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…]
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. 
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.
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. 
The Akron Symphony appropriately celebrated Saint Cecilia’s Day 2014 with a concert of music by the divine Mozart and the sainted Fauré, but also took the opportunity to elevate the jazzy music of Ravel to the Empyrean. To a neglected symphony and an infrequently performed mass by Mozart, music director Christopher Wilkins added a lovely Fauré bonbon and a wonderfully cheeky Ravel piano concerto, creating a program that showed the patron saint of music to be a woman with wide aesthetic tastes. 
The last time violin superstar Joshua Bell appeared on Akron’s Tuesday Musical Series, he caused a major traffic jam outside E.J. Thomas Hall and the audience was so large that the Association ran out of programs. On that occasion in February, 2010, Bell played a recital with pianist Jeremy Denk. He’ll share that same stage with a few more musicians on Friday, November 7, when he plays Max Bruch’s g-minor concerto with Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony Orchestra, a first-ever collaboration between the ASO and the TMA. Better carpool or come early to get a parking space.
Symphony musicians know all too well the feeling of being terrified during a performance. On Saturday night, October 18, in EJ Thomas Hall, the audience had plenty of reasons to share that feeling with the Akron Symphony.