Budgets. Contracts. Marketing. Fundraising. There are so many things to think about that it’s often easy to forget what running an orchestra is all about: the music! This year’s League of American Orchestras Conference in Minneapolis provides ample reminders of music’s centrality to our mission. The Minnesota Orchestra, under the direction of Music Director Osmo Vänskä, opens its Tuesday June 7 program with Concerto with Echoes by Aaron Jay Kernis, director of the orchestra’s Composer Institute. The piece, inspired by Bach’s Sixth Brandenburg Concerto, was commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for its New Brandenburg project. Yevgeny Sudbin, who is in the process of recording all five Beethoven piano concertos with the Minnesota Orchestra, will join them for the Concerto No. 3, before they take on Sibelius’s stirring Symphony No. 2 in D Major. Co-hosts The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Chorale will take the stage Thursday, June 9, leading off with Schubert’s Offertory in B-flat, Intende Voci, featuring soprano Jennifer Zetlan, alto Abigail Nims, tenor Paul Appleby, and bass Kyle Ketelsen. Thomas Zehetmair then serves as violin soloist on Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s World War II-era Concerto funebre, before leading the orchestra and chorale through Haydn’s exalted late work, Harmoniemesse. Click here for a complete listing of all performances happening at Conference.
And don’t forget, there’s still time to sign up before late fees go into effect! Register here to join us June 6-9 in Minneapolis.
Photo of Osmo Vänskä by Ann Marsden; photo of Thomas Zehetmair by Keith Pattison
Posted April 27, 2011
