The Dallas Symphony will perform with members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for two concerts at the Meyerson Symphony Center in what’s being called a historic collaboration.

On April 30th and May 1st, 50 musicians from the Dallas orchestra and 50 from the New York orchestra will perform under the baton of DSO music director Fabio Luisi. They’ll perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony #1.

Last September, the Dallas Symphony was the first major American orchestra to return to performing live concerts – with smaller ensembles onstage and socially distanced audiences. The idea behind this new, unprecedented collaboration was to create performances for classical musicians who’ve been out of work. The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra has not performed for more than a year, and Luisi had been its principal conductor for six years, 2011-2017.

COVID precautions will remain in place for the 400 people who attend each of the two concerts. The concerts will be fundraisers for the Met Orchestra Musicians Fund and the COVID Relief Fund for Dallas-Fort Worth Musicians. The DSO performances originally set for those dates will be re-scheduled.

In other DSO news, Fabio Luisi has been appointed the principal conductor of the NHK Orchestra in Tokyo, considered  one of the best in Japan. This means Luisi leads major orchestras in Europe, Asia and the US.