Boulder Jewish News Arts, Culture, Events, Lifestyles, Holidays, Synagogues, Education
This holiday season, the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra will celebrate the season with a program that spans continents and centuries. On December 20, the orchestra will pair Vivaldi’s most famous work, The Four Seasons, with Astor Piazzolla’s vibrant Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires).
For centuries, Vivaldi’s Seasons has dazzled audiences with its vivid storytelling—thunderstorms cracking across the strings, birds trilling in the breeze, winter’s icy bite etched into every phrase. Piazzolla takes the same idea and flips it on its head, recasting the seasons through the pulse of Buenos Aires: sultry, bold, rhythm-charged, and alive with tango’s restless heartbeat. Hearing the works side by side reveals how two great musical minds, separated by 250 years and an ocean, transform the same inspiration into completely different emotional worlds. It’s a pairing that critics describe as “electrifying,” “unexpectedly cinematic,” and “a conversation across time.”
The performance will be led and conducted by violinist Alex Gonzalez, who currently serves as Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music. Gonzalez is also a member of the Sphinx Virtuosi, where he serves as concertmaster and tours extensively throughout the country and abroad. During the summer months, he is on the faculty of the Sphinx Performance Academy at both The Juilliard School and CU Boulder, and has previously taught at Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra Program (NYO2) and the Iber Academy in Medellín, Colombia. Attendees will also have the rare opportunity to hear him perform on a violin crafted for him by Mario Miralles in 2017.
A beautiful addition to downtown Boulder’s holiday offerings.
Saturday, December 20
Four Seasons: Vivaldi & Piazzolla
First United Methodist | Boulder, CO | 7:00 PM
Tickets start at just $30. For additional details and tickets, visit: boulderphil.org.
