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With 33 concerts, with almost 3,500 working days of hired musicians, over 5,500 tickets sold in 6 months, around 250 season tickets issued for the 2023 season, the publication of a photo book and with around 300 candidates auditioning for the upcoming concert season, the The Matera Symphony Orchestra is preparing to begin the activities of the 2024 season, carrying forward its mission: to disseminate symphonic music, train audiences and be a point of reference for musical research both locally and nationally.
Previewed in April, the photographic book, edited by Antonello Di Gennaro Editorial and Corporate photographer, highlights the commitment and excellent results achieved in a year of work by a cultural institution now consolidated in the area. The publication contains all the events of the 2023 winter calendar: in addition to photos of the live shows, it is accompanied by portraits of the season’s protagonists and speeches by the President of the Province of Matera Piero Marrese, the Mayor of Matera Domenico Bennardi and the Director of “ER Duni” Conservatory of Matera Carmine Antonio Catenazzo and will be on sale at the Mondadori Bookstore in Matera.
“2023 was a year of important confirmations for the Matera Symphony Orchestra” explains Gianna Racamato, president of the Matera Symphony Orchestra Foundation “characterized by an intense program of activities aimed at consolidating the initiatives and objectives declared by the founding members: the Matera Symphony Orchestra has offered significant job opportunities to young local talents, many of them from the ER Duni Conservatory, allowing them to interact with internationally renowned artists, directors and soloists; we managed to successfully continue the path started in 2022 with the recognition by the Ministry of Culture of candidates for Orchestral Concert Institution for the three-year period 2022/2024 thanks to the entry, as partners, of the Province of Matera, the Municipality of Matera and of the ER Duni Conservatory of Matera and the transformation into a Participatory Foundation; finally, with pride, we have achieved successes and obtained the appreciation of the public, strengthening the awareness of the importance of having an Institutional Orchestra representing the City of Matera and the entire Province”.
“We are proud as the Province of Matera to acknowledge that the OSM project has become a high-level reality, furthermore enriched by the consideration that there are many young people from our territory who are part of it” comments the President of the Province, Piero Marrese “For this reason our support is more clear than ever: we do it with enthusiasm and great conviction because one of the priority objectives of the Province of Matera is also to create new job opportunities for our children. The Matera Symphony Orchestra is a hotbed of talent and is everyone’s heritage.”
“The Matera Symphony Orchestra represents the concrete realization of the dream of seeing a Matera symphony, combining the desire for active protagonism in music by the European capital of culture, with the need to enhance local artistic talents, thus creating also job opportunities” explains the mayor of Matera, Domenico Bennardi “A project in which we believed from the first moment, bringing it to the scrutiny of the city council and with the involvement among the members of another Matera excellence, the Duni Conservatory of Matera” .
With the start of the audition sessions for the 2024 staff, the Matera Symphony Orchestra is preparing to begin a new concert season: around 300 applications arrived via public tender from Basilicata, but also from the whole territory national with requests also from Brazil, Colombia and Poland and with a significant presence of candidates under 30. The auditions will be held from Tuesday 18 June until Saturday 29 June in the rooms of the ER Duni Conservatory of Matera to select trumpet, clarinet and percussion instrumentalists , timpani, trombone, horn, viola, flute, bassoon, oboe, violin.
“The presence of a symphony orchestra in an area like that of Matera and its province is an added value not only for enthusiasts, who can return to listening to high-level symphony music without having to reach the neighboring regions, but above all it is a very important resource for the younger generations who can thus approach music both through projects agreed with schools and by having the opportunity to attend concerts in their own city, without forgetting that music is fundamental for the tourist development of a place” explains the Artistic Director of the Matera Symphony Orchestra, Saverio Vizziello, who continues “In this year’s program we remember two very important figures of classical music, Gershwin and Puccini, we want to continue to involve the territories of the province by bringing high-level musical proposals artistic but also easily recognizable for every listener, we want to continue the fruitful and challenging collaboration with the ancient music festival dedicated to Egidio Romualdo Duni to arrive at the Christmas holidays with one of the composers who perhaps loved and best interpreted the winter atmospheres , Tchaikovsky. We are very satisfied with the results achieved last year and we want to continue working as best we can to achieve increasingly ambitious goals.”
The summer months will therefore see the province of Matera as the protagonist where the Orchestra will bring two projects: the first dedicated to serenades with string concert and recitation of love poems, the second dedicated to the figure of Fabrizio De André with the orchestral body in accompaniment to the voice of Mario Rosini. The presentation of the winter part of the concert season is scheduled for September in Matera with an event dedicated to great American music with songs by George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of “Rhapsody in Blue”, the masterpiece that George Gershwin composed in January 1924 and premiered on February 12 of that year at Aeolian Hall in New York. We continue in Matera with the autumn program dedicated to Puccini in the hundred years of the death of the Tuscan composer, arriving in December with a concert dedicated to the music of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky passing through the electronic atmospheres combined with the classical music of the concerts for schools and the co-production with the Duni Festival of the ballet Pulcinella, written by Igor Fëdorovič Stravinsky with music by 18th century authors.
