THE SNOWY DAY
Performances February 8, 13, 15, 16, 2025
In the fresh snow, every footstep is marked with magic. A young boy wakes to find that the first snow of winter has fallen overnight– an exciting day of adventure awaits. Peter delights in making footprints in the snow and meeting new friends, before returning home to the cozy embrace of Mama and Daddy. Based on the Caldecott Medal-winning book by Ezra Jack Keats, Joel Thompson and Andrea Davis Pinkney’s The Snowy Day brings centerstage the fleeting but indelible magic of childhood.
Learn more>
AMERICAN DANCE PARTY
Performances March 1 & 2, 2025
Get ready to jam as the infectious rhythms and tunes of American greats like Ellington, Joplin, and Gershwin will have you dancing in your seats. One of the concert's works get a Reno-themed multi-media treatment by Eve Allen Garza and RCO’s principal strings are featured as soloists in Delights and Dances, a work by Pulitzer-prize winner Michael Abels, known widely for his score to the film Nope.
Learn more>
LATIN BRIDGES
Performances April 5 & 6, 2025
Handel’s Messiah returns to the RCO after over two decades in a Spanish translation as we highlight Easter selections from El Mesías: Messiah for a New World. A chamber orchestration of Gershwin’s infectious Havana-inspired Cuban Overture and Piazzolla’s fresh tango-jazz-classical Sinfonietta fill out this program influenced by Latin connections.
Learn more>
RUSALKA
Performances April 24, 25, 26, and 27, 2025
Conductor: Kelly Kuo
Director: John de los Santos
Learn more>
SALUTE TO YOUTH
Performance May 18, 2025
Talented Nevada youth perform side-by-side with RCO in Barber’s famous Adagio for Strings before the winners of our concerto competition take the stage as soloists. RCO’s Sound Investment commissioning program makes its debut with a new work by rising composer Tanner Porter before the season concludes with a symphony chosen by our audience and supporters.
Learn more>
TEVYE'S DAUGHTERS
Orchestra Workshop Performance: November 20, 2024
Inspired by the darker, grittier stories by Sholem Aleichem not included in Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye’s Daughters centers on the tale of the beloved milkman’s younger daughter Shprintse, who falls in love with a young man above her station. Like so many women of her generation, Shprintse has no choice but to navigate her crisis with silence. Galvanized by the literature of little-known female Yiddish writers, as well as tkhines - Yiddish prayers designated expressly for women - Tevye’s Daughters rewrites that silence, giving voice to a generation of women whose stories have frequently been suppressed, omitted, even erased. The opera moves between a shtetl in Ukraine in 1907 and a summer cabin in the Catskills in 1964 as Tseytl, Khave, and Beylke, now old women, haunted by a vestigial memory submerged for more than half a century, can no longer look away from the past. The arrival of Rose, a granddaughter grappling with her own sexual identity, incites the sisters not only to remember Shprintse’s traumatic story, but to come to terms with their shared tumultuous present.
Learn more>
TWENTY-SOMETHINGS
Performances November 9 & 10, 2024
An intriguing combination of works written by well-known composers when they were in their twenties begins with a Debussy suite which includes Clair de lune, one of the most famous musical pieces of all time, followed by NCMF Artistic Director Clive Greensmith performing Dobrinka Tabakova’s charming arrangement of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata. Shostakovich’s acerbic wit and seriousness are then on full display in incidental music he wrote for “the most scandalous production (of Hamlet) in the history of Shakespeare,” presented here as a theatrical collaboration with local actors.
Learn more>
GOETHE: UNBOUNDED
Performance November 3, 2024
Experience the magic of song in a concert celebrating the poetry of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of the most revered figures in literature. Often exploring the interplay between nature, the human spirit, and the quest for personal fulfillment, Goethe's text reflects a deep journey of self-discovery and emotional depth.
Learn more>
SHE WHO DARED
Orchestra Workshop Performance: October 29, 2024
Everyone has heard of Rosa Parks, but she wasn’t the first to refuse to move. She Who Dared recenters the spotlight on the courageous women who helped desegregate the Montgomery bus system in the 1950’s leading to the momentous court case of Browder v. Gayle. The highly melodic score liberally references musical idioms of the time, including soul, gospel, and protest music. While often riotous and sometimes hilarious, She Who Dared demonstrates how everyday people have the power to challenge the systems around them and affect tangible change – if only they dare.
Learn more>
A PLACE FOR US
Performances: October 19 & 20, 2024
Celebrating its 50th anniversary season, RCO makes a case for a chamber orchestra of the 21st century with fresh pieces by Carlos Simon, Malcolm Arnold, and renowned film score composer Danny Elfman alongside a strings feature by Bartok from RCO’s first season, and a showcase for winds by Strauss foreshadowing his great operas.
Learn more>
ELIZABETH CREE
Performances: July 28(m), August 3, 10(m), 12(m), 16, 20(m), 2024
Elizabeth Cree: Tara Erraught
John Cree: John Chest
Dan Leno: Christian Mark Gibbs
Inspector Kildare: Schyler Vargas
Aveline Mortimer: Elizabeth Sutphen
Conductor: Kelly Kuo
Director: Alison Moritz
Set Designer: Edward Morris
Costume Designer: Amanda Seymour
Lighting Designer: Kate Ashton
Hair & Makeup: Tom Watson
Learn more>
DREAMING BIG
Performance: May 19, 2024
Herbert: Serenade
Winners of the Reno Chamber Orchestra Concerto Competition, TBD
Saint-Saens: Symphony No. 2 in A Minor, op. 55
Learn more>
LEGACY
Performance: May 11, 2024
Featuring winners of OMP’s 2024 Young Soloist Competition
Ngwenyama: Primal Message
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64, 3rd mvt (Sawa Yamaguchi, violin; winner, Junior Division)
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219, Allegro aperto (Leo Trajano, violin; winner, Senior Division)
Mozart
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, op. 73 (Dean Kramer, piano)
Learn more>
CENDRILLON
Performances: May 3, 4, & 5, 2024
Cendrillon: Flora Hawk
Stage Director: Dean Anthony
Conductor: Kelly Kuo
Learn more>
TO THE WOODS
Performance: April 13, 2024
Ericsson Hatfield: God’s World
Gregory Spears: Walden
Lisa Neher: No One Saves the Earth From Us But Us
Quinn Patrick Ankrum, mezzo-soprano
Brandon Bell, baritone
Elizabeth Avery, piano
Kelly Kuo, piano
Learn more>
