Flashy favorites all aglow in MSO’s Bravo opener
Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ and piano soloist Tyler Kemp among the highlights
Jackson, Mississippi — The Mississippi Symphony Orchestra’s flagship Bravo series opens October 12 with a lineup so big and brilliant, it earns its “Orchestral Fireworks” title. The 7:30 p.m. concert will be held at the Madison Central High School Auditorium in Madison. MSO’s usual home for Bravo concerts, Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson, is temporarily closed for repairs.
In MSO’s glittering 80th season, this first concert in the Selby & Richard McRae Bravo series bursts with full-throttle excitement. The largest orchestra of the year, with 73 players on the stage, becomes the musical powerhouse delivering such top audience favorites as Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, Richard Wagner’s Prelude and Love Death from Tristan and Isolde, plus Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome. Featured soloist Tyler Kemp taps into deeply familiar chords for Southern ears, with Margaret Bonds’ Spiritual Suite.
The beginning and ending pieces from Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde are prized for their passionate sweep and emotional heights. Ravel’s Bolero, created in 1928, was a sensation from the start, and its prominence in the 1979 hit comedy 10, starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek, sent it into the stratosphere for another round of fame.
“It’s hard to believe it’s not even 100 years old,” Maestro Crafton Beck said of Ravel’s most popular piece. “It’s just two eight-bar phrases that are very evocative and compelling — melodies that don’t go anywhere. They circle in on themselves and they get swapped back and forth, and that’s all it is.” A steady, relentlessly rhythmic snare drum drives that sensual, slow-burn buildup for a positively hypnotic effect.
“It’s a 17-minute crescendo … a masterful piece of sustained tension,” Beck said.
About 18 years have passed since MSO’s last performance of Bolero, and at least 12 since it last brought Pines of Rome to the stage. Both are much-requested works requiring a huge orchestra, befitting MSO’s 80th anniversary “Season Spectacular.”
Pines of Rome, a tone poem to the Italian capital past and present, takes listeners on a tour of the ancient city in four symphonic movements. “Musicians enjoy playing it and of course, audiences love hearing it,” Beck said.
“It’s such a narrative work,” MSO President and Executive Director Jenny Mann added. “Just by reading the names of each movement, you can really hear and feel the environment that it was written in — the piney woods that all of those depict.” Even with Rome’s distinctive umbrella-like pines in common, “It’s amazing how different they feel, and the story that the music conjures up.”
Season ticket holders with Conductor, Connoisseur, and Loge reservations will enjoy reserved seating at the new venue. Please see the box office or an usher for assistance upon arrival. All other seats are general admission and are first-come, first-seated.
Individual tickets for the “Orchestral Fireworks” concert are $43 for adults and are $5 for students, kindergarten through college (with valid student ID). Visit msorchestra.com for ticket orders and concert details.
The on-site box office will open at 6:30 p.m. on the evening of the concert at Madison Central High School Auditorium.
MSO is supported in part by the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
What: Orchestral Fireworks, MSO Bravo Series concert
Who: Mississippi Symphony Orchestra
When: 7:30 p.m. October 12, 2024
Where: Madison Central High School Auditorium
1417 Highland Colony Parkway, Madison, MS