December 18, 2023

The Lansing Symphony’s annual Holiday Pops concert is in the books now. We had a festive and capacity crowd at the Wharton Center yesterday afternoon, and I think they left happy. It feels great to be a part of a community’s holiday traditions, and as such we look forward to this concert every year.
 
The famous phrase “make hay when the sun shines” has a slightly different application to the professional musician. The sun tends to shine in December as their calendars are booked with one holiday engagement after another through most of the month. Many will work on New Year’s Eve too.
 
The impressive thing to me is that one never senses a casual approach from these musicians as a result of that schedule. They know that, while this might be holiday concert No. 15 for them this month, it’s concert No. 1 for the audience. These concerts are not easy. There is a lot of work to do in a short amount of time to deliver a professional quality product, and what I see from our musicians is that they give 100% every single time…the focus is on the audience experience as it should be. It is a pleasure and honor for me to work with musicians like those of the LSO.
 
Kudos to our guest artist, Teri Hansen, for her engaging presence yesterday afternoon. She brought a remarkably wide range of styles in her repertoire and the audience loved it.
 
Kudos also to the young people that joined our concert, with a guest appearance from members of the Lansing Children’s Choir and our wonderful “Side By Side” participants, area high school students who joined us for a few works yesterday. You all sounded wonderful.
 
Next up for me is LSO’s January Masterworks, music of Mozart, Bizet and a world premiere of David Biedenbender!
 
NEXT UP
 
January 12, 2024
 
Lansing Symphony Orchestra
Neil Mueller, trumpet
Wharton Center for the Performing Arts
East Lansing, Michigan
7:30 p.m.
 
MOZART      Symphony No. 35 “Haffner”
BIEDENBENDER     River of Time, concerto     for trumpet WORLD PREMIERE
BIZET      Symphony in C           

​#terihansen