ADRIAN — Last season was the Season of Stravinsky for the Adrian Symphony Orchestra. Now, for the upcoming 2024-25 year, it’s the Season of Copland.
The ASO focused on four particular Stravinsky masterworks last year in order to give audiences an in-depth look at one composer’s music “in a digestible way,” ASO music director Bruce Anthony Kiesling said. And, by the end of the season, “the story of the music started to really resonate.”
The success of this approach led Kiesling to decide he wanted to turn the ASO’s focus to Aaron Copland’s music. Although both Stravinsky and Copland wrote a number of ballet scores, the Stravinsky ballet music ASO audiences heard last year were all based on folklore and mythology, whereas this season’s Copland ballet music is all about “distinctly American archetypes,” Kiesling said.
Oct. 12’s season opener includes the full score, rather than just a suite, of Copland’s ballet “Billy the Kid,” while his score for “Rodeo” is part of the Nov. 10 concert and “Appalachian Spring” is on the March 14, 2025, program.
It’s music that evokes Americana as few other composers could, and Copland “is such a sensational storyteller,” Kiesling said. “The first notes of ‘Appalachian Spring’ and ‘Billy the Kid’ just set the scene.” And Copland’s music overall is “something that sounds simple but is deceptively complex. It’s so much trickier than it sounds.”
But those three works aren’t the only Copland pieces audiences will hear. There’s also “El Salon Mexico” on Nov. 10 and both the “Jubilee Variation” and the “Lincoln Portrait” on the season-ending program on May 2, 2025.
Also this season, the ASO continues its multiyear commitment to programming music by women composers, with Jennifer Higdon’s “Peachtree Street” on the Oct. 12 program and Reena Esmail’s “Vishwas III: Testament” on March 14.
Esmail is a composer who’s “shooting to the top of the orchestral world,” Kiesling said, and March 14’s concert audience will hear a work with a very south Asian feel that “sounds like no one else’s [music]. It combines influences in a way that just leaps off the stage.”
The season also features both new and returning guest artists. Pianist Henry Kramer, who performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the ASO last November, returns Oct. 12 for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.
Also returning to the ASO stage is Sarah D’Angelo, a singer and clarinetist who performed with Paul Keller and the ASO Swing Band in 2023. This time, she joins Kiesling and the ASO for its “Swing Into Christmas” pops concert on Dec. 14.
Kiesling said he’s always looking for a way to do the holiday concert differently each year, leading him to this year’s big band with strings performance. And he’s looking forward to having D’Angelo back. “She’s a great performer. She’s going to knock ‘em dead,” he said. “I think people will really enjoy this program.”
As for new-to-Adrian guest artists, violinist Fabiola Kim comes to Adrian as part of the Nov. 10 concert for a performance of one of the great violin works, the Brahms Violin Concerto, while violist Matthew Lipman performs John Williams’ Concerto for Viola and Orchestra — which to date has never been performed other than by the Boston Symphony — on the March 14 program.
“I knew we wanted to have a violist, and [Lipman] is truly one of the world’s great violists,” Kiesling said.
But before ASO audiences get to hear one of Williams’ classical works, they’ll have a concert full of some of his most famous film music: pieces from the “Star Wars” canon.
February has long been the ASO’s movie-music pops concert, and this season’s edition, falling on Feb. 14, is no exception. This time, the orchestra returns to “Star Wars” but — given that Williams, after all, did score nine “Star Wars” films — the concert includes some works the ASO has not previously performed, along with audience favorites.
The May 2 concert that wraps up the Season of Copland does so with the composer’s “Jubilee Variation,” his shortest orchestral work, and the “Lincoln Portrait.” The latter “is a sensational piece,” Kiesling said, and for this performance it will feature not one but two narrators, Dorian Hall and LaVonte Heard.
Also on the program is Haydn’s “Paukenmesse” — known as the “timpani Mass” for its use of that instrument — featuring soprano Catherine Goode, mezzo-soprano Kristin Clark, Heard as the tenor soloist, Hall as the bass soloist, and the Adrian College and Concordia University choirs.
While that concert closes out the orchestral season, in keeping with longstanding ASO tradition the season actually wraps up with something completely different. This time, it’s the Neil Diamond tribute band Nearly Diamond, performing on June 6.
Individual concert tickets are priced at $39/$33/$25 for adults, $37/$31/$25 for senior citizens, and $20/$17/$13 for students. A variety of subscription packages are also available. All concerts are at Adrian College’s Dawson Auditorium.
More information is available online at adriansymphony.org or by calling the ASO at 517-264-3121.
