PHOENIX SYMPHONY, THE

THE PHOENIX SYMPHONY reimagines, realigns and reconnects

By Lisa Van Loo

TITO MUÑOZ. PHOTO BY JARED PLATT

The Phoenix Symphony won’t take the stage for the 2020-21 season, a heartbreaking, pandemic-influenced curveball for an orchestra that already had to suspend the end of its season earlier this year. But this does not mean the symphony is silent.

The time away from the stage has allowed the Symphony to speak in ways it hasn’t been able to, until now.

“We created about 300 pieces of video content over eight weeks,” Suzanne Wilson, The Phoenix Symphony’s president and CEO, says. “We’ve been really taking advantage of all the performances and all the content we’ve built over the years to celebrate our partnerships and our musicians.”

The Symphony has used its website and social media channels to share archived performances, to showcase musicians in their homes rehearsing or using historic instruments, and to allow the public to get to know the orchestra’s talented musicians in new ways.

They even managed to play together, from their individual homes. “Everybody was at home on video and it was literally pieced together through the magic of editing and sound production. They were all, at that point, in quarantine. Everybody played their specific part,” Wilson says of the orchestra’s virtual Beethoven performance. “This was really initiated by the musicians. They were excited to do it.”

And now, all efforts will focus on preparing for the Phoenix Symphony’s 75th anniversary, in the fall of 2021.

“It is our hope to really start to brainstorm on how we will mark that occasion. It will be a season of new beginnings, but it will mark our treasured traditions. We’re excited to emerge and connect and celebrate our audiences and how music brings all of us together,” Wilson says. “We’re taking this opportunity, like everybody else, to reimagine and realign and reconnect and set the stage for next season.”

For more information, visit phoenixsymphony.org.