FusionFest is an annual city bash lasting two days on Thanksgiving Weekend. It’s full of color, energy, music, food, dance, crafts and faiths of the world: all represented by the citizens of Orlando, Florida: what I’m told is the most diverse city in the world in the respect of the number of c0untries it’s immigrants derive.The Opening Spectacle will bring forth large musical forces to open both days. 

My goal was simply to create exciting music fitting for our city – something to capture its attitude and magnitude. As in the previous year, I chose to use my “Fanfare Orlando” as its musical base, which contains a repeating hook sounding like “Or-LAN-do”. I was extremely fortunate to have the excellent Brass Band of Central Florida under the leadership of Gareth Pritchard be my core ensemble. And, upon hearing that Orlando’s Grammy winning choral leader Dr. Redding was going to take over the festival’s Diversitastic Choir, I included them. To widen the cultural inclusivity of the music, I invited the African Heritage Ensemble. On top of all of these musical forces, I included five of my remote train horn apparatuses – 3 on the Mayor’s Balcony across the city block on Orlando City Hall and two from the more nearby Dr. Phillips Center for the Art’s building’s DeVos Balcony. Lastly, I placed two cornets on a distant stage and provided them with my latest technology of that year: radio controlled and distance backtimed metronomes with a haptic and flashing visual pulse.