West Virginia’s Wheeling Symphony Orchestra has announced details of its 2022-23 season, which will begin on September 29 with a commissioned world premiere, Migrations in Rhythm: A Concerto for Beatbox co-created by composer Evan Meier and hip-hop artist Christylez Bacon, who also be featured during the performance. Music Director John Devlin will lead the opening-night program, which also will include Mason Bates’s Mothership, Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, and John Williams’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist. Other composers during the season will include Clarice Assad, Samuel Barber, Giovanni Bottesini, Lili Boulanger, Johannes Brahms, Xavier Foley, Franz Liszt, Emilie Mayer, Angélica Negrón, Daniel Perttu, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Igor Stravinsky. In October, the orchestra will perform with Pittsburgh-based chorus Voces Solis in Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered and John Corigliano’s Fern Hill.
Author: Ginger Dolden
On Houston’s far west side, a hybrid professional/amateur ensemble: ECHOrchestra
“The Energy Corridor Houston Orchestra, ECHOrchestra for short, occupies a peculiar middle ground in the city’s arts landscape,” writes Chris Gray in Thursday’s (6/22) Houston Chronicle (TX). “It’s big and talented enough to handle top-level repertoire, flexible enough to sponsor a chamber-music series and young-artist competition, and yet still something of a secret outside its far-westside community…. The orchestra began in 2014 when, explains [Executive Director Linda Shrum] East, co-founders Michael Fahey and Sarah McDonner wanted to increase the ‘cultural presence’ in the district much better-known for the high concentration of energy-company offices than artistic amenities…. Fahey … pulled together the first ECHOrchestra concert in the fall of 2015…. East came aboard two years ago…. Today, she explains, ECHOrchestra’s concerts usually feature between 40 and 50 musicians onstage, drawn from a pool of around 90 musicians…. About half that number consists of professional musicians, but the orchestra also includes doctors, accountants, educators, and—this being the Energy Corridor— a ‘significant representation’ from the oil and gas industry…. Last month … was the world premiere of Houston-based composer Kevin Ray’s ‘Retrospect.’ … East credits the organizations’s donor base, which she says currently numbers around 2,000, for helping keep ECHOrchestra afloat.”
Dual post: Arizona violinist and fire lookout
“Janie Croxen Ringleberg is a fire watcher who practices her violin for upcoming performances with the White Mountain Symphony Orchestra while watching for smoke from 31 feet off the ground,” writes Joan Meiners in Saturday’s (6/25) Associated Press. “Her grandfather is believed to have been the first fire lookout in Arizona, stationed at the Woody Mountain tree stand near Flagstaff in 1910. For the past 30 summers, except for the one after she gave birth to her daughter, Ringleberg has called in to the Springerville Interagency Dispatch Center at 8 a.m. before she starts her shift as one of the few remaining paid fire watch tower employees anywhere.… Ringleberg has seen how climate change, drought and historical fire suppression have worsened wildfires and changed Arizona’s alpine forests…. This year, she has been working 10-hour days six days a week since May 8. But Ringleberg still has time to bring her violin up to the tower and said she’s ‘able to practice while … keeping up on what’s happening in the landscape around me.’ ” When Ringleberg retires, she hopes “somebody will come along who has as much interest in it as I have had over the years.”
Washington’s Olympia Symphony selects Alexandra Arrieche as music director
“Alexandra Arrieche is the Olympia Symphony Orchestra’s new music director, and she can’t wait to get started,” writes Molly Gilmore in Saturday’s (6/26) Olympian (WA). “ ‘I fell in love with the city and fell in love with organization,’ [said] Arrieche, [who] … was in Olympia for the announcement, which came Friday…. Arrieche, who also leads the Henderson (Nevada) Symphony Orchestra, is already looking for a home to rent in Olympia and working on programs for the 2022-2023 season. The orchestra’s leadership is as enthusiastic about their new music director as she is about her new position. ‘We were looking for somebody who had the right combination of qualities to help us grow,’ said Bill Tweit, president of the orchestra’s board. ‘There’s a certain electricity when Alex walks into the room.’ … ‘She brings out the best in people,’ said Jennifer Hermann, the orchestra’s executive director…. The committee was impressed by Arrieche’s rapport with young people, focus on educational programs and ideas about collaborations between the orchestra and other arts organizations, Barnes said…. Arrieche, who grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, has been living in Henderson, where she’s led the orchestra since 2016. She’ll continue leading that orchestra.”
Wisconsin Youth Symphony begins construction on new $33M building, expected to open in 2023
“Construction teams broke ground Monday morning on a new building for the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra,” reads an unsigned report in Monday’s (6/27) WGLR-FM (Lancaster, WI). “The construction is taking place on part of E. Washington Ave. in downtown Madison, across from the Metro transit hub. The organization, which was founded in 1966, will host state-of-the-art rehearsal spaces in the new building, as well as performances and individual instruction for kids of all backgrounds. It also gives those programs a home under one roof after spending the past two years at satellite sites across the city. More than 500 musicians from across southern Wisconsin participate in the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra’s programs. Monday morning’s groundbreaking ceremony was kicked off with young musicians participating in a brass quintet set, and was followed by a speech from the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Bridget Fraser, who quoted a poem by William Butler Yeats. The $33 million project … should be finished sometime in 2023.”
