MUSE will celebrate artistic inspiration on Friday, February 9, 2018 at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg at 7:00 p.m. The fifth annual benefit for the arts will recognize the breadth and beauty of art and culture in our City of the Arts, and pay tribute to those that continue to inspire and guide St. Petersburg to its standing as an international arts destination. Proceeds will benefit artists, arts education, and arts & cultural organizations through our Arts Alliance programs and services.
MUSE Performance Arts Award honors Mark Sforzini, St. Petersburg Opera Company
This award recognizes an artist or organization that has achieved excellence in the performance field to include music, dance, theater and/or interdisciplinary arts.
Executive Director of the St. Petersburg Opera and Music Director of the Tampa Bay Symphony, Mark Sforzini began conducting opera in 2005 and founded St. Petersburg Opera in 2007. Sforzini conducts a full range of repertoire: classic orchestral, pops, opera and Broadway. He was appointed Music Director of the Tampa Bay Symphony in 2012. He was conductor of the Pinellas Youth Symphony from 1999 – 2002 and FloriMezzo from 2002 – 2008.
Mark’s compositions have been performed by the Florida Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, Alabama Symphony, Brevard Symphony, and Tampa Bay Symphony, as well as heard at the Eastern Music Festival, the Chautauqua Institution, the Toledo Symphony chamber concerts, Crested Butte, and in the Palladium Encore Series in St. Petersburg. His works were also featured at the University of Tampa when he was Composer-in-Residence in 2011.
Over the course of his career, Sforzini has taught at the Sewanee Summer Music Center, Kinhaven Music School, Florida College and St. Petersburg College. Mark has also taught master classes at Rice University, FSU, the St. Petersburg College Summer Vocal Institute, University of Tampa and frequently at St. Petersburg Opera as part of that organization’s Emerging Artists Program.
Mark Sforzini was recently chosen by Musical America as one of thirty international industry professionals as a “Profile in Courage”. These top industry leaders have “taken a risk, spoken out where others were silent – all to the measurable benefit of their arts organizations and the field”.
For ticket information and sponsorship please go to www.stpeteartsalliance.org/muse