Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:49:19 -0700WeeblyFri, 14 Aug 2026 13:36:43 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/august-10-2026
Another Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra season is in the books. We had our final concert Monday night. The 2026 Conducting Fellow Michelle Bushkova drew a spirited and stylish performance of Manuel de Falla’s Three Cornered Hat Suite 2 from the players. I wrapped things up with Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2, so kind of an orchestral blowout program and a great way to wrap up the season.
 
As usual, the festival flew by. It’s always intense but also re-energizing. A lot of that has to do with the musicians themselves. The finest conservatory and college-age students in the country is a rather luxurious cohort with whom to make music.
 
This was also my 30th season with the MSFO. In retrospect, my time at CHQ and my times with each year’s orchestra have been joyous.  This is an orchestra that changes personnel every year, so after 3 decades, over 2400 people have sat in those seats. That means there is a large group of these fine musicians now occupying other seats in orchestras all across the country and beyond our borders. For me, that means every time I’m on a guest-conducting engagement, I run into an MSFO alum or two. I love that.
 
It's also rewarding to see them show up in the papers, on concert stages, on the radio, TV or Spotify. They are out there, bringing music to the world and finding a fulfilling life path for themselves.
 
Because the MSFO is embedded in the greater Chautauqua Institution, a summer humanities-rich community of some 10,000 people, an experience here is very different from other music festivals. Our students experience not just great music making, but they also witness how music can interact with a community in nearly ideal circumstances, a model that shapes the advocacy and leadership roles they assume in the communities they go on to serve.
 
Another very important part of my CHQ experience has been overseeing the David Effron Conducting Fellowship. The fellowship was established and ultimately endowed by Chautauquan Kay Logan 30 years ago (my first year at CHQ) to honor David Effron who held my position immediately prior. Coincidentally, Mr. Effron was also my conducting teacher at the Eastman School.
 
The fellowship allows one highly-gifted conducting student, selected from an international pool of talent, to work as my assistant and study with me here in the summer. They perform multiple works with the orchestra over that time. They also get great exposure to other arts leaders in the community, gaining experience, insight and developing connections that can help guide their career paths.
 
Through this fellowship, I have had the privilege of getting to know and work with a very special group of people who are now out there bringing music to the world. It’s been exciting to watch their careers blossom and know that they take a bit of CHQ with them as they go. Many have become life-long friends in the process.
 
It has also been interesting to observe and be a part of the Institution’s evolution over the years.  A place always dedicated to the exploration of the best in human values, I have seen it grow from something of an anachronistic curiosity to now a powerful, and much needed force for good in this world. There have been good times and bad, joy and sadness, but an overall impressive trajectory towards relevance and impact in a way unique to Chautauqua.
 
It's been quite a run, and I look forward to what the coming years have in store.  
 
NEXT UP
 
September 14, 2026
Corbett Auditorium
Cincinnati Conservatory of Music
Cincinnati, Ohio
 
Jared MILLER              House of Dreams
PROKOFIEV                 Piano Concerto No. 3
RACHMANINOFF         Symphony No. 3
 
#msfo #chautauquainstitution #musicschoolfestivalorchestra #kaylogan #michellebushkova
]]>Wed, 29 Jul 2026 02:39:37 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/july-27-2026
In the world of opera, Debussy is known for his Pelléas et Mélisande, an iconic work of early 20th Century French opera, but buried in his past is a wonderful little gem of a work written while he was still a student, basically before he was “Debussy,” called L’enfant Prodigue. Honestly it feels more like a cantata than an opera, but it is full of gorgeous music and moments of longing, tenderness, and forgiveness in a proto-Debussian musical style.
 
At the other end of the spectrum of French opera is Poulenc’s Le Mamelles de Tiresias, a work from 1947 based on text of Apollinaire. There is really nothing else quite like this work in the world of opera It is a wild, crazy, surreal story with some social significance of its day and a spectacular and brilliant score. Had Mozart been a Frenchman living in the 20th Century, he would have written this work. It is deeply inspired music.
 
The MSFO did our annual collaboration with Chautauqua’s Opera Conservatory for a staged production on Monday and presented both of these works as a double bill.  Emma Griffin provided a dynamic staging for both works. The cast and orchestra rose to the occasion, creating a wonderful and unforgettable evening of great opera. The thunderstorm and downpour half way through added a memorable touch.
 
