Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra : All posts

Ann Arbor Symphony tickets on sale for next season

Arie Lipsky will return to lead the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra for its 85th season.

courtesy of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra

Tickets are on sale for the subscription season, which opens with a performance of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."

The full text of the orchestra's announcement appears below:

A2SO leader Arie Lipsky moving to Ann Arbor, adding prestigious new post

Arie Lipsky

courtesy of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra

Saturday evening, the last A2SO 2012-2013 mainstage concert opened with the announcement of Lipsky’s appointment as principal guest conductor with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted there on a regular basis since 1997.

Lipsky considers the Haifa Symphony his first “hometown” orchestra, but admirers of Lipsky’s craft need not fret that he’s leaving Ann Arbor any time soon. On the contrary, incoming A2SO Board President J. Robert Gates also announced that as of this summer, Lipsky and his wife Rachel and daughter Inbal will make Ann Arbor their home.

concert review

Ann Arbor Symphony delivers a riveting, powerful Mahler 'Tragic' Symphony

The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s season finale at the Michigan Theater Saturday evening began with announcements of good things to come for the orchestra and its maestro, Music Director Arie Lipsky. You can read all about it in the sidebar accompanying this review.

But there were good things ahead in the 85 minutes that followed these announcements. Or rather, one good thing: the massive Mahler “Tragic” Symphony, No. 6 in A Minor.

This extraordinary music is an exhausting and exhilarating journey for orchestra, conductor and audience, an endurance test physically and emotionally. And on this occasion, the orchestra, brass and woodwind rich, did far more than endure. Under Lipsky’s baton and with new faces in some principal chairs (including the former concertmaster, Stephen Shipps, substituting brilliantly for Aaron Berofsky), the orchestra delivered a riveting performance of this dramatic, intense, complicated work.

concert preview

Ann Arbor Symphony closing out season with Mahler's massive 'Tragic' Symphony

How to end a season? For the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra in recent years, the answer has been a grand work—2012’s "Carmina Burana," for example.

This year is no exception. Saturday at the Michigan Theater, the orchestra, under the baton of Music Director Arie Lipsky, closes out its 2012-2013 season with one massive, towering work: Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, often called “the Tragic.”

There are many questions about whether that title was one Mahler bestowed on the work, or wanted attached to it. But it’s a detail, among many, about this work, that continues to resonate as the work passes its 100th birthday.

concert review

Ann Arbor Symphony takes listeners on a trip to far-off lands

Dreary March in Ann Arbor is not a bad time for a trip abroad. Anyone looking for a transporting experience in town, though, could have done no better than the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s “Scheherazade” program Friday night at the Michigan Theater.

Just as the “Arabian Nights” stories whisked readers off to exotic adventures, so, too, the did orchestra succeed on Friday in placing us elsewhere while we were fixed in our seats: most of all in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Arabian Nights-inspired symphonic suite “Scheherazade,” which gave the program its title; but also in Evan Chambers’ “Crazed for the Flame,” which opened the program; and in the Elgar Cello Concerto, with cellist Amit Peled as soloist.
With their decidedly Eastern flavor, “Crazed for the Flame” and “Scheherazade” were an inspired pairing and a terrific frame for the concert.

concert preview

Ann Arbor Symphony offering 'Scheherazade,' Elgar cello concerto, and work by U-M's Evan Chambers

Arie Lipsky

courtesy of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra

It’s a week that’s madder than most: the Ann Arbor classical musical calendar is so packed, culminating Saturday night with the University Musical Society Ford Honors Program featuring superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, that the A2SO moved its usual Saturday concert to Friday evening.

So that’s the first thing you need to know: Show up Friday night, not Saturday, to claim your seat at the Michigan Theater for what promises to be an extraordinary concert. It may even be as transporting as “Scheherazade,” “The Arabian Nights” stories that inspired both Rimsky-Korsakov’s music—featured on the bill—and the concert’s title.

Attend 'Hearts for the Arts' to raise money for youth music programs

Help the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra raise $70,000 to bring musical arts enrichment programs to over 30,000 area students at the Hearts for the Arts fundraiser at the Barton Hills Country Club and Golf Course on Saturday.

concert review

Ann Arbor Symphony sparkles for Mozart's birthday

What did you think of the concert? Leave a comment and / or vote in the poll at the end of this post:

By Stephanie Kadel Taras

For AnnArbor.com

The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s 2013 Mozart Birthday Bash was a reminder that homegrown talent deserves appreciation.

That was something Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart did not always enjoy in his hometown of Salzburg, Austria. It is absurd to imagine 18th century aristocrats talking over his performances at parties and treating him like a servant. But Mozart gets the last laugh when his nearly 250-year-old compositions attract a full house to the Michigan Theater.

concert preview

Ann Arbor Symphony's Mozart Birthday Bash to focus on less familiar works

Yehonatan Berick

Most of us, however, don’t have to put our oeuvre up against Wolfgang Amadeus’ output—and so our encounters with him are pure pleasure, from youth through working years to golden years. And we can thank our lucky stars that the Divine Mr. M was a January baby. A Mozart Birthday Bash, such as the A2SO offers each year—complete with party treats at the end—is just the sunny elixir to eradicate the frigid winter gray that is January in Michigan.

