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Akron Symphony announces
Interlude Season for 2020-2021

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by Staff

This past Monday, the Akron Symphony Orchestra revised its plans for the coming year. The previously announced 2020-2021 concert season has been moved forward to  2021-2022, and the Orchestra will instead present the ASO Interlude Season — Akron Symphony’s Gift to the Community, designed to share free music throughout  Northeast Ohio.

“I’m tremendously excited about the Interlude Season,” ASO Music Director Christopher Wilkins said in a press release. “I do mourn the loss of a full orchestra season. But ironically, it gives us the chance to do a great many things we’ve always wanted to do. Our greatest asset is the creativity of our musicians, and this new plan allows us to utilize their skills in an extraordinary variety of ways.”

During the season, which will run from August 2020 through May 2021, ASO musicians will provide free performances with numerous collaborative partners, including the Akron Art Museum, the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, Akron Public Schools, Akron-Summit County Public Library, the Akron Zoo, International Institute of Akron, Jilly’s Music Room, Love Akron, Mustard Seed Market & Café, Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, Summa Health, the Summit County Historical Society, and Tuesday Musical Association. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony & Chorus: Mozart’s Requiem (Feb. 22)

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by Peter Feher

The history of classical music sometimes borders on mythology. The music on the Akron Symphony’s Saturday, February 22 program has taken on this fabled, quasi-historical quality — Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, and Beethoven’s over-finished Leonore Overture No. 3. Fortunately, in performance the music more than lived up to the story. [Read more…]

Gospel Meets Symphony in Akron: talking to new choirmaster Jonathon Turner

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If you heard about someone sneaking into a rehearsal, you might be forgiven for asking, “Don’t you mean out?” But twelve years ago, a program called Gospel Meets Symphony came across the radar of 16-year-old Jonathon Turner, and he was curious. He asked his uncle to drive him and a friend, Dinareo Hill, to a church on the west side of Akron.

“We kind of snuck in the back, sat in the last row of the sanctuary, and just listened,” Turner, 28, said during a recent phone call. “It was like, oh my God. We had never heard a sound like that, with both gospel music and classical music.”

[Read more…]

Akron Symphony in “Symphonic Shakespeare” (Oct. 19)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Shakespeare is everywhere these days: not just at the roots of today’s literature, poetry, philosophy, pop culture, and theatre, but as the ultimate canonic figure in the arts. His fame helps keep him famous. Titles of novels riff on the fact that his work remains required reading; Supreme Court justices make headlines for doubting his authorship; tempests in teapots brew when people move his portrait. Classical music, with its piano-adorning composer busts, boasts figures of comparable monumentality. In presenting music on Shakespearean themes and scenarios in a recent concert, however, the Akron Symphony seized a chance to savor works of rarer vintages. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony to open season with an all-Russian program

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by Mike Telin 

When inclement weather forced the cancelation of the Akron Symphony’s January 2019 concert, they were  fortunate that both guest conductor and soloist were available to open the ASO’s 2019-2020 season this weekend. The following preview, originally published in January, has been edited for content. 

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There are certain pieces of music that, no matter when they were written, always sound new. And in the eyes and ears of Alexander Korsantia, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is one that holds that distinction. “It is an eternally fun concerto,” the pianist said during an interview. “It was written almost one hundred years ago but it still feels like it is aiming to the future.”

On Saturday, September 21 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Georgian-born pianist will perform that concerto with the Akron Symphony under the direction of guest conductor Benjamin Zander. The all-Russian program will also include Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, Mussorgsky’s “Dawn on the Moscow River” from Kovantchina, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Akron Symphony’s West Side Story: O’Brien gets his shot at Tony

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by Jarrett Hoffman

From the first time he saw West Side Story, Connor Bogart O’Brien knew that Tony was a role he was born to play.

So why did he pass on opportunities to do just that — not once, not twice, but three times?

“I didn’t want my debut as Tony to be for anything less than the biggest, most stellar production,” the Ashtabula native said with a laugh during a recent phone call.

Then, about six years ago, O’Brien found himself right where he wanted to be: in Pearl Studios in Manhattan in the final callbacks for the musical’s national tour. “I’m there with two other Tony’s, and I’m thinking, this is it, now is my chance. And fifteen minutes later, I’m on the street wondering what the heck just happened. I did not get it. So I thought, that’s it, I’m going to get too old to play a teenager, and I’m just not going to be able to do it.”

But the universe — via Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins — smiled on O’Brien. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: “Verdi & Valkyries” (Nov. 16)

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by Nicholas Stevens

E.J. Thomas Hall looms and soars, cradling audiences in a colossal yet cozy acoustic shell. The mechanism that allows for adjustments in the ceiling height — a system of suspended counterweights — dominates one lobby like a giant’s carillon. The hall hosts performances of all sizes, but truly comes alive when a given theatrical or musical production offers art of comparable scale, scope, and solidity, spanning the spectrum from soft speech to symphonic swells. The Akron Symphony offered just such a program earlier this month. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony & Choruses in Verdi’s Requiem (May 5)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ASO Verdi ChorusThere are two varieties of concert Requiems — the comforting, consoling type (Brahms, Fauré, Duruflé) and the fiery Day of Judgment kind (Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi). The Akron Symphony chose one of the latter to close its season on Saturday, May 5. Led by music director Christopher Wilkins, the Akron Symphony Chorus and the Masterworks Chorale of the Summit Choral Society joined the Orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem, a thrilling choral conflagration that lit up E.J. Thomas Hall. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony tours Planet Earth (March 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ASO Planet EarthHearing the Akron Symphony’s “Planet Earth” program on Friday evening, March 23 in E.J. Thomas Hall was like playing around with Google Earth — the fascinating app that lets you zoom around between completely unrelated global destinations from the comfort of your laptop. Music Director Christopher Wilkins crafted an itinerary that visited both poles — Antarctica and the Finnish Arctic — tucking in trips to Rome and the Scottish Hebrides as well. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony to perform music inspired by artworks on November 18

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by Mike Telin

Burchfield Four Seasons“I like to play great music and I consider Mathis to be one of the greatest 20th-century works. And Pictures, especially in the Ravel orchestration, is a classic,” conductor Christopher Wilkins said by telephone. “Like the other two, Burchfield is a wonderful piece with a dazzling orchestration.”

On Saturday, November 18 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony will present three works inspired by masterpieces of art: Eric Benjamin will conduct Morton Gould’s Burchfield Gallery, and Wilkins will lead Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Tickets are available online.

The concert will also include projected visual images of the art that inspired the music. “Because showing a single image is a static thing to do, I think it’s more artistically honest to show and talk about the paintings and then perform the work,” Wilkins said. “In all three cases that is what we’re going to do.” [Read more…]

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