The Queer Urban Orchestra (QUO) opened its 11th season, on October 19 at Church of the Holy Apostles in Chelsea, with a Halloween-themed collection of formidably eerie pieces of music and bid farewell, as well, to its esteemed Artistic Director of the last five years, Julie Desbordes, who leaves to take a position at Arizona State University, and was presented with a plaque by QUO President Bjorn Berkhout, on behalf of the orchestra. Also at this concert, QUO violinist Jennifer Rich, who passed away recently, was remembered.
To celebrate Halloween, players wore masks and makeup and suggestions of costume: animal ears; some drag—blonde wig, high heels; pirate hat and eyepatch; and devil’s horns. Desbordes and QUO began with Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre,” fierce and fiery, and evocative of death, the relentless fiddler, with Concertmaster Phong Ta responsible for the violin solos. In Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” from his music for Henrik Ibsen’s play “Peer Gynt,” the musicians conveyed the insistent tumult of the King’s trolls, reacting to Peer Gynt’s presence in the kingdom.
Under Assistant Conductor Alex Wen’s baton, QUO played Franz Liszt’s early “Malédiction,” a Concerto for Piano and Strings, his first work for piano and orchestra, with guest Yuri Shadrin, at the Yamaha, making the pianist’s powerful and emotional, driven statement, and limned a wild demonic orgy and witches’ Sabbath, taking place on that “Night on Bald Mountain,” and a peaceful morning afterwards, in Modest Mussorgsky’s composition.
Desbordes mounted the podium anew for some more contemporary magic, John Williams’ score for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” now diaphanous, now ringing, then ruminating or playful, and ultimately resplendent.
QUO will play at the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, for a QUOtets Chamber Concert, on December 8 at 4 p.m., and returns to Holy Apostles, at 296 Ninth Avenue, at 28th Street, to introduce its new Artistic Director on February 22, 2020. Visit http://www.queerurbanorchestra.org for further information.