The Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Orchestra will play its final concert of the season, "Fantastic Landscapes," at 3 pm on Sunday, May 4 in Chenery Auditorium. "I ask every year what the Junior Symphony would like to perform the following year from all returning players. And I would say one of the most frequent requests that I get is for film scores, movie music, things like that,” says Koehler in a conversation with Cara Lieurance.
The program kicks off with music from The Lord of the Rings films by Howard Shore, followed by a movement from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Oboe Concerto featuring Leo Egan, who won the 2024 Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition (one of three recent competition wins). Egan tells Lieurance that they embraced the well-known concerto because “I realized, okay, I have my college auditions coming up and I need to play a standard concerto... And I thought [it] would do really well for that because it makes a great use of a very wide range of the oboe." They will be attending the Mannes School of Music in New York in the fall.
Other works on the program include music from the ballet Wild Swans by Elena Kats-Chernin and Carl Nielsen’s Aladdin Suite. And music of John Williams: "I thought if I don't do some Star Wars music and wish the good people of Kalamazoo ‘May the 4th be with you,’ then what are any of us doing here in the first place?” Koehler jokes.
Tickets and more information are at the Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Orchestra website.
