“Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony have long been champions of American music, and their 2018-19 season, with an American piece on almost every program, is a veritable celebration of native composers,” writes Patrick Neas in Saturday’s (1/13) Kansas City Star (MO). “ ‘We’re an American orchestra and an American city, and we have a great swath of music by a wide range of American composers,’ [said Stern]. There are 35 composers represented in 14 concerts, and of those, 13 works are getting their first-ever Kansas City Symphony performance. There are interesting pieces by [composers ranging from] Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland to Augusta Read Thomas and Sarah Kirkland Snider…. Local jazz guitarist … Pat Metheny ‘is represented in a very interesting piece [Imaginary Day] for percussion and orchestra,’ Stern said. ‘Christopher Deviney, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal percussionist, and Chris McLaurin, our principal percussionist, are the soloists.’ ” The season also includes Charles Tomlinson Griffes’s White Peacock, Aaron Jay Kernis’s New Era Dance, Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, and John Corigiliano’s Snapshot: Circa 1909, as well as music by Brahms, Hindemith, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Mahler, Dvorak, Schubert, Beethoven, Rossini, Mendelssohn, Barber, and Mussorgsky.
Posted January 16, 2018
