The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra welcomes guest conductor Michael Christie to lead its next Symphonic Series concert. Mr. Christie is the current director of the Minnesota Opera, which recently premiered The Manchurian Candidate in a second collaboration with composer Kevin Puts, who won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Silent Night, their first opera together.
Mr. Christie says he's looking forward to bringing out the push-pull, operatic gestures in Debussy's masterpiece La Mer, a tone-poem of the sea. He also admires Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 for its ability to adapt to a wide range of interpreters. It was his suggestion to complete the program with an overture by Hector Berlioz, to remind the audience that French music isn't all subtle impressionism, but can arrive with a helping of bombast as well.