{"id":120,"date":"2015-03-29T00:00:23","date_gmt":"2015-03-29T04:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/?p=120"},"modified":"2015-04-07T13:05:15","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T17:05:15","slug":"a-season-of-firsts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/a-season-of-firsts\/","title":{"rendered":"A season of firsts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week we announced the 2015\/16 Jacksonville Symphony season. This is a big moment in every orchestra\u2019s year. It\u2019s a manifesto for the future, not just outlining the music that will be played, but also giving a glimpse of long-term vision. As the first season I\u2019ve planned since taking the music directorship, I think it\u2019s fair to say that there has been a certain degree of anticipation about what\u2019s in store. So here\u2019s the inside story.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the series of concerts for which we\u2019re best known: Florida Blue Masterworks on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. This is our flagship series, presenting the widest range of repertoire. I\u2019m excited about playing music that our audience knows and loves, like Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony, Holst\u2019s suite The Planets<\/em>, and Debussy\u2019s glistening tone poem La Mer<\/em>. But we will also explore areas that haven\u2019t featured on recent Jacksonville Symphony seasons. The heart and soul of our art is the classical period of the 18th<\/sup> century. We\u2019ll be performing classical repertoire that you may not know, like Haydn\u2019s Symphony No. 90 and Mozart\u2019s Great C minor Mass. Playing these pieces is the musical equivalent of going to the car wash, leaving the orchestral sound sparkling and transparent.<\/p>\n

At the other end of musical history, we\u2019ll be performing a lot more from the 20th<\/sup> and 21st<\/sup> centuries. You would never dream of maintaining an art gallery that ignored the last 100 years, and concerts should be no different. I\u2019m looking forward to Stravinsky\u2019s biting wartime Symphony in Three Movements, and Thomas Ad\u00e8s\u2019s 1997 masterpiece Asyla<\/em>, one movement of which \u201csummons the druggy techno of a London nightclub\u201d, to quote the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan once said that the sound of a great orchestra needs to be tended like an English country garden. Over the next few seasons we will be performing repertoire from the 19th<\/sup> century that you may not know, like the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. We start with his Sixth in April 2016.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re beginning to reach out to Jacksonville\u2019s population in new ways. Our community needs an orchestra that responds to its changing needs. We\u2019ve already launched a young professionals\u2019 group, UpTempo, \u201cfor the cultural class of the next generation\u201d. If you\u2019re in your twenties or thirties, sign up for great concert packages and pop-up member-only parties in surprise locations.<\/p>\n

Symphony in 60 is a new concert experience. Beginning at 6:00pm on Thursdays and lasting an hour, each concert will present a major masterpiece in a fresh, casual format. Audience members will be able to watch close-up HD projections of the orchestra on screens in Jacoby Hall, and join us onstage after the concert for a drink. If you work downtown, why not skip the traffic and enjoy the Jacksonville Symphony instead?<\/p>\n

Many people have told me how much they\u2019d love to hear the orchestra without having to drive at night. With that in mind, we\u2019re launching a series of Signature Sunday matinee concerts. These will be full-length masterworks at 3:00pm.<\/p>\n

We have a world-class venue in Jacoby Symphony Hall, but if we never leave it we miss the opportunity of reaching thousands of people who don\u2019t yet know they love classical music. During the last week of September, we will perform concerts around the city, starting at Unity Plaza at 220 Riverside Avenue.<\/p>\n

November sees the launch of a new annual residence outside Jacksonville. This year we will spend a week in Clay County, during which orchestra ensembles will perform in local community centers, hospitals and schools. The whole orchestra will perform a morning concert for local schools and the residence will culminate in a public evening concert at the Thrasher-Horne Center for the Arts. We plan to spend one week a year outside Jacksonville, bringing the joy of great music all over North Florida.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s my hope that next season marks the beginning of a new era for the Jacksonville Symphony. We\u2019ve chosen masterpieces old and new to challenge us as we play and inspire you as you listen. Our concert series, initiatives and residencies offer greater access to classical music than ever before. It\u2019s an exhilarating season of firsts, and there has never been a better time to make your debut as an audience member.<\/p>\n

Reproduced with kind permission from The Florida Times-Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week we announced the 2015\/16 Jacksonville Symphony season. This is a big moment in every orchestra\u2019s year. It\u2019s a manifesto for the future, not just outlining the music that will be played, but also giving a glimpse of long-term vision. As the first season I\u2019ve planned since taking the music directorship, I think it\u2019s fair to say that there has been a certain degree of anticipation about what\u2019s in store. So here\u2019s the inside story. Let\u2019s start with the series of concerts for which we\u2019re best known: Florida Blue Masterworks on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. This is our flagship series, presenting the widest range of repertoire. I\u2019m excited about playing music that our audience knows and loves, like Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony, Holst\u2019s suite<\/p>\n

Continue readingA season of firsts<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"nfd_image_url":"","nfd_onboarding_generated":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jacksonvillesymphony"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}