Music Director Bethany Pflueger will lead the Pasadena Community Orchestra (PCO) in their first concert of 2020 with pieces by Beethoven, Griffes, Kalinnikov and a world premiere by Dante Luna on Jan. 24, 2020 at 8 p.m.
Dante Luna is a composer and performer based in Los Angeles, whose compositions are influenced by Viennese classical to the New Simplicity movement. Luna played piano and studied music theory from the age of 5, and began writing music by the age of 11. He attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, studying classical percussion and jazz vibraphone. In 2018, he graduated from UCLA with Latin honors with a bachelor’s in music. As a performer, he can be heard playing with the Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Pasadena Symphony/Pops, and many other Los Angeles-based ensembles. Luna’s original composition, “Stamping Grounds,” will premiere on Jan. 24 with the Pasadena Community Orchestra.
Also on the program, is Beethoven’s “Coriolan Overture,” written in 1807 for a German stage play by Heinrich von Collin. The work features a powerful C major theme in the beginning, which contrasts with a lyrical E-flat major theme. American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes wrote “The White Peacock” originally for piano in 1915 and then orchestrated it into a tone poem in 1919. Vasily Sergeyevich Kalinnikov was a Russian composer who wrote his Symphony No. 1 in G minor from 1894-1895.
PCO’s concert will be held in the sanctuary of First Church of the Nazarene, 3700 E. Sierra Madre Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91107 (just west of Michillinda Avenue). Ample free parking is available. Venue is wheelchair accessible.
For more information, email publicity@pcomusic.org, visit pcomusic.org, or call (626) 445-6708.
