Virginia Arts Festival and The Simon Family JCC to Welcome the Israel Philharmonic, 4/2

Virginia Beach, Va. -- Virginia Arts Festival in partnership with The Simon Family JCC is delighted to bring the acclaimed Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to the Sandler Center April 2nd. This event is the opening night of the Virginia Arts Festival 2014 season and is part of the JCC's Celebrate Israel series this spring.

Gianandrea Noseda is the IPO's Principal Guest Conductor. He leads the IPO for seven performances in the US this spring in Naples, Houston, Newark, Washington, DC, Louisville, Virginia Beach, and Chapel Hill, for a program consisting of Faure's Pelléas et Mélisande: Suite, Op. 80, Ravel's Ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) Suite, Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 2 and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

The great Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman created what was then called the Palestine Symphony Orchestra in 1935, saving many German and Eastern European Jewish musicians and their families - and a good part of Jewish musical culture in the process.

When Israel achieved statehood in 1948, the orchestra was renamed The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO). The musicians developed a reputation for delivering stunning accounts of symphonies by Brahms, Mahler and Tchaikovsky, to name three composers who became specialties of the orchestra under renowned conductors like Leonard Bernstein and Zubin Mehta and, more recently, guest conductors like Gustavo Dudamel.

PERFORMANCE
Wednesday, April 2 at 7:30 pm
(Pre-Concert Conversation 6:30 pm)
Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Beach, VA

Tickets $127 Gold Circle, (No Discounts) $92, $77. Tickets are available online at vafest.org, by phone at 877-741-2787, or at the Virginia Arts Festival Box Office, 440 Bank Street, Norfolk. Group tickets (groups of 15 or more) are available, call 757-282-2819. Through the JCC: 757-321-2338, online at SimonFamilyJCC.org, or at the JCC, 5000 Corporate Woods Dr Virginia Beach

VIRGINIA ARTS FESTIVAL: Since 1997, Virginia Arts Festival has transformed the cultural scene in southeastern Virginia, presenting great performers from around the world to local audiences and making this historic, recreation?rich region a cultural destination for visitors from across the United States and around the world. The Festival has presented numerous U.S. and regional premieres, and regularly commissions' new works of music, dance, and theater from some of today's most influential composers, choreographers and playwrights. The Festival's arts education programs reach tens of thousands of area schoolchildren each year through student matinees, in?school performances, artists' residencies, master classes and demonstrations.

For a complete list of Celebrate Israel events, visit the Simon Family JCC homepage at SimonFamilyJCC.org.