Virginia Symphony Orchestra Music Director Eric Jacobsen. He’s shown at the Plaza Live, a venue of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, where he is also music director. Photo: Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel
“Eric Jacobsen, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s new music director, makes his debut this week with concerts at three Hampton Roads venues and with Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer Branford Marsalis,” writes Saleen Martin in Wednesday’s (12/1) Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA). “The performances will be at the Ferguson Center for the Arts in Newport News Thursday, Chrysler Hall in Norfolk Friday and the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts in Virginia Beach Sunday…. Jacobsen, whose tenure with VSO started July 1, … also serves as music director for the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra…. Jacobsen will open with Mozart’s overture to ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and [conduct works by] Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler and London-based composer Sally Beamish. Beamish’s pieces [“Under the Wing of the Rock” and “The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone’] were written for saxophone and orchestra, and she and Marsalis have worked together. Beamish will attend the local concerts and sit in on recording sessions for a CD slated for a 2022 release. Marsalis is part of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, which was formed in 1986. He is well known for his renditions of Claude Debussy, Mahler and Ralph Vaughan Williams and his collaborations with the Grateful Dead and Sting.”
