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View Winners → Gershwin and Debussy Lead the Pasadena Symphony in Ode to Romance
Arcadia Weekly Feb 14, 2020
Documents of the Walking Purchase and the Councils of Easton, 75 manuscripts, including two manuscript maps, 1685–1762. – Courtesy photo / The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
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Ambassador Auditorium. – Courtesy photo / Pasadena Symphony
Plus Oscar and Grammy Award-winning composer Michael Giacchino’s Voyage
Music Director David Lockington and the Pasadena Symphony continue the 2019/2020 Symphony Classics season with Gershwin/Debussy on Saturday, Feb. 15 at Ambassador Auditorium with matinee and evening performances at 2 and 8 p.m. This Valentine’s program opens with Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and celebrated film composer Michael Giacchino’s interstellar Voyage. Nick Kendall, of Time for Three, brings his infectious enthusiasm to a fanciful violin concerto based on Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Vaughan William’s longingly poetic Lark Ascending. Debussy’s La Mer paints a majestic picture of the sea with a mosaic of orchestral colors to close out the symphony’s ode to romance.
The February concert boasts a new work by Oscar and Grammy Award-winning composer Giacchino as part of the orchestra’s Composers Showcase. Giacchino has written scores for many popular films including Up, Coco, Star Trek, Jurassic World and most recently Jojo Rabbit among many others. Commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra in 2018 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of NASA, Voyage is Giacchino’s first work written for symphony orchestra. He says the work expresses “what is going through your mind when you wake up on the morning of a launch, going out to the pad, being buckled in, waiting for launch, blasting off, weightlessness, reaching your destination, and coming home.” Lockington describes the piece as “epic in its kind of cinematic scope and also very personal.”
All concerts are held at Ambassador Auditorium, 131 S. St. John Ave., Pasadena, CA. Subscription packages start at as low as $99. Single tickets start at $35 and may be purchased online at pasadenasymphony-pops.org or by calling (626) 793-7172.
