On April 4 and 6 Tucson Symphony Orchestra and the TSO Chorus will join forces with the Tucson Girls Chorus (TGC), Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus (TABC), and soloists Ashley Fabian, soprano, Logan Tanner, countertenor and Octavio Moreno, baritone for a mesmerizing performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. One of the most popular choral works of the 20th century, Carmina Burana is an adaptation of 24 poems from a Medieval manuscript discovered in the early 19th century and set to music by Carl Orff in the late 1930s.
The secular text is a tribute to the fleeting nature of life, the fickleness of fate, and the pleasures and perils of drink, gluttony, and lust. Orff’s score is at once powerful, mysterious, hypnotic, and exotic: “The opening and closing movement, O Fortuna, is instantly recognizable, mainly due to its extensive use in films, commercials, and pop culture. It is dramatic, rhythmically energetic, vocally intense, and highly engaging. Carmina Burana is a scenic cantata and inherently possesses a dramatic storyline and theatrical quality,” said Dr. Marcela Molina, director of the TSO Chorus and the TGC.
The combined choral forces will fill the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall with over 150 voices singing in Latin, Middle High German, and Old French (surtitles in English will be available). Molina goes on to say, “musically speaking, I love the change of timbre and the combination of vocal colors between the ragazzi part (sung by the TGC and the TABC) and the adult choral part. It beautifully showcases the transformation of the voice. On a very personal note, I love seeing both the Tucson Girls Chorus—my full-time home—and the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus play such an integral role in our symphony performances. It strengthens our community by fostering collaboration and demonstrates to our young singers that singing is a lifelong endeavor.”
Maestro José Luis Gomez, who will conduct the monumental performances adds, “it is a great opportunity to hear all these forces together. It is exciting, challenging and very rewarding. Working closely with our TSO Chorus director Dr. Marcela Molina, it is pure joy, as is sharing the stage with the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus and the Tucson Girls Chorus.”
The program also includes Gabriela Ortiz’s Kauyumari and Robert Muczynski’s Symphonic Memoir. Composed in 2021 for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kauyumari from the Huichol people of Mexico, translates to “blue deer” and represents a spiritual guide accessed in a peyote-induced hallucinogenic state that allows the Huichol to communicate with their ancestors and make offerings in gratitude, through which they also are able to heal the wounds of the soul. Ortiz describes the piece as “a piece that reflects on our return to the stage following the pandemic, I immediately thought of the blue deer and its power to enter the world of the intangible as akin to a celebration of the reopening of live music.” Maestro Gomez describe Otiz as “one of the more prominent and important living Mexican composers, having recently won a GRAMMY for Revolución Diamantina, and we are very much looking forward to playing her wonderful music, full of Hispanic influences in the rhythms and musical textures.”
Symphonic Memoir by the late Tucson composer and University of Arizona professor Robert Muczynski was composed for and premiered by the TSO in 1979. “It is a very special occasion to bring this work back to the concert stage. We do so as part of our ongoing project to showcase the music of Muczynski, a composer that had close ties to Tucson as he was a former professor of composition at the University of Arizona from the 1960´s until his retirement in the 80´s,” said Maestro Gomez.
