The Florida Orchestra will perform in Branscomb Auditorium on Saturday, Feb. 19, at 7:30 p.m. with guest artist, Stewart Goodyear (above).

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LAKELAND, Fla. (Feb. 16, 2011) – Florida Southern College welcomes the famed Florida Orchestra to perform in Branscomb Auditorium on Saturday, Feb. 19, at 7:30 p.m. as part of its Festival of Fine Arts.

Founded in 1968 after the Tampa Philharmonic and the St. Petersburg Symphony merged, the Florida Orchestra is one of the state’s leading performing arts institutions and among the best in the nation.

In 1991 the Orchestra achieved international critical acclaim when it performed The Star-Spangled Banner with Whitney Houston at Super Bowl XXV before an audience of 750 million. It was the first symphony orchestra to ever be invited to perform at a Super Bowl.

Today the Orchestra performs nearly 100 concerts annually in the Tampa Bay area and is led by conductor Stefan Sanderling, who is considered one of the leading German conductors of his generation.

In addition to leading the Florida Orchestra, Sanderling is also the principal conductor and adviser of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and the music director of the Chautauqua (New York) Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted the London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Prague Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony, among many others.

He has made several recordings for the Sony Classics record label, while his most recent recording, symphonies and tone poems by Honegger, has been released on Naxos.

The Florida Southern College performance will feature guest artist Stewart Goodyear performing Gershwin’s high-energy and blues-laced Concerto in F, a performance described by the San Francisco Chronicle as simply “breathtaking.”

Concerto in F was Gershwin’s follow-up to Rhapsody in Blue. An early run-through of the work, prior to its 1925 premier in New York, was described by Gershwin as “one of the greatest musical thrills” of his life.

Goodyear holds a master’s degree from Juilliard School of Music and also studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Los Angeles Philharmonic, among others.
The FSC program also features Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 and a new work by Osvaldo Golijov titled Sidereus.

Golijov is a winner of such coveted distinctions as the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award and the MacArthur Foundation’s Genius Award. He is Loyola Professor of Music at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and he also teaches at the Boston Conservatory and Tanglewood Music Center in Boston.

Sidereus was commissioned by a consortium of 35 orchestras in honor of the recently retired Henry Fogel, who was the president of the League of American Orchestras from 2003 to 2008 after having served as orchestra manager of the New York Philharmonic, executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, and president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Tickets for the Florida Orchestra’s performance are $35 for adults and $17.50 for students. To purchase tickets or for more information about the Festival of Fine Arts, call 863-680-4296 or visit www.flsouthern.edu/ffa.