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…]
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.
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.
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. 
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.