Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra hopes to feed our collective soul next season with a full slate of new works and new faces appearing with the volunteer ensemble.
SASO Music Director Linus Lerner curated a season that unofficially opens with SASO’s third annual Mexican Independence Day Concert on Sept. 15 at Fox Tucson Theatre downtown. The free concert, sponsored by the Mexican Consulate in Tucson and the Instituto Cultural Mexicano de Tucson, will feature music of Mexican composers, a mariachi ensemble and opera arias sung by winners of the Linus Lerner International Voice Competition, which will be held this summer in San Luis Potosí in Mexico.
The 2017-18 season highlights:
- We get an early listen to American composer Amanda Harberg’s “Solis” a year after the work debuted at Carnegie Hall last October. It’s one of the highlights of the Oct. 14-15 SASO season opener that also features the return of violinist Chloé Trevor to perform Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto and Vivaldi’s “Summer” from “The Four Seasons.”
- Guest conductor Diego Sánchez Haase is coming from Paraguay to lead a concert anchored by Tucson fave Tbilisi-born pianist Yelena Beriyeva performing Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto. The Nov. 18-19 concert opens with Rossini’s Overture to “William Tell” and includes Beethoven’s “Pastroral” Symphony.
- The Tucson Sino Choir joins SASO Jan. 27-28 for a Chinese New Year celebration that will highlight traditional Chinese instruments the guzheng and erhu. University of Arizona faculty member Jing Xia will play the guzheng in Zhou’s “Robe of the Clouds”; erhu player Xiaoyin Zheng solos on Lui’s “Great Wall Fantasy.”
- Tucson rocker and rising classical composer Pete Fine takes the spotlight when he joins the orchestra to perform his self-penned Electric Guitar Concerto No. 2 on March 10-11. The SASO Chorus also will join the orchestra for Poulenc’s “Gloria.”
- The season wraps up April 14-15 with Tucson Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Lauren Roth performing Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 on a concert that also includes Theofanides’ “Rainbow Body” and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances.
