“When the pandemic squashed plans for the Michigan Philharmonic to mark its 75th anniversary last year, the orchestra didn’t give up on celebrating altogether. It just delayed the party,” writes Maureen Feighan in Saturday’s (10/2) Detroit News. “Now, a ’75 + 1’ birthday bash celebration will kick off its new season … Saturday… The new season—led by Nan Harrison Washburn, the philharmonic’s longtime music director and conductor—will include eight concerts from October through May, often focusing on composers who are still alive and creating along with women composers…. Kristin Kuster’s … ‘Rain On It’ will be featured at Saturday’s concert, [which] will also include pianist Angie Zhang performing Rachmaninoff. Masks are required…. COVID-19 forced the orchestra, like all cultural institutions, last season to pivot its programming to outdoors and online…. They also [sent] musicians to perform at senior centers and nursing homes…. The 2021-22 season will … feature … concerts with Mimi Fox, a jazz guitarist from California; African American composer Andre Myers; and Josanne Francis, a steelpan soloist from Trinidad and Tobago. By exposing their audiences to new composers, they often end up hearing the classics by Beethoven and Mozart differently, said Beth Stewart, the orchestra’s executive director.”
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