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Courtesy the Sault Symphony Orchestra
Sault Symphony Orchestra
Sault Symphony Orchestra, with members from two countries, has an international aspect that “is quite rare,” says John Wilkinson, who is entering his 37th year as the orchestra’s music director.
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Courtesy Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra
Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra
Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, in its 53rd season, will offer a diverse and ambitious calendar of performances, with music ranging from Mozart to Pink Floyd. Inset: Music Director Arthur Post.
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Jeff Frey & Associates Photography / Courtesy DSSO
Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra
Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra is the region’s oldest orchestra.
The term “metropolitan” barely suits even the bigger cities around Lake Superior’s shores.
Thunder Bay, the twin ports of Duluth-Superior or the border-straddling sister cities of Sault Ste. Marie all barely exceed 100,000.
So it’s fair to consider it a small wonder these communities, and even smaller ones in the Big Lake neighborhood, offer an extensive array of performance art – from theater to ballet and opera.
Community support is key for the continued life of these musical miracles. Fundraising efforts run the gamut. Among the creative ideas to aid the local orchestras are sales of cheese, books, homemade preserves, jams and jellies and cash vouchers with a reimbursement to the symphony. The Sault Symphony Orchestra is selling a piano this year.
Special events, such as the sell-out Brew & Beethoven concert in Thunder Bay and a similar Beer Meets Beethoven in Duluth, combine local craft brews with music. A St. Patrick’s Day dinner of traditional Irish fare and a concert supports the Sault orchestra.
And the inventive list goes on. Sponsors – corporate and individual – and grants also sustain the orchestras.
The biggest sustainers – for morale if not finances – are local concert-goers. Given that this year, each orchestra plans a performance season that’s bigger and better than last year’s, you might want to make 2013-14 the time to take in a performance. Let us help with a sampler:
Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra (30-50 musicians)
Perhaps the most ambitious calendar for an orchestra this year is in Thunder Bay, where the 53rd season of the TBSO will feature 28 performances, with music ranging from Mozart to Pink Floyd.
“Incredible variety” is how Music Director Arthur Post describes it. “We’re aiming for each of our concerts to be a real event.”
For lovers of the classics, there are six masterworks concerts, including an “All Beethoven” program and “From Russia with Love,” a show featuring music written by Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. But even these shows featuring the old master composers have theatrical twists. “Spanish Fire,” for example, will feature flamenco dancers interpreting the works of Manuel de Falla, Roberto Gerhard, Xavier Montsalvatge, Georges Bizet and Joaquín Turina.
“That’s not a pops concert, that’s on our masterworks series,” Arthur says. “So we’re looking for ways to turn the traditional masterworks experience into something more dramatic.”
With “Who Killed Mozart?” the orchestra is taking a perfectly serious concert of Mozart’s greatest works, including “Symphony No. 41” aka “Jupiter,” and building around it a detective story to address the mysteries surrounding the death of the prolific composer.
“It’s a great way to bring the audience into a story around the music,” Arthur says.
The story around Pink Floyd’s 1973 album “The Dark Side of the Moon” is that lyricist Roger Waters gathered ideas for the songs by recording responses to questions like: “Have you ever been violent?” and “When was the last time you thumped someone?”
The classic rock concept album is now orchestral material; TBSO will perform it on Thanksgiving weekend, collaborating with a group called Jeans ’n Classics.
“They do all sorts of shows very, very well,” Arthur says of the group out of Toronto that helps orchestras build younger audiences by packaging mainstream modern rock music, like the works of Queen and Led Zeppelin, into a symphony format.
“They have great singers, great musicians, and the essential thing they have is a man (Peter Brennan) who has written effective arrangements for orchestra, so the orchestra plays along and plays a vital role, it’s not just a rock band on stage.”
The 2013-14 TBSO season also includes a family series, a cabaret series and six pops concerts, beginning with the season-opening show featuring renowned fiddle player Natalie MacMaster.
