Miami Symphony Orchestra's Season Opening

[cubanmiamiboy]

MSO is a great orchestra that has been suffering for a while its absence of a permanent home. That's why it is kind of hard to track its concerts-(in this very spread out city). BUT...for the opening season's night they got the Arsht Center-( ), and so I went. The program consisted in Beethoven's "7th Symphony in A Major", with its joyful dance elements, vitality, and sense of celebration, Ravel's "Bolero"-(always an audience's favorite)-and to close the night, fellow countryman jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval performed "Concierto de Miami" by Cuban-Guatemalan composer Carlos Rivera. This charming, relatively lightweight concerto, with plenty of attractive melody and color, is the product of a joint commission by the Miami Symphony Orchestra and the famed El Sistema Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. AD Eduardo Martured conducted. It was a wonderful night!

[dirac]

Thank you for telling us about it.. The location issue must be challenging for the orchestra as well as its fans.

[bart]

Christian, do you know whether this was presented by the Arsht or whether the orchestra rented the hall, as does MIami City Ballet, for example?

There are so many beautifully trained classical musicians in south Florida. (I was astonished and excited about the superb quality -- and great improvement -- of Palm Beach Opera's orchestra in both the Verdi Requiem (full orchestra) and in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (reduced orchestra) the past two weekends.)

The work life of musicians without a permanent institutional home isn't often secure or easy. I hope the MSO can create the kind of institution that could, eventually, expand their performance schedules to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, just as MCB does. There used to be a Florida Philharmonic which had multiple performance venues, but that folded before we moved down here.

[cubanmiamiboy]

They always rent the performance space, either at the Arsht Center or anywhere else. Actually the wife of the conductor-(a client of mine)-told me that they had been trying hard to lease the Lincoln Theater once it was vacated by the New World Symphony after their moving to the Gehry building, but the rent was to expensive for them. As I reported, some retailers ended up getting it and , sadly, it will be gone soon.