SASO opens 'Echoes' season with guest artists; Moeckel returns to TSO

Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra opens its 2025-26 "Symphonic Echoes" season this weekend with "Echoes of Serenity."

From Ernest Bloch's moving, spirit-lifting homage to his mother in the program's opening "In Memoriam," to Mozart's delightful Oboe Concerto in C major, the program curated by SASO Music Director Linus Lerner fits the definition of serenity.

The program is bookended by Beethoven's lush and sentimental Sixth Symphony "Pastoral," which takes us to the Vienna summertime countryside where Beethoven composed it in 1808. 

This is Beethoven taking a deep breath from the bombast and exuberance he infused in his Fifth Symphony and instead dancing us through a delightful calm.  

Lerner is turning the podium over to Romanian-Israeli guest conductor Ethan Schmeisser. Erin Hannigan, principal oboe with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, will solo on the Mozart.

The orchestra will perform the concert at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, at DesertView Performing Arts Center, 39900 S. Clubhouse Drive in SaddleBrooke; and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12, at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, SW Sanctuary, 7575 N. Paseo del Norte on the northwest side.

Tickets are $35 for SaddleBrooke and $28 for Tucson through sasomusic.org.

TSO welcomes old friend as artist-in-residence

Former Tucson Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Steven Moeckel returns to his old stomping grounds as the orchestra's 2025 artist in residence. 

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Over the next two weekends, Moeckel will perform Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in the orchestra's Masterworks chamber series and several works by late 19th-century/early 20th-century composers in its intimate Up Close series with a half-dozen TSO musicians. 

Moeckel opens the residency with "Mozart and Schubert" at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12, at Catalina Foothills High School, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive. Moeckel's solo is bookended by Louise Ferrenc's Overture No. 1 and Schubert's Symphony No. 1, with TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez at the podium.

Tickets are $54-$99 through tucsonsypmphony.org.

On Oct. 18-19, Moeckel joins TSO musicians clarinetist Dario Brignoli, Victor Valenzuela on horn, violist Ann Weaver, cellist Anne Gratz, pianist Dean Zhang and Ben Albertson on harp for the Up Close recital at Tucson Symphony Center, 2175 N. Sixth Ave. The Up Close series is more conversational, allowing the artists to discuss the music-making.

The program, curated by Moeckel, includes works by Camille Saint-Saëns, Ernő Dohnányi, Amy Beach and Rebecca Clarke. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. 

The concert will be held at the Symphony Center, 2175 N. Sixth Ave. Tickets are $29 through tucsonsymphony.org.

Moeckel, who returned to the orchestra last season as a guest concertmaster, was TSO concertmaster from 2002-08 before taking the same position with the Phoenix Symphony. He now teaches full-time at Northern Arizona University. 

Moeckel in July made his Arizona Friends of Chamber Music debut in a sold-out concert.