Bill DeYoung, St. Pete Catalyst, 15th February 2023
Michael Francis, music director and conductor for The Florida Orchestra since 2015, has signed a contract extension that will keep him behind the podium through 2030.
The five-year extension is the third for Francis, the native of Great Britain who replaced Stefan Sanderling as music director.
His guaranteed 15 […]
14th January 2024, Alois Ecker, Die Rheinpfalz
“The German State Philharmonic of Rhineland-Palatinate, with a gigantic symphonic line-up, unpacked a program under the title “Unendliche Weiten” with which they had already caused a sensation in the Speyer Technology Museum last summer. Under its chief conductor Michael Francis, who acted with energetic body language and precise […]
Jan Benedict Tiggeler, Mannheimer Morgan, 3rd January 2024
“The German State Philharmonic of Rhineland-Palatinate under its chief conductor Michael Francis invited people to the New Year’s Concert – a successful home game between Vienna and Paris!…
The first Carmen Suite began the evening. Michael Francis, expressive and with precise signaling, spanned the arc from the threatening […]
29th December 2023, Garrett Harris, San Diego Reader
“If there was just one concert in 2023 that I wished everyone could have experienced it would have been Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. This was the concluding concert of the 2023 Mainly Mozart Festival. The concert was held at the Epstein Family Amphitheater on the campus of […]
Florida Orchestra Music Director Michael Francis creates a concert experience that explains the life of great composers and their work called “Inside the Music”.
Uwe Rauschelbach, Schwetzingen Zeitung, 4th July 2023
“Beethoven’s “Great Fugue” is already a renunciation of the familiar and the conventional. Music that is out of the ordinary. Who wants to go somewhere, but has no orientation or goal. Even the fugue pattern doesn’t hold up and is bursting at the seams. Under their chief conductor […]
Karl Georg Berg, Die Rheinpfalz, 3rd July 2023
“With his coherent and exciting rendition of Mozart’s Requiem, Michael Francis made a deeply moving musical impression…Above all, however, the chorus followed the impassioned expression of Michael Francis, who combined clarity of form with a highly expressive interpretation of the funeral mass…
Last but not least, the concert […]
Uwe Rauschelbach, Schwetzingen Zeitung, 30th June 2023
“In captivating passages [of Shubert’s Symphony No. 9 “Great”], the woodwinds made their mark with striking entries – especially in the lyrical oboe motif in the second movement, which the clarinet carried along – and the brass unfolded its majestically radiant dominance in the intensifications staged by the […]
Karl Georg Berg, Die Rheinpfalz, 29th June 2023
“After a festive first part of the overture, Michael Francis ignited a multitude of musical firecrackers in dazzling colors at the current opening concert, at least in the fast main part [of Haydn’s Music for the Royal Fireworks], and unfolded an igniting and brilliant sound magic. The […]
Ken Herman, San Diego Story, 21st June 2023
“Michael Francis conducted a well-considered, beautifully shaped account of the symphony, giving ample space for Mahler’s cornucopia of themes to unfold with languid ease–as the composer instructed–while maintaining a clear sense of direction and purpose.”
