by Jarrett Hoffman
If you heard about someone sneaking into a rehearsal, you might be forgiven for asking, “Don’t you mean out?” But twelve years ago, a program called Gospel Meets Symphony came across the radar of 16-year-old Jonathon Turner, and he was curious. He asked his uncle to drive him and a friend, Dinareo Hill, to a church on the west side of Akron.
“We kind of snuck in the back, sat in the last row of the sanctuary, and just listened,” Turner, 28, said during a recent phone call. “It was like, oh my God. We had never heard a sound like that, with both gospel music and classical music.”
A couple of weeks ago, The Price Is Right host and former Clevelander Drew Carey urged long-suffering Cleveland Browns fans to stop attending (expletive) Browns games and instead go see the (expletive) orchestra. This prompted the Akron Symphony Orchestra to champion the comedian’s cause by offering to exchange a Browns ticket stub for a free ticket to their annual holiday pops concert, “Home for the Holidays,” on Friday, December 11 at E.J. Thomas Hall.