Vancouver Island Symphony’s season finale will take the audience “on an roller coaster through music history.”
The program for Proms Island Style was curated in collaboration with guest conductor Arthur Arnold and the symphony’s concert master Calvin Dyck.
“What we looked for was an incredible variety of excitement,” Arnold said. “And to go through a lot of different emotions and take the people really on an exciting roller coaster through music history and through the available repertoire for orchestra.”
The conductor said the variety of music will traverse through many different corners of the world, offering a little bit of something for everyone.
“An overture is a fantastic statement to start a concert,” he said.
The concert’s program reads an opening with Strauss’s Fledermaus Overture and Mascagni’s Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, and moves through more contemporary works such as Lalo Schifrin’s Mission: Impossible Theme and Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango.
The conductor alluded to a surprise piece not listed in the program where “one needs good office skills to play.”
“It’s going to be hilarious,” he said.
Also included in the Proms Island Style concert will be a pastiche symphony, where a medley of movements are taken from various composers to create a new symphony, and will include the works of Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms and Tchaikovsky.
“One of the things I find important and interesting about music is … we have a composer … and they write a piece … and [we] look at it, like a painting. But it doens’t evoke emotions,” the conductor said. “Every time, in music, it has to be brought back to life … Without musicians, it doesn’t exist … only in that one moment that you play it. Then it’s gone again. That one note in that symphony never comes back … This is the uniqueness about live music – it’s created right in front of your eyes and ears.”
Vancouver Island Symphony’s Proms Island Style will play at the Port Theatre on Saturday, April 29, in two concerts at 5 p.m. and at 7:30 p.m. The crooner from Cowichan, tenor Ken Lavigne, will also appear at the guest artist.
Ticket information can be found at www.porttheatre.com.
READ MORE: Vancouver Island Symphony passes baton to new artistic director
mandy.moraes@nanaimobulletin.com
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