JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic and Virginia Symphony orchestras, will be the first of five guest conductors for the Arkansas Symphony's 2019-20 Masterworks series. She'll be on the podium for the opening concerts, Sept. 28-29 at Little Rock's Robinson Center Performance Hall.
Falletta will conduct two orchestral showpieces -- La Valse by Maurice Ravel and Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and, with guests Time for Three (Nicolas "Nick" Kendall and Charles Yang, violins; and Ranaan Meyer, double bass), Jennifer Higdon's Concerto 4-3.
Falletta recently won a Grammy Award for best classical compendium for her recording, with the London Symphony Orchestra, of works by Kenneth Fuchs. Her most recent album, of Ottorino Respighi's The Pines of Rome, The Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals, is due soon on the Naxos label.
Hers is the most prominent name in a list of guest conductors and soloists the orchestra is bringing in for what is being touted as an interim "breather" year between the departure of Music Director Philip Mann, who is leaving in May after nine years in the job, and the 2020-21 season, in which the orchestra could be auditioning candidates to succeed him.
ASO Executive Director Christina Littlejohn and board president Jan Hundley stress that they're "taking a breather" before starting a conductor search, in part so that the board can establish just what they'll be searching for. "Search years are tiring," Littlejohn says with a sigh. "This is definitely not a search year. We're just taking a little space to breathe."
So the season's five guest conductors -- on the podium for the fourth concert pairing is ASO Associate Conductor Geoffrey Robson -- are not officially auditioning for the permanent position.
"None of them were contracted with the belief that they were part of a search," Littlejohn says. "That said, we wanted to make sure that we had people with different strengths and different backgrounds on the podium to give our orchestra and our audience the opportunity to see a variety of conductors and styles. They're all very strong and excellent conductors but they all bring something a little different to the concert experience. We hope that next season will inform what we're looking for in our next leader as we get closer to be able to announce a search."
To plan the 2019-20 season, Robson assembled and took suggestions from a committee of orchestra musicians, members of its administration and board members to pick the pieces and the personnel on the season lineup. In the process, he has acquired a new title, "interim artistic director."
"We're very excited about next season, and how the process went," Robson says.
Though as music director, Mann, whose departure from the orchestra was announced in May, would ordinarily have shaped the coming season, he had no hand in any of the choices, Littlejohn says. "He's really busy doing other things," she says. "But we glad he's here to conduct [his] last season."
Mann is conducting Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony this weekend. He'll close out his ninth season with the orchestra May 4-5 with a program that he recently changed to include Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5.
Robson will conduct the Feb. 29-March 1, 2020, Masterworks concerts with Andrius Zlabys as soloist in Thomas Ades' In Seven Days: Concerto for Piano with Moving Image. The program will also include Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 7.
MASTERWORKS ETC.
Littlejohn says the season opener will also be the closing event of the 2019 Acansa Arts Festival, and that both organizations collaborated on the cost of bringing in Time for Three. "This way, instead of trying to compete, we're working together, able to collaborate and make something that's better than we could have done before," she adds.
The rest of the Masterworks lineup (all concerts, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday at Little Rock's Robinson Center Performance Hall):
• Nov. 9-10, Andrew Grams, music director of the Elgin (Ill.) Symphony Orchestra, conductor; Karen Walwyn, piano. Works by Arkansas composers -- Festive Overture by William Grant Still and the Piano Concerto in One Movement by Florence Price -- and Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 3
• Jan. 25-26, Carolyn Kuan, music director of the Hartford (Conn.) Symphony Orchestra, will conduct three 20th-century dance-oriented works: Variaciones concertantes by Alberto Ginastera, Dance Suite by Bela Bartok and Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo by Aaron Copland.
• April 18-19, 2020: Eric Jacobsen, co-artistic director, conductor and cellist of The Knights, conductor; Simone Porter, violin. Works by French composers: D'un Matin de Printemps by Lili Boulanger, Violin Concerto No. 3 by Camille Saint-Saens and Hector Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique.
• May 2-3, 2020: Vladimir Kulenovic, music director of the Lake Forest (Ill.) Symphony, conductor. Cellist Zuill Bailey, also this coming season's Richard Sheppard Arnold Artist of Distinction, plays the Antonin Dvorak's Cello Concerto. Also on the program: Overture in C major by Fanny Mendelssohn and the Symphony No. 3, "Rhenish," by Robert Schumann.
The pops series lineup (except as noted, all concerts, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday at Robinson):
• Dec. 20-22: Home Alone, film with orchestra (also 7:30 p.m. Friday)
• Feb. 8-9: Sondheim/Lloyd Webber Celebration
• March 14-15, 2020: Tribute to Aretha Franklin
• May 9-10: Jurassic Park, film with orchestra
A Halloween pops special, Oct. 19-20, will feature spooky tunes, Littlejohn says.
CONDUCTOR SEARCH AWAITS
Hundley says the "breather" year gives the board room to decide just what they're seeking in their next leader music director -- or even if they're looking for a music director per se.
"We're seeing [whether] we want to jump back into exactly the same model that we've had and always have had, or are there other models?"
Since the orchestra incorporated in 1966, it has had four music director-conductors, and one central requirement has always been "that this be the [conductor's] principal residence, and that he be an active member of the community," Hundley says. "The contracts specifically state how many weeks out of a year they're ours.
"That has been stirring a lot of conversation: Is that principal residence [requirement] an important piece? Does that they know the conductor personally, or they see him at Kroger, encourage people to buy tickets? There are differences of opinion on that."
Many orchestras have fly-in conductors who are heading two, three or even more operations; some separate the music director role and use principal conductors or guest conductors.
"We had an all-day retreat, and had phone-ins from three different organizations," Hundley says, "one that has the traditional model, two others that had hybrids. That's one of the things we're looking at -- would we be willing to hire somebody who has other gigs and this is not going to be their principal residence."
Hundley admits that the demand that the conductor make a home here may have discouraged qualified candidates from looking at this orchestra. And, she also admits, "Little Rock is not the easiest place to recruit to. But if you can get somebody here to look, that's 80 percent of the battle."
Advantages she notes that this orchestra has over many others: Its financial stability -- it's now heading into its 10th straight year in the black, "which is unusual," she says -- as well as a core of full-time, professional musicians, also unusual for a regional orchestra of this size.
"I believe that the Arkansas Symphony would be an appealing organization for any conductor to work for," Robson says. "I think the future is bright as Little Rock continues to develop richer cultural offerings and connections within the community, and I think the symphony is well positioned to help lead the way with creative and engaging programming, meaningful collaborations and powerful educational initiatives."
Robson could easily be a candidate for the permanent job, Littlejohn agrees.
"Geoff's name would be in the hat, if he wants it to be, absolutely," she says, adding that "this season shows what he is capable of doing as a music director."
Mann, meanwhile, will leave with the title of music director laureate, "so one day we assume he'll come back to guest-conduct," Littlejohn says. "Of course he'll be welcome."
Style on 02/24/2019