Gulf Coast Symphony celebrates 30th with Broadway, jazz, new piece from young SWFL composer
March 28, 2025
By Charles Runnells – Fort Myers News Press
March 28, 2025
You can’t confine Gulf Coast Symphony to any one genre.
The Fort Myers orchestra — together with other musicians it books at its own concert venue, The MACC — packs just about everything it can onstage: Classical, folk, opera, ballet, Broadway musicals, jazz, rock and sometimes even country music.
There’s so much happening, says orchestra founder and music director Andrew M. Kurtz, there’s just no way the orchestra could play it all during a single, two-hour show.
But they’re giving it a shot anyway.
The resulting concert celebrates the orchestra’s 30th anniversary on Sunday, March 30, at Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall.
“We have always played a wide variety of music,” Kurtz says. “What I wanted to do is to really celebrate what we do best, and to really showcase all of the things we do as an organization.”
Big changes for Gulf Coast Symphony
The orchestra has changed a lot in the last 30 years, he says. And especially in the last five.
Since opening its own Fort Myers concert venue in 2021 — The Music & Arts Community Center (aka “The MACC”) — the orchestra has more than doubled its annual budget to about $2.5 million, Kurtz says. And they put on shows almost every night of the week, including orchestra concerts, touring acts, plays, musicals and a popular ongoing jazz series.
Drummer Paul Gavin is the artistic director of Gulf Coast Jazz Collective at Fort Myers concert venue The MACC. Photo courtesy of Bruce Jaeger
Another thing that’s changed: The orchestra’s now a mix of mostly paid professional and semi-professional musicians with some amateur musicians, Kurtz says. That’s a big shift from its origins as a community orchestra featuring mostly unpaid amateurs.
It’s an “astonishing” difference, says Kurtz, CEO and music director of Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra Inc., the nonprofit that runs The MACC, the orchestra and more. So they have a lot to celebrate at Sunday’s concert.
Gulf Coast Symphony Performed with country singer-songwriter Jeffrey Steele during the 2024 Island Hopper Songwriter Fest in Lee County. Photo Courtesy of Bruce Jaeger
The lineup includes Broadway singers Mark Sanders and Heather Ivy performing musical-theater and pops tunes; Gulfshore Ballet dancing to excerpts from Stravinsky’s “Firebird” and Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty”; and an original overture composed by young Bonita Springs composer/pianist Frazar Henry.
“It’s a very eclectic program,” Kurtz says.
19-year-old composer Frazar Henry debuts ‘Seas of Glass’
Henry, 19, grew up in Naples and Bonita Springs and is now in his first year of studies at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio. He started composing music at age 5.
The orchestra commissioned Henry to write a celebratory piece for its 30th anniversary. The resulting, nearly 6-minute overture, “Seas of Glass,” is meant to celebrate both Southwest Florida and the nearby Gulf — from its calm, clear days to the chaos and churning of a hurricane.
For Henry, “Seas of Glass” isn’t just about Southwest Florida. It also represents his feelings about leaving his Bonita Springs family for the first time to go off to school. He started writing it about one or two months before moving.
“I was kind of dealing with moving away from home,” he says. “And part of the piece was me sort of trying to connect back to where I grew up. And also using the imagery of the sea as a metaphor for the uncertainty of growing up and moving away.”
The main musical theme of the piece, he says, is a tumultuous, storm-like churning with restless woodwinds and strings. But there’s also another, more soothing theme with mostly brass instruments meant to represent calm and certainty. “It’s sort of an anchor to hold onto,” he says.
Andrew M. Kurtz, founder and music director of Gulf Coast Symphony. Photo Courtesy of Bruce Jaeger.
Henry says he looks forward to visiting Southwest Florida again to attend rehearsals for the concert and then the 30th-anniversary show.
“I’m super excited,” he says about being a part of the special event.
Tickets for Sunday’s show are $39-$100. For more information, call 481-4849 or visit bbmannpah.com.
Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. To reach him, call 239-335-0368 or email crunnells@gannett.com. Follow or message him on social media: Facebook(@charles.runnells.7), Instagram and Threads (@crunnells1) and X (@CharlesRunnells)