Philadelphia Orchestra Music Animateur Thomas Cabaniss has the unique job of helping audiences make deeper and more personally relevant connections with the music and musicians of The Philadelphia Orchestra.  As host of the Orchestra’s Access Concert series, he guides listeners through the final piece featured on the series: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.

• Thomas Cabaniss explains the story told by Symphonie fantastique and describes how Berlioz used an idée fixe (a recurring musical theme) throughout the work. 
• Orchestra English horn Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia discusses the challenges of performing a duet with an off-stage partner in Symphonie fantastique. 
• Philadelphia Orchestra cello Gloria de Pasquale talks about reaching new audiences through the Orchestra’s Access series.   
• Access Concerts usually include a visual element:
  
  Carolyn Macuga from the Philadelphia Museum of Art describes images she chose from the museum’s collection to be shown during the Access Concert.
  
  Thomas Cabaniss describes what else listeners will see on screens in the hall during the Access Concert: close-ups of Orchestra musicians and the composer’s own program notes. 
  

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Podchestra is produced by The Philadelphia Orchestra in collaboration with Jim Cotter. Jim Cotter is arts and culture editor at WRTI-FM and is the host and producer of WRTI-FM’s Creatively Speaking!, which can be heard Saturday mornings on WRTI-FM.

Support for Access is brought to you by the WACHOVIA Foundation – lead underwriter of the Raising the Invisible Curtain Initiative