by Daniel Hathaway
Performing to a full house, the Masterworks Chorale of Summit Choral Society began its 26th season under the new leadership of artistic director Marie Bucoy-Calavan with warm, confident performances of Johannes Brahms’s Schicksalslied and Wolfgang Amadè Mozart’s Requiem on Sunday, November 1 in Akron’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
The Akron Symphony Orchestra will continue its Classic Series on Saturday, November 14 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall. The concert, under the direction of celebrated guest conductor JoAnn Falletta, will include works by Roussel, Copland, and Brahms.
“It’s been a long time since I last conducted in Akron, and I’m delighted to be coming back,” the engaging, Grammy-award-winning conductor said via telephone. “Christopher Wilkins and I have known each other for a long time. We’re really good friends, and I’m happy he invited me.”
Falletta, who serves as the Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, will open Saturday’s concert with the second suite from Albert Roussel’s Bacchus and Ariadne. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
For the past five months the Akron Symphony Orchestra and composer Clint Needham have been asking people one question: what does Akron sound like to you? The Symphony and Needham are currently working with the community to create a collaborative symphony using sound submissions from the public. Needham will use these as the inspiration for a new work that will be premiered by the Akron Symphony at E.J. Thomas Hall under the direction of Christopher Wilkins on April 16, 2016.
“This project is cool,” an enthusiastic Wilkins said during a recent telephone conversation. “It really is verging on performance art in that it’s breaking down the fourth wall in making the community part of the creative process. In a way, asking what Akron sounds like is similar to asking who you are — from a sonic point of view.” Wilkins encourages everyone to download the iOS app or the Android app and upload their recordings to Sounds of Akron. On Sunday, October 11 the Symphony invites area residents to collect sounds during an outing at the Akron Zoo. “People should know that we still want submissions,” Wilkins said, adding, “they should send us anything that they think is interesting.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Pianist Philip Thomson joined music director Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony Orchestra in a spirited concert on Saturday, September 19 at E.J. Thomas Hall. The “American Journey” began in Mexico with Aaron Copland’s El Salón México, stopped in Texarkana, Texas for Clint Needham’s Southern Air, and traveled to somewhere in the Wild West for Copland’s Rodeo before meeting up with George Gershwin in New York. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“This is one of my favorite piano concertos, and I think it’s one of Gershwin’s greatest works,” pianist Philip Thomson said during a telephone conversation. “I haven’t had a chance to perform it for a long time, so I’m thrilled to be able to play it again.” On Saturday, September 19 at 8:00 pm, Thomson will be featured in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F when Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony open their season in E.J. Thomas Hall with a concert titled “American Journey.” The program will also include Aaron Copland’s El salón México and Rodeo Ballet, as well as Clint Needham’s Southern Air.
Thomson, who is beginning his twenty-first year of serving on the piano faculty at the University of Akron, said that he first fell in love with George Gershwin’s music as a high school student back in St. John, New Brunswick. “He was my hero, and I read all about him. In addition to writing great melodies, he was also a great pianist. He could get around the keyboard, and he knew how to write for the piano. Just like Chopin and Liszt, he thinks like a pianist. He gave the first performance of this concerto, just as he did with Rhapsody in Blue.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Commemorations of war anniversaries have fueled the programming of many arts organizations in recent months. Akron Symphony artistic director Christopher Wilkins chose to mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War with a sensitively curated program of music by Michael Tippett, Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, John Williams and Aaron Copland last Saturday evening, April 11 at E.J. Thomas Hall. While centered on the events of 1865 involving Abraham Lincoln, the program also took note of racial injustice in South Africa and Nazi Germany. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Themed symphony orchestra programs — often cooked up by marketing departments — can be gimmicky. But Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins’s “Four Rivers” program at E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday, March 14 took three European rivers and one American one that lives only in the realm of metaphor, and made them tributaries that flowed beautifully together into a larger stream. [Read more…]
Mike Telin
This past Sunday, guitarist Jason Vieaux became a first-time Grammy Award winner in the “Best Classical Solo Performance” category for his Azica Records CD, Play. On Saturday, February 14, Vieaux will be the featured soloist in Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with the Akron Symphony under the direction of Christopher Wilkins.
The program also includes Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and Oboe Concerto with ASO principal oboist Terry Orcutt as soloist, as well as Elgar’s Serenade for Strings and de Falla’s El amor brujo. The concert begins at 8:00 pm in the University of Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall.
Composed in 1939, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez is without a doubt the composer’s best-known work. “It is a popular piece and deservedly so,” Vieaux said during a recent telephone conversation. “The second movement is a masterpiece. As a guitarist, I am a little biased, but I think it’s so cool how the solo line brings the entire concerto to a climax at the end of the second movement cadenza. Rodrigo understood the guitar well enough to make sure it was at its very loudest during those ten-note flourishes.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Visitors from Boston were the headliners for the Akron Symphony concert at E.J. Thomas hall on Saturday evening. Guest conductor Benjamin Zander and 20-year-old cellist Jonah Ellsworth brought along major works by Antonin Dvořák and Dmitri Shostakovich and gave them compelling performances. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Among the more appealing attractions of the classical music genre is its ability to wrap the talents of multiple generations into a single performance. In the next two weeks, young musicians will be showcased alongside their more seasoned colleagues in concerts by the Akron Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and The Cleveland Orchestra.
On Saturday, January 10 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins will yield his baton to one of his mentors, the distinguished British-born conductor Benjamin Zander (Wilkins played oboe with the Boston Philharmonic under Zander after graduating from Harvard). Zander, in turn, has invited one of his young mentorees, cellist Jonah Ellsworth, to play the Dvorak concerto with the orchestra (above, Ellsworth with Zander after their performance of Strauss’s Don Quixote in May, 2014). [Read more…]