“For the first full Arkansas Symphony season lineup entirely his creation, Music Director Philip Mann is fulfilling a pledge of sorts he made when he took the job a year ago,” writes Eric Harrison in Sunday’s (3/6) Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock). “The conductor is putting one foot into contemporary American music, bringing in for residencies two living composers (one of them, Michael Torke, will be the orchestra’s first Composer of the Year). He is keeping the other foot in the classical world of Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky…. Haitian-American composer-violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, known by his initials, DBR, will the composer in residence in November, with the help of a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.” Among the standard works scheduled for the 2011-12 season are the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, with Norman Krieger as soloist; Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” Symphony; Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”); and Respighi’s Pines of Rome. Mann comments in the article that the orchestra’s Beethoven’s Ninth concert next season may incorporate community and nontraditional choruses from all over the state, and the chorus and soloists, he promises, will ‘look like Arkansas.’ ” A subscription is required to view the full article at the link above.
Posted March 8, 2011