Arthur says maintaining a full-time orchestra in a city with just more than 100,000 people is a challenge. The core of his orchestra consists of 30 people, and he borrows musicians from Toronto, Duluth and other communities for larger concerts.
“Because we have full-time professionals who play every week, and because we have a real state-of-the-art hall, we’re able to do even some of the bigger repertoires with fewer musicians on stage. Being a small organization in a fairly small town, we’re sort of lean and mean and very enthusiastic and everybody really chips in.”
Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra (80+ musicians)
The region’s oldest orchestra, the DSSO, enters its 82nd season by welcoming a new music director. Dirk Meyer spent last season as music director designate and conducted several DSSO shows, but spent much of his time in Florida as associate conductor of the Sarasota Orchestra. He moved to Duluth in April and has been enthused by the DSSO’s willingness to try new things.
“When I came here, everybody was asking where I want to take this orchestra and what I want to do and what my vision is and so on,” Dirk says. “Every idea is embraced.”
For example, this season the DSSO will expand out of its home – Symphony Hall in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center – for two Discovery Series concerts at East High School’s new auditorium.
“It’s just a different format, basically, of how to present classical music,” Dirk says of the new series. “It’s geared toward audience development, skewed toward people who usually don’t attend our concerts. It opens up classical music for people who don’t think it’s for them.”
The show in October, “Once Upon a Time,” is comprised of fairy-tale music. It’s a multimedia event with videos and narration.
“One of the pieces that I’ve designed on that concept is the suite from ‘Cinderella’ by Prokofiev. What happens is, the narrator – which is basically an actor that we will hire – is sort of like Grandpa reading you that Grimm fairy tale. … It’s a completely different experience than if you would just perform the suite from the ballet in a concert setting. It just adds another element to it. You get to experience the entire fairy tale and the music behind it, too.”
Another highlight of the 2013-14 season is the “Harbor Holiday Special” on December 6, featuring the Three Altos from Duluth and Ariana Savalas.
Ariana is a jazz singer from Los Angeles who sang with the DSSO at its New Year’s Eve show last season. She is the daughter of the late actor Telly Savalas and Duluth native Julie Hovland.
“Her grandmother is still in Duluth,” Dirk says. Ariana “comes here every Christmas, and this year she will be joining us singing some holiday numbers.”
Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra (60+ musicians)
The oldest orchestra in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula performs in Houghton. The Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra is entering its 43rd season as a hybrid college/community ensemble funded by Michigan Technological University.
Music Director Joel Neves says his orchestra wouldn’t survive if it were limited only to students or only to community members.
“Our concert master last year is a recently graduated high-school student,” Joel says. “Our principal flutist is a long-standing physics professor. Our principal trombonist is a freelance artist and businessman from Marquette. When you live in the Keweenaw, up here in the U.P., you need to grab musicians from as many places as necessary.”
Joel is most excited about the show “1863-2013: Lincoln and Gettysburg,” held on Pearl Harbor Day (December 7) in special recognition of this year’s 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg and the midpoint of the Civil War. The show will feature a rare symphony called “Gettysburg” by the American composer Roy Harris.
“It’s a beautiful symphony based on statements made by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address. Another piece I’m really excited about is called ‘Afro-American Symphony,’ by the first successful African-American classical composer, William Grant Still.”
The Sault Symphony Orchestra (30+ musicians)
The orchestra with the most international flavor – or flavour – is hosted by both cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Ontario. John Wilkinson is entering his 37th year as conductor and music director of the Sault Symphony Orchestra, which itself is entering its 41st season playing on both sides of the border. John says about 60 percent of the performers in the orchestra live on the Canadian side, and the audience skews even more toward the maple leaf.
“The international aspect is something that is quite rare. To have an organization like this that blends regular members from two different countries is kind of special.”
The season opens on the Michigan side on September 28 with “Orchestral Kaleidoscope” at the Soo Theatre, featuring show tunes, pops songs and classical works by Beethoven and Mozart.
