The Verde Valley Sinfonietta’s second concert of the 2022- 2023 season took a very different turn than its organizers had planned on Sunday, Jan. 15.

The Sinfonietta was originally slated to perform the overture to Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” and Felix Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony under the baton of guest conductor William C. White of Seattle, who was to be auditioning for the permanent conductor’s post.

However, this program was revised at the last minute when heavy snowfall shut down State Route 89A north of Sedona and trapped about half the orchestra in Flagstaff, including most of the string section.

Since White and violin soloist Rachel Priday both succeeded in making it to the Sedona Performing Arts Center in spite of the weather, they elected to go ahead with Priday’s planned rendition of Jose White Lafitte’s Violin Concerto in F Sharp Minor, with White accompanying Priday on the piano in place of a full orchestra.

White Lafitte, a Cuban-born, French-trained composer who finished his career as director of the Imperial Conservatory of Brazil, was a virtuoso violinist known as one of the most spectacular violin artists of the mid-nineteenth century. His violin compositions reflect the technical brilliance for which he himself was known in performance, but Priday was up to his demands. Her stylish bowing and quick fingering made her execution of White Lafitte’s complex passages seem almost casual and drew two curtain calls from the appreciative audience.

Notably, White performed the piano accompaniment for Priday not from a piano score, since there was no time to obtain one, but directly from the orchestral score, meaning that he had to effectively compose a new piano score from it in his head on the fly.

Afterwards, White thanked the audience for their forebearance during what was “possibly the most frightening moment of my entire life.”

“Believe me, I did you a favor by cutting out most of what the orchestra plays,” he consoled them, drawing laughter.

“I came down here from Seattle to give you guys a show,” White continued. “Do you want a show?”

Enthusiastic applause answered that question.

White then delivered a novel one-man show of his own composition that he had titled “La Bonne Chose,” a song cycle setting the captions of 16 of Martha Stewart’s Instagram posts to music. The composer confessed to a fascination with Stewart’s lifestyle, which he compared to that of the late Queen Elizabeth II, always hanging out in country houses and riding horses.

He drew special attention to Stewart’s fascination with her ostentation of peafowl, devoting four separate songs to her peacock-related posts and her passionate hope for “fertile eggs.” The audience found these hilarious.

Other aspects of Stewart’s lifestyle that White addressed musically included her master bathroom problem, making hay, the need for appropriate fencing, the 47 types of salt and 27 types of olive oil to be found in her pantry and her desire to be Lady Godiva. [“I’m glad you’re not,” one theatregoer remarked ironically amid the laughs.] There was also a bit about her experience of being stalked by a hawk.

White brought nuance to the broader humor of the lyrics he had chosen with appropriate musical settings, as when he used a quotation from Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” as the theme for one of Stewart’s posts in which she had mentioned listening to the Bach piece.

“Unfortunately we will not be able to have [Will White] back in Sedona,” Sinfonietta president Sue Buffum said with regard to the canceled audition. “The members of our board of trustees and search committee were able to attend many of the rehearsals, including the dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, and we had a meeting with him after the rehearsal, so we have enough information to make a considered decision on his candidacy.

“We are also getting feedback from the Sinfonietta musicians,” Buffum said. “The only piece that we won’t be able to get is the audience survey, which is an important piece but only one part of the whole evaluation process. His flexibility on short notice and willingness to be vulnerable in front of a live audience will all be positive factors in our decision-making.”

The Sinfonietta will continue its “Season of the Audition” on Feb. 5 with guest conductor Daniel O’Bryant and on April 2 with guest conductor Janna Hymes.

White’s “La Bonne Chose” song cycle may be heard online at youtube.com/watch?v=BtVh9uZDzvg.