Author: Ginger Dolden

“Colorado Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2021/22 season,” writes Maggie Donahue in Monday’s (6/14) Colorado Public Radio. “Starting in September, the orchestra will perform 49 live, indoor concerts … at Boettcher Concert Hall in downtown Denver. The season is the orchestra’s first regular programming since COVID began in 2020. In the last year and a half, it’s put on several virtual performances and played 18 live shows at Red Rocks. Members have also performed in small ensemble concerts…. The season will open Sept. 17-19 with … pianist Emanuel Ax [and] the orchestra [in] Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, [plus] Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. This year, the orchestra plans to highlight talented and diverse composers, guest performers, soloists and conductors, including music by women composers Clarise Assad, Gabriela Lena Frank, Joan Towers, Jessie Montgomery, and Florence Price. ‘As we look ahead to the return of normal in-hall operations, we’re excited to build on the successes we’ve enjoyed over the past decade by coming out of this pandemic with renewed energy and purpose,’ said Anthony Pierce, the orchestra’s chief artistic officer.” Resident Conductor Christopher Dragon and guest conductors will lead the season’s concerts.

“The Juilliard School, one of the world’s leading performing arts conservatories, is better known for recitals than picket lines,” writes Colin Moynihan in Friday’s (6/11) New York Times. “But students protesting a planned tuition increase occupied parts of its Lincoln Center campus this week and, when they were later barred from entering a school building, led music- and dance-filled protests on West 65th Street. The protests began Monday when a group of students, objecting to plans to raise tuition to $51,230 a year from $49,260, occupied parts of the school’s Irene Diamond building and posted photos on social media of … the words ‘TUITION FREEZE.’ On Wednesday, students said, they received an email from the administration saying that ‘school space’ could not be used for nonschool events without permission…. On Thursday, about 20 students continued their tuition protest on the sidewalk outside … Rosalie Contreras, a spokeswoman for Juilliard, [stated] … ‘Juilliard respects the right of all community members including students to freely express opinions with demonstrations that are conducted in a reasonable time, place and manner,’ Ms. Contreras added. ‘Regrettably the demonstration on Wednesday escalated to the point where public safety was called by an employee.’ ”

“Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras plans to build a new music center on East Washington Avenue, replacing the current Avenue Club and Bubble Up Bar, which closed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” writes Gayle World in Tuesday’s (6/15) Wisconsin State Journal (Madison). “The new WYSO Center for Music will be home to rehearsal space for the 500 young musicians, ages 5-18, who receive instrumental music training…. Arts philanthropists Pleasant Rowland and Jerry Frautschi have pledged $18 million toward the project, which is expected to open by spring or fall 2023, said WYSO executive director Bridget Fraser.… The site is in the block adjacent to the block holding the soon-to-be-opened Madison Youth Arts Center…. WYSO [comprises] three full orchestras, two string orchestras, a chamber music program, a harp program, a percussion ensemble, a brass choir program and the WYSO Music Makers program, targeted to underserved youth in the Madison area. For decades, WYSO had used space in the UW-Madison Humanities Building … said music director Kyle Knox…. In 2019 … the university stepped back from hosting large groups of pre-college students…. WYSO had to move up its timeline to find a new home.”

“After 16 months cut off from performing in front of in-person audiences, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra is thinking big again,” writes Frank Rizzo in Monday’s (6/14) Hartford Business Journal (CT). “ ‘But we’re not completely out of the woods yet,’ says HSO Executive Director Steve Collins. Still, after a 2020-2021 season absent from its normal in-person audiences, the HSO will be performing in front of outdoor crowds in July at the Talcott Mountain Music Festival in Simsbury. Indoor concerts return Oct. 1 … at The Bushnell’s Belding Theater…. The shutdown’s fiscal impact wasn’t felt dramatically until it began to drag on for months, says Collins…. As the pandemic continued into the fall, then winter and this spring, HSO’s budget was buttressed by two federal Paycheck Protection Program loans … that prevented the organization from having to take on long-term debt, Collins said…. HSO Music Director Carolyn Kuan … said during the pandemic … ‘Each decision was based on “how do we take care of everybody to the best of our ability;” the administration, staff, musicians, board, audiences, community.’ HSO’s musicians were supported financially through almost all of the 2019-2020 season, even though part of it was canceled.”

