The Florida Orchestra will premiere Michael Ippolito’s Triptych this weekend, commissioned for the orchestra’s 50th anniversary season, writes Andrew Meacham in Friday’s (2/23) Tampa Bay Times. Music Director Michael Francis “persuaded Ippolito, 33, to accept the commission he and his wife, Cindy, helped pay for. The mission was to celebrate Florida. Francis regards the commission as the centerpiece of the … season…. [Ippolito, a Tampa native] played cello at McLane Middle School and the Tampa Bay Youth Orchestra… At Brandon High, he took master classes with Lowell Adams, still the orchestra’s assistant principal cellist…. His work [has been] played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra…. Growing up, he had looked at his home state … as a place to get away from…. Francis challenged him … to look at it afresh…. Not Disney’s Florida or that kid at baggage claim who’s kite surfing [but] … ‘Something like the swamp or the storms,’ [says Ippolito]. ‘These are not the paradise-friendly. These are sort of elemental forces. They’re bigger than us.’ Triptych divides into three movements,” “Cypress Cathedral,” “On the Curl’d Clouds,” and “Barque of Phosphor,” “a meditation on postcard Florida, the moon turned into sailing ship.”
Posted February 23, 2018
Pictured: Composer Michael Ippolito works with the Florida Orchestra as they rehearse his music at the Mahaffey Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo by Cherie Diez / Tampa Bay Times
