Andrew Koehler, music director of the Kalamazoo Junior Symphony, Kalamazoo Philharmonia, and WMU Symphony, touched on how each group is faring during the pandemic in a conversation with Cara Lieurance.
In late March, the WMU Symphony will record two full concerts to be released online in April. 2020 Stulberg Silver Medalist Yeyong Jin will spend two days with the orchestra to record showpieces by Sarasate and Saint-Saens. They'll also feature an early work by Black American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, written in the 1930s. A reduced Kalamazoo Philharmonia has begun rehearsing as well, to the joy of many of its members. They'll record an upcoming concert of Purcell, Warlock, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Ives and Respighi. And the Kalamazoo Junior Symphony, with the help of video editing, will record the Barber of Seville overture by recording each part separately.