Las Vegas Philharmonic music director Donato Cabrera is just like you. When the lockdown went into effect, he took a couple of days to figure out his next move.
“What am I going to do? I’m a conductor. I need 75 people to do my job,” he says. “But after a couple days passed, I started to think if nothing else, I should share some of my favorite recordings or videos I can find on YouTube. It’s just something I can do every day, it won’t take much time, and I already have a blog so I did that, both to keep engaging with the Las Vegas Philharmonic folks in the community and also for myself.
“It’s a bit of therapy for me to go down that rabbit hole every day and rediscover some of the things that I love.”
That process helped Cabrera established a routine and get more involved on social media, something that had been on his to-do list for a long time. Thinking about the ways the Philharmonic interacts with its audience sparked some new ideas, including the creation of a virtual version of the pre-concert conversations that have become a popular staple of performances at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts.
On May 1 at 1 p.m., Cabrera will host a livestream event on the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s Facebook and YouTube platforms to preview the 2020-21 concert season. It might feel similar to those pre-concert chats, but there will be many more special guests at Friday’s online gathering.
“This would have been the time when we would normally have a press conference to announce the next season,” he says. “So we thought, why not do another live [streaming] event where we can actually engage with many more people online that we ever could with a press conference.”
The livestream will highlight the 20 programs planned for the Philharmonic’s 22nd seasons set to start on October 16 at the Smith Center, which will kick off with a two-day music festival celebrating Beethoven’s 250th birthday. Joining Cabrera as co-host is Joshua Roman in his first official appearance as the Philharmonic’s Artist in Residence. Roman is a cellist, composer and curator who will be in Las Vegas for the next three years working on the chamber music program and building new collaborations in the community.
Other artists will be joining the livestream including De Ann Letourneau, Stewart Goodyear, Jennifer Cho, Bella Hristova, Keith Thompson and more.
“We’ll have a five-minute segment with each [guest] from one of our upcoming shows,” Cabrera says. “I’m excited about every one of them but among the highlights for me are the mini-festival to start the season, which is something that will make the Las Vegas Philharmonic stand out nationally and is great for the city of Las Vegas, and the American Woman concert in November, which will showcase the music of women composers around the time of the 100th anniversary of the signing of the 19th Amendment.”
Subscriptions to the new season start at $106 for a four-concert package and are on sale through the Las Vegas Philharmonic website or the Smith Center box office. Subscribers can save up to 12 percent when they renew before June 3.