Street Symphony, making musical connections with residents of LA’s Skid Row for more than a decade
“Some of the most beautiful music being performed in Los Angeles right now is happening on Skid Row,” writes Neda Ulaby in Monday’s (6/27) National Public Radio. “Street Symphony is an organization bringing professional musicians to clinics, homeless shelters and jails clustered in and around one of the most devastating concentrations of urban poverty in the United States…. [Street Symphony] Founder Vijay Gupta … first became aware of Skid Row after joining the LA Philharmonic as a 19-year-old violin prodigy. The orchestra’s dazzling steel-clad concert hall is located about a mile and a half away…. Gupta came up with the idea of Street Symphony [in 2011]…. Luis Garcia, who is now on Street Symphony’s board … was counseling mentally ill parolees on Skid Row when he first met Gupta. Garcia found himself impressed by an organization that did more than drop in, play a little music, then leave…. [At] a recent Street Symphony performance … 75-year-old Linda Leigh, a longtime Skid Row resident … told a rapt audience about getting a key to her very own room … and how moved she was to find two chocolates awaiting on her bed…. ‘This work has taught me to expect miracles,’ said Gupta.”
Pacific Symphony continues free outdoor chamber concerts in summer 2022
The Pacific Symphony’s free Symphony On the Go! outdoor chamber music concerts have returned for a second summer at venues throughout Orange County, California. The 2022 series began with a June 17 event featuring a Pacific Symphony String Quartet performance, followed by a screening of the 2021 movie SING 2. The performance and screening were offered free at Eastgate Park in Garden Grove, California. The chamber music concerts feature string quartets, woodwind quintets, and brass quintets, curated by the musicians of Pacific Symphony. The traveling stage on wheels features colorful images of Pacific Symphony musicians and Music Director Carl St.Clair. Additional concerts are planned in Buena Park (July 1), Laguna Hills (Aug. 26), and Dana Point (Aug. 27). More information at PacificSymphony.org/SOTG.
New York City’s 92nd Street Y—now 92NY—undertakes $200 million campus upgrade
“Changes are afoot at the 92nd Street Y. For starters, that’s not technically its name anymore,” writes Matt Stevens in Sunday’s (6/19) New York Times. The organization has a substantial history as a presenter of classical music and home for music education. “The longtime Upper East Side institution for arts and enrichment has rebranded itself, leaned into digital offerings and is now set to begin a long-awaited renovation of its home on the corner of 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for later this month at … the cultural center’s … Buttenwieser Hall [kicking] off a new phase of what officials say is a broader $200 million master plan to reimagine the campus…. The plan was developed … in large part by Seth Pinsky, the chief executive of the institution, which last month was renamed the 92nd Street Y, New York — or 92NY for short…. The renovation will include improvements to Buttenwieser Hall, the creation of a new dance studio … Some … renovations … are designed to improve energy efficiency, upgrade the heating and cooling systems and ensure that new restrooms and lockers meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
Ukrainian parliament votes to ban performances and broadcasts of some Russian music
“Ukraine’s parliament has voted in favor of banning some Russian music in media and public spaces,” writes Alys Davies in Monday’s (6/20) BBC News (U.K). “The ban will not apply to all Russian music, but rather relates to music created or performed by those who are or were Russian citizens after 1991 [the year Ukraine declared independence]. Artists who have condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine can apply for an exemption from the ban. The import of books from Russia and Belarus will also be prohibited under the legislation. Many of those living in areas of east and south Ukraine have historically felt a strong connection to Russia…. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led many Ukrainians to want to separate themselves from Russian culture. The bill … bans some Russian music from being played or performed on television, radio, schools, public transport, hotels, restaurants, cinemas and other public spaces…. The document says the ban will ‘minimise the risks of possible hostile propaganda through music in Ukraine and will increase the volume of national music products in the cultural space.’ … This means the works of long-dead Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich can still be performed.”
Singapore Symphony names Hans Graf music director
“On 2 June, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra announced that Hans Graf will step up and assume the title of Music Director … for the upcoming 2022/23 season,” after serving as the SSO’s chief conductor during the 2020-21 season, writes Fidel Tan in last Tuesday’s (6/14) Bandwagon (Southeast Asia). “Graf has previously led several distinguished orchestras in North America and Europe, including the Houston Symphony, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg…. The SSO 2022/23 season will commence … on 28 and 29 July…. Ahead of the upcoming season, … Graf [shared] his thoughts on being appointed Music Director, his artistic vision moving forward, as well as the difficulties he faced in leading the orchestra as Chief Conductor amidst the pandemic.” Graf: “We just had an associate conductor audition…. We’re … trying to recruit musicians for the orchestra. Some musicians have retired while some moved to other orchestras in other cities due to family reasons. We have 10 positions to fill at the moment. We’re preparing for my first real big concert since before COVID-19. We’re doing the real thing with the full orchestra. And this is in July, it’s our big Inaugural Concert. And then the whole season will follow.”