‘Tunes for Toons!’

The UTRGV Symphony Orchestra starts its spring concert season Friday with “Tunes for Toons!” an exploration of the use of classical music in cartoons, giving audience members a new perspective. 

Starting at 7 p.m. in the Texas Southmost College Performing Arts Center in Brownsville and continuing at 7 p.m. Saturday in the UTRGV Performing Arts Complex in Edinburg, the concert will feature tunes from four cartoons, such as “Rabbit of Seville” and “Tom & Jerry at the Hollywood Bowl.”

The events will feature classical music, such as “The Barber of Seville” by Gioachino Rossini and “Ride of the Valkyries” by Richard Wagner.

Norman Gamboa, UTRGV Symphony Orchestra director and a School of Music lecturer, told The Rider that the concert performance was initially programmed for a Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District elementary school for educational purposes. 

“It was very successful and, after that, we started getting a lot of requests from other places to perform it,” Gamboa said.

Initial plans for a faculty concert fell through and he decided to make “Tunes for Toons!” the first of two spring concerts. 

“It’s a very different type of concert since the idea was … that we’re going to show kids how the everyday cartoons they watch on TV uses classical music,” Gamboa said. “So, classical music is not something so foreign to them. They just don’t think about it.” 

Gamboa said two things they had to work on were copyright laws and political correctness, since the cartoons are from the 1950s and some things might be deemed offensive in today’s environment. 

During the concert, a clip of a cartoon will be followed by the UTRGV Symphony Orchestra performing a classical piece of music. 

Omar David Molina, a graduate performance student, plays the double bass in the orchestra and told The Rider he believes the concert will be fantastic. 

Molina said children and adults watching cartoons are unconsciously already listening to classical music and he believes it will give them an interesting perspective. 

“Having in mind that this is an educational concert, but obviously being professional, I think the orchestra’s responsibility and commitment from everybody is pretty high,” he said. “… I think the string players are pretty combined with the woodwinds, with the brass section and with the percussionists … to get better and reach a high quality of performance.” 

Molina welcomes everyone at UTRGV to join and become immersed in the fantastic world of symphony  orchestra. 

“I like the fact that they are standard pieces of orchestral repertoire,” Gamboa said. “A lot of it, they don’t get played much anymore. And I will say it is one of the most audience-friendly programs that we have performed. The music is well-known. … Everybody is going to recognize it. The fact that we’re going to be alternating with the video and the music is also nice because it gives a different dimension to the whole performance.” 

Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the box offices of the respective concert venues.