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Led by Music Director Christopher Wilkins on November 1, 2008, the Orlando Philharmonic celebrated the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth by premiering “The Eternal Struggle,” a performance of Copland’s Lincoln Portrait employing “photochoreography” by James Westwater. The production was commissioned by the Orlando Philharmonic and the Akron Symphony.
multimedia performance.
© WestwaterArts.com and Orlando Philharmonic
Irving Symphony Orchestra
ost often we experience art in isolation,” observes Tracy J. Boyd, president of the Irving Symphony Orchestra in Texas. He’s thinking specifically about the orchestral art, and about how that art is traditionally experienced in a live setting—that is, with no visual context for the music, and with little in the way of visual stimulation other than the moving arms of the conductor and at least some of the musicians onstage. Recently his orchestra has taken bold steps to change that experience. The Irving Symphony is devoting its entire 2009-10 season to what Boyd calls “interdisciplinary” symphonic performances. The orchestra’s four classical concerts are being presented as “Sonic Flight,” “Sonic Visions,” “Sonic Dreams,” and “Sonic Boom,” each featuring onstage activities or special lighting effects. “While preserving the fidelity of the world’s most enduring music,” says Boyd, “the ISO is staging productions in highly signature formats. Our whole mantra is to create opportunities that you can’t get anywhere else. Collectively as maestro, board of directors, and staff, we see ourselves as progenitors of a new paradigm.” “Sonic Flight,” presented last October, was a program of works by De Falla, Stravinsky, Ponchielli, Bach, Piazzolla, Grieg, Dvorák, Liszt, Rossini, Kabalevsky, and Brahms, accompanied by performances from four master aerialists. “Sonic Boom,” the April 10 offering, will consist of Felipe Espinoza Tanaka’s Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Concertino for Harp—the latter work compleAcrobatics enhanced the mented by the choreographed Irving (Texas) Symphony’s “Sonic Flight” program last flight of Asian kites. Specially October. designed to operate indoors without artificial wind, these kites will be flown onstage in front of a full orchestra, their movements synchronized to the music by a duo of experts. (The ISO sent the kite flyers a recording of the eighteen-minute work several months before the performance so they could
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