Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s season will also champion women conductors and new music.

Two of the world’s most charismatic performers will join the Queensland Symphony Orchestra next year, it was revealed today in the QSO’s 2016 season announcement. Piano superstar Lang Lang will headline the orchestra’s Mid-Season Gala and violin virtuoso Maxim Vengerov, who will be touring Australia with Musica Viva this November, will return to Australia for the second year in a row to join QSO for its Tchaikovsky Gala. In 2015 QSO was the first major Australian orchestra to appoint a resident soloist, and soloists-in-residence both past and present, violinist Shlomo Mintz and pianist Nikolai Demidenko respectively, will also perform with the orchestra in 2016. Newly appointed resident Demidenko, who has shared a long association with the QSO, will headline a Beethoven piano concerto cycle, which will see all five concertos performed over two evenings in May and October. The Australian Voices have also bee appointed as the QSO’s ensemble-in-residence, and will feature in four main stage performances with the orchestra next year.

QSO’s 2016’s season will also see a focus on women conductors, with appearances by home-grown talents Simone Young and Jessica Cottis, as well as Mexican firecracker Alondra de la Parra. Conductor Laureate and Former Music Director of the QSO, Johannes Fritzsch will also return to the podium at QPAC as both maestro and mentor, as he oversees the tenure of the newly appointed Assistant Conductor of the orchestra, Natalia Raspopova. Chinese conductor Yu Long will lead the QSO in a performance of Carl Orff’s epic masterpiece Carmina Burana next August as one of the flagship programmes of a new choral concert series. These concerts will see the great choral-orchestral masterworks of the classical repertoire, including Mozart’s Requiem, celebrated across the season. The orchestra is yet to appoint a successor to Fritzsch as the QSO’s Music Director, although an announcement is due in early 2016.

Alondra de la Parra

2016 will see a continuation of QSO’s commitment to championing new Australian music across two initatives. QSOCurrent, which showcases the best new music by Queenslander and Australian composers, will once again feature beat boxing firebrand Tom Thum, who wowed audiences this year in Gordon Hamilton’s beat box concerto. Thumb, whose TED Talk on his unique art form is the most viewed lecture from the series on YouTube with almost 41.5 million views, has been appointed QSOCurrent’s artist-in-residence. In a quirky take in the culinary concept of the amuse-bouche, QSO’s amuse-oreille (amusement for the ears) initiative will feature a series of newly commissioned, short “bite-sized” pieces from Australian composers as a complement to the more well known favourites in the Maestro series.

In what is becoming an increasingly popular highlight for many orchestras across Australia, QSO’s 2016 season will also feature an evening dedicated to film music. Next year they will perform John Williams’ white-knuckle score to Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, accompanying the film starring Harrison Ford as the daring archaeologist.

Full details of QSO’s 2016 season, as well as information on subscribing, is available on the QSO website.