It’s been a long time coming but the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is excited to host a full-capacity concert for the first time in three years since the pandemic.
“It's a long awaited concert because it was postponed during the pandemic. It's also a concert where the conductor for many years, Mélanie Léonard, is returning to finish off her contract. This is her last concert with the orchestra as music director. So it's very exciting for her and very promising for the future,” Jennifer Grant, executive director of the SSO, told Sudbury.com in a phone interview.
The concert, “Hopes and High Notes”, is a full orchestra concert that will feature Léonard as conductor and Dobrochna Zubek as cello soloist. The concert includes an overture by Mozart and other variations by Mozart’s presumptive rival, Salieri.
“There is an overture by Mozart that starts the program. And that's a humorous, endearing overture of Mozart,” Grant said about the intro piece.
The Jupiter Symphony (No. 41) by Mozart will be performed right after the intermission.
“The Jupiter symphony is very famous. It was one of his final symphonies, and everybody loves it. It's just wonderful. But it really shows what the orchestra can do. It's not it's not an easy piece to perform,” Grant said.
With Mozart and Sallieri joining the concert, the SSO will surely take the audience on a melodic journey. Grant and everyone in the orchestra are excited to perform for the first time in a while. And as exciting as it is to pull a performance together, it is also a lot of work.
“I’m fairly hysterical. There’s a lot of work to be done, and a lot of holes to be patched. First of all, we have to get the musicians up, we have to get everybody started. And we’re also hysterical because there's always this fear that it’s (COVID-19 restrictions) going to happen again,” Grant said.
The pandemic has been hard for the orchestra and Grant told Sudbury.com funding for the orchestra hasn’t been easy to maintain. The SSO hopes that there will be better funding opportunities for the next season. But for the time being, she hopes with high notes that there will be a good turn out for the upcoming concert despite the mask regulations.
“The audience is very hesitant to come out. We have to talk to each of them individually and explain that masking is obligatory. Because Fraser Auditorium is on Laurentian University grounds and they have masking policies until mid June… So we're really hoping to get our audience back soon so that we can start working. It really doesn't matter what we do in the future. If we don't get our audience back, we're in trouble,” Grant said.
The concert will be held at the Fraser Auditorium on May 7 for 7:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here. For more information on the concert, visit the link here.
