HEAR IT - Humanity's Expressive Artists Reveal & Illuminate Truth

José Luis Gomez,   conductor Zhuang Zuo,   piano Program Robert Muczynski : Galena: A Town - World Premiere Franz Lisz t: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E♭ major Modest Mussorgsky : Pictures at an Exhibition (Ravel) A rousing, passionate, color-filled program rolled out from the stage inside the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall this last weekend, opening  Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s 95th season :  a posthumous world premier by the esteemed composer and long time University of Arizona instructor, Robert Muczynski; a lyrical yet fiery Liszt piano concerto with Zee Zee; and Ravel’s ever popular setting of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition . In a masterly touch, after discovering the oeuvre of musical gems from Robert Muczynski , Maestro José Luis Gomez has taken it upon himself to bring this superbly well-crafted music to the 21st century stage. Galena: A Town , an understated title for a brilliant work, is joyously quintessential Muczynski:  clear, almost crystalline son...

José Luis Gomez, Music Director Tucson Symphony Orchestra Friday, 31 March 2023 RISE! YES, RISE AGAIN, TUCSON! This was a fine and joyous performance. The brass, percussion, and woodwind-swollen orchestra, alternately stretched out in long-spun soundscapes, attacking in thunderous outbursts, and finally layering into Mahler’s otherworldly culmination of musical forces, performed very well under Maestro José Luis Gomez’ steady, studied, expressive, can't miss direction. The multi-ensemble symphonic chorus produced Mahler’s delicate dissonances and ultra-powerful divine declarations in fine form.  Vocal soloists Kelly Nassief and Emily Marvosh both achieved that seemingly impossible combination of powerful projection, tonal variation, and exaggerated annunciation that is required to deliver Mahler’s grand settings of the Urlicht (4th mvt.) and Auferstehen (Finale). Concertmaster Loren Roth ’s several solo contributions were deliciously outstanding and were heavily lauded during ova...

13) YOU LOVE LIFE and intend to keep living it to its (over)fullest! 12) This orchestra will be CRAZY BIG: 10 trumpets, 10 French horns, two bass drums, two harps, a double sized woodwind section, a giant chorus, and vocal soloists. WHERE WILL THEY FIND ALL OF THESE NEEDED EXTRA VIRTUOSI? 11) Where have I heard THAT before?! Mahler’s Second symphony contains and integrates--by far!--more hints, allusions, and wild transformations--this is NOT plagiarism!--of previously composed music, including his own, than any music previously composed (that is, of course, until completing his Third symphony...). 10) TSO Maestro José Luis Gomez ("The real deal!", spake Lenny's daughter, Jaime Bernstein) TRANSFORMS into a highly driven, yet relaxed, grunting and groaning MASTER DIRECTOR of gigantic musical forces. This may be his most daunting challenge yet! WILL HE RISE (Yes, rise again!) TO THE OCCASION? 9) Mahler’s COMPLETELY NOVEL, NON-METRIC VOCAL SETTINGS mirror w...

Tucson Symphony Orchestra BEETHOVEN'S NINTH José Luis Gomez, conductor Maria Brea, soprano Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano* Richard Trey Smagur, tenor Kelly Markgraf, baritone Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus · Marcela Molina, interim director PROGRAM Richard Wagner: Prelude to The Mastersingers of Nuremberg Richard Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder* Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, “Choral” Friday, 20 January 2023 ________________________ Prologue - Regarding Beethoven After life's most difficult questions and challenges have been asked and directly confronted, we all come together in a blissful bond of global fellowship, the grace of our open embrace of the entire knowable universe, beyond which a loving father–Nature's Creator!–must lie. Rejoice!! The rapturous evocation and celebration of universal brotherhood, described by Friedrich Schiller and delivered by Beethoven, is an overpowering, cathartic answer and conclusion to the massive tumult which was the social, economi...

Tucson Symphony Orchestra BEETHOVEN'S NINTH José Luis Gomez, conductor Maria Brea, soprano Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano* Richard Trey Smagur, tenor Kelly Markgraf, baritone Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus · Marcela Molina, Director PROGRAM Richard Wagner: Prelude to The Mastersingers of Nuremberg Richard Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder* Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, “Choral” Friday, 20 January 2023 Friedrich Schiller After life's most difficult questions and challenges have been asked and directly confronted, we all come together in a blissful bond of global fellowship , the grace of our open embrace of the entire knowable universe, beyond which a loving father–Nature's Creator!–must lie. Rejoice! By northern Sonora Desert standards, it is a cold Friday evening in mid-late January . And despite multiple highly transmissible viruses on the loose, close to 2000, mostly long-in-the-tooth, well-musically and culturally educated ladies and gentlemen are quickly filling the ...

Tucson Symphony Orchestra  Masterworks Series José Luis Gomez, conductor PROGRAM Franz Liszt: The Black Gondola (arr. John Adams) Richard Wagner: Siegfried Idyll Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 40 Nov. 6, 7:30 P.M.,  CFHS Auditorium REVIEW Credit where credit is due. The Tucson Symphony Orchestra , under José Luis Gomez’ direction, is in a real groove of great programming, and he and the players are performing their socks off. Everything has a purpose. We’re not “mixing old and new”, or playing “warhorses” because they’re popular, or playing contemporary music as a wink to post-modernity. Pinnacles of historical European symphonic repertoire have been singled out, like Mozart’s 40th Symphony this weekend, with renditions based on a very studied understanding of how they were performed when written. That means with Mozart, as with Beethoven, substantially faster tempos than most of us are used to. In the case of Mozart’s 40th, the swift tempos end up highlighting, in an u...