Summer Sinfonietta Season Finale 2016

The Summer Sinfonietta presents its fourth and last free concert of the season featuring our concerto competition winner Eric Millard and guest organist Viktor Billa.

The program begins with Ottorino Respighi’s Suite in G for Organ and Strings, an early work (1905) that features influences from Baroque composers such as Bach, Frescobaldi, and Corelli.  This suite, similar to a concerto grosso, features organist Viktor Billa as soloist. The next work is the Trumpet Concerto No. 1 by Estonian composer Eino Tamberg. An exciting and rhythmic piece, this concerto the winner of this year’s concerto competition winner, Eric Millard, a current doctoral trumpet student at FSU. Finally, the concert closes with Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, which was originally written as a piano duet for children. The subjects of the suite are drawn from old French fairy tales, such as Sleeping Beauty, Little Tom Thumb, and Beauty and the Beast. Ravel’s orchestration of the suite features beautifully lush textures that reflect the fantasy of the tales.

The Summer Sinfonietta was formed in 2014 to provide a creative outlet for orchestral musicians in Tallahassee during the summer months. Current and former students from Florida State University play in, conduct, and organize the ensemble, which is dedicated to providing free, casual, energetic concerts to the Tallahassee community. James Chang, a current master’s student in FSU’s orchestral conducting program, is the orchestra’s music director and conductor.