orchestra21

Funny you should ask, since our most recent event was the second in a series of amazing collaborations that began with our presentation of the Planets two seasons ago. These concerts have been insanely well-received and, based on the feedback, we are looking into the possibility of bringing back the Planets production for an encore live performance with an accompanying video release.

So, the programmer in me wants to know – would you come to a concert like this?

On the occasion of Mozart’s 254th birthday, the buoyant dance movement of his last and most exuberant symphony:

Mozart – Symphony K551, Menuetto-Trio
WCFSO – November 2007

More Mozart from this blog here.

Eugene Wallingford, of Knowing and Doing and head of the CS department at the University of Northern Iowa, normally writes about one type of programming. Last week he took a detour to reflect on ours at the WCFSO.

Broadcast – My November 3, 2007 concert with the WCFSO will be featured on Iowa Public Radio’s Symphonies of Iowa series this Saturday morning at 10:00 am. [As always, time given is local.] This event featured a major commission from visual artist Gary Kelley, who created a series of evocative paintings and works on paper that were filmed by Scott Smith and presented alongside our performance of the Planets.

Here we are rehearsing Neptune the Mystic with Gary’s imagery. Lining everything up was not an easy task since Scott’s video piece involved constant motion in addition to edits and pans cued to the music. But the result was thrilling – read the review here. We are continuing work on this project and hope to make it available to orchestras nationwide in the future.

PS – Still hoping that IPR will establish an iTunes/mp3 stream.