The Akron Symphony and Music Director Christpher Wilkins.
In Friday’s (4/4) WKYC (Cleveland), Justin McMullen writes, “The Akron Symphony’s 2025-26 season, as music director Christopher Wilkins puts it, is like a menu…. The ASO’s next season is filled with meaty entrees, highlighted by major works like Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ Suite, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and Handel’s ‘Messiah.’ ‘These are the great works that people hanker for, our signature dishes,’ Wilkins says, also shouting out pieces like Carl Orff’s cantata ‘Carmina Burana’ and Aaron Copland’s Americana-inspired ‘Appalachian Spring.’… Helping to round out the prix fixe: film music by Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman, a program that pairs a movement of Duke Ellington’s ‘Three Black Kings’ with Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from ‘West Side Story,’ Haydn’s trumpet concerto performed by the ASO’s talented young section principal Justin Kohan and more … [including] Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor’ and a string and harp setting of the late Akron composer Julia Perry’s ‘Ye, Who Seek the Truth’ … The orchestra will also give a world premiere of a new work by Margaret Brouwer.” The article lists the Akron Symphony’s complete classical season for 2025-26.
