The Florida Fanfare Project debuts Throughout its 50th anniversary season, The Florida Orchestra will premiere five short celebratory fanfares written by faculty composers from universities around the state for its Florida Fanfare Project. The debut works add a true Florida flair to the season while supporting new music and showcasing the extraordinary talent in the state. The orchestra has co-commissioned the fanfares through a new partnership with the universities. The fanfares could be any genre, though they will relate to the rest of the concert program and will be 3 to 5 minutes long. Here is a look at the first two composers: Paul Reller, Associate Professor of Music at the University of South Florida, and Kevin Wilt, Assistant Professor of Music and Composer-in- Residence at Florida Atlantic University. Other composers and premiere dates are Daniel Crozier, Professor of Theory and Composition at Rollins College in Winter Park (Jan. 19-21); Dorothy Hindman, Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Miami (Feb. 16-18); and Manuel de Murga, Associate Professor of Music at Stetson University in Deland (May 4-6). This just might be the most intriguing title of a work in the entire Florida Orchestra 50th anniversary season: Horizon Gravy. Sounds delicious, but what does it mean? We asked Paul Reller, a University of South Florida associate professor of music who composed the piece as part of TFO’s Florida Fanfare Project to celebrate its 50th season. “I generated it using an app that puts random words together,” he said. “I decided to use the title because it was so positive and forward looking: ‘Horizon,’ speaking of the future, and ‘gravy’ speaking of positivity.” Reller is director of USF’s Systems Complex for the Recording and Performing Arts Electronic Music THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2017-2018 Studio and teaches electronic music, acoustic composition, and the history of blues and rock music. He also helped start the Bonk Festival of New Music. So don’t expect the short piece to be a typical fanfare when it opens Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture concerts Oct. 27-29. “I am really a modernist in how I deconstruct such an idea. For this piece, it’s as if you start out in a fanfare but instantly get caught in a cubist’s idea of such,” Reller said. Composing the work for the Fanfare Project is not something Reller took lightly, calling it “truly one of the greatest honors of my career.” He believes commissioning new music is critical. “There wouldn’t be a repertoire if there hadn’t been new works at one time. The orchestra is an amazing ensemble, capable of anything. Generating new works is just one of the byproducts of such a group of creative individuals. It really is a blessing to live in an area with such an ensemble.” On the ‘Horizon Gravy’ 60
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