“Don’t bother telling Kathleen Carroll the old joke about how you get to Carnegie Hall. She’s heard it, repeatedly,” writes David Kushma in Tuesday’s (4/12) Toledo Blade (Ohio). “Ms. Carroll is president and chief executive of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, which will make its New York debut on May 7 at the world-renowned concert venue. It’s taken a lot more than practice, practice, practice to get there. … Toledo’s 80-member symphony is one of seven orchestras, chosen from 65 applicants, that will take part in Carnegie Hall’s new ‘Spring for Music’ festival. … The symphony’s risk-taking New York program includes ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour,’ a theatrical collaboration of playwright Tom Stoppard and composer-conductor André Previn. The symphony is a character in the play, along with actors from the University of Toledo and Glacity Theater Collective. Although the black comedy was first performed 35 years ago during the Cold War, its theme—the conflict between free expression and political repression—has ample current resonance in the popular revolts that are sweeping Arab nations and China. The concert program leads off with Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6, written and first performed in 1939. … Nearly 1,400 people will travel from the Toledo area to attend the New York concert. They’ll make up half the Carnegie Hall audience.”
Posted April 13, 2011
