Season of change
When it comes to the Spokane Symphony’s 2007-08 season, in the words of a song made famous by Billie Holiday: There’ll be some changes made.
For more than 30 years, the orchestra’s concerts have been held in what was once called the Spokane Opera House, now the INB Performing Arts Center.
Next season, many concerts will move to the newly remodeled Fox Theater. But not all of them will move to the Fox, and none at the beginning of the season.
Classics series concerts at the Fox also will move to new times – Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons – from the current Friday nights.
The 2007-08 season schedule announced today will see the return of former symphony music director Fabio Mechetti for a performance that will include Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony on Jan. 26 and 27.
Returning soloists include cellist Alban Gerhardt on Feb. 9 and 10, and violinist Anne Akiko Myers on April 5 and 6.
The SuperPops series opens Oct. 13 with Bernadette Peters, the seven-time Tony Award winning singer-actress-comedienne, in a program of her signature songs.
Most SuperPops concerts and the orchestra’s annual performances of “The Nutcracker” ballet will stay at the INB-PAC, which also will host the first two concerts of the Classics series while work finishes on the Fox.
But beginning Dec. 1, the symphony’s Classics series and its Casual Classics programs will head to The Fox.
“The real excitement for us and for our audience next season will be the move to the Fox,” says Music Director Eckart Preu.
“But the Opera House has been home to the Spokane Symphony since 1974. So we want to leave the Opera House with a bang and begin in the Fox with another bang.”
The Classics season opens Sept. 14 at the INB-PAC with pianist Louis Lortie playing both of Ravel’s piano concertos.
“Ravel gives us a great way to begin our season,” Preu says. “And Louis Lortie is one of the very few pianists who can take on these two brilliant and very difficult concertos in one concert.
“And we’ll end that concert with Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at and Exhibition,’ a real demonstration of what our orchestra can do.”
The symphony’s farewell to the former Opera House will take place Oct. 19 with a performance of Verdi’s monumental Requiem.
The concerts marking the orchestra’s entry to the Fox on Dec. 1 and 2 will conclude with Stravinsky’s path-breaking “Rite of Spring.”
“But we must bless our new house with Mozart,” Preu says. “And what better way to do that than with the Overture to ‘The Magic Flute’ – because magic is what we want to create there.”
The move to the Fox will involve a month’s preparation for the orchestra. The only performance in November will be a SuperPops concert at the INB-PAC with the Latin percussionist and bandleader Poncho Sanchez, conducted by Associate Conductor Morihiko Nakahara.
“We will use that month trying out the Fox to fine-tune and see what we have to adjust,” Preu says.
“The sound at the Fox will be purely acoustic – no amplification and no ‘electronic enhancement.’ That was talked about at first. But why move to a hall with better sound when you’re going to start messing around with it?”
Those adjustments will include a change in the first chair of the first violins. Mateusz Wolski will succeed the symphony’s longtime concertmaster, Kelly Farris, who retired last year after 37 seasons in that position.
“That will be good for all of us,” Preu says. “We will be creating the sound we want for the new hall, and the concertmaster has a lot to do with the character of that sound.
“Mateusz has a very warm sound that is a little different than you hear from most American orchestras.”
A more European sound?
“Well, you might choose to put it that way,” the German-born Preu said. “But that quality will set the example for all our string players.
“Mateusz is a brilliant solo virtuoso, too, as you will hear when he plays the Wieniawski concerto in February.”
New faces among the season’s Classics soloists include pianist Cecile Licad at the opening of the Fox; percussionist Maria Flurry, playing Tan Dun’s new Water Concerto, in January; and flutist Christina Jennings and pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine in separate concerts in March.
Casual Classics concerts at the Fox (the former Symphony at The Met series) will have single Friday performances replace the previous Sunday matinee-Tuesday evening pairs.
Soloists will include the Seattle Symphony’s recently appointed principal cellist, Joshua Roman, in December and Wolski’s previously mentioned performance in February.
The SuperPops series sees the fourth return of the popular singing group Five by Design for the Holiday Pops at the Fox in December; the trio Three Mo’ Tenors in February; and the renowned Celtic fiddler Eileen Ivers in April.
The orchestra will discontinue its performances in Coeur d’Alene and at Eastern Washington University. It will introduce a family concert on Jan. 19, and the Symphony YES! educational series will continue with the Classics programs of Sept. 14, Jan. 13, March 2 and May 4.
The Symphony Soiree chamber music series at the Davenport Hotel will continue with concerts in October, January and March. And there will be two more Symphony on the Edge shows in the less formal confines of the Big Easy Concert House.
The move to the Fox means that Classics series subscribers will make a choice between 8 p.m. performances on Saturday or 3 p.m. matinees on Sunday.
The Fox will seat 1,633 for symphony concerts, compared to about 2,600 for the INB-PAC, necessitating the split.
For returning subscribers, “priority seating will be determined by factors including how long the person has been a subscriber, how much the subscriber has donated over the years, and whether or not the person has been a symphony volunteer,” says the orchestra’s executive director, Brenda Nienhouse.
Renewals must be made by May 11; after that, seats will be open to the general public. Call the symphony at (509) 624-1200 or see www.spokanesymphony.org for more information.