Sarasota Orchestra Discoveries series concerts are intended to help new audiences become more comfortable with classical music programs and to allow longtime fans to rediscover music and composers they thought they knew.
This year’s series comes to an end May 17 with “Vivaldi Inspired,” which features the “Spring” and “Summer” sections of Vivaldi’s popular “The Four Seasons,” sandwiching works that were directly or indirectly inspired by Vivaldi.
“I think of it as a fantastic way to discover classical music or discover the Sarasota Orchestra,” said RoseAnn McCabe, senior vice president of artistic operations for the organization.
Conductor Kalena Bovell makes her Sarasota Orchestra debut leading the Discoveries concert “Vivaldi Inspired.”
The concerts run a little more than an hour and “the conductor will talk and introduce the pieces to the audience, so they’re very user-friendly,” she said. “If you don’t know anything, she’ll tell you just enough to introduce the music and if you know the music, you’ll have a completely different experience because of the introduction.”
Conductor Kalena Bovell makes her Sarasota debut with the concert, one of many guest conducting assignments she has had after serving as assistant conductor for the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.
Bovell is joined by the rising teenage violinist Amaryn Olmeda, whom McCabe described as an “up and coming, fantastic violinist. She is so full of life with a beautiful tone.” Olmeda will be playing the two Vivaldi works.
The rest of the program is made up of music inspired by Vivaldi, even if it sounds nothing like the composer’s work, McCabe said.
Two of the pieces are actually based on musical themes from the 1700s – Stravinsky’s Sinfonia and Gavotte from “Pulcinella Suite” and Respighi’s Italian and Siciliana from “Ancient Airs and Dances” Suite No. 3.
“Respighi and Stravinsky won’t sound like Vivaldi but they will make you feel good,” McCabe said.
Amaryn Olmeda is the guest soloist for the Sarasota Orchestra Discoveries concert “Vivaldi Inspired.”
The program also features music by Gustav Holst and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor that is “very pastoral. They make you think of the English countryside, which ties in with spring and summer,” she said.
The orchestra will perform Holst’s “Brook Green Suite,” which he wrote for his orchestral students at the St. Paul Girls’ School while he was in the hospital in 1933, a year before his death. Coleridge-Taylor, a contemporary of Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams, has been rediscovered by the classical world in the last 10 years. The orchestra will perform his Idyll, Op. 44.
‘Vivaldi Inspired’
Sarasota Orchestra Discoveries. 7:30 p.m. May 17, Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. Tickets are $32-$80. 941-953-3434; sarasotaorchestra.org
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Rising young violinist plays Vivaldi in Sarasota Orchestra concert