On July 24, our own Dudamel Orchestra performed alongside The Boston Landmarks Orchestra in “Music For The Ages,” a free family concert at the DCR’s Hatch Shell, where they played for an enthusiastic and supportive audience of over 1000 people.
The concert included the Dudamel Orchestra performing an excerpt from the Lord of the Rings Symphonic Suite by Howard Shore, as well as The Queen and the Conjurer, a commissioned piece composed by Michael Gandolfi specifically for the Dudamel and Landmarks Orchestras to perform together as one ensemble. Additionally, the Landmarks Orchestra performed The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britten, Symphony No. 1 by Brahms, and Perpetuum Mobile by Johan Strauss, Jr., which featured Conservatory Lab student Yantaya Smith as a guest conductor.
The program grew out of collaboration between the Landmarks Orchestra and the Conservatory Lab Charter School that has lasted all year. Michael Gandolfi, chairman of the composition department at the New England Conservatory, worked with our students to create The Queen and the Conjurer, which initially premiered at the Strand Theater in May in front of an audience of 1,000 Boston public, private, and parochial school students.
The concept for this program was so appealing that it was generously supported by the National Endowment for The Arts, the Mable Louise Riley Foundation, the Lynch Foundation and the Free For All Concert Fund.