Celebrating 35 Years of Bringing Music and Minnesotans Together!
2023-2024 Winter Concert Season – A Note from Our Conductor
Dear Friends and Supporters,
My greetings. I am very pleased to report that we have successfully concluded another great year – outstanding concerts, incredible soloists, great audiences and, after a 4-year COVID-caused hiatus, we restarted our Music in the Schools, Young Artist Competition, and Youth Outreach Week. And there was more. We just completed a second full-length video production of one of our Music in the Schools programs: Water, Our Most Precious Resource. It will soon be posted along with our first video, The Magical Mysteries of Math and Music, for everyone to access, and both are also being made available to thousands of Minnesota students and children in over 1,000 Minnesota schools – all free of charge as part of our commitment to students and education.
It really was a great year, and now we are thrilled to begin another – our 35th concert season! And what a season this will be.
Our programs will include music by some of my favorites – Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn and Mozart – and the soloists – Rodney Marsalis, who will be joined by violinist Helen Chang Haertzen; Inna Falicks; Amit Peled; and Yevgeny Kutik – are all returning for encore performances!
Our Music in the Schools will be back in full force, working with up to twenty schools. The program will be Music Tells a Story, with the academic emphasis on literature. Music and stories will include Mozart’s Magic Flute, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, and (African) Chevalier de Saint-Georges’ overture to L’Amant Anonyme. And of course there will be stimulating activities to help students meet academic literature standards, songs for them to sing, and music for the orchestra students to play with the Sinfonia as part of the in-school performances. In the spring we will be making a full in-studio video production of this program! Later in the spring we will hold our Young Artist Competition, and when we get into the summer, we will have a full slate of classical and “lighter side” concerts. Our Youth Outreach Week, featuring some of the region’s very talented instrumental students, will help complete our season in late July, culminating in a grand finale performance at the Lake Harriet bandstand.
Do mark the dates on your calendars and plan to bring your kids (and grandchildren), friends and neighbors. As always, the concerts are free admission, and we absolutely want you to bring your children! Help us celebrate what will be another great and special year – 35 years is indeed a very important achievement. We thank you for your continued and enthusiastic support, and as we say in the trade – Stay Tuned!
Jay Fishman
Artistic Director