Mobile Symphony Opens 25th Anniversary Season with Scheherazade
The Mobile Symphony Orchestra (MSO) opens its 25th Anniversary season with Scheherazade, an action-packed concert spotlighting the impressive skills and talents of the Gulf Coast’s premier orchestra, Saturday, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Sept. 25, at 2:30 p.m., at Mobile’s historic Saenger Theatre.
“MSO’s season begins with a concert that celebrates our musicians themselves,” MSO Music Director Scott Speck explains. “Rimsky-Korsakov’s colorful tone poem, Scheherazade, calls for myriad solos from within the orchestra – including extended solos for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, cello, and of course our concertmaster, Jenny Grégoire, playing the voice of Scheherazade.”
Violinist Jenny Grégoire has been concertmaster and an essential part of the Mobile Symphony Orchestra since 2001. This season she gives voice to Scheherazade, the exotic storyteller in the collection of tales known as the One Thousand and One Nights, set to music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The composer is best known for his lush orchestrations, and here he uses every musical trick to convey the exotic intensity of one of literature’s great suspense thrillers.
Capriccio Espagnol, also by Rimsky-Korsakov, opens the program with a burst of energy; and the program moves closer to home for Night in the Tropics, a rarely performed symphony by the New Orleans-born composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
Six-concert season memberships are $102-$408. Tickets to individual performances are $20-$89. Memberships and tickets can be purchased online, by phone at 251-432-2010 or at the symphony box office, 257 Dauphin Street. Student tickets are $10. Through the MSO Big Red Ticket program sponsored by the Alabama Power Foundation, students in grades K-12 can attend any of the season’s six classical Sunday performances free when accompanied by a paying adult (excludes special event A Cinematic Christmas). More details can be found online at www.mobilesymphony.org.
Scheherazade is sponsored by the Laura Lee Pattillo Norquist Charitable Foundation, the Metcalfe Charitable Trust and WKRG-TV as media sponsor.
All concerts have been made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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The Mobile Symphony has been a regional orchestra for the central Gulf Coast since 1997. Scott Speck serves as music director. In addition to offering a full season of classical and pops concerts, the orchestra serves the area with a wide range of educational and outreach programs including student performances, string academies and a youth orchestra. http://www.mobilesymphony.org
