The new season of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra begins at 7:30 pm on Saturday, Sep 27 at Miller Auditorium, with world-renowned pianist Emanuel Ax as the guest artist. Music director Julian Kuerti, in a conversation with Cara Lieurance, says he is thrilled to have the musician on the program, calling it "incredibly special." Ax will perform Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto in C minor. Kuerti notes that the work is "repertoire that he lives and breathes," describing it as a piece that "gets richer and deeper and more profound as you play it and as you live with it." The concerto has a "little twist," Kuerti reveals, encouraging listeners to "listen for it towards the end when he switches to C major and it goes-happily ever-after."
The concert also includes a rarity: a suite from Terence Blanchard's opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Kuerti explains that the KSO has secured permission to play the suite, making it only the second time the piece has ever been heard publicly, even "before it's released to the general public." The program concludes with Ravel's La Valse, described by Kuerti as “a driving and emotional look at the history of the waltz that "self-destructs" at the end.
CEO Jessica Mallow Gulley joins the conversation to elaborate on the Kalamazoo Symphony’s diverse and ambitious season, including the return of The Nutcracker with Ballet Arts Ensemble on November 22nd, and a fully staged, choreographed production of West Side Story on April 18th. The season will also feature a film with orchestra screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl on March 21st, and the "epic, large work" Mahler’s Third Symphony in a collaboration with the WMU Chorus and the Kalamazoo Children’s Chorus.
Tickets and full season information are available at the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra website.
This interview was summarized by Gemini AI and edited by the author.
