As the 2012-13 season gets underway, orchestras in California, Iowa, Massachusetts, and South Carolina are each marking significant birthdays: the Santa Rosa Symphony (85th anniversary since its founding, in 1928), Des Moines Symphony (75th anniversary), the Longwood Symphony Orchestra (30th anniversary), and the Greenville Symphony Orchestra (65th anniversary). On September 30, California’s Santa Rosa Symphony will hold its season-opening concert at the new Weill Concert Hall in the Green Music Center on the Sonoma State University campus, with all three of the orchestra’s living conductors participating: current Music Director Bruno Ferrandis, Conductor Emeritus Corrick Brown, and Conductor Laureate Jeffrey Kahane. Iowa’s Des Moines Symphony will open its 75th season with Music Director and Conductor Joseph Giunta leading the world premiere of Steve Heitzeg’s Symphony in Sculpture, about Des Moines’s Pappajohn Sculpture Park in Des Moines, plus Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. The Longwood Symphony Orchestra, based in Boston, will celebrate its 30th season with a four-concert series at Jordan Hall, the debut of new Music Director Ronald Feldman, performances by soloists from the Young Concert Artists program, and concerts benefiting four Boston nonprofit organizations. The four nonprofits—known as the orchestra’s Community Partners—are the Sharehood Project, a free healthcare organization; Triangle, Inc., a resource organization for people with disabilities; Jack’s Magic Bean Fund, a pediatric cancer research program; and Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence, directed at Asian domestic violence survivors in the Greater Boston and Lowell areas. The Greenville Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina will open the first of six masterworks concerts at Greenville’s Peace Center Concert Hall during its 65th season on September 22, when Music Director and Conductor Edvard Tchivzhel leads the orchestra in a program of Bernstein’s Candide Overture, Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, and Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F Major, with soloist Gabriela Martinez. The GSO continues its free “Active Listening” program this year in the upper balcony section of its concert hall, where ushers offer mp3 players that provide newcomers with program information, concert etiquette guidelines, and background information about the GSO.
Posted September 6, 2012
