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The Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra will open its 2026-27 Masterworks season Sept. 19 with a distinctly American program featuring the music of George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and John Mackey — and a familiar Twin Ports musician in the spotlight.
Alexander Sandor, the DSSO’s principal pianist and a longtime member of the region’s music community, will be featured in two Gershwin works during the 7 p.m. concert at DECC Symphony Hall.
The program, titled “America in Motion,” moves through jazz, classical music, tango and some of the most recognizable American orchestral writing of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The concert will open with Mackey’s “Redline Tango,” a hard-driving contemporary orchestral work whose rhythms evoke the speed, tension and movement of urban life.
Sandor then takes center stage for Gershwin’s “Second Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra,” followed by the composer’s “I Got Rhythm” Variations. Both works reflect Gershwin’s ability to move easily between the concert hall and the jazz-infused popular music that helped define American music during the first half of the 20th century.
The orchestra will turn next to Ellington’s “The River Suite,” bringing the work of one of America’s most influential jazz composers to the symphonic stage.
The evening concludes with Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” one of the composer’s best-known orchestral works. Inspired by Gershwin’s time in Paris, the piece combines the sounds and energy of a bustling European city with unmistakably American jazz influences.
For the DSSO, the season-opening program places American composers and musical traditions at the center of the orchestra’s first major concert of the fall.
Sandor brings an especially strong local connection to the program.
He is a senior lecturer in piano at the University of Wisconsin-Superior and performs widely as a soloist and chamber musician. In addition to his work with the DSSO, Sandor performs with the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra and serves as president of the Lake Superior Ragtime Society.
His appearance also gives the opening Masterworks concert a different dimension from a program built around a visiting soloist: The featured pianist is a musician who regularly performs, teaches and collaborates throughout the Twin Ports.
The Sept. 19 performance begins a six-concert Masterworks schedule for the DSSO in 2026-27. The orchestra has built its new season around American music and composers, with additional Masterworks concerts scheduled through May.
The Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra has performed in the Twin Ports for more than nine decades and presents its major orchestral concerts at DECC Symphony Hall.
Single tickets for the Sept. 19 concert start at $33. Student and military tickets are $15.
The concert begins at 7 p.m. at DECC Symphony Hall, 350 Harbor Drive in Duluth. Tickets are available through the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra.
