Jacksonville, Fla. — The Jacksonville Symphony continues opening up its season a series of firsts. Next up is the Florida Blue Classical Concert series with “Copland’s Clarinet Concerto”.
The show starts at 7:30pm Friday with Joel Thompson’s To See the Sky: Exegesis for Orchestra. Thompson describes his piece as his take on an exegesis: an explanation, interpretation, or critical analysis. To See the Sky is in three movements, respectively exploring feeling of oppression brought on by circumstance, the healing process and the deep introspection involved in that process, and finally digging deeper into that introspection. Thompson says that “writing this piece gave me the will to keep persisting/existing/dreaming, and I hope it inspires the same in those who need that encouragement too”.
Afterward is a performance of American composer Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto. Composed in the years after World War II, this piece is a commission from Chicago-born clarinetist and jazz artist Benny Goodman. The resulting composition is a patriotic, swinging, big band jazz work. Copland finished the first movement in Rio de Janeiro, injecting Latin rhythms into the music.
Finally, the symphony will play Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5. This is one of Prokofiev’s most well known works along with Classical Symphony and Peter and the Wolf. First premiered in Moscow on January 13th, 1945, and “completes, as it were, a long period of my works. I conceived it as a symphony of the greatness of the human spirit” in the composer’s own words.
Tickets to the Jacksonville Symphony are available now on their website.
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