Culver City Symphony Orchestra Opens Season With a Celebration of Dance

Maxim Kuzin, who studied and started his conducting career in his native Ukraine, will lead the season opening concert of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra on December 10. The Junior winner of the 2019 Parness Concerto Competition, Yirou (Ronnie) Zhang, will perform Alexander Glazunov’s Violin Concerto. Her appearance with the orchestra was delayed when covid-19 shut down concerts in early 2020.

The concert will be presented free of charge to the public at 7:30 p.m. at The Robert Frost Auditorium at Culver City High School, 4401 Elenda St., Culver City.

Maestro Kuzin will open with Taras Bulba Overture by Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko, written in 1880-1891, followed by the violin concerto. The second half will be a Celebration of Dance, symphonic music inspired by Eastern MORE

European folk dances, including Frederik Chopin’s Polonaise #1 in A minor, Zoltan Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta, Manuel de Falla’s Ritual of Fire and Spanish Dances No. 1, Antonin Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances No. 2, and Johannes Brahms’ Hungarian Dances #1.

Kuzin is one of three finalists for the prestigious Music Director position with the Culver City Symphony Orchestra and Marina del Rey Summer Symphony. The other finalists are Clyde Mitchell, who will conduct a concert on February 11, 2023; and Steven Allen Fox, who will conduct a concert tentatively scheduled for June, 2023. The community is invited to experience all three exciting conductors, each a noted music world figure, this season. More information on the finalists and this season’s concerts can be found at http://www.culvercitysymphony.org.

Kuzin shared his vision for the orchestras: “My aspiration is to expand the rich tradition of high-level music making of the Culver City and Marina del Rey symphonies as well as deliver a wide range of engaging, innovative and deeply impactful orchestral performances of classical and pops music that will further develop the orchestras into a well-known and financially thriving regional music organization.” Dr. Kuzin is currently the Music Director of the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic, a Lecturer at U.C. Santa Barbara and Music Director of the

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University’s Chamber Orchestra. He is also the newly appointed Conductor of the Irvine Classical Players youth orchestra. His early musical education was in Ukraine, followed by nineteen years of conducting professional and student orchestras, opera companies and choirs in Ukraine, Eastern Europe and the United States. He founded the youth music theatre “MAXIMA” and conducted the orchestra for the popular Dancing with the Stars show in Ukraine. He received a Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Conducting degree from U.C.L.A.

The Culver City Symphony’s 2022-2023 concert season is made possible, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, and by the City of Culver City and its Cultural Arts Foundation, with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Culver Arts Foundation.

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For more information go to http://www.culvercitysymphony.org, or contact Stephen Turk, President of the Board of Directors, SoCal Symphony Society (and cellist in the orchestras) at 213-300-4149 or [email protected]

 

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