In photo: Florida Orchestra musicians, led by Associate Conductor Daniel Black, perform a selection from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.
“Sidelined since the start of the pandemic in mid-March, Tampa Bay’s premier purveyors of classical music have been chomping at the proverbial bit to perform, to present … to play,” writes Bill DeYoung in Thursday’s (4/30) St. Pete Catalyst (Florida). “The Florida Orchestra has been publishing virtual performances, videos made up of dozens of other videos to create a fully-realized piece of symphonic music. There have been two thus far…. The mastermind behind them all is Associate Conductor Daniel Black, who estimates he puts in 50 hours of work for every three minutes of video. Not that he’s a studio whiz, mind you…. ‘The first few weeks were really learning on the fly,’ Black says. First came Thank You Tampa Bay, a virtual performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 (finale), with 40 musicians; this was followed by a moving rendition of the 19th-century women’s suffrage anthem Daughters of Freedom, combining orchestra musicians with singers from the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay…. In the works is a video featuring excerpts from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. ‘It’s going to be something similar to [Music Director] Michael Francis’ Inside the Music pre-concert talks,’ Black says, ‘with Michael recording some commentary.’ ”
