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…]
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.
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. 
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.