The Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra has several upcoming performances this fall and winter at the Great Lakes Center for the Arts in Bay Harbor. Get tickets to these Northern Michigan events.
Saturday, September 18 // 7–8:30 p.m.
 
Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra Music Director Libor Ondras tells us this is a concert celebrating Spanish music, evoking ideas of romantic exoticism—the idea of distance embodied by sound perceived by the listener as belonging to another music tradition.
 
“Present are extra musical elements (dramatic plot/story, dancing, monologue, visual stage effects),” Ondras explains, “mimicking the elements of Spanish folk music like guitar strumming, dance rhythms, delivering the sonic image that audience might have already constructed in their minds, playing on the audience’s collective (and romantic) imagination of Spain, conveying otherness through realistic exoticism.”
 
This concert will feature Michigan State University’s Tyler Roberts, a mezzo-soprano, who will perform with the GLCO during Manuel de Falla’s “El Amour Brujo.” Also on the program is Juan Crisostomo Arriaga’s “Los Esclavos Felice” overture, Pablo de Sarasate’s “Navarra” and Astor Piazzolla’s “Variations on Buenos Aires.”
Saturday, October 30 // 7–8:30 p.m.
 
This concert will feature Gioachino Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia Overture,” Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Cello Concerto in C Major” featuring University of Michigan cellist Helen LaGrand and Ludwig Van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7.”
 
According to Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra Music Director Libor Ondras, the program reflects the visual image of a typical postcard—pictures of characteristic/dominant sites of the town. One can hardly fit all of the Vienna’s iconic pictures on one postcard! Alas, the three featured pieces offer but a glimpse of Classical period Vienna. Central to the program is Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.
 
“This symphony is one of the composer’s most optimistic works, and it quickly won public approval,” Ondras says. “Richard Wagner thought the piece was perfect dance music, calling it ‘the apotheosis of the dance.’ The First and Third movements shine with brilliant colors, dotted rhythms and allusions to country dances.”
Thursday, December 16 & Friday, December 17 // 7–8:30 p.m.
 
German composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) wrote “Messiah,” an English language oratorio, in 1741. In addition to the familiar “Messiah” music, there will also be some selections from Johann Sebastian Bach.
 
Bach wrote the score of his Christmas Oratorio in the year 1734. Unlike other Baroque era oratorios, Bach’s is divided into six parts for the Festival of Christmas. The Festival is celebrated on successive days, starting on Christmas Day and the two following days, then on New Years’ Day and the Sunday after that, with the 6th section on the Festival of the Epiphany.
 
The overture consists of the introduction to the opening chorus and will be followed by the alto aria several movements later, an appropriate setting for Handel’s “Messiah.”

Photo(s) by Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra