The Jazz Age

The penultimate programme of the Orchestra Wellington 2024 season The Story is presented at 7:30pm on Saturday 9 November at the Michael Fowler Centre. The Jazz Age brings together passionately talented soloists Deborah Wai Kapohe and brothers Eddie Muliaumaseali’i and Siliga Sani Muliaumaseali’i with the magical voices of Wellington’s acclaimed Pasifika Signature Choir for a semi-staged performance of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess!

Our fifth concert of the year is always an amazing evening with the annual side-by-side performance of Arohanui Strings Sistema Youth Orchestra with Orchestra Wellington, as well as the World Premiere of the SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music 2024 Commission for Orchestra and Sistema Youth Orchestra, Te Tono Mahinga a SOUNZ mā te Rāngai Puoro me te Rāngai Puoro Taiohi a Sistema!

The evening will also include the Orchestra Wellington 2025 Season unveiling!

Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess of 1935 is one of the 20th century’s great operas. We will present a semi-staged production of the 1956 arrangement of this work, which was made famous by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and created a surprising Kiwi connection: legendary Hollywood film composer Russel Garcia, who wrote the 1956 arrangement, sailed from Los Angeles with his wife Gina in the 1970s and upon finding himself in New Zealand, settled in the Bay of Islands. This arrangement of Porgy and Bess combined the powerful voices of Fitzgerald and Armstrong with musicians from the Duke Ellington Band and others and the forces of a large orchestra, and ultimately won a Grammy Hall of Fame award.