by Kevin McLaughlin
The sound of an organ in orchestral settings is always an aural thrill. A cornucopia of colors and sonorities on its own, the organ, when mixed with strings, winds, brass, and percussion, more than doubles the pleasure and the fun.
In his welcoming remarks, music director Christopher Wilkins drew attention to the evening’s sonic star and focus — a digital impersonator of sounds, painstakingly prepared by Robert Mollard to sound just like a pipe organ. Putting out fullness and variety, if not always the seismic events associated with cathedral organs, Mollard nevertheless created excitement and beauty in his appearance with the Akron Symphony at E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday, October 21.
Since the first official work on the program, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Worship: A Concert Overture, takes as its basis the hymn tune Old 100th (“Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”), two bonuses were in store to orient us. Principal flute Barbara O’Brien played the unadorned tune in gorgeous, silvery tones, and Mollard let loose with Robert Hebble’s Toccata on Old Hundredth, a festival of organ prowess.
The Akron Symphony Orchestra was particularly well represented by its string section on Saturday, January 14, as it continued to put on display both the strength of its players and its capacity for varied and engaging programming. 
Singers Companye, Samuel Gordon’s Akron-based chamber choir, gave three performances of its spring program “An Unclouded Day: A Celebration of Love” in Cleveland, Fairlawn, and Hudson on April 20, 22, and 28. In their first concert at Mary Queen of Peace Church in Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood, they presented assured performances of modern choral works, including several by composers with Scandinavian and Baltic roots who write in expressive, opulent textures.
How did the planets align so that Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Domenico Scarlatti — three of the most eminent and prolific composers of the Baroque period — all came to be born in the same year? That defies explanation, but it makes for interesting concert programming. On Sunday, March 11 at 4:00 pm at Faith Lutheran Church in Fairlawn, Akron Baroque will raise a glass to “The Class of 1685” with a free concert devoted to music by these three luminaries.
