In Tuesday’s (3/19) Chicago Tribune, John von Rhein writes, “The Chicago Sinfonietta, an orchestra long committed to promoting diversity and inclusiveness on both sides of the footlights, is taking its venturesome programming up a notch beginning next season. The move, as explained by executive director Jim Hirsch and Mei-Ann Chen, the Sinfonietta’s Taiwan-born, American music director, is the outgrowth of longterm planning conversations among board and staff members and musicians that began last fall. The idea behind the organization’s so-called ‘Blue Ocean Strategy,’ the directors say, is to give concertgoers unusual, thematically unified programs of the sort they won’t find anywhere else in the Chicago area. … The season of five programs will run Sept. 14-May 12 at Wentz Concert Hall in Naperville and Symphony Center in Chicago. All but two of the concerts will be conducted by Chen. The season opener, Sept. 14-15, a collaboration between the orchestra and the Chicago hip-hop dance ensemble FootworKINGz, is emblematic of the group’s renewed populist approach. … The orchestra’s annual ‘Day of the Dead’ concerts on Nov. 9 and 11 will include expressions of grief and joy inspired by the Mexican celebration of Dia de los Muertos. Featured will be a special treatment of movements from Mozart’s Requiem Mass by Chicago’s Redmoon Theater Company.”
Posted March 21, 2013
