The Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Orchestra (KJSO) brings its concert season to a close Sunday, Apr 26 at 3 p.m. in Chenery Auditorium with a program titled "Souvenir,"led by music director Andrew Koehler. The concert doubles as a preview of repertoire the ensemble will take on an international tour to Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia in late June.
In a conversation with Cara Lieurance, Koehler says the travel theme shapes every piece on the program, saying: "These are all pieces about composers who have traveled, and those experiences have affected them."
The concert opens with Echoes of Ossian by Danish composer Niels Gade, his Opus 1, inspired by Celtic folklore. Koehler praises the work as a remarkable debut: "From the first note to the last, every detail seems perfectly measured and perfectly wrought." He notes the piece's stylistic kinship with Felix Mendelssohn, under whom Gade later served as an assistant in Leipzig.
Next comes the Suite Algérienne by Camille Saint-Saëns, a composer who made roughly 140 international trips and repeatedly returned to Algeria. Koehler singles out the suite's second movement — depicting dances overheard in a Moorish café — as "the real stunner of the set."
In a KJSO first, the concert's centerpiece is not a concerto soloist but a composer: 15-year-old violinist Terry Stamp, whose original orchestral work Night Mystique receives its world premiere. Stamp won the orchestra's combined concerto and composition competition, impressing the judging panel with a piece Koehler describes as showing "already a very personal voice" and a deep familiarity with composers like Vaughan Williams and Mahler.
The program closes with Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, a dazzling orchestral showpiece that Koehler calls "a great way for us to be sent off to the Balkans."
A bon voyage concert is also scheduled for Friday, June 26, at Kalamazoo College. Tickets, tour information, and donation opportunities are available at kjso.org.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.