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Barry Douglas, Piano TSO Music Director, José Luis Gomez 15 February 2019 -- Tucson, Arizona. Tucson Community Center Music Hall, To call Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto a war horse, is rather an understatement. Though initially rated as garbage by the piano virtuoso, Nikolai Rubinstein, for whom Pyotr had intended the premier, it has long been one of the most popular concertos in the literature. Barry Douglas won over the world performing this work in 1986, capping his Tchaikovsky Piano Competition  Gold Medal . How would he, Maestro José Luis Gomez, and the TSO fare with it, 30+ years later? With flair, power, precision, and delicate moments of introspection. Douglas, steady as a rock in both stage presence and musicality, pressed out the giant musical statements with power and grace. Then immediately, his genius of judgement was on display. The tempo and tone adjustments required to highlight and communicate the precious, less strident solos and lightly acco...

Tonight, Music Director, José Luis Gomez, and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, dive deep into late 19th century orchestral splendor. This will be the very, VERY long-awaited TSO Premier-- 134 years since its composition! -- of Anton Bruckner's sprawling and storied 7th Symphony. The concert will open, like a raucous, outsized Tucson Rodeo 'Prelude', with superstar cowboy -- er, famed power pianist! -- Barry Douglas, saddling up his Steinway 'D', to ride the Great War Horse, Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, into a Shootout at the TCC Corral! Irish pianist Barry Douglas, whose career was launched, as he became, in 1986, only the second non-Russian to win the quadrennial Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, has a repertoire forged somewhat in the mold of the great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Douglas wowed the Tchaikovsky Competition judges and audience with his stunning 'Pictures at an Exhibition', by Mussorgsky, which Richter had redefined, an...

Pacho Flores, Corno Music Director, José Luis Gomez Tucson Symphony Orchestra Friday night, 25 January 2019, Tucson Symphony Orchestra's 'Fresh Music, Copland and More' Classic concert: ONE: this is a brilliant program. Two brass concerti, featuring Venezuelan super-virtuoso Pacho Flores, and two popular Aaron Copeland works, were bookended by sublime overtures by Mozart and Bernstein. ONE-A: a surprising common musical thread weaves its way through Mozart's Overture to 'The Abduction from the Seraglio', the 'Concerto for Corno da Caccia', by J.B.G. Neruda (a contemporary of Bach and Mozart), and the first movement of the new Arturo Márquez 'Concerto for Trumpet' – a sustained, repeated melodic syncopation. The TSO Music Director, José Luis Gomez, is a sly one! TWO: this performance by Pacho Flores  was a soulful and energetic gift to this audience. His tone, articulations, and musicality are masterly, while his v...

Anne-Marie McDermott James Judd 2 November 2018: McDERMOTT FINDS MOZART'S PATHOS Anne-Marie McDermott is a very versatile pianist. Tucsonans have known and admired her performances with Arizona Friends of Chamber Music for over twenty years. In a revelation of power, passion, and pathos, before recording the complete, heavyweight Prokofiev Piano Sonatas in 2009, she performed all of them in succession in Tucson over several consecutive days. Her discography of both solo and chamber works stretches from Bach to the moderns, including Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, Scriabin, and celebrated contemporary composer Charles Wuorinen . Last night, crisp and clear, McDermott's performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto #27 was not dainty. And for this last of Mozart's concerti, the ensemble is quite small, which made for a great overall balance of sound. For Mozart, this concerto is very lyrical and less filled with complexities than his great ones just precedin...

REVIEW:  2 November 2018 MIDORI plays Brahms Violin Concerto GENESIS And God said:   Let the Earth put forth "each greenery".  And it was so (Japanese: 五嶋みどり ; English transliteration:  Midori Goto ) .  'OMG, thank you!' , re joiced the people, transfixed  by Midori's music, as they basked in the Glory of receiving on Earth this Divine inspiration from He who dwells beyond the canopy of stars. As bright as a meteor was the beginning of Midori's concert career; shining on stage with Zubin Mehta and the NYPO at age 11, a headlining performance with Bernstein at Tanglewood at age 14; and conquering Carnegie Hall with a dazzling full recital at age 18.  Thirty years into a spectacular concert and recording career,  that has taken us far beyond the normal bounds of concert artist,  Midori has become a true citizen of the world. Highly active as an educator, promoter of opportunities for young musicians, and an act...

 Inspirational Musical Master MIDORI  performs BRAHMS  Violin Concerto  with JOSÉ LUIS GOMEZ and  the  TUSCON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MIDORI GOTO This Friday evening, 2 November 2018, at 7:30 P.M., world-renowned concert violinist, dedicated educator, and global music ambassador Midori Goto will perform the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra , conducted by Music Director, José Luis Gomez . Midori, who performed in Carnegie Hall   with orchestra  at the tender age of eleven, brings striking, penetrating musicality and dazzling technique to all repertoire she covers.  Midori's riveting stage presence flows from an endless series of supple rotations, as w hole body motions are applied to each note , arpeggio, double-stop, and  trill. Not only by  virtuosity do her performances thrill.  T he delicacy and power Midori draws from the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesu ex-Huberman violin she plays, beli...

Yolanda Kondonassis José Luis Gomez REVIEW, Tucson Symphony Orchestra , 12 October 2018: Following his overall smashing Inaugural Season as TSO Music Director, Maestro José Luis Gomez said, for his second season, he would show us his Latin side. This concert delivered two fine South American masterworks, counterbalanced by Johannes Brahms orchestral coming-out party – his first symphony, completed at age 43. "...and she was hanging from my lips, as the word of flesh that made the Poem live, because I told him, fr iends, the Parable of the Volcano and the Seven Stars."   ~  Andrés Eloy Blanco 'El Río de las Siete Estrellas' (The River of the Seven Stars) is Evencio Castellanos' seminal orchestral musical political history of Venezuela – a tour de force of orchestral coloration and of artistic settings of suggestive fragments of folkloric melodies. In tracing Venezuela's journey of “discovery” by Christopher Columbus, through...