Maestro Paul Nadler in New York. -STEFANIE WEISS / COURTESY PHOTO

In an extraordinary phoenix moment, 90 Mastersingers will help lift the new Fort Myers Philharmonic orchestra from the ashes of an old one in a birth-moment concert of remembrance and praise: Friday, Sept. 11, beginning at 7:30 p.m., at the Barbara B. Mann Hall on the campus of Florida Southwestern State College.

First responders, including some who were present at the worst American day since the bombing of Pearl Harbor — the terrorist assault on New York City and Washington that resulted in 2,977 deaths on Sept. 11, 2001 — will be honored and celebrated in the program.

The occasion marks a significant addition to regional classical music following the collapse of the old Southwest Florida Symphony. It’s the first of nine planned concerts in 24 performances on the horizon.

The men and women of the orchestra are awash in both talent and discipline, people who devote their lives to their instruments and this singular art.

“There’s a common denominator for all of us: You have a calling and you have to do it. You can’t not do it,” said concertmaster Florentina Ramniceanu, an internationally celebrated violinist.

Florentina Ramniceanu, concertmaster. -FORT MYERS PHILHARMONIC / COURTESY PHOTO

Born and raised in Romania, a Chicago resident of many years now living in Florida too, Ramniceanu is a founding member of the Orion Ensemble. She studied with several of the world’s leading violinists, played throughout Europe and the United States, and served as concertmaster for the Chicago Philharmonic, the Joffrey Ballet, the American Ballet Theater, Miami Ballet, Ballet Chicago, and others.

She was explaining the compulsion of classical musicians to spend significant portions of their lives working alone to achieve a participating anonymity in an orchestra of other anonymous masters. Each, she suggested, aims to produce an art that requires all of them, and music that touches an audience without words, like light, deeply and instantly.

“All these years of practicing,” she added — “otherwise, why would you be practicing? You’re locked in a room all your childhood, practicing. I started when I was five-and-a-half.”

Classical music won’t buy you a cup of coffee, perhaps, but it might save your soul, a reality that could become particularly true on the night of the Philharmonic’s first performance.

Maestro Paul Nadler, who conducted the old Florida Southwestern Symphony in its heyday and has directed orchestras around the world in a remarkable and distinguished career that included leading the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, will lead the philharmonic this year.

His passion for the music and his respect and understanding of what compels classical musicians has given him significant respect among them, a number have said.

He remains dazzled by the devotion these artists can give to their art, something he did himself as a boy in Chicago, where his father was a violinist and he grew up playing both cello and flute.

“The fact that some young people will take up music at 5 or 8, practice for 15 or 20 years just to get a job — the amount of skill and love and persistence it takes to go into that — and then together they play music by some of the most creative people who ever lived, is….it’s just such a phenomenon.

“And then there’s the cooperation that needs to go on, on stage, with everybody pulling for the same end. It’s a unique kind of thing. I’ve always been struck by that. It’s one of the great creations of humanity.”

The Philharmonic’s champagne program Sept. 11 will begin with opening tributes to first responders. The tributes will be followed by the Mastersingers performing both the Star-Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful.

Then Maestro Nadler will take his string sections through Barber’s heart-rending Adagio for Strings, music performed at the funerals of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, and John F. Kennedy, Jr., in 1963.

Maestro Paul Nadler and his wife, opera singer Cello Bennett Nadler live in Babcock Ranch. -COURTESY PHOTOS

“We’ll be trying to fashion a string sound and section with all the characteristics a singer has, so it’s not all mechanical,” Maestro Nadler explained. “Most conductors do that instinctively. It’s a warm sound we seek, brilliant where necessary, but warm.”

The final piece of the evening, Mozart’s Requiem, is not music that shies away from mortality. Neither do First Responders. Some of them went into the Twin Towers after they’d been hit repeatedly to rescue many people, and never came out.

Mozart began writing the Requiem on a commission to honor the death of a young wife, but his health was declining as he worked. “He believed in the end that he was composing the requiem for himself,” the Philharmonic’s executive director, Carol Robinson, notes. And he did. Mozart, one of the world’s great geniuses, died not long after at the age of 35 after suffering a short, unidentifiable illness. But he will return in the vital present with the Fort Myers Philharmonic on the evening of Sept. 11.

Sometimes, there just aren’t words. And at the heart of an assault and tragedy like 9/11, that may be truer than ever — just as it may be true for the most intimate moments of love or the most life-altering moments of epiphany.

Thus, like light — like grief or love or epiphany — the music of the Philharmonic may arrive wordless, to explain.

“Classical music has no words — it’s just a different experience,” Ramniceanu said. “It has to be part of a community, just like any art form, but maybe more, because of what it does for humans.”

In The KNOW:

Fort Myers Philharmonic: fmphil.org

Tickets to the Sept. 11 concert: $50 general admission; $20 students and educators; no cost for 300 first responders from throughout Lee County, and active duty or retired career military veterans.
Tickets available: Visit the Barbara B. Mann box office, or visit this link: www.bbmannpah.com/events/detail/fm-philharmonic-honoring-our-heroes-2026
Call: 239-350-1520

At the concert:

The North Fort Myers High School JRROTC Color Guard will present colors.
A 10-minute video will include interviews with those in New York City 25 years ago, created by WGCU arts reporter, Tom Hall, following a live thanks to first responders
Mastersingers will sing both the Star-Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful