This year’s Christmas season performance by the Coronado Philharmonia Orchestra will feature a composition inspired by the city’s main street: “Holiday’s on Orange Avenue.”
On Dec. 6, at 7 p.m. the Coronado Philharmonia Orchestra will present its holiday program, “Christmas in Coronado,” at the Coronado Performing Arts Center.
For the past four years, the Coronado Philharmonia Orchestra has performed “The Nutcracker” during the holiday season, but this year, music director and founder Osvaldo Mendoza wanted to try something new.
After a colleague suggested collaborating with professional saxophonist Christopher Hollyday, he decided to take the program in a new direction. He soon realized, however, that combining a saxophonist, an orchestra and holiday music was far from typical.
“I realized there’s no music out there with saxophone, orchestra and Christmas together. I thought, ‘Oh, this is worse than I expected.’ So I had to write one of the compositions — it’s called ‘Holidays on Orange Avenue,’” Mendoza said.
The program will debut the original composition titled, “Holidays on Orange Avenue,” inspired by Coronado’s historic main street that leads to the Hotel Del Coronado.
The collaboration with saxophonist Christopher Hollyday and his ensemble, the Christopher Hollyday Jazz Quartet, will perform during the first half of the show and a youth octet will play during intermission.
The theme remains holiday music, but this year’s performance will feature traditional selections such as “The Polar Express,” “O Christmas Tree” and pieces from the soundtrack for “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” according to violinist and marketing director Stacey Eaton.
“We’ve been playing Tchaikovsky, which is beautiful, but we’re a little strained from that,” Eaton said. “This is the first time we’ve done something with a professional jazz musician involved, so it will definitely have a different feel from the last.”
The Philharmonia Orchestra is made up of 54 musicians from in and around San Diego. Mendoza founded the ensemble about four years ago after noticing a gap in Coronado’s classical music scene.
“I kept asking myself why Coronado didn’t have an orchestra — not for children or adults — and that’s one of the reasons I started this,” he said.
Although he now lives in Arizona and runs several youth orchestras there, Mendoza travels to Coronado several times a year to direct the ensemble.
The orchestra has grown from 18 to 54 musicians in the past few years and, according to Mendoza, most are semi-professional or professional players with master’s or doctoral degrees in music or substantial experience in performance. After the pandemic, he said, many musicians reached out wanting to join.
His aim, he added, is to expose local youth to orchestral music and create a youth symphony that will eventually join the orchestra.
“The support of the community is important — to support these kinds of concerts and to attend them, especially so kids can be exposed to high-quality music. That’s something every child should have, even if they’re not going to be musicians. At least they can see art at its highest level and learn from it,” Mendoza said.
For tickets and additional details about the program, visit coronadophilharmonia.org/events.
