Year-End Concerts to Feature Holiday Cheer, Chamber Season Debut
The classical calendar winds down with festive fare including holiday pops concerts and performances of seasonal works of Bach, Handel and others, plus other highlights such as a fetching chamber series marking its latest debut.
The first of five concerts in the wonderful Palladium Chamber Series is set for Wednesday, Dec. 9. Like all the series’ concerts this season, the inaugural program will be offered in the acoustically crisp concert hall on St. Petersburg College’s Gibbs Campus. The 310-seat venue is located at 6605 Fifth Ave. North in St. Pete.
The move to Gibbs is necessary while SPC’s historic downtown concert venue, the Palladium, undergoes an ambitious renovation. All series concerts are set for 7 p.m., a half-hour earlier than in recent past seasons.
That season-launching program will feature violinist Ryan Meehan and pianist Gabriela Fahnenstiel performing works of Debussy, Mozart and others. The subsequent four series concerts are set for Jan. 6, Feb. 10, March 24 and April 21 — all Wednesdays.
Jeffrey Multer, series co-founder and concertmaster of The Florida Orchestra, figures prominently in the middle three concerts, while the special season-capping program will feature the globe-trotting Horszowski Trio, with Jesse Mills on violin, Ole Akahoshi on cello and pianist Rieko Aizawa.
The Florida Orchestra also recently announced its always-impressive Soundwaves chamber series, set this coming season to run from February to April. Details on programs, dates, venues and ticketing are now available at FloridaOrchestra.org.
Deck the concert halls
The Florida Orchestra hits the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg with one of its “live to film” concerts — at 7:30 p.m. and 2 p.m., respectively, on Dec. 5 & 6 — featuring Tim Burton’s 1993 family favorite “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” The orchestra will perform Danny Elfman’s imaginative film score in accompaniment to the seasonal fantasy.
TFO’s annual “Holiday Pops” concerts, always chockablock with the season’s musical classics, will run from Dec. 10 to Dec. 13. Six performances, including two matinees, are scheduled for the Straz Center in Tampa, the Mahaffey, and Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall.
Then, a pair of 7:30 p.m. “Classical Christmas” concerts are set for Dec. 18 & 19 at the Straz and the Mahaffey, respectively, with TFO music director Michael Francis leading the orchestra and the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay in Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” and selections from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” plus some traditional carols. Soloists will include baritone Alex Boyd — a regular in Sarasota Opera productions — and the Lumina Youth Choir also will perform.
Suncoast Symphony Orchestra’s annual “Sounds of the Season” concerts are slated for Dec. 5, 6 and 11 at churches in Clearwater and Largo. See the community ensemble’s website for details.
And finally, “Candlelight Christmas” — a singalong program with a locally recruited string quartet to support a batch of yuletide tunes — arrives Dec. 19 at the historic Centro Asturiano de Tampa. Adults and kids age 8 and older are welcome for the ticketed, hour-long program. •