NEXT UP
 
August 10, 2026
 
Chautauqua Institution
Music School Festival Orchestra
Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater
 
8:00 p.m.
 
FALLA              Suite No. 2 from the Three Cornered Hat (conducted by Michelle Bushkova)
RACHMANINOFF         Symphony No. 2
 
#ChautauquaInstitution #MSFO #MusicSchoolFestivalOrchestra
]]>Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:02:57 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/july-21-2026July 21, 2026
 
It is always a joy for me to do a program with the fabulous Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. Not only do I enjoy hearing them several times each summer, but many members have become good friends over the years, and some also teach the students who play in the Music School Festival Orchestra. It is a closely-knit musical community.
 
Tuesday night we did a program of two works, Christopher Theofanidis’s Rainbow Body and Beethoven’s Eroica (Symphony No. 3). Chris’s work has become quite a hit in the orchestral world since its composition in 2000. It has an immediate and visceral impact on the listener. He bathes us in indescribable beauty in the opening. He takes us on some soaring rides that feel as if we were flying. Of course, there are moments of conflict and tension, you can’t have a good story without conflict, and a resolution to the conflict that is among the most joyous moments in music, literally with people cheering at the wave after wave of climaxes.
 
Yes, sometimes people use the word “literally” when they don’t really mean “literally” but here, they are literally cheering. Chris writes in the score that the players are to cheer at the high points. When preparing this work, I always wonder if I will need to coax the cheering out of a perhaps reserved or shy group of players who are not accustomed to vocalizing in the orchestra. There was no coaxing needed from the CSO. The embraced the challenge and took it over the top to great effect.
 
It has been my experience that musicians universally recognize that the opportunity to perform Beethoven’s Eroica is truly a special one. So many players in the CSO mentioned that very thing to me either before or after the concert. These are musicians who play hundreds of concerts and rehearsals a year, so when a well-worn work like Eroica still gets them excited, that does say something. It is a monument in music, and how lucky we are as performers to recreate and share such a masterwork. I felt especially fortunate to do so with the wonderful CSO.
 
NEXT UP
 
July 27, 2026
 
Chautauqua Institution
Music School Festival Orchestra
Students from the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory
Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater
 
8:00 p.m.
 
DEBUSSY         L’enfant Prodigue
POULENC        Les Mamelles de Tiresias
 
#ChautauquaInstitution #ChautauquaSymphonyOrchestra #Christopertheofanidis
]]>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 02:03:22 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/july-20-2026July 20, 2026
 
​Early in my career I was engaged by the Louisiana Philharmonic in New Orleans to do a concert that included Prokofiev’s music from his ballet Romeo and Juliet. For that concert, their Music Director at the time, the wonderful Klauspeter Siebel, had assembled his own version of a suite from the ballet, cherry picking movements from the three published suites. This was a relatively new practice for the time (1980’s).
 
I kept Klauspeter’s suite, and returned to it many times over my career, sometimes making minor adjustment for purposes of duration, but keeping the essential shape intact.
 
For some reason that I didn’t fully understand, the publishers would not allow that this year. It was either a complete suite as published, or no R and J. So, I opted to Suite 2. The silver lining was taking a deep dive into some of the movements I have been neglecting for the past decades, just further proof that Prokofiev’s ballet is a deep well indeed.
 
Our concert opened with Tale of Fate of Rautavaara, conducted by our conducting fellow Michelle Bushkova. This work really grew on me over the week, and Michelle and the orchestra made a great case for it, very moving.
 
The CHQ School of Music has an annual SAI concerto competition, the winner of which returns the following summer to play a concerto with the orchestra. Violinist Tianyu Liu won the 2025 competition and returned this week to play Sibelius with us. He has developed into a very fine violinist, and it was a joy to dive into that work with him.
 
NEXT UP:
 
July 21, 2026
 
Chautauqua Institution
Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra
Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater
 
8:00 p.m.
 
THEOFANIDIS              Rainbow Body
BEETHOVEN                Symphony No. 3 “Eroica”
 
#ChautauquaInstitution #MSFO #MusicSchoolFestivalOrchestra #MichelleBushkova #TianyLiu
]]>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 22:45:40 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/july-13-2026​July 13, 2026
 
Music School Festival Orchestra No. 2 of 2026 is in the books. It was an evocative and kaleidoscopic program as one might expect with works of Ravel, Kodaly and Stravinsky.
 
