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Canton Symphony enters a new era:
a conversation with music director designate Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz

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by Mike Telin

When Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz was appointed Music Director Designate of the Canton Symphony in August of 2020, the plan was for him to assume the role of Music Director in 2026. But with the passing in June of Gerhardt Zimmermann, the Orchestra’s longtime Music Director, Jaroszewicz suddenly found himself tasked with filling some big shoes sooner than expected.

On Saturday, October 7 at 7:30 pm, the young conductor will lead the Orchestra’s season-opening concert at Zimmermann Symphony Center. The program, titled “Ode to Freedom,” includes Joan Tower’s Made in America, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, and two works that will feature Seohyun Kim, winner of the 2022 Thomas and Evon Cooper International Violin Competition: Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane and Jeff Scott’s Song of the Uirapuru, receiving its world premiere. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with Jaroszewicz by phone and began by asking him how he is managing during this period of transition.

Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz: It’s been difficult for a lot of reasons. Obviously, in six years serving as Gerhardt’s assistant and then associate, I built a professional and personal relationship with him, and with his wife Sharon as well. The plan was for me to take over as Music Director in 2026, and after that Gerhardt would still be around as the Music Director Emeritus for five more years. So to not only be thrust into the role three years early, but to not have Gerhardt there as someone I could lean on as a mentor was a shock.

[Read more…]

The Cooper International Violin Competition Returns to Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

Since 2010 the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition has brought talented young violinists and pianists to the campus of Oberlin College and Conservatory every summer.

After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Competition will return beginning on August 15. The 2022 edition for violin will feature a revised format and the largest prize package in the competition’s history.

The competition includes a week of performances in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall. To kick things off, all eighteen participants will give 30-minute recitals with piano on August 15 and 16. [Read more…]

Splendid Sibelius, Stratospheric Tchaikovsky from the Canton Symphony (June 25)

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by Tom Wachunas

“Music begins where the possibilities of language end.” —Sibelius

The first selection on the June 25 “Triumphant Tchaikovsky” program from the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 3 in C Major.

With this work, premiered in 1907, Sibelius offered a bold departure from the explosive emotionalism so prevalent in late-Romantic era music. This symphony was a renewed embrace of Classicism’s purity of form and melody, and one that, oddly enough, left many initial audiences of the day somewhat bewildered. [Read more…]

Canton Symphony: New Music of the Spheres (May 22)

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by Tom Wachunas

A particularly gratifying take-away from the May 22 Canton Symphony Orchestra MasterWorks program at Umstattd Hall was that one need not be in an actual rocket ship to experience the beauties and mysteries of the cosmos.

As this concert so wondrously demonstrated, an orchestra as sublime as the CSO is itself a carefully constructed mode of transport. Call it a well-traveled vessel, amply fueled by a composer’s art, with performance flight plans navigated by the always sure hand of the conductor at the helm, Gerhardt Zimmermann. [Read more…]

A Magnificent Feast from the Canton Symphony (Apr. 30)

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by Tom Wachunas

Talk about perfect timing. In this abysmal era so saturated with our blood and tears, along comes the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) with its inspiring April 30 concert, called Music For Humanity, presenting a lavish feast to feed yearning souls.

The first half of the evening featured two works conducted by the vivacious associate conductor Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz, beginning with Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No.1. Composed in 1986 by Joan Tower, the work was inspired by Aaron Copland’s iconic fanfare and employed the same instrumentation of brass and percussion.

Tower dedicated this surprisingly brief work to “women who take risks and are adventurous.” Adventurous to be sure. While the opening theme is a subtle echo of Copland’s, the CSO brass was remarkably bright, crisp and crackling in its relentless morphing of the motif into quick, layered variations, both delicate and discordant, robustly spiced with startling bursts of timpani. [Read more…]

A Healing Return to the Stage for the Canton Symphony Orchestra

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by Tom Wachunas

Reasons to be cheerful: they’re back! The May 23 concert by the Canton Symphony Orchestra marked the first time in more than a year that the ensemble has performed live at Umstattd Performing Arts Hall. This occasion was certainly an important step on the road back to cultural “normalcy” as we recover from the dreadful pandemic shutdown.

For a May 21 article by Ed Balint in The Repository (Canton’s daily newspaper), CSO president and CEO Michelle Charles said of the concert, “That’s what we do, that’s what we love and that’s why we exist, to perform music live. You do take for granted how readily available (classical music) is until it’s not. So I think it’s going to be very emotional.” [Read more…]

Violinist Emily Cornelius on escaping the inescapable — performing in a pandemic

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by Stephanie Manning

In such an unpredictable year for musicians, Emily Cornelius feels overwhelmingly grateful to continue performing for others. From a small, socially distanced concert with the Canton Symphony to a recent guest concertmaster appearance with the Eric Philharmonic, the violinist considers herself lucky to have been staying busy these past few months. “Like most musicians, my work is really the center of my life—it’s not just a job, it’s who I am,” she said in a recent Zoom interview.

“To get to continue doing that in some form is enormous.” With her time in Erie now behind her, she is focusing on her next performance, a live streamed recital on November 19th sponsored by the Local 4 Music Fund.

The three composers and their pieces on the program are all well-known, but familiarity was the goal. She and her collaborator, pianist Eric Charnofsky, chose works “that would be personally challenging and satisfying for us to play and hopefully a joy for the audience to hear.” [Read more…]

Canton Youth Symphony joins the Pros in a side-by-side (Feb. 16)

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by Tom Wachunas

Unlike some other MasterWorks concerts by the Canton Symphony Orchestra, there was no single, dominant musical theme or concept uniting the selections on its February 16 program. There certainly was, however, a unifying energy working from the podium — CSO Assistant Conductor Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz. [Read more…]

Canton Symphony & Youth Symphony to play side-by-side this weekend

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by Mike Telin

For those of us who had the good fortune to be part of a youth symphony system, we cherish those days fondly for the rest of our lives. We remember the first time when, while still young students, we were invited to join the ranks of a professional orchestra. All of a sudden, you realized that you had entered a whole new ballgame.

On Sunday, February 16 at 3:00 pm in Umstattd Hall, members of the Canton Youth Symphony will have that opportunity when they join with the Canton Symphony for side-by-side performances of Sibelius’ Finlandia and Walton’s Crown Imperial Coronation March, under the direction of Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz. The program will also include Nicolai’s Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”) performed by the Canton Symphony. A concert prelude with Jaroszewicz begins at 2:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“I am very excited about this opportunity,” CYS concertmaster Karl Helmuth said in a conference call during his morning study hall at Hoover High School, where he is a junior. [Read more…]

Jaroszewicz leads Canton Symphony with organ soloist Heather Cooper (Jan. 25)

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by Tom Wachunas

Among many fascinating aspects of the January 25 performance by the Canton Symphony Orchestra was the ensemble’s untiring attentiveness to the conductor. Here was a remarkable connectivity, a sharpened focus, a palpable state of eager readiness. The musicians were always alert, ever poised to respond instantaneously and with riveting precision to signals from the podium. Those signals were transmitted in delightfully animated fashion by assistant conductor Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz. [Read more…]

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