The Houston Symphony will offer free performances at Miller Outdoor Theatre on June 10 and 12, both conducted by Conducting Fellow Yue Bao; the concerts are the first in the orchestra’s annual summer venue after 2020 performances there were cancelled due to the pandemic. The first performance will feature brass, winds, and percussion, and will include a brass fanfare from Dukas’s La péri, Valerie Coleman’s Red Clay and Mississippi Delta, Tielman Susato’s Susato Suite for brass and percussion, Richard Strauss’s Serenade in E-flat for Winds, excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite, and Astor Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires Suite, arranged for brass by Steven Verhelst. The June 12 program—also being live-streamed on the Miller Outdoor Theatre’s Facebook page, website, and YouTube channel—will feature Mozart’s Divertimento in D major for Strings, Elgar’s Serenade in E minor, Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst, and the “Jupiter” movement from Holst’s The Planets.

“Black drivers were … 71% more likely to be pulled over in 2020 than white drivers, and 25% more likely to be arrested in Missouri,” writes Patrick News in Saturday’s (6/5) Kansas City Star (MO). “That reality, mixed with the oppressive anxiety Black parents face when they give the car keys to their children, is explored in the opera ‘dwb (driving while black).’ Composed by Kansas City native Susan Kander with a libretto by Roberta Gumbel … the 2018 opera has just been released … by Albany Records. UrbanArias, an opera company based in Washington, D.C., has also made a film version … available for viewing online…. Written for soprano, cello and percussion, ‘dwb’ … is a powerful, compact 45-minute chamber opera in which a mother reflects on the dangers her child faces. Her musings are occasionally interrupted with news bulletins referencing Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile and other real-life victims of racism…. Just as the political setting of Puccini’s ‘Tosca’ … is not as important as its theme of oppression, Gumbel hopes her opera might one day transcend the politics of America…. ‘The desire to be safe in your own world is universal. Everybody deserves that,’ she says.”

“Wynton Marsalis may not have written his first symphony in response to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,” writes James D. Watts Jr. in Sunday’s (6/6) Tulsa World (OK). “But one would be hard-pressed to think of a more appropriate way officially to conclude the city of Tulsa’s commemoration of this tragedy than with a performance of this epic work,” which premiered in 1999. “Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra joined forces with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, and a group of singers drawn from some 50 local churches, schools and arts organizations under the name of the Tulsa Community Commemoration Choir, to perform ‘All Rise: Symphony No. 1,’ Sunday afternoon…. The concert was presented in collaboration with the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission…. Sunday’s performance, perhaps because of the context of this moment in this place, resonated on a deeper, more spiritual level.” Led by David Robertson, “there were dazzling solos by members of the Tulsa Symphony (a cello-violin duet between principal cellist Kari Caldwell and associate concertmaster RonnaMarie Jensen was exceptional) as well as of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra…. About 100 descendants of survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre were provided with tickets for the concert.”

“Terell M. Johnson, former community engagement director for the New World Symphony, is to be the next executive director of the Chicago Philharmonic, a three-decade-old ensemble that has gone through various iterations since its founding,” writes Nicholas Beard in Friday’s (6/4) Musical America (subscription required). “Johnson, who starts July 1, succeeds Donna Milanovich, in the job for ten years and active in hiring her replacement. Johnson is a fellow in Sphinx’s LEAD (Leaders in Excellence, Arts & Diversity) program and holds an MM in clarinet performance from Florida State University. He has large shoes to fill. Milanovich’s tenure saw the profile—and the budget—of the orchestra rise exponentially, at one time serving as the orchestra for the Joffrey Ballet and a regular at the Ravinia Festival. It is currently the resident orchestra of the Harris Theater.”

“Jader Bignamini was onstage with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in May, conducting a brand-new piece as its composer [Veronika Krausas] watched from her seat,” writes Brian McCollum in Sunday’s (6/6) Detroit Free Press (MI). “She promptly spotted something unusual…. He was conducting … from memory…. Fully assimilating a piece, then conducting from memory … as Bignamini does with all his symphonic performances—is just part of the recipe that makes the 44-year-old Italian native special, said [DSO Vice President and General Manager Erik] Ronmark…. Bignamini will conduct 10 of the classical weeks on the upcoming 2021-22 schedule [which] includes plenty of core classical stock…. More than a third of the season’s material is by living composers; more than a quarter of it is by Black composers…. On Tuesday, Bignamini will [conduct] the Michigan Opera Theatre orchestra in … ‘Cavalleria rusticana’ at Meadow Brook Amphitheatre…. As Bignamini and the DSO navigated 2020—staging scaled-down live concerts and deploying the organization’s digital savvy for online events—the masked music director and his socially distanced musicians grew closer…. ‘He showed up. He stuck with us…. When he’s with us, there’s always this sense of music and energy first,’ [Acting Concertmaster Kim Kennedy] said.”