I had planned on conducting the Ravel Five Piece from Mother Goose but illness took me out of commission for a few days. I asked MSFO Conducting Fellow Michelle Bushkova to add that to her responsibilities on this program which already included the demanding Kodaly Galanta Dances. As expected, she and the orchestra brought polish, nuance and vitality to these two gems.
 
We rounded out the program with Stravinsky’s tragic carnival of music, Petrouchka. This score never fails to get the nerve endings tingling in so many ways. It is among most challenging works in the repertoire, and the wonderful players of the MSFO were more than up for that challenge.
 
July 20, 2026
 
Chautauqua Institution
Music School Festival Orchestra
Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater
Tianyu Li, violin
 
8:00 p.m.
 
RAUTAVARRA             A Tale of Fate, from Book of Visions
SIBELIUS                      Violin Concerto
PROKOFIEV                 Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2
 
#ChautauquaInstitution #MSFO #MusicSchoolFestivalOrchestra #MichelleBushkova
]]>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 01:41:55 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/july-6-2026It was definitely a star-studded night at the Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater Monday night for our launch of the 2026 Music School Festival Orchestra season. We gave the world premiere of a work commissioned by the Institution from the award-winning American composer Damien Geter. It is a powerful and moving setting of excerpts from two books written by American poet and author, Newbery Medalist and Emmy-winner Kwame Alexander who provided the narration.
 
Following intermission came the Elegy of Pulitzer Prize, Academy Award, and 5-time Grammy-winner John Corigliano who was also at the concert. And, of course, the other stars of the night, the phenomenal musicians of the Music School Festival Orchestra who, along with the compelling performances of the Geter and Corigliano, delivered a stylish Haydn Symphony 96 and a dramatic and exhilarating performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1.
 
Kwame is a community favorite here at CHQ, serving as the Institution’s Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and the Institution's Inaugural Writer-in-Residence, a dual role he stepped into in December 2023. Presently he is the 2026 Inaugural Distinguished Fellow for the African American Heritage House at Chautauqua. Symphonic performances are not something he does often, but you wouldn’t know it. His performance was riveting.
 
The Geter/Alexander work is called An American Story. The text is taken from two works of Kwame’s tracing the horrors and indignities of slavery and the challenges faced by African-Americans. The work begins with a dark and unsettled character giving way to poignant juxtapositions of American patriotic music with spirituals of the African American tradition. About halfway through the work, following a bluesy trumpet cadenza, the character changes to one of resilience, dignity, honor, resolve and some hope. The audience response was overwhelming.
 
Corigliano’s Elegy was written in the 1960’s as a remembrance of his teacher Samuel Barber. As such, there are echoes of Barber throughout the work while still being John’s voice. It is a very personal and heartfelt statement. It presented many opportunities for rich expression from the wonderful MSFO players into which they dove deeply.
 
Although the personnel of the MSFO changes every summer, the experience always retains some wonderful consistencies. This is a group made up of some of the finest young instrumentalists in world’s conservatories and colleges. We had 668 applicants for our 82 spots in the orchestra this year. In this case competition yields quality. It is a great pleasure to make music with these fine young players.
 
NEXT UP
 July 13, 2026
 Chautauqua Institution
Music School Festival Orchestra
Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater
8:00 p.m.
 
RAVEL              Five Pieces from Mother Goose
KODALY        Galanta Dances (conducted by CHQ Conducting Fellow Michelle Bushkova)
PROKOFIEV     Suite No. 2 from Romeo and Juliet
 
#ChautauquaInstitution #MSFO #MusicSchoolFestivalOrchestra #KwameAlexander #DamienGeter #JohnCorigliano]]>Sat, 23 May 2026 14:10:57 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/may-20-2026
So that’s a wrap as they say. With today’s two Young Peoples' Concerts, I conclude my time on the podium with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. The opportunity to work with these wonderful people of the LSO, those both on stage and off, has been among the greatest gifts of my professional life. I will miss them all.
 
For nearly all my time here in Lansing, we have done Carnegie Hall’s brilliant “Link Up” Series for our YPC’s. I have extolled the virtues of those programs in the past, and it was a great way to wrap up my tenure here. As it has been every year, the experience is enhanced by sharing the stage with an orchestra that truly appreciates and understands the beauty of 2000 recorders playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. It is a glorious thing to behold.
 
To my friends and colleagues of the LSO, thank you for the memories. I will treasure them always.
 
