Pasadena Symphony Reconfigures for a Pandemic Season

In a summer that didn’t, the Pasadena Symphony is aiming to become the orchestra that could as they look to the Fall.

Symphony leadership— CEO Lora Unger, Musical Director David Lockington, and President Reggie Wilson —announced in an online Zoom town hall meeting Tuesday that the 20/21 “Symphony Classics” season will be moved to the 21/22, and in its place will be a new series called “Pasadena Presents.”

Pasadena Symphony will present a “new concert experience” with David Lockington as curator and host, and will feature renowned guest artists and musicians from the orchestra in a chamber music format.

“Audiences are going to receive nine concerts over the course of the 20/21 season, including the postponed concerts from last March and April, beginning in October, including our popular holiday candlelight concert,” said Unger.

As Unger explained, “We’ve come up with a new concert model that adapts to the Covid reality we all have to work within, and believe is sustainable over the entire 2021 season, if need be.”

“Staying dark is not in our DNA,” Unger continued. “We knew that with some creativity, resourcefulness and hard work, that we would find a path forward to bring music back to our audiences come the fall.”

“We have two scenarios in place. Our hope is to be able to perform outdoors, should the state guidelines allow an outside version of phase four in the fall, if not, then we’ll perform Pasadena Presents from our home at the Ambassador Auditorium for online streaming to our customers and patrons.”

The small chamber concerts are planned for the Pasadena Pavilion for the Performing Arts, formerly known as the Pasadena Levitt Pavilion, should the State’s “Safer at Home” order Phase 4 be in effect and allow such gatherings outside. Attendance at the concerts would be socially distanced with seats six feet apart, and could accommodate a maximum of 350 people. Multiple performances would be mounted to accommodate the reseating of the Symphony’s normal audience attendance.

“We’re focused on delivering exciting concerts to our audience and bringing musicians back to work safely,” Unger added. “Both scenarios achieve that goal.”

Later shows could return indoors at the Ambassador Auditorium, pending public health guidelines.

The season will also include the September 12 “Moonlight Sonata,” a virtual fundraising gala to support the orchestra’s relaunch campaign, which will take place online and will feature special guests Michael Feinstein, Patti Austin, Cheyenne Jackson and more.

Lockington explained the concert schedule, as it is currently planned, with allowances for any changes in the current pandemic situation.

“Each one of these new fall programs has been inspired by the program that it has replaced. So we’ve tried to adapt some of the character of that program and bring it into these fall concerts.”

“Violinist  Simone Porter was the last artist to perform with the orchestra prior to the pandemic in February and will open the season on October 17,” said Lockinton. ‘So Simone is going to be playing Mozart’s fifth violin concerto, in recital and that’s going to be paired with our other favorite Tchaikovsky.  “We’re going to be playing the “Souvenir of Florence,” a beautiful sunny virtuosic piece.”

The new season will also include soloists performing concertos in a recital format such as pianist Terence Wilson performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” Angelo Xiang performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and pianist Inon Barnaton performing a power house program of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances transcribed for solo Piano. Chamber music works include Brahms Clarinet Quintet and Dvorak’s American Quartet.

President Reggie Wilson also noted that the Symphony and POPS is in stable financial shape despite the rescheduling of the summer 2020 season, saying that the POPS suffered only a 6% refund rate from its summer subscribers.

‘Right now we are really well-positioned to navigate this unprecedented event, having had balanced budgets over the past number of fiscal years since 2015. So we’re in pretty good shape.

Wilson continued, “We’re absolutely in the kind of financial situation that will allow us to move forward with our plans for the foreseeable future.”

Lockington, commenting on how the reduced season and smaller ensembles would affect the musical programming, said, “ We’re blessed with an incredibly broad repertoire. We play music from about the last 400 years, so there’s a lot of fabulous material to choose from.”

As he explained, “The initial stages of Pasadena Presents will be small ensembles, socially distanced effectively. And then as we can come together, and the ensembles will get larger, we might go to a chamber orchestra or be able to incorporate something else, like some dance or a movie.

“I’m not sure exactly what it’s going to be,” said Lockington,  “but as we are allowed to, we will increase the size of the ensembles on stage. We want to bring new music and experiences that are going to be emotionally satisfying, entertaining and also relevent.”