UK Symphony Orchestra to open 105th season with 'Pines of Rome'

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 19, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra (UKSO), under the direction of John Nardolillo, has announced its 105th season of concerts. The orchestra will return to the concert hall with Ottorino Respighi’s "Pines of Rome" and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, beginning 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22, at the Singletary Center for the Arts. The opening night concert will also include Richard Strauss’ Oboe Concerto featuring music faculty ToniMarie Marchioni. 

The 2023-2024 UKSO season will continue with several Kentucky premieres including “Lumina,” by composer and multimedia artist Nina Shekhar, who is currently a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University. The UKSO will premiere “Lumina” alongside Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with special guest Amit Peled on cello, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26. 

To close out the Fall 2023 semester, UKSO will present another Kentucky premiere, Austrian composer Hannah Eisendle’s “heliosis,” along with Alexander Borodin’s “In the Steppes of Central Asia,” Johann Hummel’s Grand Concerto for Bassoon, and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. This concert will begin 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 30. 

The University of Kentucky Treble Choir, under the direction of Lori Hetzel, will join the UKSO for their first concert of the Spring 2024 semester at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 16. This concert will feature the Kentucky premiere of Mathilde Wantenaar’s “Prélude à une nuit américaine," music from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Felix Mendelssohn, and Richard Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life).” 

The following month, the UKSO will present the Concerto Competition winners along with Claude Debussy’s “Rondes de printemps” from “Images,” Bohuslav Martinů’s Oboe Concerto featuring Camilla Yoder on oboe, and Maurice Ravel’s “La valse.” This concert will begin 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 22, at the Singletary Center.   

To close out their 105th season, the UKSO will once again join the UK Choirs on stage for Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem. UKSO's season finale will begin 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 19, at the Singletary Center.  

Founded in 1918, the UKSO is a 100-member all-student orchestra, presenting classical, chamber, opera and education concerts. The group is made up of undergraduate and graduate students from across the United States, Asia, South America, Africa and Europe. The orchestra has regularly performed with world-renowned concert artists including Itzhak Perlman, Lang Lang, Sarah Chang, Gil Shaham, Lynn Harrell, Marvin Hamlisch, Denyce Graves, Christine Brewer, Pink Martini, Ronan Tynan, Mark O’Connor, Wynonna Judd, Keith Lockhart and Arlo Guthrie.  

UK’s orchestra has performed at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., tours the state of Kentucky regularly, and has toured China, playing concerts in major concert halls in Shanghai, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Yangzhou and Beijing. The orchestra’s performance at Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts was broadcast on China Central Television, a network reaching more than 1.5 billion viewers. In the fall of 2010, the orchestra played for the opening ceremonies of the World Equestrian Games, a performance that featured more than 1,500 performers and 200 horses that was seen live on NBC in the United States by 39 million people, and by an estimated 500 million more television viewers worldwide.  

Maestro John Nardolillo has appeared with more than 30 of the country’s leading orchestras, including the Boston Pops, the National Symphony, and principal orchestras of Seattle, San Francisco, Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas, Milwaukee, Utah, Columbus, Indianapolis, Oregon, Fort Worth, Buffalo, Alabama, Louisville, Missouri, North Carolina, Toledo, Vermont, Columbus, Omaha and Hawaii. He also recently conducted concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia; and Carnegie Hall in New York. Nardolillo made his professional conducting debut in 1994 at the Sully Festival in France and has since made conducting appearances in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Czech Republic and China. He has led major American orchestras in subscription series concerts, summer and pops concerts, education concerts and tours, and for television and radio broadcasts. Nardolillo is the artistic director of the Prague Summer Nights Music Festival, and in 2004, he joined the faculty at the UK School of Music, where he serves as the director of orchestras.  

Tickets for UK Symphony Orchestra concerts are $14 for general admission, $7 for students, and free for UK students with a valid ID before the day of the performance (at the Singletary Center ticket office). Tickets are available through the Singletary Center ticket office online at www.singletarycenter.com, by phone at 859-257-4929, or in person at the venue. Children 6 and older are welcome.  

The UK Symphony Orchestra is housed in the School of Music at UK College of Fine Arts. The UK School of Music has garnered a national reputation for high-caliber education in opera, choral and instrumental music performance, as well as music education, music therapy, composition, and theory and music history.