Orchestra combines breathtaking video and music in tribute to Queensland

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Season 2023 shines the light on music and celebrates some of the state's most beautiful locations - from the beach to the rainforest, and the outback to the city in an amazing new video described as a love letter to Queensland.

The video entitled Sounds Like Queensland, together with images in the season brochure, were shot to reinforce that QSO is an orchestra for all Queenslanders.

Every year the orchesta tours across Queensland, sharing music while performing on dusty regional stages, in tiny town halls, schools from Townsville to Toowoomba and Longreach to the Gold Coast, and of course in the mighty Concert Hall at QPAC.

All up, the orchestra members travel 10,000km across Queensland annually!

For the video musicians were filmed on country in Iningai (Longreach), Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Maiala (Mt Glorious) and Meanjin (Brisbane). It features a specially commissioned piece of music by Cameron Patrick, performed by QSO and conducted by Peter Luff.

Musicians include Huw Jones (Oboe), Rainer Saville (Trumpet), Lauren Manuel (French Horn), Ashley Carter (Trombone), Matthew Kinmont (Cello), Nicholas Tomkin (Viola), Joshua De Marchi (Cymbols) (Trombone), and Violinists Mia Stanton and Natalie Low.

The orchestra's Season 2023 under the baton of QSO's new Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici, features a year of grand masterpieces and intimate chamber moments, world premieres, and experimental music experiences and featuring some of the greatest music in the world in Don Quixote, The Planets, Beethoven's heroic Symphony No.9, and what will be one of the most spectacular productions of 2023, Wagner's Ring Cycle.

QSO Chief Executive Yarmila Alfonzetti said in 2023 and beyond, QSO would be everywhere, all the time.

"On the mainstage, in our studio, in the pit for the opera and the ballet, and touring all over this vast State; QSO thrives as an arts company for all Queenslanders. Be in no doubt that the QSO underpins a significant portion of the major performing arts sector in Queensland," she said.

On the regional touring front, the Orchestra is committed to sharing the power of music with as much of the state as possible - from Longreach to Bundaberg, Toowoomba to Atherton.

The famed Maestro Series opens on February 17 with Ode to Joy - a concert for the ages, which will see Umberto Clerici lead the Orchestra, with didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton and violinist Véronique Serret, soprano Eleanor Lyons, mezzo soprano Deborah Humble, tenor Andrew Goodwin, baritone Michael Honeyman and the Brisbane Chamber Choir performing Beethoven's magnificent Symphony No.9 (Choral) along with Sculthorpe's celebrated Earth Cry.

Barton and Serret will also perform, for the first time in the Concert Hall, their collaboration Kalkani, described as 'a message of peace and love carried by the eagle spirit', transformed into a stunning orchestral version.