“Upbeat energy; genius; eternal youth—that’s why we do our Mozart concert every January,” Lipsky said in a recent phone call. “And in the end we get some chocolate. What else do we need?”

photo gallery: Scenes from 'Sing Along With Santa' 2012

The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra hosted its annual "Sing Along With Santa" event on Saturday at Bethlehem United Church of Christ. Photographer Daniel Brenner captured these images.

concert review

with poll: Ann Arbor Symphony's first Holiday Pops a festive musical treat

Arie Lipsky

courtesy of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra

Ann Arbor received an early Christmas present Friday night, thanks to the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever “Holiday Pops” concert.

It was truly a festive occasion, with not only the A2SO on the Hill Auditorium stage, but the men’s choir Measure for Measure and the choirs of Huron and Pioneer high schools at various times as well.

Even Santa was in the house, accompanied by some really tall green-and-red clad elves, later revealed as members of the University of Michigan Men’s Rowing Team. Conductor Arie Lipsky looked dapper in a Santa hat, revealing that he donned it on a challenge, thus winning $20.

concert preview

Ann Arbor Symphony presenting a new tradition: holiday pops concert

Measure For Measure

Friday evening at Hill Auditorium, the A2SO inaugurates “Holiday Pops,” a concert it plans to make an annual tradition.

With the choirs of both Huron and Pioneer high schools on hand to sing in the season, as well as the men’s choir Measure for Measure, the orchestra presents an evening of light holiday fare, both choral and orchestral.

“We wanted to do it,” said A2SO Music Director Arie Lipksy, “because there is not something like that in our community, a concert in a friendly, family environment that celebrates the holidays with music, joy, and community artistry. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

concert review

Ann Arbor Symphony offers an exciting 'Sabor Latino'

Marco Sartor publicity photo

That was one of the take-aways from the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s Saturday mainstage concert at the Michigan Theater, where a traversal of music with Latin flair included Rodrigo’s “Fantasia para un Gentilhombre” and Ravel’s “Bolero.”

How worn are the grooves on any old LPs you happen to have of these works? Both inspire high fidelity among listeners; but hearing them up close and personal—and live—in concert is worth the ticket in a performance such as Saturday’s.

concert preview

Ann Arbor Symphony offering 3 family concerts this season

It’s a busy weekend for the musicians of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra and their maestro, Arie Lipsky.

Saturday evening, it’s Mainstage Concert time at the Michigan Theater. Then, Sunday afternoon, Nov. 4, musicians and maestro return, along with a host of friends (some of them furry), for “Carnival of the Animals,” the first of the orchestra’s three Family Concerts this season.

concert preview

Ann Arbor Symphony to explore Latin flavors at Michigan Theater concert

It’s a time of year when sunnier climes begin to have extra appeal, and the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Music Director Arie Lipsky, obligingly grants us a visa to Spain and Latin America Saturday evening, in a bill called “Sabor Latino.”

Under that umbrella—or perhaps one should says parasol—what’s in store at the Michigan Theater that night are debuts and encores and something sort of in between.

In that neither-here-nor-there category is a work that’s decidedly not wishy-washy: Richard Strauss’s “Don Juan,” a piece that Lipsky has no hesitations about calling “one of the most demanding in the orchestral literature.”

“There’s no audition for orchestra without some of the runs” in the piece, said Lipsky, “which are unplayable.”

concert review

Ann Arbor Symphony in top form for 'Brahms and Friends'

Mr. Brahms had good company Saturday evening at the Michigan Theater when the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra presented “Brahms and Friends,” its second mainstage concert of the season.

Truth be told, there was only one “friend” on this two-composer program - a Northern comrade, Sibelius - but the companionship on stage could not have been better. The orchestra, following on its triumphant all-Beethoven season-opener, was in top form, and in the young pianist Roman Rabinovich, it had a soloist superbly attuned to both the subtle intimacies and extroverted glories of the headlining work, the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor.

concert preview

Ann Arbor Symphony welcoming return of Roman Rabinovich for Brahms 'And Friends'

Roman Rabinovich

photo by Jose Franch-Ballester

For the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, which opened the season with a bravura Beethoven Nine at a packed Hill Auditorium, the answer is to turn to another of those “B” List composers: Johannes Brahms.

“Brahms and Friends,” the orchestra’s October main-stage concert at the Michigan Theater Saturday evening, features the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, with the rising young pianist, Roman Rabinovich, as the soloist. And the Brahms’ “friend” on the program, the Sibelius Symphony No. 2, is no also-ran, but a “Symphony of Independence” that drives to a mighty and heroic conclusion.

concert review

Ann Arbor Symphony opens season in Hill Auditorium with powerful Beethoven program

“Do you sense the Creator, world?” Schiller asks in his “Ode to Joy,” the text Beethoven set in the finale of his late, and still great Ninth Symphony.

That “spark divine” made itself felt many times Saturday evening as the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of its music director Arie Lipsky, opened its 2012-2013 season with an all-Beethoven performance featuring the Ninth.

concert preview

Ann Arbor Symphony opening its season with Beethoven's Ninth in Hill Auditorium

Arie Lipsky

courtesy of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra

“Let the brotherly love resound,” says Maestro Arie Lipsky, adding, with election-year flair, “I’m the music director, and I approved this message.”

Lipsky’s not running for office—though he was recently reappointed to another 5 year term as A2SO music director—but there’s no doubt of his, or the orchestra’s, popularity as the new season launches. Subscriptions are at an all-time high, and the orchestra’s formula of fine playing, innovative programming, endless outreach and promotion of both local and international talent has earned it a secure and beloved place in a town that has no shortage of fabulous music to attend to.

Ann Arbor Symphony seeking volunteers, interns

The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, just about to begin its new season, is looking for volunteers to usher at concerts and perform a variety of other duties. The orchestra also has several internship opportunities available.