NEXT UP
 
July 6, 2026
 
Chautauqua Institution
Music School Festival Orchestra
Kwame Alexander, author and narrator
Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater
8:15 p.m.
 
HAYDN                        Symphony No. 96 “Miracle”
Damian GETER             An American Story WORLD PREMIERE
John CORIGLIANO       Elegy
SHOSTAKOVICH          Symphony No. 1
 
#lansingsymphony #linkup]]>Wed, 20 May 2026 23:09:45 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/may-15-2026
Off the top of my head, I can’t list the 7 wonders of the world, but if Ottorino Respighi’s epic tone poem, Pines of Rome isn’t on that list, maybe it’s time or whomever makes such lists to reconsider. More on that later.
 
In the realm of comings and goings, I guess a big one, my last subscription concert with the Lansing Symphony. It’s been a wonderful 20-year ride. Even though some names and faces changed over the years, I have always felt fortunate to be a part of this organization. We have had a remarkably committed, forward-looking and professional board of directors, a very talented, dedicated and resourceful staff, a supportive and appreciative audience, and a highly-gifted group of musicians.  I have loved every second with this orchestra and will miss them all greatly.
 
But it’s time for a change. Everything has its season, and I’m excited to see what the next season brings. The sky is the limit for the LSO.
 
We did really put a bow on our time together with our concert on Friday. Dvorak‘s Carnival Overture set a exuberant tone, and pianist Jon Nakamatsu joined us for Rachmaninoff Paganini Fantasy. After intermission we gave birth to an evocative new work from our Composer in Residence Jared Miller and topped if off with the apex of orchestral blow outs, the aforementioned Pines of Rome.
 
Not only was it a premiere from Jared, but this concert also marked the finale of his time with the LSO. Our composer residency runs 3 years and culminates in a new work. Once again, Jared really delivered. His is a unique voice among today’s composers. The music comes from deep in his soul and his target is deep in the listener’s. It is a musical language that is rich in innovation but grounded in tradition such that its impact is immediate and potent. He called the work House of Dreams. The piece was inspired by an actual episodic dream of his. The work is structured to reflect those episodes as if each was a room of a house through which the listener is walking. The audience seemed all-in, and the orchestra was too. I look forward to the next opportunity to do this wonderful piece.
 
I think I have worked with Jon Nakamatsu more than any other artist in my career, so it was appropriate and wonderful to have him here for my final LSO concert.  If memory serves me, he won the Cliburn right about the same time as I started with the Baton Rouge Symphony, so our careers have been somewhat on the same timeline. Jon is one of those artists that surprises audiences with what he can pull out of a work expressively, even the old warhorses. His Rach/Pag was one of the most dramatic, luscious and spirited that I have heard. He is one of my all-time favorites, and I know I am not alone.
 
About that Respighi: Pini di Roma (1924) is one of the most brilliant and celebrated symphonic poems in the orchestral repertoire. It is the second entry in the composer’s famed "Roman Trilogy," falling between Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome, 1916) and Feste Romane (Roman Festivals, 1928). Audiences love Pines of Rome, musicians love Pines of Rome, people who write about music, often not so much. Respighi at times got short shrift from theorists, musicologists, and critics especially in the 20th century. His innovations were not overt or shocking like Stravinsky or the Second Viennese guys (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern), but he was no less original. He worked within the realm of tonality, but extended the possibilities of color, atmosphere and expression into new realms we had not previously heard. Not as much ink was spilled about him, but he left a great legacy of masterworks.
 
This concert was presented as my “last” in Lansing but actually, I get to do one more with my wonderful LSO colleagues. This week is our annual Young Peoples’ Concert on Wednesday. Two shows, thousands of kids thrilled to hear the orchestra. Should be fun!
 
NEXT UP
 
Lansing Symphony Orchestra
Wharton Center for the Performing Arts
East Lansing, Michigan
Wednesday May 20, 2026 10:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.
 
Link Up “The Orchestra Sings”
 
#LansingSymphony #jonnakamatsu #jaredmiller]]>Sun, 29 Mar 2026 23:21:07 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/march-27-2026
You probably remember an important musicological moment in the 1965 classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. While pianist Schroeder is playing Beethoven’s Für Elise, Lucy interrupts him and the following dialogue takes place:
 
Lucy: "Everyone talks about how great Beethoven was. Beethoven wasn't so great."
Schroeder: "What do you mean, Beethoven wasn't so great?"
Lucy: "He never got his picture on bubble gum cards, did he? Have you ever seen his picture on a bubble gum card? Hmmm? How can you say someone is great who's never had his picture on bubble gum cards?"
 
