Tucson Symphony Orchestra will close its 2025-26 Classics series this weekend with the world premiere of a long-forgotten work by the late UA professor and composer Robert Muczynski.
Muczynski's Symphony closes out a years-long project by TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez to perform and record Muczynski's works.
Muczynski had completed the symphony but had not arranged it for orchestra, something the TSO had to do.
"It was never performed, at least there's no knowledge of it ever being performed by anyone," Gomez said. "This is very special because in the closing of our project, we're going to perform a symphony by Maestro Muczynski that is completely finished, but it was never performed. This is going to be a world premiere."
Robert Muczynski
Since 2021, the orchestra has resurrected a number of Muczynski's works that Gomez unearthed during the pandemic.
"We all had time on our hands," said Gomez, who was home in Spain and started researching composers for a recording project when he googled "Tucson composers" and came up with Muczynski.
"I knew that he was not born in Tucson, but his presence in Tucson was important," Gomez said. "So I started to research and see what kind of music by him has been recorded, what has been played. And I realized, looking at his catalog, that there was a great deal of music for woodwinds (that had been) recorded and was known by musicians, especially in this country."
But there also were symphonic works, which led Gomez to the TSO's database, where he discovered that the orchestra had played a lot of the composer's works in the 1960s and '70s.
"I'm like, 'Oh, wow. So this music was played'," Gomez recalled. "And then I started to do even more research and see what are those pieces that were never recorded or were never played."
Gomez and the TSO launched the Muczynski recording project with "Dovetail" Overture in the 2021-22 season, then opened the TSO's 2022-23 season with "Charade." He added "Galena: A Town" (Suite for Orchestra) in 2023 and last spring led the orchestra in "Symphonic Memoir," which Muczynski had composed for the orchestra and premiered in 1979.
Finishing with Muczynski's Symphony "is very special," Gomez said.
TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez will close out his years-long exploration of Robert Muczynski's music with a world premiere this weekend.
"The quality of the music is wonderful," he said of the composer, who died in Tucson in 2010 at the age of 81. "He is a respected composer, and he lived here in Tucson. So this orchestra, which played many of his works, needs to pay tribute to him."
Gomez bookended this weekend's "Copland's Fanfare for America" concert with Joan Tower's "Sixth Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman" and Copland's Symphony No. 3, whose final movement includes the main theme of his "Fanfare for the Common Man."
The symphony will perform the concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 10, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 12, at Linda Ronstadt Music hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $16.90-$109.30 through tucsonsymphony.org.
