When beloved maestro Thomas Wilkins returned to conduct Gershwin this week, it was like coming home – and not just because he still lives in Tampa Bay. Read about the former TFO conductor and this weekend’s concerts on the blog.
On Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a wave of pogroms, state-sponsored terrorism, against the Jews in Germany and Austria. Within a few short hours, thousands of synagogues, Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed.
Composers often use the orchestra like a giant paintbrush, splashing colors across an imaginary canvas, evoking ideas and images through a bundle of instruments.
For David Browne, winning The Florida Orchestra’s Student Composition Contest was a dream come true. “Shattered Clock Fanfare is a musical depiction of a recurring dream I had as a child wherein I was forever lost in a universe where time never existed,” said Browne, 22, in his artist statement on the short work, which premieres on the Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony concert May 18-20.
From the moment you walk into the Straz Center on Friday, Florida will come to life through art and music. Fourteen works of art, all inspired by Florida, will be displayed in the Morsani lobby by the Life Enrichment Center for the Arts (LEC).
To say the earth will tremble this weekend when The Florida Orchestra stages Verdi’s Requiem seems a bit dramatic. But that’s Verdi for you.
Located 30 miles north of Prague, Terezin/Theresienstadt was turned into a Jewish ghetto and concentration camp by the Nazis after their occupation of Czechoslovakia. The camp was unusual in that inmates included highly educated Jewish scholars and scientists as well as internationally renowned artists, musicians and actors including Czech composer Rafael Schächter and the famous German rabbi Leo Baeck.
In classical music, it can be easy to overlook the influence of women. Beethoven! Mozart! Tchaikovsky! But now more than ever, women are making a huge impact on classical music…
You know you’re getting old when you find in a desk drawer a ticket stub to the opening of The Florida Orchestra’s 1981-82 season.
Eighteen years ago, I spent an afternoon at the Brandon home of Michael Ippolito, where he sat at the piano talking about his newly composed Rhapsodie Pathetique. He played a passage and looked at me, confidently. “I’m the piano,’’ he said, “and the orchestra is the world.’’