Schroeder responds with a blank stare and the Peanuts characteristic “Good Grief.”
 
The other thing everybody talks about with Beethoven (although the “everybody” might be a smaller cohort here) is that Beethoven’s metronome was broken. I don’t think Beethoven’s metronome was broken. I’m not sure what Lucy thought about that, and Schroeder never mentioned it.
 
It’s true, occasionally Beethoven gives us a metronome marking that is outrageous, impossible and/or ridiculous, but that doesn’t happen often enough to dismiss all of his metronome markings entirely.
 
A little background info here:  The metronome was new technology in his day, invented in 1815. Beethoven was 45 years old. He was thrilled with this invention because it would mean musicians would know how fast or slow to play his music if he wasn’t around to tell them. Tempo was very important to Beethoven. We know from his correspondence that when learning of someone’s performance of one of his works, his first question would be “how was the tempo?”
 
Not only did the composer incorporate metronome markings in his compositions moving forward after learning of this new device, he even went back and wrote them in his existing works, often with the help of his nephew Karl and perhaps others. As is commonly known, Beethoven was deaf at this point, so he would not be able to hear the clicks of the metronome and accurately translate that into a metronome marking, so he had to enlist the help of a hearing person.
 
This is where some of the explanations of the outlier metronome markings come in. Were those rare instances of clear errors in the markings the result of something essentially lost in translation between the composer and the transcriber?  There is a wealth of literature out there on this topic for anyone interested in a deeper dive.
 
Naturally, this issue presents a conundrum to the thinking musician. How much weight do we give to Beethoven’s printed metronome indications?
 
I sometimes feel as if the very controversy gave carte blanche to some musicians to do whatever they felt like. Considering some of the early recorded performances from the first half of the 20th century, one would think musicians didn’t really care about such trivial matters as the composer’s wishes. I think there was also a trend towards slower is better, as in more profound. Is it almost as if some musicians were asking “how much can we wring out of this passage if we really stretch it out?”
 
This is not to say that these interpretations were wrong. They were just a function of their era and its zeitgeist, and frankly many are masterful in their own ways.
 
My generation of musician and prior, before historical performance practice really started to inform the music world, was saturated in overly-slow Beethoven, and that is a problem that can be hard to shake.
 
It goes something like this, as young musicians (teen and pre-teen) we listened to recordings of our favorite works over and over, and of course Beethoven was in the favorite category for most. Before YouTube and Spotify, when a record cost $5, we didn’t have access to multiple recorded performances, so whatever recording we owned became imprinted on us the way a baby bird imprints the image of its mother. In whatever way that work unfolded on our recording, that was the way the piece was meant to go, end of discussion. Of course, at that point, this musician wasn’t really even looking at the metronome marking or the score, I just loved the music. That can become a very difficult impression to shake as a person transitions from young music enthusiast to someone performing for a living.
 
I’ve always tried to approach every work as though I were doing the world premiere, even, and especially the really famous stuff. I just work with what I have in front of me, the score and existing scholarship that sheds light on the composer’s wishes or expectations.
 
There is a saying among musicians, “tradition is just the last bad performance.” That seems a little extreme to me, but it is good to take traditions with a grain of salt. We know that many composers did not care for some of the performance traditions that developed in their music. They just wanted it played the way they wrote it. That is sometimes easier said than done, as our initial mother imprint can stay with us in a powerful way.
 
The generations who followed mine, have not been so burdened by this first-impression prejudice. The historical performance practice movement encouraged us to re-think and re-consider how works should and could be interpreted based upon concrete evidence. The internet too has changed everything. Young musicians can listen to a nearly unlimited range of performances of most works and lay a broader foundation from which their knowledge, tastes and preferences can develop.
 
In physics, escape velocity is the minimum speed an object must attain to break free of the gravitational pull of another object. These strong first impressions of a work formed in childhood present a powerful interpretive gravitational pull on us as we form our own visions of a work as adults and professional performers. Breaking free of that pull and achieving interpretive escape velocity is a function of conviction, experimentation, confidence and pure repetition. It isn’t just about tempo, but also how a reconsidered tempo relates to other elements like articulation, phrasing, releases, and pacing.
 
