From Our Music Director to You,

Welcome to the 2007-8, 77th Season of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra!

I am delighted to bring you an invigorating and colorful season of orchestral classics and special touches to enhance your musical lives in El Paso through our many wonderful performances at the Plaza Theater.

This season delves into some of the most romantic and sumptuous music ever written. In our opening concert we perform Rachmaninoff’s most luscious work ever, the 2nd Piano Concerto with a very young and dazzling soloist Jie Chen, who made her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch in 2001 to great acclaim. To follow this what better Russian masterpiece but the ballet music from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet!

Our season continues with similar fire and passion through John Corigliano’s beautiful academy award winning score The Red Violin, with violinist Lara St.John, the heart warming Symphony No.1 by Sibelius, to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony No.6, Grieg’s Music from the ballet Peer Gynt, Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune and finishing up our season with Ravel’s Daphnis & Chloe Suite No.2 in collaboration with the El Paso Chorale.

Each season gives us a wonderful opportunity to bring some of the greatest living artists to perform to you and this season’s line up is incredible. Our international soloists are each specialists in their own field and in the repertoire they’ll be performing. Tony DiLorenzo, star trumpeter will perform the Armenian composer’s Aratiunian Trumpet Concerto along with Khachaturian’s Adagio from Spartacus and Shostakovich Symphony No.5, a concert not to be missed! Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen returns to El Paso bringing you the Grieg Piano concerto in February as part of an all Grieg Valentine concert.

The 2007-8 season with the El Paso Symphony will continue to light a candle to celebrate the greatest music of all time. We will continue our partnership with El Paso Pro Musica bringing you the Rosetti String Quartet in Spohr’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra. You’ll witness a US premier; a work by one of the greatest living composers Victoria Borisova-Ollas, in a spectacular work, (10 minutes only!) Open Ground with multi-media film.

It is my greatest pleasure to bring you this exciting season, which could not take place without the fabulous work of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra and its Association, but most of all without YOU! Thank you for joining us and I look forward to seeing you all in the Plaza Theatre for the 2007-8 season.

Sincerely,

Sarah Ioannides, Music Director, El Paso Symphony Orchestra