by Kate MacKenzie
On Sunday, March 2, animal print was à la mode at Severance Music Center, as concertgoers donned masks of leopards, crocodiles, and other creatures for Dan Brown’s Wild Symphony. The program was presented as part of The Cleveland Orchestra Family Concert Series.
Conductor Daniel Reith led the ensemble, but the star of the stage was Wild Symphony’s author and composer. Although best known for his novel The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown recently made his debut in the genre of juvenile fiction. A life-long lover of classical music, Brown was inspired by works like Peter and the Wolf and The Carnival of the Animals to write his own introduction to the orchestra. A marshland walk prompted the first composition: a poem and short piece modeled after the chorus of frogs he’d heard. Over the years, the project expanded to more than twenty poems and brief orchestral works representing different animals. Wild Symphony was published as a picture book in 2020, along with an app designed to play each movement as the pages are turned.