LITTLE ROCK — It’s a whole “New World” for the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. And that’s not just a reference to the Antonin Dvorak symphony that closes next weekend’s concerts at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall.
Those concerts, at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Oct. 3, kick off the orchestra’s 45th season. They also open the orchestra’s 2010-11 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks concert series and officially inaugurate new Music Director Philip Mann.
“This is a milestone moment,” Mann says with a touch of understatement. “A new season, a new music director.”
Mann says it is only fitting that all this takes place with a“New World” program of popular American, or at least American-connected music: Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide; George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F major (with Kevin Cole as soloist); and Antonin Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World.”
Like the conductor himself, Mann notes, his first mainstage program with the orchestra “has one foot in the American musical tradition, and one foot in the European classical tradition.”
Mann says he sees the Bernstein overture as a way of igniting the season, “a predictor of the energy to come.”
And he’s happy to introduceArkansas audiences to pianist Cole, to whom he was introduced by pianist-composerconductor Marvin Hamlisch.
“If you’re going to program [Gershwin’s] Rhapsody in Blue or the Concerto in F, you can’t find anybody better to play that,” Mann says, noting that Cole has received a stamp of approval from the Gershwin estate. Cole, who had never heard recordings of Gershwin or the piano rolls he made, played for the composer’s family, who said he sounded just like Gershwin.
“He’s a champion of Gershwin’s music, in a very honest and exciting and exuberant way, and it doesn’t just extend to the other musicians - it extends out into the hall,” Mann says.
As proud as he is of the initial concert lineup, he’s even prouder of the program for the second Masterworks concert, Oct. 30-31, with the orchestra’s principal horn, David Renfro, as soloist in the Horn Concerto No. 2 by Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. And that’s even though it was put together before his accession.
“It’s a very good idea to highlight the talents within the ranks,” he says. “And not just because it features DavidRenfro in the Strauss. It also spotlights the musicians of the orchestra in the Mahler symphony, in which every section can show its stuff and really shine.”
Mann will conduct all six Masterworks pairs this season, and also most likely the first two concerts in the orchestra’s Acxiom Pops Live! Series (which have been shifted this season from Friday-Saturday nights to Saturday night-Sunday afternoon):
A “Halloween Spookfest,” Oct. 16-17, for which Mann promises a combination of spooky classical favorites (Camille Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre and Modest Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain) with science fiction, horror movie and TV music.
“Home for the Holidays,” Dec. 17-18, which, in the tradition of his predecessor, David Itkin, will concentrate on local talent.
SETTLING IN
Mann says he and his wife, pianist Tatiana Roitman, who has secured a post as “visiting artist” at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, are settling into their new Little Rock home after moving here during the summer from San Diego, where he was the San Diego Symphony’s assistant conductor.
“We’re still surrounded by boxes,” he says. “We decided we were going to hitthe ground running, and that’s pretty much what’s happened.”
The orchestra is offering a video on its newly reconstructed website, arkan sassymphony.org, with Arkansans from Mayor Mark Stodola to former Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles to actor Jerry Van Dyke welcoming “the Mann for the job.”
Mann had to prepare pretty much on the fly for a “run-out” concert Sept. 16 in Mountain Home, where he and the orchestra helped open a performance hall at the Vada Sheid Community Development Center. That program included music by Scott Joplin and Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony.
The big orchestra shared the bill with the Mountain Home Symphony Orchestra(formerly the Mozark Regional Orchestra), a community group that draws musicians from southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an orchestra welcomed so warmly by a community,” Mann says.
The concert was well in keeping with what Mann views as one of the orchestra’s main missions: to be the Arkansas Symphony, serving the entire state and not just its Little Rock base.
Roitman, by the way, is also hitting the ground running. She’ll be the pianist in Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with four ASO musicians for the opening concert Oct. 5 in the orchestra’s River Rhapsodies Chamber Series at the Clinton Presidential Center.She’ll make her UALR debut in an Oct. 21 chamber music concert in the newly renovated Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall.
CHOPPING PRICES
The orchestra is reducing the price of individual tickets for its concerts this season, says Executive Director Christina Littlejohn - $14-$48, down from last year’s $20-$58. It is also offering freebies for kids in grades K-12 on Sunday afternoons as a way of potentially expanding the orchestra’s audience base. (Recently acquired sponsorship by Entergy lets the orchestra call this the EntergyKids Ticket program.)
Individual pops tickets will also drop in price, from $20-$72 to $16-$65. And the orchestra is offering season tickets at half-off to new subscribers.
Even if it sells out every concert, the orchestra can’t cover its costs through ticket sales alone, Littlejohn explains, “so why not embrace our nonprofit mission a little bit more?”
As for the orchestra’s overall health, it finished the 2010 fiscal year in the black with a small surplus, an extraordinary achievement for a nonprofit cultural institution in these hard economic times.
Paid attendance at Masterworks concerts increased by 2.6 percent and single-ticket attendance was up by 50 percent from the previous year, in large part because of interest generated by the orchestra’s conductor search.
But that has come at the price of some significant cutbacks. The orchestra musicians have agreed to continuation of the pay cuts implemented last year in the new two-year contract they recently signed.
However, says cellist Daniel Cline, president of the ASO Players Committee and musician representative to the orchestra board, “The negotiations for the new collective bargaining agreement were some of the most pleasant and productive discussions Ican remember” and “making a financial sacrifice is never easy, but it emphasizes our confidence and excitement for the future of the ASO.”
Board giving and individual donations are up. However, pops concert attendance and subscriptions were down. A change back to Saturday-Sunday concert times, matching the Masterworks concerts, may help, Littlejohn says.
This season the orchestra has eliminated its Super Pops! concert and will be spending less on guest artists and more on the orchestra for Pops and Masterworks concerts.
Music
Arkansas Symphony Orchestra
8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Oct. 3,
Robinson Center Music Hall,
West Markham Street and
Broadway, Little Rock. Kevin
Cole, piano; Philip Mann,
conductor. Bernstein: Can
dide Overture; Gershwin:
Piano Concerto in F major;
Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 in
e minor, op.95, “From the
New World”
Sponsor: American Airlines
Tickets: $14-$48; student/ac
tive military $10; free Sunday
for children in grades K-12
with paid adult
(501) 666-1761
arkansassymphony.org
Style, Pages 53 on 09/26/2010