About the 90th Anniversary Season – Puttin’ on the Ritz
We’re Puttin’ on the Ritz here at the Springfield Symphony to celebrate our 90th season! Our orchestra was formed in 1934 and performed its first concert in February of 1935, and has performed every year since then, through war and peace, prosperity and poverty, and even a pandemic. Through good times and bad, we have continuously made music for the people of Springfield and Southwest Missouri, bringing our community together to share in the excitement and beauty of hearing a live symphony orchestra.
The 1930s were a time of great political upheaval and the Great Depression, but even in the face of such difficulties, music and culture thrived. It was a golden era of transformative new movements in the arts, as we saw the rise of stunning Art Deco in art and architecture, literature that celebrated the rich history of the different regions of our country, and in music, the solidification of jazz as a true American art form for everyone as great singers of the day performed and ultimately recorded what would become the standards of the American playbook. We look to those songs that became standards in our founding decade as the inspiration for our concerts this year, and celebrate the way the arts can connect us across the years.
Let our thrilling 90th anniversary year put you in the mood to celebrate with us while we put on the Ritz and get our rhythm in this major milestone for music in Missouri!
We’re puttin’ on the ritz to kick off our 90th anniversary season with an opening night of musical fireworks, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s triumphant Procession of the Nobles and Grieg’s Piano Concerto, which is always an audience favorite, performed by the marvelous Steinway Artist Spencer Myer. We will also perform, for the first time in the Springfield Symphony’s history, Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, a deeply-moving musical portrait of life in Russia under Stalin, which has been hailed as a work encompassing both lofty principles and great artistry, and also a deep and poignant humanity.
The Springfield Symphony’s got rhythm in Sound, Echo, and Silence – an electrifying new concerto by Thailand’s star composer Narong Prangcharoen for traditional Thai instruments and orchestra. This will only be the second US performance of this thrilling work that will have you mesmerized and tapping your feet with the fascinating rhythms. Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony is also full of dazzling orchestral features including a pizzicato movement and a finale bursting with percussive beats and flourishes.
We team up again with the Missouri State University’s star-studded department of Theatre and Dance for a concert version of Rogers and Hammerstein’s beautiful and haunting Carousel. This score is arguably one of the most gorgeous to come out of Broadway’s Golden Era, and it will be thrilling to hear a full symphony backing up the MSU students and featuring new faculty member Josh Young, fresh from Broadway runs of Jesus Christ Superstar and Amazing Grace.
We’ll put you in the holiday mood with all of your favorites at our traditional holiday concert, featuring the Mid-American Singers, in a night of both secular and sacred works, including selections from Handel’s Messiah. You’ll leave ready to celebrate the season after our annual sing-along.
It might be the middle of winter, but you’ll be singing “Summertime….and the livin’ is easy” when the Springfield Symphony performs George Gershwin’s symphonic portrait from his African-American opera Porgy and Bess. We also perform the music of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Zhou Long in his thrilling and cacophonous symphonic work The Rhyme of Taigu, inspired by Japanese Taiko drumming.
There are few works more spiritually powerful than Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, a five-movement contemplation and celebration of resurrection and the afterlife. At times tempestuous and at other times angelically sublime, this work will take you on a musical and emotional journey and leave you breathless with its beauty and uplifting message of redemption. We are joined by the combined choirs of Drury, Missouri State, and Evangel universities.
The Springfield Symphony performed Beethoven’s ever-popular and dramatic Fifth Symphony at its inaugural concert in 1935, so in honor of our 90th year, we play it again. You will also hear Sibelius’s stormy and passionate Violin Concerto and Overture for Orchestra by Polish composer Graznya Bacewich, one of the first women composers from Poland to gain international acclaim. And there will be one more piece, a surprise for everyone to honor our anniversary…that you’ll have to be here to hear!
Let yourself drift into a pleasant reverie at an intimate evening of small-scale symphonic works from light classical and Baroque favorites to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw’s charming new Entre’Acte for strings. We will feature soloists from the Springfield Symphony in this night of elegant and popular fare for the classical orchestra.
We can’t think of a more wonderful way to finish our 90th Anniversary Season than with another collaboration with the outstanding Saint Louis Ballet – this time featuring several different dances with jazzy music by some of the greatest Broadway composers, including George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers. Don’t miss this opportunity to see the Springfield Symphony team up again with one of the best ballet companies of the Midwest.
