Tucson Symphony celebrates Duke Ellington; AZ Friends host Goldmund Quartet

Kay grew up in Tucson and earned his bachelor’s degree in music before heading to the East Coast to earn advanced degrees from the Eastman School, Columbia and Yale University. He was the first African-American composer to win the “Prix de Rome” award that allowed him to study and travel in Italy beginning in 1946. The concert ends with Ravel’s “La valse.”

Gomez will be behind the podium for the concert, which the orchestra will perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 18, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 20, at Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $17 to $83 through ticketmaster.com.

Most classical music is old, dating back centuries not decades, but that doesn’t mean it has to sound old.

That’s kind of the philosophy hanging over the 10-year-old Goldmund Quartet, which infuses a sense of newness to very old works with polished and convincing interpretations that are flawlessly precise down to the smallest detail. And in those small details listeners discover nuances that might have escaped them or that they had forgotten until it suddenly seems to pop out of the drawn bow or plucked string from the Munich-based Goldmund — four school friends (violinists Florian Schotz and Pinchas Adt, violist Christoph Vandory and cellist Raphael Paratore) who turned their love of music-making and camaraderie into a critically-acclaimed ensemble.