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Mariposa Symphony Orchestra’s Portrait Of The Year

MARIPOSA — The Mariposa Symphony Orchestra’s concert at Yosemite National Park’s Glacier Point continues to bring surprising international attention to the small town and its symphony orchestra.

That once-in-a-lifetime Aug. 21 performance was the final concert in the MSO’s recent tour commemorating the Centennial of the National Park Service.

August 21, 2016 Mariposa Symphony Orchestra, "Our Nation's Nature" by Les Marsden.

The Mariposa Symphony Orchestra performs “Our Nation’s Nature” on August 21, 2016 in commemoration of the National Park Service Centennial at Yosemite’s Glacier Point – NPS Photo by Al Golub

An iconic National Park Service image by photographer Al Golub highlighting the orchestra performing at 7,200 feet against the backdrop of a sunset-tinged Half Dome has gone viral, although a different image of the orchestra rehearsing at Glacier Point earlier in the day was described by famed author/musicologist Norman Lebrecht as the “Orchestra Portrait of the Year” in his London-based SlippedDisc blog.

SlippedDisc provides international news of professional music, opera and the cultural arts. Lebrecht’s MSO post is found at: http://tinyurl.com/SlippedMSO

Additional online/print media sites featuring the MSO’s story include New York’s BroadwayWorld http://tinyurl.com/BWWMSO and the orchestra’s tour was the featured front-page article on “The HUB,” the subscription-only journal of the League of American Orchestras. Founded in 1942 and chartered by Congress, the member-organization League links a national network of thousands of orchestras, instrumentalists, conductors, managers, etc.

A column in the Fresno Bee entitled “In Moments of Musical Beauty, Anger Melts, Hatred Dissolves, Peace Dawns” offered aesthetic context on the concert by Dr. Andrew Fiala. Fiala is a professor of philosophy and director of The Ethics Center at California State University, Fresno and his Aug. 26 column in the Bee was devoted entirely to the MSO’s Glacier Point concert: http://tinyurl.com/FialaMSO.

Television coverage was offered on Fresno’s KFSN (ABC-30) http://tinyurl.com/KFSNGP and the Bay Area’s KRON (Channel 4) http://tinyurl.com/KRON4MSO .

More than 145,000 international viewers tuned in to Yosemite National Park’s Internet livestream of the concert from Glacier Point, bringing a high level of awareness to both the National Park Service Centennial and to Mariposa, believed to be the smallest town in all America with its own symphony orchestra.

The MSO’s tour presented MSO Founder/Conductor’s “Our Nation’s Nature” in seven concerts in five counties and was made possible by a generous grant from the California Arts Council.

The MSO’s 15th Season Opening Concert will be held on Saturday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. in the Fiester Auditorium of Mariposa County High School. The concert will feature Beethoven’s Third Symphony in Eb (the “Eroica”) and Jan Hugo Vorisek’s Symphony in D.

The MSO is a program of the Mariposa County Arts Council, Inc and its website is at http://www.mariposaartscouncil.org.

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