Tucson Symphony looks to draw a new audience with more accessible format

Tucson Symphony Orchestra kicks off its 2023-24 season this weekend with the return of a celebrated guest pianist and the launch of a new concert format that could bring new audiences to Linda Ronstadt Music Hall.

This weekend’s “Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition” concert is the first in the orchestra’s “Classics With A Twist” series. The orchestra, under TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez, on Friday, Sept. 22, will perform two of the three pieces on the program with no intermission. The full program will be performed in full on Sunday, Sept. 24.

“Classics With A Twist” throws out some of the classical music etiquette playbook, which Gomez said “makes it a little more accessible” for audiences who might be intimidated by the more rigid structure of a traditional classical music concert.

The orchestra will perform three “Classics With A Twist” concerts this season for “people who want to experience the same program you would see at the music hall with a twist,” Gomez said. The twist will include a narrator talking about the music to connect the dots between the repertoire and what the audience will see and hear, multimedia elements and a post-concert Q&A.

“Each concert is going to have a different approach, a different ambience,” Gomez said.

Friday’s concert features guest pianist Zee Zee, who will perform Franz Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. Zee Zee is making her first appearance with the TSO since she was the guest soloist at the orchestra’s 2017-18 season-opening concert playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

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This time around, Zee Zee, who was born in China, grew up mostly in Germany and studied piano at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, returns to familiar musical terrain with Liszt, a composer the 33-year-old said in a post on her website “is one of the most important pianists and composers for the piano in the history of classical music.”

Last year, she released her recital album “Journey,” anchored by several of the 19th-century Hungarian pianist/composer’s works.

Friday’s TSO concert closes with Mussorgsky’s “Pictures At An Exhibition.”

In addition to the Liszt and Mussorgsky, the TSO at Sunday’s concert will perform the world premiere of Robert Muczynski’s “Galena: A Town” Suite for Orchestra, one of several works by the longtime University of Arizona professor and composer-in-residence who died in 2010.

Since 2021, the TSO has performed several of Muczynski’s pieces as part of a recording project to celebrate his works.

“I feel our mission as a symphony orchestra, with having a connection with this very interesting and unique composer, is to do that for him,” Gomez said.