It crosses into Ontario on November 9 for “Music with the Maestro” at the Kiwanis Community Theatre Centre, featuring Enrique Bátiz as guest conductor.
“He’s a little hard to categorize because his repertory is so enormous,” John says of the award-winning conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. “He’s recorded almost everything you could think of as far as the standard repertory.”
Meanwhile, John will conduct Bátiz’s orchestra in Mexico City.
“I’ve done other orchestras before, but to do something on this level is a step up for me. And it’s exciting for us to have somebody like Bátiz, who is really quite a figure in the world of classical music, conducting our orchestra.”
Marquette Symphony Orchestra (70 musicians)
Entering its 17th season, the Marquette Symphony Orchestra is the smallest and most recently established of the Lake Superior-area orchestras.
Its five-show season includes three concerts focused on master composers, a concerto performance by the winner of the Youth Concerto Competition for Strings and a holiday show that includes a commissioned work by Marquette native Thomas LaVoy.
Thomas’ piece is based on the Christmas Eve 1913 Italian Hall Disaster in Calumet, marking the 100-year anniversary of the tragic stampede that killed 73 people at a Christmas party held by striking copper miners and their families.
Jacob Chi, MSO’s conductor and music director, says some members of his orchestra come from Minnesota and southern Michigan, but most are deeply rooted in the Marquette area.
“The musicians really like music, and they really practice.”
Notes for Symphony Newbies
Practice makes perfect applies not only to musicians, but also to audiences. The more you attend concerts and become comfortable with the music styles, the more perfectly you will enjoy the experience.
The chief advice from the region’s symphony conductors to those who haven’t been to a symphony orchestra performance: Drop any preconceived notions and go see what it’s about.
“Everybody is welcome,” says Thunder Bay’s conductor. “They don’t need to know anything. They only need to bring their love of music.”
Dirk Meyer, the 36-year-old DSSO conductor, says people his age and younger who haven’t been to a symphony imagine it will be formal and stuffy. Shuck that stereotype, he says. “It’s a complete mix of people. There are people who are dressed up, there are people who come in jeans and a button-down shirt. There are people who enjoy the meditative aspect of it – of relaxing and enjoying the music – and others see it as a great night out with their friends. People come with all sorts of different attitudes and all sorts of different fashions.”
There are two general types of symphony orchestra concerts: masterworks and pops.
Masterworks performances preserve the works of the old masters and introduce new masters. In the simplest terms, think Beethoven.
Pops shows feature, as the name implies, popular music, often from Broadway musicals or Hollywood films, arias from operas or light classical pieces that everyone knows. Think John Williams’ theme music for “Star Wars.”
“The difference between masterworks and pops,” explains Dirk, “is masterworks is a concert and pops is a show.”
Therefore, it stands to reason that first-timers might prefer pops.
Once in that concert hall seat, says John Wilkinson, conductor of the Sault Symphony Orchestra, it’s not a big jump from pops to classical.
“If you go to a classical concert ... (the music) might be based more on abstract concepts of melodies or themes, and keys and speeds and tempos, but all of those details and all of those traditions can still be decoded pretty easily. The composer wants to be understood, but it requires a little bit of active imagination.
“There are messages in the sounds, and you don’t have to be an expert to decode the messages,” John adds. “You can just sort of keep your feelers, your emotions, out there. Be alert to how it makes you feel at a given time.”
And remember – you won’t be the only person attending a symphony for the first time, says Thunder Bay’s conductor, and you will have a sense of community.
“It’s a really unique feeling. Large halls with great acoustics, the music is right in your face. With that many musicians on stage it’s a real communal experience, and you go out feeling like you’ve really shared something with everybody who is around you.”
Duluth-based writer Paul Lundgren’s day job is as head honcho of Perfect Duluth Day, a website that tracks restaurant openings, porcupine sightings and good polka records from the 1970s.