The Santa Fe Symphony kicks off its exciting return to live performances with a powerful Season Opener at The Lensic Performing Arts Center September 12 with a program featuring brilliant works by Anthony Barfield, Charles Gounod, Steve Reich, and Astor Piazzolla. Courtesy/Santa Fe Symphony
MUSIC News:
SANTA FE — The Santa Fe Symphony kicks off its exciting return to live performances with a powerful Season Opener at The Lensic Performing Arts Center Sept. 12 with a program featuring brilliant works by Anthony Barfield, Charles Gounod, Steve Reich and Astor Piazzolla.
Recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, violinist Alexi Kenney was named “a talent to watch” by The New York Times. He has earned widespread acclaim across the globe and returns to Santa Fe this fall to join Maestro Guillermo Figueroa on violin for Reich’s masterful Duet for Two Violins and String Orchestra and as featured soloist for The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, an exquisite symphonic tango by Astor Piazzolla.
This epic season continues with Beethoven’s Emperor featuring his masterful Symphony No. 2 and Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor.” For this highly anticipated concert, The Santa Fe Symphony is honored to bring back piano virtuoso Drew Petersen—recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2017 American Pianists Award, and the Christel DeHaan Fellow of the American Pianists Association, as well as a University of Indianapolis residency.
Handel’s Messiah starts the holiday season with its soaring arias, memorable choruses, and hallmark Baroque flourish the weekend before Thanksgiving. This annual performance is perhaps music’s most enduring message of hope, and one of history’s most treasured oratorios.
Christmas Treasures has become a Santa Fe tradition, featuring popular favorites for the entire family on December 12. And with great anticipation, The Symphony is proud to celebrate Christmas Eve with The Santa Fe Opera in the new season, presenting a spectacular collaboration with The Symphony Orchestra and select Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Singers performing beloved arias, duets, trios and quartets.
The first Symphony program to ring in the new year will be a spectacular concert featuring works by Mozart, Haydn, Glinka & Fung. The Symphony proudly partnered with seven orchestras and universities across the U.S. to co-commission the JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung and her Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra, written for classical trumpeter and Gold Medal Global Music Award winner Mary Elizabeth Bowden.
Vivian Fung, the first North American female composer to write for a female trumpet soloist, was awarded a New Music USA grant. On the heels of this amazing program, The Symphony continues its celebration of female composers with the ethereal blue cathedral by acclaimed female composer Jennifer Higdon, followed by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Christopher Rouse’s explosive and passionate Flute Concerto showcasing The Symphony’s very own Principal Flutist Jesse Tatum, and Dvořák’s masterful Eighth Symphony.
Romantic Legacies brings to life the extraordinary Symphony No. 1. by Florence Beatrice Price, the first female African American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Performing a cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire, Sir Edward Elgar’s intimate Cello Concerto in E Minor, is the phenomenal Zlatomir Fung, Gold Medalist of the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition and the first U.S. cellist in over four decades to win the top prize in the cello division at the International Tchaikovsky Competition. For the finale, be swept away by Verdi’s dramatic and romantic Overture to La Forza del Destino.
Celebrating Stravinsky—The Symphony’s brilliant re-creation of Igor Stravinsky’s concert at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi—is back on the schedule with not only the return of live orchestral performances, but the long-awaited return of choral performances. Conducted on July 17, 1960, this spectacular concert spotlights four Santa Fe Symphony principals and the full Symphony Orchestra & Chorus.
The Symphony’s Season Finale presents rising star Rubén Rengel, the 2018 Sphinx Competition “Robert Frederick Smith Prize” winner. Rengel joins the full Orchestra for Mendelssohn’s brilliant Violin Concerto in E Minor as part of a new three-year collaboration with the Sphinx Organization, the Detroit-based national organization dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. Bringing The Symphony’s 38th Season to a rousing close is American composer Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question and Brahms’s monumental Second Symphony.
NON-SUBSCRIPTION EVENTS
In addition to its 2021–2022 live subscription concerts, The Santa Fe Symphony will continue its acclaimed Virtual Concert Series on its new digital platform, SantaFeSymphonyTV.org, with brand new virtual performances—filmed and produced by Hutton Broadcasting—at more beautiful locations across Northern New Mexico.
Evoking the layers of musical conversation seen in chamber music, plus the diversity of venue and repertoire, Symphony patrons can experience two new SFS Strata performances next season at St. Francis Auditorium. November 7, Beethoven’s Harp presents an afternoon of uplifting chamber music featuring five Symphony principals performing works by Camille Saint-Saëns, Hannah Lash, Maurice Ravel, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
In the spring 2022, dancers from Albuquerque’s Festival Ballet will join Santa Fe Symphony Chamber players for a brilliant presentation of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat “A Soldier’s Tale” (Date TBA).
March 4 and 5, 2022, at The Lensic, Performance Santa Fe and The Santa Fe Symphony proudly present the Martha Graham Dance Company and The Santa Fe Symphony performing the original 13-piece chamber orchestration of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring in celebration of the 75th Anniversary of its premiere. Tickets for this performance are available through Performance Santa Fe @ performancesantafe.org and will require an additional ticket for season subscribers.
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets starting at $22 go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. July 6: santafesymphony.org or through The Symphony Box Office at 505.983.1414 or 505.983.3530. Subscription packages will be available to existing subscribers and upper-level donors 10 a.m. June 21 (not available online). Pricing for select performances and special engagements may vary.
ANNOUNCING RALPH P. CRAVISO AS INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
While The Santa Fe Symphony performs a national search for Daniel M. Crupi’s replacement as Executive Director through the Catherine French Group, it is thrilled to appoint Ralph P. Craviso as Interim Executive Director (as of June 1, 2021).
Ralph P. Craviso established Craviso & Associates, a management consulting firm, in 2006, concentrating his work in the not-for-profit sector. He has extensive experience in organizational assessment and reorganization, management training and benefits planning and design. Craviso has demonstrated success in labor/management relations, designing and executing labor relations strategies and negotiating labor agreements.
He has worked with over 50 orchestras across the country with annual budgets ranging from $800K to over $70M. He served as Interim Executive Director of the Rochester (NY) Philharmonic Orchestra for a two-year period, creating a five-year financial plan, increasing contributed revenue (30 percent) earned revenue (30 percent single tickets; 10 percent subscriptions) and raising over $3.5M in bridge funding. He also broadened the Orchestra’s connection with the Rochester community.
Craviso is also co-founder and first Director of a master’s program in Performing Arts Administration at the Chicago College of Performing Arts, Roosevelt University. He retired from the Director position in 2020 and currently teaches as Adjunct Faculty. This program is unique in that the faculty is composed of prominent practitioners in the performing arts field; it is designed to develop the future leaders of performing arts institutions.
Prior to establishing his consultant practice, Craviso worked in the private sector for 27 years, serving in Officer positions at Continental Airlines, American Airlines, and Lucent Technologies.
Ralph Craviso earned his bachelor’s degree from Fordham University and his law degree from Fordham Law School. Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the American Lyric Theater (NYC) and the MET Orchestra Musicians Fund. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dallas Symphony Association. He has also held Board seats with the Employment Policy Foundation and the Labor and Employment Relations Association.
Craviso continues in his work in assisting performing arts organizations in improving their organizational effectiveness. He is a patron of the arts and a passionate concert and opera subscriber.