Music Director Rafael Payare conducts the San Diego Symphony at Copley Symphony Hall, before the venue closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Photo by Nancee E. Lewis
“The San Diego Symphony will ring in the new year with music, virtually speaking,” writes George Varga in Tuesday’s (12/8) San Diego Union Tribune. “The orchestra will be joined by Riverside-based teen piano prodigy Ray Ushikubo for a performance of George Gershwin’s … ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’ Led by music director Rafael Payare, 43 members of the 82-piece symphony last week filmed what is being billed as the [orchestra’s] first ‘New Year’s Eve Celebration.’ … Money raised from the concert, which will be streamed online Dec. 31, will … benefit the Symphony Stabilization Fund…. In November, Payare and 45 of the symphony’s musicians reconvened at downtown’s Copley Symphony Hall for the first time in eight months to film the orchestra’s first streamed online concert, … filmed and recorded over three days, then edited. Similar steps and precautions were undertaken to film last week’s ‘New Year’s Eve Celebration’ concert. It will feature 26 string players, seven wind players, six brass players and two percussionists from the orchestra performing in different configurations…. In addition to ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ the Dec. 31 repertoire will include Duke Ellington’s ‘Sophisticated Lady,’ Johannes Brahms’ Selected Hungarian Dances and two pieces by Johann Strauss, the Radetzky March and the Emperor Waltz.”
