UF Symphony Orchestra celebrates its 100th Anniversary Season

February 25, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. —The University of Florida Symphony Orchestra will celebrate its 100th anniversary season with an evening of performances conducted by Raymond Chobaz at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 26, at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

The concert, themed “The Master’s Hand: Works Inspired by the Visual Arts,” will include works by UF music faculty Paul Richards, “Dream Theatre,” based on four works by photographer and former UF College of Fine Arts faculty member Jerry Uelsmann; UF alumna Stella Sung, “Rockwell Reflections;” and Modest Mussorgsky, “Pictures at an Exhibition, 1874.”

A celebratory toast will follow the show in the East Fackler Foyer in recognition of the Orchestra’s 100 years.

A highlight of this concert is a performance of “Rockwell Reflections,” a work created by composer Stella Sung, commissioned by the Orlando Philharmonic and the Akron Symphony. Sung’s composition is written in five movements, each reflecting a painting by Rockwell.

In creating this work, Sung chose five seminal paintings by Norman Rockwell (“Artist Facing a Blank Canvas,” “The Stay at Homes,” “Checkers,” “Murder in Mississippi” and “The Peace Corps” to use as points of departure for her compositions.

Sung, an alumna of the University of Florida College of Fine Arts, is a composer, pianist, and Professor of Music at the University of Central Florida’s Department of Digital Media, and director of UCF’s Center for Research and Education in Arts, Technology, and Entertainment, known as CREATE.

UF music faculty Paul Richards was commissioned by the UF Symphony Orchestra to create “Dream Theatre” in honor of the orchestra’s 100th anniversary. The composition is based on four works by photographer and former UF faculty member Jerry Uelsmann, each serving as a starting point for the creation of musical movements that reflect something of the technique, narrative content, or atmosphere found in the art works.

Uelsmann’s composited black-and-white photographs are, in his words, “obviously symbolic, but not symbolically obvious,” showing us a surreal world that arises from the seamless integration of multiple image sources.

“I find them extremely compelling, rewarding both on first inspection and after intense scrutiny, where subtle details emerge for the patient viewer,” Richards said.

Tickets for the Feb. 26 concerts are: $10, general public; $8 UF faculty and staff, and non-UF students; free for UF students.

Ticket orders: 352-392-ARTS (2787) or www.ticketmaster.com.