Between Islands: New Music for Chamber Orchestra and Voices – Saturday, July 19, 2025

Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts – Winter Park, FL

WINTER PARK, FL – The Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra (OCCO), led by Music Director Todd Craven, joins forces with Claire Hodge and the vocal ensemble VoxO for Between Islands, a compelling evening of new music for chamber orchestra and voices. The concert will be held on Saturday, July 19, 2025, at 8:00 PM at the Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts in Winter Park, Florida.

This performance marks one of the first concerts in the newly opened Blue Bamboo venue and features works by nine living composers, including several based in Central Florida. The program centers on themes of loss, renewal, community, and connection.

Ethan Soledad’s Legacy Songs of Unity is the centerpiece—a sweeping, lyrical choral work written in 2024 that celebrates resilience, community, and the power of music to unite and heal.

Central Florida Composers Forum members offer deeply personal contributions:

• Charles Griffin’s Between Islands (2025) reimagines his 2016 trumpet‑and‑audio work with meditative winds and ritualistic percussion, tracing grief’s transformation into memory and peace.
• Troy Gifford’s The Night is based on the poem The Night Has a Thousand Eyes by Francis William Bourdillon.
• Alan Gerber’s sensitive setting of the traditional Irish blessing May the Road Rise to Meet You.

This program also includes:

• Erich Barganier – Speaking in Tongues: Inspired by glossolalia and spiritual ecstasy, this piece explores fluid vocal expression and layered ensemble textures.
• Saman Shahi – I HEARD A FLY BUZZ: A poignant SATB setting of Emily Dickinson’s poem emphasizing the fly’s “buzz” motif, silence, and stillness in death.
• Maciej Bałenkowski – Comets: An early work (age 18) focused on expression, melody, and emotion, reflecting the composer’s fascination with the universe.
• Robert Cohen – Connecticut Autumn: A choral‑orchestral setting of Hyam Plutzik’s poem, using autumnal imagery to explore aging, mortality, and passage of time.
• Gerson de Sousa Batista – Babalon: A tribute to life, nature, and birth, inspired by the mother figure and celebrating creative origins.

These works span cosmic wonder, mystical ritual, personal reflection, and communal affirmation, offering a profoundly moving and varied evening of contemporary music.

Tickets are $30 and include an intermission.
Location: Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts, 460 E. New England Ave., Winter Park, FL
More Information: occo.music | voxomusic.org