New Wheeling Symphony Orchestra Season To Celebrate ‘Music At Play’
Trending
WHEELING -- The word "play" has a broad spectrum of meanings, from an orchestra playing a piece to children playing outside to actors performing a play. The Wheeling Symphony Orchestra's 2023-24 season, titled "Music At Play," will explore many of them throughout the year.
From Tony Award-winning actresses and Grammy Award-winning classical artists to Harry Potter and James Bond, WSO executives are excited to offer a wide array of events that any musical taste can enjoy.
"This word is so multi-dimensional," said WSO Conductor and Director of Music John Devlin of "play," "and it describes the feeling that I want people to have when they come to a concert. Maybe too often, people feel as if the symphonic concert-going experience is one that's replicated every single time you go to the concert hall and you can predict how you will feel at the end of that experience.
"And I want people to come and have a curiosity, a sparkle in their eye and an understanding that we've planned something very special for them in which they can feel an interactive part," he added.
The season's theme is the title of the Symphony's second Masterworks concert, set for 7:30 p.m. March 8. That night, composer Clarice Assad, whom Devlin calls his "favorite living American composer," will perform an original work titled "Play" that was co-commissioned by the WSO. It will heavily feature children's toys as instruments and is inspired by Assad's two young children.
"This is going to feel accessible and exciting while still being written at a very high symphonic level," Devlin said.
The rest of the 2023-24 schedule is as follows:
- At 7:30 p.m. Sept. 3 at Oglebay Park's Anne Kuchinka Amphitheater for a free community concert, where Jeans N' Classics teams up with the Symphony to present the music of the James Bond movies.
- The Opening Night Concert at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 29 at the Capitol Theatre will feature seven-time Tony Award nominee and two-time Tony winner Sutton Foster, who just finished performing with Hugh Jackman on Broadway in "The Music Man." Foster will perform a collection of Broadway classics.
- The first Masterworks concert will feature "Violins of Hope," an organization that collects and restores string instruments played by concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust. WSO musicians will play some of those instruments in concert. It will also feature "Piano Concerto no. 2 in A minor," a composition by Walter Bricht, a Jewish composer in the early 1900s who fled the country after Adolf Hitler offered him honorary Aryan membership to become one of Germany's favored composers and ended up in Charleston, West Virginia.
Helping Devlin in this performance is Germany-based conductor/composer Michael Elllis Ingram, who is Devlin's best friend.
"It's going to be a very, very emotional and meaningful moment for me, and I'm sure for the audience," Devlin said.
- The holiday staple "Symphony on Ice" returns to WesBanco Arena at 7 p.m. Nov. 30. There, champion figure skaters along with youth figure skating clubs from Wheeling and Pittsburgh and middle school and high school choirs from throughout the Ohio Valley join together to celebrate the season.
- After the success of performing the score of "Jurassic Park" live underneath the movie, the Symphony will perform a similar task with "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the first movie in the "Harry Potter" film series. That performance comes at 1 p.m. Jan. 20. Scenes will play on a giant high-definition screen with the WSO performing John Williams' Oscar-nominated score along with it.
- Renee Elise Goldsberry, who originated the role of Angelica Schuyler in Broadway's "Hamilton" and won a Tony for her performance, will perform with the WSO at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 16. Goldsberry - who also had star turns in the Disney+ series "She Hulk: Attorney At Law" and the Emmy-nominated "Girls5Eva" - will perform numbers from genres including jazz, folk, pop, gospel and Broadway.
- "Ol' Blue Eyes" gets the WSO treatment at 7:30 p.m. April 26 during its performance of "Sinatra & Beyond." Guest artist Tony Desare will croon the tunes Frank Sinatra made famous, dipping into the legendary artist's deep songbook for hits like "My Way," "Come Fly With Me," and "I've Got The World On A String."
- The season concludes at 7:30 p.m. May 10 with the third Masterworks concert, "Contact," featuring the trio Time for Three. The group just won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition with its work, "Contact," and will perform the piece that night. The "musician's choice" piece of the season, Brahms' Third Symphony, also will be performed.
Information for purchasing tickets can be found at the Capitol Theatre, by calling 304-232-6191 or by visiting wheelingsymphony.com.
- The music won't stop in the summer, as the WSO will embark on another tour of the state on its "Celebrate America: 4th of July" tour during the Independence Day holiday.
This WSO season will be the first for new executive director Sonja Thoms, a Western Pennsylvania native who most recently was vice president of operations at The Nashville Symphony. Thoms said she's extremely excited to join the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra during a season of such fun and diverse selections.
"I think it's really important that an organization like the Wheeling Symphony, and any orchestral or arts organization, really, puts that at the center of anything that we do - that the whole point is to engage in this art together," she said. "It's not that we are presenting it and you will listen to it and consume it. But I think it really is so much more exciting.
"To me, it's a gift that we're all trying to uphold together," she added. "And a lifestyle with music is, to me, essential. So I'm really excited to just kind of explore all the ways that we can engage with each other through these concerts."