This summer, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra’s VSO Jukebox Quartet presented free concerts at breweries around the state to keep the music going during the pandemic. At Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Waitsfield in July, Assistant Principal Second Violin Brooke Quiggins, violinist Laura Markowitz, Assistant Principal Viola Stefanie Taylor, and Principal Cello John Dunlop performed music ranging from Scott Joplin and Elena Kats-Chernin to arrangements of rock tunes by Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana. The quartet, established in 2017, performs throughout the state, year round. This October, the VSO made its full-orchestra return to the Flynn Center in Burlington, the first such concert since February 2020. Led by Akiko Fujimoto, the first of seven music director candidates this season, the program included music by Beethoven, Ravel, and Jessie Montgomery, plus the world premiere of a cello concerto by Jordanian-Canadian composer Suad Bushnaq. The VSO plans to launch a competition for young Vermont composer/musicians to create songs based on Bushnaq’s cello concerto and co-present a public lecture with Bushnaq and three Vermont-based immigrant musicians.
