Related Links
Get a 20% discount when purchasing to four or more Music Department events sold through the Cal Poly Ticket Office. Cal Poly faculty and staff receive 20% discount for any Music Department event sold through the ticket office.
Cal Poly Symphony Concert: Rach 2 with Elizabeth Dorman
(click limage for large-size file)
3 p.m., Performing Arts Center
The Cal Poly Symphony begins the season with two exciting collaborations. It will perform side-by-side with the San Luis Obispo Youth Symphony and welcome pianist Elizabeth Dorman as a soloist to perform Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
The combined ensemble will perform Mikhail Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila.
Praised by Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle for her “elegance and verve,” pianist Dorman enjoys performing music both new and old as a soloist and chamber musician.
A finalist of the 2018 Leipzig International Bach Competition, Dorman has been widely recognized as a leading performer for her inquisitive interpretations of Bach’s music on the modern piano. She has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Louisville Orchestra, the Leipzig Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, the Santa Rosa Symphony, the California Symphony, the Vallejo Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Folsom Lake Symphony, the Stanford Summer Symphony, Symphony Parnassus, as a soloist for interdisciplinary projects at New World Symphony, and as a keyboardist at the San Francisco Symphony. She can be heard on Delos records as a concerto soloist with Santa Rosa Symphony’s new album celebrating the music of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and has also recorded for Navona.
Dorman will give a free presentation on Oct. 9. Read more on the special events page.
Tickets ($17 and $22 general, $12 students)
Cal Poly Symphony Concert: Student Soloist Showcase
(Click image for full-size file)
7:30 p.m., Performing Arts Center
The Cal Poly Symphony will showcase student soloists who were winners of the symphony’s Solo Competition in September.
Tickets ($17 and $22 general, $12 students)
Cal Poly Band and Orchestra Festival Finale Concert
Saturday, April 3, 2027
6:30 p.m., Performing Arts Center
Cal Poly Open House Concert
Saturday, April 10, 2027
7:30 p.m., Performing Arts Center
The Symphony will perform with the department's other large, premier ensembles. Read more about the concert.
Cal Poly Symphony Concert: Mahler 1
(Click image for full-size file)
7:30 p.m., Performing Arts Center
Gustav Mahler famously said “my time will come.” His idiosyncratic, groundbreaking symphonies were not universally understood in his own lifetime but have become some of the most celebrated works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For this season finale, the Cal Poly Symphony will perform Mahler’s first work in the genre that would define him: the symphony.
In this work, Mahler draws heavily on music he wrote for the autobiographical song cycle “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” (Songs of a Wayfarer). This first symphony embraces the full range of images and emotions, from nature awakening and birds singing about spring to a funeral march, from a village band to a “heart wounded to the quick.”
Tickets ($17 and $22 general, $12 students)