Lubbock—To advance music education in the Lubbock and surrounding communities, LSO has selected Travel the Orient Express as the theme for its annual ListenLive!Education Concert. The concert will include the music of Johann Strauss, Jr., Béla Bartók and Jacques Offenbach and will feature dancers from Ballet Lubbock. This free concert geared directly to 5th graders will be held on January 15, 2008 in the Lubbock Civic Center Theatre with performances at 9:30 a.m., 10:45 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. Each year more than 4,000 students from more than 60 schools attend Listen Live! Guidebooks are given to students and teachers prior to the concert to inform and educate the young concertgoers and to allow teachers to integrate concert related activities into their daily lesson plans. To obtain a Guidebook or more information on Listen Live! please contact Kristin Lyman, LSO Education Director, at or by calling 762-1688.
This year’s concert is SOLD OUT!
Tomasz Golka has appeared in performances of over 100 major works with such orchestras as the Seattle, Fort Worth, Louisville, Spoleto USA, Charleston, Lansing and Florida West Coast symphony orchestras. He has also appeared with Buffalo Philharmonic, where he replaced the ailing scheduled conductor on just a few hours notice and led the orchestra in an enthusiastically received performance. As a conducting fellow at the 2006 Tanglewood Music Festival, he worked with James Levine, shared the podium with Bernard Haitink, and conducted a historic performance of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale with legendary composers Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter and John Harbison as narrators. He has toured Mexico several times, appearing with virtually all of the country's top orchestras, including those of UNAM, Xalapa, Queretaro, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Aguascalientes and Yucatan. An avid supporter of living composers, Golka has several world premieres under his belt, including Mikołaj Górecki’s Sinfonietta, Fabián Panisello’s Cuadernos para Orquesta and Eleanor Trawick's Triple Play.
Golka is currently in his first year as Music Director of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra. Past positions held by Golka include Music Director of the Ball State Symphony Orchestra and Opera and the Bakersfield Youth Symphony (2003-04), and Founder and Artistic Director of the Chamber Music at All Saints (2000-02) and the Bloomington Chamber Orchestra (1998-99). As a violinist, Golka has served as concertmaster of Spoleto USA Festival Orchestra and the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra (1999-2000). Golka studied conducting with David Effron at Indiana University and Gustav Meier at the Peabody Conservatory. He holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in violin from Rice University, where he was a violin student of Kenneth Goldsmith and Sergiu Luca. He was a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival in 2002 and has conducted in Master Classes for such distinguished conductors as Yuri Temirkanov and David Zinman.
