Press
Tribune Chronicle
May 28th, 2009
Orchestra will use all of Packard Music Hall for its next season
ANDY GRAY
The Warren Philharmonic Orchestra plans to fully utilize Packard Music Hall for its 2009-10 season.
''We're going to create a multi-media experience,'' according to conductor and music director Susan Davenny Wyner.
While the orchestra performs on the main floor of the hall, the stage will be filled with projected images for one of the three concerts, and dancers will fill the stage for a second concert. And the walls of the hall will be covered with music-inspired drawings by area schoolchildren.
''I was very excited about the idea of really using the hall and the possibilities it opens to us,'' Wyner said.
For its opening concert on Oct. 18, the orchestra will continue a tradition it started last season by recognizing a different segment of the community. Last year it was veterans; this year it is teachers.
''They are often the unsung heroes among us,'' Wyner said. ''We're going to have them be with us and be honored by the students and by the music we're doing.''
Singing classical and popular songs with the orchestra that day will be baritone Brian Keith Johnson and soprano Dione Parker Bennett. Not only is Johnson a product of Warren City Schools, his parents - Cliff and Lillie Johnson - were longtime educators and he is a teacher himself. Bennett also is a teacher.
Wyner selected the music with teachers in mind. Since educators introduce the world to the works of William Shakespeare, she selected Tchaikovsky's ''Romeo and Juliet Fantasy.'' And in a role reversal, the orchestra will perform Elgar's ''Pomp and Circumstance'' March, commonly referred to as the ''Graduation March.''
''I don't know whether we'll make the teachers get up and march or not, but I couldn't resist turning the tables on them,'' she said.
The orchestra will perform its annual family concert at 3 p.m. Nov. 22.
The instrument petting zoo that lets the children in the audience get an up-close look at the musicians' tools will return, as will an art contest for area schoolchildren. Art teachers will get a CD featuring excerpts of the music the orchestra will be performing, and the students will create art inspired by the music.
''I would love to paper the whole of Packard Music Hall with these wonderful drawings,'' Wyner said. ''The music helps them get away from literal transcriptions, and you can see them respond to a characteristic in the music.''
David Vosburgh, director of Opera Western Reserve and an original cast member of such Broadway productions as ''1776'' and ''Evita,'' will be the narrator for a performance of Poulenc's ''The Story of Babar'' that will be accompanied by video projections. Wyner also will have the instrumentalists stand while doing their solos for ''Babar.''
''I think it's exciting for people to see the instrumentalists as individuals,'' she said. ''It helps (the audience) hear the music ... And with our being down on the floor, they can actually look into the orchestra instead of looking up to it on stage.''
Also on the November program will be Handel's ''Entrance of the Queen of Sheba,'' de Falla's ''Ritual Fire Dance'' and Mussorgsky's ''Pictures at an Exhibition.''
The season wraps on March 27, 2010, with a spring gala. The orchestra will be joined by an 80-voice chorus from Westminster College on Bach's Cantata 191 - ''Gloria in Excelsis Deo.''
Richard Dickinson, artistic director for Ballet Western Reserve, will choreograph a pas de deux that will accompany Rachmaninoff's ''Vocalize'' and a larger ensemble that will dance to Variations on ''America.''
''We have that wonderful big stage,'' Wyner said. ''And we'll have costumes and be able to use the stage lighting. And this is not a pit orchestra. To get to hear a full-sized orchestra will all of this going on on stage is a rare treat.''
The concert will close with ''The Battle Hymn of the Republic,'' and Wyner plans to position the chorus in the balcony for that selection to create a stereo effect for the audience.
''It should make for a glorious sound,'' she said.