Shelley Conducts The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Strauss

Music Director Alexander Shelley conjures a night of magic. Hear The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the runaway broom music from Disney’s Fantasia. Let a violin soar in a new concerto from the composer of The Hunger Games. Then let the sunrise from 2001: A Space Odyssey wash over you. No screens—all goosebumps.

Preview Talk at 7 p.m. with Classical California midday host Alan Chapman.

What’s Interesting

• You know this music, even if you don’t know you know it. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the enchanted broom sequence from Disney’s Fantasia. Also Sprach Zarathustra opens 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Greta Gerwig parodied that scene at the start of Barbie.
• A 2,000-year-old comedy. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice story goes back to the Greek writer Lucian around 150 AD. Goethe made it a poem, Dukas made it music, and Disney handed the broom to Mickey.
• A composer with a rock-and-roll past. Before scoring more than 100 films, from Pretty Woman to The Dark Knight, James Newton Howard played keyboards for Elton John in the 1970s.
• A "pop concerto." That's Howard's own description of his music. A racing first movement, a soaring slow one, and a finale with a hoedown streak—written for the virtuoso violinist, James Ehnes, who will play it with the orchestra.
• Feel it before you hear it. Zarathustra begins on an organ note so low it’s more rumble than pitch, and Segerstrom’s concert organ delivers it at full size.
• With Image Magnification on the big screen for a closer look at the artists!

Meet & Greet Opportunities

• Artistic and Music Director Alexander Shelley will be signing posters each night after the concert in the main lobby
• Violinist James Ehnes will greet the audience Friday night at intermission in the Box Circle Lobby

Henri Temianka Distinguished Violinist Concert Series
Sponsored by Dr. Daniel Temianka and Dr. Zeinab Dabbah