“The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra has risen from the devastation Hurricane Katrina wreaked on it: a water-damaged Orpheum Theater and musicians and audiences scattered across the country,” writes Sarah Bonnette in Friday’s (9/11) Times-Picayune (New Orleans). The LPO “started a regular concert series on [Lake Pontchartrain’s] north shore in 2007…. ‘We get to go home,’ to the Orpheum Theater, said Hugh Long, current president of the LPO Board. ‘We also get to continue our great tradition of coming here.’ ” Led by Music Director Carlos Prieto, the LPO will open the orchestra’s North Shore series on September 18 with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection,’ as a “commemoration of its 25th anniversary, Prieto’s 10th year as conductor, and its post-Katrina, phoenix-like comeback. ‘Following Hurricane Katrina, we realized very quickly that our audience … was now spread all over the region,’ Sean Snyder, LPO’s Director of Marketing and Communications, said…. ‘Instead of expecting folks to travel to New Orleans to see a concert, we … began taking our programs to the various communities.’ Thus the North Shore Classics series was born with four concerts. This year there will be six concerts, all of which will take place at First Baptist Church in Covington.”
Posted September 17, 2015
