UK Symphony Orchestra season opens celebrating Nardolillo’s 20th year on the podium

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 26, 2024) — The University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra (UKSO) has announced its 106th season of concerts. The orchestra will return to the Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall on Sept. 27 with a celebration of John Nardolillo’s 20th anniversary as UK’s director of orchestras.

All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Singletary Center.

The ensemble will open the season with the same program featured on Nardolillo’s first concert as orchestra director in September of 2004. The performance opens with Jean Sibelius’ tone poem “Finlandia,” and includes an exciting contemporary work, composed in 2013, by Anna Clyne titled “Masquerade,” followed by Schubert’s beloved “Unfinished” symphony. The program concludes with Ravel’s setting of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” including its famous conclusion, the “Great Gate of Kiev.”

The 2024-25 UKSO season will continue Nov. 1 with Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Joan Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman,” Copland’s “Appalachian Spring Suite” and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World.”

To close out the fall semester, on Dec. 5 UKSO will present Austin Yip’s “Metamorphosis,” Dorothy Chang’s “Northern Star,” Lowell Liebermann’s Flute Concerto No. 1 featuring junior soloist Alex Nguyen, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathétique.” 

On Feb. 14, the orchestra will welcome spring with Claude Debussy’s: Prélude à “L’après-midi d’un faune,” Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2,” featuring  senior solist Caleb Webber, music from Tchaikovsky’s “Cinderella” and Richard Strauss’s Suite from “Der Rosenkavalier.”

The following month, on March 28, the UKSO will present the Concerto Competition winner along with Lina Tonia’s “Butterfly Effect” and Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 5.”    

The UKSO will close its 106th season on April 25, joining the UK Choirs on stage for Giuseppe Verdi’s “Requiem.” 

Tickets for UK Symphony Orchestra concerts are $20 for general admission, $10 for students and free for UK students with a valid ID before the day of the performance (at the Singletary Center ticket office, 405 Rose Street in Lexington). 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.  

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.  

Director 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.  

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.