“As a conductor of the Florida Orchestra, Michael Francis spends time on the details,” writes Andrew Meacham in Sunday’s (9/25) Tampa Bay Times. “As music director, he revels in the big ideas. Francis, 40, opens the Florida Orchestra’s latest season Sept. 30, and he is always looking for ways to connect his latest inspiration with a concert. That’s what he was doing in May 2015 while chatting with … mezzo soprano Jamie Barton. Francis was working with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conducting the world premiere of [The Work at Hand] by American composer Jake Heggie…. composed … for Barton…. The result is a Florida Orchestra concert, Songs of the Sea: Britten, Elgar and Debussy (Nov. 11-13), the same weekend as the Blue Ocean Film Festival,” featuring the Heggie work, plus Elgar’s Sea Pictures and Debussy’s La Mer. “The concert’s theme also ties to the audience, Francis said, to ‘the fact that we are by the sea, to celebrate the fact that Tampa Bay is so surrounded by water.’ … For the ‘core repertoire,’ … the season includes five concerts fully or partly devoted to Beethoven, starting with the season opener.”
Posted September 28, 2016
