The Austin Symphony Orchestra in Texas will perform the world premiere of Dan Welcher’s Symphony No. 5 on May 1 at the Long Center in Austin. The work was commissioned by the orchestra on the occasion of Peter Bay’s tenth year as Austin’s music director. Welcher, a professor of composition at the University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music, played bassoon in the Austin Symphony in 1979 and served for ten years as its assistant conductor in the 1980s. He also hosts “Knowing the Score,” a Sunday radio program on KMFA public radio in Austin. Bay commented that he had conducted more than ten of Welcher’s works with the Austin Symphony and other orchestras, but that this was his first-ever commission of a work by Welcher.
Posted April 3, 2009
