The Reno PhilharmonicPosts

Join the Reno Phil for Pops on the River, Nashville to Neon! The evening features a costume & table decorating contest, raffle, auction, and an unforgettable performance from the Reno Phil Orchestra (straight from Nashville) led by Music Director Laura Jackson. Celebrate with the classic Country hits you know and love from legendary stars Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash to the biggest stars of today like Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, The Chicks and Kacey Musgraves. This concert breathes new life into this timeless American art form and features two of Nashville’s brightest young vocal stars Emily West and Rick Brantley along with four of Nashville’s most in-demand instrumentalists.

This program is brimming with youthful talent. Davidson Fellow, Charlotte Marckx, takes center stage as she hypnotizes you into a blissful trance with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4. Enjoy a world premiere performance composed by our very own Reno Phil Youth Orchestra and Davidson alumni, Paul Novak. Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony will anchor the program – written in 1937 as a defiant act to satisfy Stalin’s regime. The symphony was published with the ironic subtitle, “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Criticism” and has become loved for is complex beauty and triumphant conclusion.

Get a sneak peek of our upcoming musician spotlight in the Spanish Nights program! Read the whole interview with Bassoonist Eric Fassbender in our Spanish Nights program on January 27th and 28th at the Pioneer Center for the performing Arts. What year did you join the orchestra? I started subbing with the Phil when I moved to Reno in 2007. In 2011 I won the Second Bassoon position vacated by my teacher, Christy Schillinger. In 2022 I won the Principal Bassoon position from which my good friend Jeff Leep had recently retired. How did you pick your instrument? I started playing bassoon in ninth grade. I had never heard one before, I didn’t even know what it looked like, but I knew our band didn’t have one and I wanted to play something different. My teacher laughed, found an old case in the back of a cabinet, blew the dust off it, and wished me luck. At first I couldn’t even figure out how to put the thing together! But I quickly came to love the challenge and the weirdness of the bassoon. What is your favorite vacation spot?
Back home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where the rest of my family still lives. Our house is on forty acres of maple and pine forest, ten minutes from the shore of Lake Superior.

Grab your passports and travel to Spain for an evening of unforgettable music with the Reno Phil! Spanish conductor Ramon Tebar will lead the orchestra on a musical journey with colorful works by Spanish composers. Multi award-winning Spanish guitarist Rafael Aguirre will join the program for a performance of Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, a work of lyrical beauty and virtuosity. Join us for a night you won’t soon forget! Olé!