Name: Who’s Afraid of Living Composers?
Start: 2021-09-26Tnull

Huntsville Symphony Orchestra

Now massively updated for 2026, Video Games Live is acknowledged by Guinness as the biggest, most successful, and longest-running video game concert in the world. The brainchild of industry legend Tommy Tallarico, Video Games Live combines the energy and excitement of a rock concert with the power and emotion of a symphony orchestra and choir – in support of the art and culture of yesteryear’s arcade classics and today’s fresh console releases. It’s a thrilling experience for the whole family, gamers and grandparents alike. 

Video Games Live

Von Braun Center

Situated the summit of Madison County’s Round Top, Burritt on the Mountain has been one of Huntsville’s main attractions for over sixty years. This evening it provides the view, while the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra brings a three-course dinner and some lovely chamber music for your enjoyment and that of your dinner guests. We’ll hear two very different octets: the first by Louis Spohr, an important violinist, composer, and conductor of the early nineteenth century, and the second by the modern French composer Jean Françaix, celebrated for his sparkling wit and earthy originality.

Dinner on the Mountain

One of the most controversial of all concert pieces, Ravel’s Boléro (1928) is both an incomparable feast for the ears
– languid, modal melodies, crooning saxophones, Spanish dance rhythms – and a puzzle for the brain, as it is a work
whose marvelous variety and sensational climax are built on mechanistic repetition. The composer himself once
half-jokingly characterized it as “a crescendo without music.” This evening, the famous Boléro is matched with
Rachmaninov’s riveting, perennially popular Symphonic Dances for orchestra, and the Variaciones concertantes of
Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera, in which a lyrical theme for cello and harp is taken on a tour of the whole
orchestra.

Boléro

Contemporary classical music thrives in all corners of the world, including our home state of Alabama. This introspective program of new music will showcase recent compositions by three noted Alabama composers. You know Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms – but what about the composers living right next door?</span></p><p>Maybe your neighbors include engineers, nurses, or teachers – but what if one of them is a composer, of all things? Today’s program focuses on exciting new works by living composers right here in Alabama: Joshua Burel from Huntsville, Birmingham’s William Price, and Amir Zaheri, who comes to us from Tuscaloosa. Join us in Roberts Recital Hall on the UAH campus for an afternoon of exciting new music and engaging discussion by these three fantastic composers from the University of Alabama system.