The Queer Urban Orchestra (QUO) made a welcome return to live, in-person performance, for the first time in a year-and-a-half, at the Church of the Holy Apostles, in Chelsea, on October 16, with “Music that Drives Us,” a sold-out concert consisting of two 21st century works and two by Ludwig van Beethoven. There were well-deserved standing ovations aplenty.
Whetting our appetites for the music to come was a pre-concert panel discussion, moderated by QUO President and Principal Trumpeter Ron Nahass, questioning Artist Director Ian Shafer, Assistant Conductor Laurel Charleston, and guest pianist Spencer Myer.
The opening work was Jennifer Higdon’s colorful “Fanfare Ritmico,” in which the composer had welcomed the new Millennium with strains of anticipatory turbulence and sounds of progress, with the clattering of machinery, leavened by glistening hope, led with flair by Charleston and vividly realized by the QUO musicians.
Under Shafer’s knowing baton, we were surprised by an unprogrammed poignant brief excerpt from composer Clint Borzoni’s new filmed opera, for Arizona Opera, “The Copper Queen.”
Completing the evening were towering performances of iconic Beethoven masterpieces, led by Shafer, the Piano Concerto Number Four in G major, Opus 58, featuring the at once sensitive, commanding and, in the final movement, jubilant pianism of Myer, on the Yamaha, followed by a thundering Symphony Number Five in C minor, Opus 67.
It’s good to have QUO up and running again.
QUO’s 13th season, with a theme of “Alive with Spirit,” continues at Holy Apostles, 296 Ninth Avenue, at West 28th Street, with “The Fate of Destiny,” on December 18 at 8 p.m., consisting of Adophus Hailstork’s “Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed;” Camille Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto Number Three, with guest soloist Andrew Sords; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony Number 4; and “Earthly Rituals,” on January 22, 2022, a QUOtets chamber concert, which will includes Igor Stravinsky’s Suite for Small Orchestra; Kaija Saariaho’s “Terra Memoria” for String Quartet; and Bruce Saylor’s “Rituals.” Look for a guest appearance by pianist James Adler later in the season.
Visit www.queerurbanorchestra.org for further information.