It was the start of an era as the Atlantic Classical Orchestra’s first concert of its 27th season last week got underway last week.
First, though, there was the usual cacophony in three movements.
From the wings of St. Edward’s School’s Waxlax Performing Arts Center, the screech of metal chairs and music stands was the treble clef to the percussive thuds and clicks of assorted instrument cases. Then came the chatter, in a half-dozen languages with artists here from Russia, Serbia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, China, Venezuela – and that’s just the string instruments. At last the instruments had their say, each in conversation with its master, warming up, then tuning up.
Finally silence fell, the focus of the musicians palpable as the tenure of the chamber orchestra’s next music director began. David Amado, flashing a radiant smile, stepped out from the wings. With a face as animated as an acting class exercise, he raised his baton to begin.
What followed – Smetana’s overture to “The Bartered Bride,” followed by Tchaikovsky’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – was tonic to an audience eager to embrace the 48-year-old conductor of the Delaware Symphony who now calls Florida’s south-central coast his second home.
“Here’s some news,” ACO’s president and CEO Alan Hopper announced brightly two days after the Vero concert. “A board member said the buzz on the golf course was all about the concert.”
At all three venues where the chamber orchestra performs – Vero, Palm Beach Gardens and Stuart – reaction was the same. The warm, approachable and keenly talented conductor had audience and orchestra alike in thrall.
People “couldn’t hold back their praise,” he said. “Through the rehearsal process you could just see it: David brought such extreme clarity and nuance to the orchestra.”
Amado, who trained first as a pianist at Juilliard before studying conducting at Indiana University, is the son of both a mother and grandmother who were prominent violinists. He was selected by an eight-member panel last spring, and the first of four finalists to audition. Setting the bar high, as one board member put it then, he conducted the ACO’s first concert of the season with three more candidates following with concerts of their own. Those four were selected from 130 applicants, all viewed on YouTube or in person.
Never mind the racket made before the concert; what followed each piece was noisier still. Thunderous applause and whoops of approval were unleashed from a record number of listeners in each venue – and including a record number of newcomers, a critical measure of the orchestra’s future success. But the ovations were no match for the power of the program’s music, a greatest-hits collection of favorites that included Tchaikovsky’s extraordinarily difficult Piano Concerto No. 1, played by a young Russian pianist, Vyacheslav Gryaznov, who dazzled the crowd with his power and precision, then topped off his performance with an encore, a charming polka by Rachmaninoff. “Slava played a different encore every night,” says Cindy Roden, ACO’s publicity director.
The Vero audience included a bank of students from Vero Beach High School’s orchestra program, all there with free tickets. Not that they didn’t earn them: The students performed for arriving guests on the terrace of the St. Ed’s theater. Different student musicians were to play at all the ACO concerts, part of an accelerated effort to reach out to student musicians.
Next month, Amado conducts a concert of all opera music, including Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, with singers from the Young Artist Program of the Palm Beach Opera performing.
It won’t be until the March concert that Amado gets to conduct new music, his passion since his days with Sequitur, a group he founded while a student at Juilliard that focused on recent compositions.
Amado and the Delaware Orchestra were nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2010 for a recording of a concerto by Brazilian guitarist and composer Sergio Assad performed with the L.A. Guitar Quartet.
The March ACO concert will premiere a work of Conrad Tao, a pianist and composer awarded the Rappaport Prize through the foundation of Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport. Jerry Rappaport, former board chair of ACO, is a prominent Boston developer now living in Stuart. In addition to supporting music and art, the foundation provides scholarships for medical research, mental health and public policy.
The ACO is one of the few organizations outside of Boston that receives Rappaport Foundation support. In celebration of Jerry Rappaport’s 90th birthday, and to honor Amado, the orchestra is hosting a benefit gala March 12 at Willoughby Golf Club Stuart.
Among the expected guests: Stewart Robertson, ACO’s conductor emeritus who retired in 2015 after 12 years with the orchestra.
Robertson, who retired for health reasons, is doing well, says the ACO’s Roden.
Friday afternoon, Hopper was ferrying Amado’s family – wife Meredith, a professional violinist, and their three school-age children – to Stuart’s Lyric Theatre, for the final concerts of this first program. The day had been a mild but gloomy one, spritzing rain more in the style of a northern autumn day that Florida’s customary deluge.
Still, to the family now living in Maine, it was an invigorating change if for no other reason than the strength of the sun’s rays.
“It’s so bright!” the kids exclaimed.
