The Lowell Chamber Orchestra Announces Its Fourth Season

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra just announced its fourth season, with five free concerts that look to entertain, educate, and enlighten Lowell audiences.

"The season is designed to turn the western classical musical canon on its head," says Music Director Orlando Cela. "The programming elevates contemporary works above established masterpieces, demonstrating that music keeps evolving in the orchestral medium."

The season will feature works by very well-known composers such as Manuel De Falla, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Joseph Haydn, but these will have very unusual features, such as flamenco style chanting, a vanishing orchestra, and unusual instruments. The newer works will have influences by grindcore punk, Latin-American rhythms, Cornish traditions, and more.

Most of the works have an important social message, such as Gabriele Vanoni's multimedia oratorio "Island of Peoples," about the immigrant experience, and Estefanía Pardo Perez's "Paikuna Saqinku," about displacement of ethnic communities due to environmental disasters - the latter piece being the winner of LCO's second call-for-scores.

"Even the last movement of Haydn's 45th symphony is a social commentary," continues Cela. "The ending is not so much about requesting to go back to Eisenstadt, as it is about demonstrating the importance of teamwork and working together (as told by Giaccomo Ferrari); and in a world where war and political tensions plague our everyday life, we program this piece as a call for global unity and peace."

The season features many guest artists: for the first time ever, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra will feature Canadian conductor Geneviève Leclair as the LCO's first ever guest conductor, and Roi Karni, the winner of LCO's first ever concerto competition. Vocalists Sophie Michaux and Rose Hegele, and cellist Leo Eguchi will also be featured, among others.

All of the concerts are completely free, consistent with the LCO's mission to provide extraordinarily high level classical music performances and take down socio-economic barriers to access these concerts. The LCO survives only through donations.

To see the entire upcoming season, click here: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/events

To donate to the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, click here: https://tinyurl.com/LCOdonate