“Tucson Symphony Orchestra is celebrating the Grand Canyon’s 100th birthday with Ferde Grofé’s monumental Grand Canyon Suite,” writes Cathalena Burch in Monday’s (2/18) Arizona Daily Star. “The orchestra will perform it as the soundtrack to a film the orchestra co-commissioned with the Phoenix Symphony in 2011 to celebrate Arizona’s 100th birthday the following year. The orchestra is bringing back multimedia visual artist Nicholas Bardonnay, who shot the film…. [Bardonnay’s] California-based Westwater Arts has created 15 photochoreographic multimedia films for orchestras…. Bardonnay will be working the controls of the visuals being projected onto a 440-square-foot screen hanging above the orchestra at Tucson Music Hall. ‘Just like a musician, I will be following the maestro,’ … he said…. Bardonnay said that while his film offers the visual glimpse, it’s the orchestra that provides the emotional connection to tie it all together…. Grand Canyon Suite anchors a program that opens with Aaron Copland’s ‘El Salón México.’ … Bardonnay will accompany the orchestra with his latest project, ‘Mágico,’ which he shot while he and his wife, Erin, were living in Mexico for a year. The orchestra also will perform Copland’s ‘The Tender Land’ Suite and two works by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla.”
Posted February 19, 2019
In photo: The Tucson Symphony will perform Ferde Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite,” featuring Westwater Arts’ images of the Grand Canyon accompanying the music
