Expecting a bit of a letdown after our grand 50th anniversary celebration? Don’t. Music Director Michael Francis has put an enormous amount of thought into programming every concert in our most wide-ranging season yet, which starts in the fall. “It’s our first chance to show where we’re going as an orchestra in our new era,” he said.
Dorothy Hindman isn’t your typical classical composer. Her music is fearless, post-modern, tightly wound, sometimes digital, punctuated with punk, and always ear-opening. Music critics describe her compositions as visceral, profound, spectral. Some works cascade into a state of entropy, like a swirling black hole in deep space.
Classical music is thriving underground in St. Petersburg. On the second Monday of the month, local musicians get together to perform in Classical Revolution St. Pete, a night of straight-up, high-caliber chamber music in the Iberian Rooster’s basement lounge for whoever wants to listen. For free.
A little more than a week before rare performances of Janacek’s Sinfonietta, TFO Personnel Manager Perry Landmeyer was in a bit of a panic. The piece calls for 12 trumpet players, instead of the typical three or four. Suddenly, he was one short.
It’s not every day that a classical composer sits down and writes a piece of music about your home town. But that’s what Daniel Crozier did with his newly minted Splendor Fountain, his homage to the Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater area.
Anybody who meets Sandra del Cid-Davies, who joined TFO on flute/piccolo this season, knows she has a passion for music and life that far outsizes her tiny piccolo. And it certainly comes through in this Q&A, which feels like a friendly chat over a piece of chocolate cake.
Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and December performances of Handel’s Messiah. The world’s most famous oratorio appears every holiday season, with hundreds if not thousands of productions by professional and amateur groups around the world.
For gamers, this is a big deal: Internationally revered FINAL FANTASY composer Nobuo Uematsu will attend both of The Florida Orchestra’s performances of Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY® coming up in just weeks at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg. This is Uematsu’s first time attending concerts in Florida.
For Stuart Malina, Common Fanfare for an Uncommon Orchestra was uncommonly difficult to compose. In fact, it almost never happened at all.
