In Tuesday’s (10/27) Daily Telegram (Adrian, Michigan), Arlene Bachanov writes, “One of the exciting things about live performances is the immediacy of watching something unfold onstage … On the other hand, being live sometimes means that, well, things happen. Saturday night’s Adrian Symphony Orchestra performance was one of those times, when in the midst of the world premiere of ASO composer-in-residence Ken Fuchs’s ‘Atlantic Riband,’ most of the lights in Dawson Auditorium—the onstage lighting and the house lights—went out. … To the credit of the ASO staff and its student workers, setting up lights so that the performance could conclude took a relatively short amount of time. To the immense credit of the ASO’s musicians, having to play the rest of the concert under considerably less than favorable conditions—I was told that even with the replacement lighting, it was quite difficult for the players to see—went off almost without a hitch.” The Fuchs work is “instantly both musically and emotionally appealing, to say nothing of being a real showpiece for both its composer and the orchestra that plays it.” Also on the program, led by Music Director John Thomas Dodson, were Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun, Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, and de Falla’s Suite No. 2 from The Three Cornered Hat.
Posted October 27, 2009