The Bangor Symphony Orchestra opened its 122nd season Sunday afternoon with a concert that blew the roof off the Collins Center for the Arts and raised the bar for the musicians a good five to 10 feet. The concert was marketed as featuring “deathly classics” because of its proximity to Halloween and the pieces’ dark […]
One of the best things about having composer Lucas Richman as the conductor of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra is the music he writes. Often, they are pieces commissioned by concertgoers at the annual fundraising auction to honor family members. Two years ago, Lee Souweine was the winning bidder. He asked for a piece to honor […]
~ ORONO — “Viennese Masters” was the title of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra’s final concert last Sunday in its 2018-19 Masterworks series. Vienna has spawned so many musical masters, but the Symphony’s choices, Mozart and Bruckner, are nothing if not exemplary. The afternoon began with Mozart’s Symphony No. 33 in B-flat Major. Written when the […]
ORONO — The Bangor Symphony Orchestra opened its 123rd season Sunday afternoon with a concert of works by Bernstein, Ravel and Sibelius. Music Director and conductor Lucas Richman remarked that this was probably the first time a BSO performance had begun with the strumming of an electric guitar — the introductory chord of “Simple Song” […]
The journey that was the satisfying second half of the KSO’s evening began in the dim light before dawn, climbed to the mountain heights through forest, glacier, and waterfall, braved untold dangers and a storm, only to return home at day’s end chastened by the ennobling experience. That journey was Richard Strauss’ programmatic tone poem, […]
ORONO — Talk of snow was not enough to keep a large, enthusiastic audience from another outstanding program by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra last Sunday afternoon. In its fourth masterworks concert of the season, the orchestra, under its music director and conductor Lucas Richman, offered an unusual program that included an early work by a […]
“Where words fail, music speaks” was Maestro Lucas Richman’s simple introduction to the encore selection—the poignant and wistful Variation IX (“Nimrod”) from Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations—on his final concert as music director of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra last weekend. While that quote from Hans Christian Andersen is often used a bit too generically, its tearfully succinct […]