For the first time, this week I felt I found my own personal escape velocity on the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. It was worth the effort. It felt to me like a Beethoven 7 for the 21st century, and one that was hopefully close to the composer’s concept from 1812.
 
Musicians needn’t be a slave to the metronome, but it’s good to consult it once in a while. You never know what insights it might provide.
 
Speaking of escape velocity, when Matthew Beck launched into the coda of Kevin Puts’ Marimba Concerto, (a section marked “as fast as possible”) I thought we were all headed for the moon. It was hair-raisingly exciting, bringing that remarkable work to an exhilarating finish. Matt is the LSO’s Principal Percussionist and was the featured soloist this weekend. I’ve always had the greatest respect for him as an artist when he is in the section, and he played beautifully as a soloist as well.
 
We opened the program with Sibelius’ Valse Triste, a work that goes from contemplative, palpable sorrow to unbridled abandon and back again, all in about 7 minutes. It was my first time conducting that work. I don’t know what took me so long. There is nothing else quite like it, even among Sibelius’ own works.
 
Congratulations to all my LSO colleagues on the stage Friday. What joy to embrace that music with you, and thanks for going along with me.
 
NEXT UP
 
Lansing Symphony Orchestra
Jon Nakamatsu, piano
Wharton Center for the Performing Arts
East Lansing, Michigan
Friday May 15, 2026
 
RACHMANINOFF         Variations on a Theme of Paganini
Jared MILLER              WORLD PREMIERE
RESPIGHI                     The Pines of Rome
 
#LansingSymphony #MatthewBeck #KevinPuts #Beethovenmetronome]]>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:24 GMThttps://www.timothymuffitt.com/comings-and-goings/march-12-2026
I had some extraordinary good fortune early in my career. Just by being in the right place at the right time, I was able to do two concerts with the legendary Van Cliburn. For the first concert, I was the Associate Conductor of the Austin Symphony at the time. They were in the middle of a music director search, so the concert came to me. The second opportunity came just a few years later. I was then Music Director of the Baton Rouge Symphony and we hired Van to be part of our Pennington Great Performers Series.
 
Van had been in retirement for many years, so these were rare re-surfacings and unforgettable opportunities for which I will always be grateful. The friendship we developed as a result was a gift as well.
 
I bring up Van because I was thinking about him last night as I was driving home from a concert I did with the wonderful Toledo Symphony in Archbold, Ohio. One of the things Van and I discussed a few times over the years were the concerts he did early on in his career called Community Concerts, and I would not be surprised if Archbold was on that circuit.
 
The Community Concerts series was a visionary initiative designed by the now defunct Columbia Artist Management to bring world-class classical music to small towns throughout North America. They started the series in 1927 with the slogan "A Carnegie Hall in Every Town." CAM required these small towns to form local nonprofit associations and sell enough subscriptions to cover the costs before any performers were booked. It allowed CAM to send world class artists to perform in remote gymnasiums and local theaters that would otherwise never have had the budget to host these great musicians. I have no doubt the revenues were a strong motivator for CAM as well.
 
As you can imagine, the impact of these concerts was transformative, effectively democratizing classical music by bringing the global stage to rural America. This started 100 years ago, so media was just radio and recordings, both of which at that time left much to be desired sonically. Live music was a real treat.
 
For Van, the Community Concerts circuit also was kind of a training ground. He toured constantly doing these concerts in the mid-1950s, honing the artistry that would eventually lead to his historic 1958 victory at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. The series did wonders for the appreciation of great music, ultimately reaching over 1,200 member cities weaving classical music into the daily lives of people all across the country. It lasted over 75 years. How cool was that?
 
The concert in Archbold Ohio, with the Toledo Symphony was probably a very similar vibe. Archbold is a lovely and vibrant small town, but they don’t have a professional orchestra. They do have a beautiful venue, and an enthusiastic audience, so it was a great pleasure to share an evening of music with them, right in their own back yard. Thank you to the Toledo Symphony for inviting me to be a part of such a wonderful and special event.
 
NEXT UP
 
Lansing Symphony Orchestra
Matthew Beck, Marimba
Wharton Center for the Performing Arts
East Lansing, Michigan
Friday March 27, 7:30 p.m.
 
SIBELIUS          Valse Triste
PUTS                Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra
BEETHOVEN    Symphony No. 7
 
#toledosymphony #archboldohio #CAMI #CommunityConcerts
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