Brahms Requiem Part 2
Unorchestrated
As the performance of Brahms Requiem approaches, the chorus has been hard at work preparing! Go behind the scenes with host Tom Moore and Akron Symphony chorus director Chris Albanese to learn more about how the chorus is gearing up for Brahms Requiem.
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Brahms Requiem Part 1
Unorchestrated
Valerie Coleman’s Umoja expresses the joy of community, through a single irresistibly catchy tune. Not since Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy has a composer created such memorably euphoric music. Deep joy lies also at the heart of Brahms’ Requiem. It is his most personal work, composed as a response to the death of his mother. Its focus is not on the past, but on the present. The work’s majestic harmonies and soaring melodic lines are for us: they are comfort for the living.
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Mahler's Third Part 4
Unorchestrated
Music Director Christopher Wilkins chats with Principal Trombone John Gruber about Mahler's Third.
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Mahler 3 Podcast 3
Unorchestrated
Do you love our preconcert Preview from the Podiums? Now you can get to know our upcoming with a pre-preconcert talk! Here's another installment of our Mahler's Third series!
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Mahler 3 Podcast 2
Unorchestrated
Maestro Christopher Wilkins speaks about Mahler's grand design for the Third Symphony. Using musical examples, he follows the course of the symphony's six movements up the Great Chain of Being: from inanimate matter, to plant and animal life, the human realm, the heavenly host, and finally to all-embracing cosmic love—agape.
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ASO 23-24 Season Preview
Unorchestrated
The Akron Symphony Orchestra’s new season is filled with a diverse range of music, world-class performers, exciting collaborations, and numerous milestones! The Akron Symphony will open its 70th season on September 29 with a program featuring Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. It is a fitting choice as the season also marks the 50th anniversary of EJ Thomas Hall and the orchestra performed Beethoven’s towering symphony when the hall opened in October of 1973.
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Mahler 3 Podcast 1
Unorchestrated
Mahler’s Third is his “Pastoral Symphony.” It seems propelled throughout by nature’s bold power. The opening march represents the arrival of spring in the Austrian Alps—the earth groans, giant ice sheets crack, and cataracts spill forth from mountain streams. The middle movements move in stages up the Great Chain of Being, from raw matter, through many varieties of forms of life, and ultimately to the realm of the spirit. Mahler originally intended to call the overwhelming and majestic final movement “What God Tells Me,” understanding God “in the only way we can experience Him,...
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Akron's Julia Perry: How Does a Shadow Shine?
Unorchestrated
Akron Symphony's Julia Perry project seeks to shine a light on the talented Akron-born composer's music and legacy. Julia Perry was born in Lexington, KY in 1924, into a talented family of musicians, teachers, doctors, and horse trainers. She received an exceptional musical education in Akron, OH, at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, and with prestigious teachers from New York to Paris to Florence, Italy. In the late 40s and throughout the 1950s she enjoyed great success as a composer, vocal soloist, and conductor—principally in Italy. Returning to New York and Akron in the 1960s,...
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Christmas!
Unorchestrated
Kick off the Holiday Season with an Akron tradition! Get in the holiday spirit with an evening of traditional carols and festivities with the Akron Symphony Orchestra, the Akron Symphony Chorus, and special guests—including a visit from the North Pole!
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Ellington's Nutcracker & The Ballad of the Brown King
Unorchestrated
Margaret Bonds and Langston Hughes tell the Christmas story through the person of Balthazar, the Black member of the Three Kings. Akron’s Julia Perry, who began her career in Europe, sets the mystical writings of Catherine of Siena, a beloved figure in the history of Italian literature. Respighi remakes toe-tapping music of the Italian Renaissance into modern miniatures with cinematic brilliance. And Duke Ellington takes five of the best-known dances from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, and dresses them up in top hats and tails. All four works are vibrant updates, “handshakes across the...
info_outlineIn the final episode of our series on the Akron Symphony Chorus, we sit down with Chorus Director Chris Albanese and special guests Chuck Myricks Jr. and Jesse Ayers about There’s a Stirrin’ in the Water, which they co-composed in 2016.
The episode includes selections of There’s a Stirrin’ in the Water from the November 2016 performance by the Akron Symphony Orchestra and Akron Symphony Chorus, as well as a performance by the Akron Symphony Chorus in May 2021 from the parking lot of the First United Methodist Church in Akron.
As a pioneering participant in Akron’s Gospel Meets Symphony concerts, Chuck Myricks has had several of his compositions performed by the Akron Symphony Orchestra and the Tuscarawas Philharmonic. In 2000, he was commissioned by Akron’s First Night to write the new Millennium Theme Song for the city-wide celebration. His 2004 collaboration with the Ohio Ballet led to the premier of Transformation, a ballet featuring music composed by Chuck and performed by Divine Hope. He also has written a musical, The Miracle of Love, and an opera, Paul: A Musical Journey.
Jesse Ayers was the winner of the inaugural American Prize for Orchestral Composition in 2011, and winner of the first Opera Kansas Zepick Modern Opera Composition Competition in 2016. Recent honors include the 2020 Governor’s Award for Ohio’s Outstanding Individual Artist, the 2019 Ohio Music Teachers Association Composer of the Year Commission, two Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Excellence Awards, the 2011 Dayton Ballet “New Music for New Dance” award, a 2010 MacDowell Fellowship, and seven “Finalist” awards from the American Prize. His music has twice been selected to represent the United States at the prestigious World Music Days festival. Learn more at his website.