Akron Symphony ‘Goes Local’ for National Park Concert
We love it when orchestras craft concert programs that strike a chord in their communities. In November 2016, the Akron Symphony did just that! For our fifth return engagement with the ASO, Music Director Christopher Wilkins put together a program centered on the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service that featured three pieces from our repertoire, Grand Canyon Country, Reflections of the Spirit, and National Park Suite.
Akron also happens to be near Cuyahoga Valley National Park, one of the nation’s newest national parks as well as home to the Blossom Music Festival. To pay tribute to this close connection, the Akron Symphony partnered with the National Park Service to invite Cuyahoga Valley visitors and local photographers to co-create a new concert experience with our multimedia artist Nicholas Bardonnay.
Nicholas selected the submitted photographs—from over 1,600!—that best portray Cuyahoga’s many facets through the seasons, and then choreographed the images to Delius’s wonderful Summer Evening. Also not to be missed on the program was the concert-opening Native American invocation and drumming ceremony by Otto Braided Hair Jr. of the Northern Cheyenne tribe.
(Frog image submitted by Dave Longfellow. Cuyahoga meadow image submitted by Jerry Jelinek.)
