By Sue Gilmore – The Walnut Creek-based California Symphony has postponed what was to be its live 2020 fall season to 2021 and will instead be presenting a free streaming series of four “Second Saturdays” events beginning Sept. 12 and concluding on Dec. 12.
Each of the four one-hour video presentations will consist of a live performance preceded by a conversation about the program between Donato Cabrera, California Symphony music director, and the participating musicians.
The series, partially funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, will be viewable on the symphony’s YouTube channel and also on Walnut Creek’s public access TV, Comcast Channel 28.
Cabrera noted in his announcement statement that the programming will focus on music for soloists and small ensembles.
“We’re also fortunate that our programming mission so easily translates from the stage to the screen,” he said. “I can’t wait to whet your appetite with these intimate video presentations until we meet again in the
concert hall.”
“Second Saturdays” kicks off at 7 p.m. Sept. 12 with “Bravo for Beethoven250,” featuring soloist Adam Golka performing both the Piano Sonato No. 30 in E Major and the No. 21, the famed “Waldstein Sonata,” in observation of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
The series continues at 7 p.m. Oct. 10 with a “Virtuoso Vibrations” program pairing violinist Robyn Bollinger and the California Symphony Wind Quintet.
A solo violin work by former California Symphony resident composer Kathryn Balch is on the program, along with works by Bach and Bartok, and the Quintet will play “Aires Tropicales,” an Afro-Caribbean jazz-inflected work by American composer Paquito D’Rivera.
The “It’s a Cello-bration!” program at 7 p.m. Nov. 14 features star cellist Joshua Roman performing a range of works for his instrument and the California Symphony String Quartet playing works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Higdon’s arrangement of “Amazing Grace.”
The series closes at 7 p.m. Dec. 12 with a “Season in Song” holiday concert with Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor, tenor Nicholas Phan and the California Symphony Brass Quintet.
For more information, people can go to www.californiasymphony.org.
Oh please stop normalizing this take over.
I agree. I’ve played in symphony orchestras including professional ones and this cannot be very interesting for the performers. Our planet has gone completely loony over a little virus.
A New World Order for the Coronavirus Era Is Emerging
The next six months will go a long way to determining what the geopolitical map will look like at a time of intensifying rivalry.
Most are ruining their own future and our lives and those of the little children, by being total narcisissts, They will be wiped off the Earth soon. Man against man til there is no more!.
Even worse is they have the stupid people participating in their very own demise.
You think government is going to give back your freedom?
You have to FIGHT for freedom.
It’s as plain as day right here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_UO4XHvj7vM
They’re telling you what they have planned, you can deny and be a sheep or you can Fight.
Is this somehow magically different then watching a pre-recorded concert? 🤔
How do you register? I went to the website, but didn’t see how to sign up 🙁
You don’t have to sign up. The concerts will be broadcast on Walnut Creek public access tv or you can watch them on the California Symphony youtube channel, which is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBX4uOIQ5RLGnJU8xc6DAFA
Thank you LaLa!