“For the Houston Symphony, 2014-15 will be the season of Andrés Orozco-Estrada,” writes Steven Brown in Sunday’s (1/12) Houston Chronicle (Texas). “The new music director will launch his tenure with a free concert Sept. 12 at the Miller Outdoor Theatre…. More than half the Classical Season concerts will have Orozco-Estrada at the helm. He’ll launch multiyear initiatives with three programs spotlighting Beethoven and with concert-style performances of Mozart’s opera ‘The Abduction From the Seraglio.’ … The Beethoven cycle will help him and the players develop their chemistry with landmarks of the orchestral repertoire, he says. Opera presentations … will become annual events because Orozco-Estrada believes performing alongside singers will enrich the orchestra’s playing.… Orozco-Estrada will offer his insights into orchestral works in a revamp of the orchestra’s Access series, which will be renamed Musically Speaking.… In Orozco-Estrada’s Houston visits since he was picked, Spanish speakers greeting the Colombia native have often bonded with him by speaking in Spanish, said Mark Hanson, the orchestra’s executive director. The orchestra will cater to that by having Orozco-Estrada conduct and discuss Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in a Nov. 16 concert with narration entirely in Spanish.”
Orozco-Estrada is among several Hispanic music directors at American orchestras profiled in the current issue of Symphony.
Posted January 15, 2014
