Tucson Chamber Orchestra to perform April 20 in Sahuarita

The Tucson Chamber Orchestra, directed by Enrique Lasansky, brings a performance full of contemporary classics in orchestral colors at 2 p.m., Sunday, April 20, at Sahuarita Auditorium, 350 Sahuarita Road.

Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors and $5 for students.

TCO is also celebrating Casa de Esperanza’s 20th anniversary this year and will present a concert this coming June as a benefit for the Green Valley social services agency. Look for upcoming publicity on that performance at a later date.

For more information or to purchase tickets, call the Tucson Chamber Orchestra at 401-4369 or Casa de Esperanza at 625-2273.

This April 20 concert will feature this year’s Young Artists Competition winners as they repeat their competition performances with the full orchestra.

In the younger category, Taiko Ezaki, age 8, takes to the stage with Vivaldi’s “Concerto in G-minor,” to be followed by the brilliant play of an older Jonathan Wintringham with Glazunov’s “Concerto for Saxophone.” For all their work and talent, it is in the collaboration with others that counts most.

What do Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and a woodland pace-spirit have in common?

All three are music from three exceptionally creative minds.

The Tucson Chamber Orchestra with its talented body of professionals presents works by China’s Tan Dun, America’s John Adams, and France’s Claude Debussy, music that help define the many threads of classical modernity.

TCO will present Dun’s “Water Concerto,” a shamanistic, elemental experience of real water in its many forms as music with the score’s signature percussionist, Maria Vomlehn Flurry.

Adams, perhaps America’s best known and certainly most performed contemporary composer, is joined in music with Rex Woods in the “evocative” Eros Piano.

Maestro Lasansky finishes the troika conducting the orchestra in one of the masterpieces of modern music, Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of a Faun, a tonal color work of haunting beauty.

Entering its 17th year, the Tucson Chamber Orchestra, founded by Lasansky, continues to bring the very best of local talent and great music together.

Under Lasansky’s direction, they have grown with Tucson, always pushing performance standards higher in meeting the mission as makers of music. Lasansky is the founder of the Catalina Chamber Orchestra, now known as the Tucson Chamber Orchestra. He embarked on a conducting career following graduation from Swarthmore College and a Thomas Watson Fellowship in Europe.

Lasansky studied conducting during four summers with Maestro Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School for Advanced Conductors. He completed a master in fine arts in conducting at Carnegie-Mellon University and worked there as an assistant conductor to composer Lukas Foss. Subsequently he moved to Tucson, Arizona earning a doctor of musical arts in orchestral conducting from the University of Arizona.

Lasansky has participated in numerous workshops and master classes of the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Conductors Guild. He has also studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller, Daniel Lewis, Murry Sidlin, Leonard Pearlman and Werner Torkanowsky.

rford@gvnews.com Ç 547-9740