“Symphony Tacoma has hit the pandemic ground running with a 2020/21 season that blends previous recordings with new video slideshows, chamber music recordings with ballet, Facebook live artist talks, and a can-do spirit,” writes Rosemary Ponnekanti in Tuesday’s (10/27) South Sound Magazine (Tacoma, WA). “On Saturday night, a Bernstein concert from 2017 took on a whole new meaning as a reiteration of the joy, hope, and caring that can still exist in our world. In ‘Bernstein: Selections from West Side Story and more,’ conductor Sarah Ioannides showcased another of her talents—visual storytelling.… As a pure audio recording, the YouTube video left a little to be desired…. What really transformed this video, however, was the pre-concert Zoom.… The artists joined Ioannides, chorus director Geoffrey Boers, musicologist Dr. Greg Youtz and various audience members to dive into both deep discussion and happy reminiscences. It’s incredibly rare to be able to chat with a soprano or conductor right before a performance—even rarer to have the discourse turn honestly, even vulnerably, to issues like representation in opera [or] Black Lives Matter.… In a separate YouTube video, Symphony Tacoma kicked off its new Interlude Series of chamber music recordings with ‘Dances & Goddesses,’ a collaboration with Tacoma City Ballet.”
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