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Mendelssohn Chorus, music at Fringe, and affordable opera
The BSR Classical Interludes, September 2024
Gail Obenreder
And just like that, it’s fall! And a new season packed with classical music is upon us. So here are a few things to get your musical fall off to a great start. We’ve got a choral extravaganza where you can sing, a musical visit to a long-ago pandemic, and a look at a conductor new to the region. It’s also been a big year for Opera Philadelphia—they have some announcements and a world premiere planned for later in the month.
Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia: All-Philly Big Sing
Sunday, September 8, 3pm
Rodeph Shalom, 615 North Broad Street, Philadelphia
This Philly choral stalwart kicks off its 150th anniversary season with the All-Philly Big Sing, a city-wide celebration of music and community. The event brings together choral leaders from throughout the region: Miriam Davidson (ANNA Crusis Feminist Choir), Rollo Dilworth (Singing City and Temple Singing Owls), Mitos Andaya Hart (PhilHarmonia), Elizabeth Parker (Commonwealth Youth Choir), Paul Rardin (Temple University), Julia Zavadsky (Nashirah: Jewish Chorale of Greater Philadelphia), and Ariel Alvarado (Mendelssohn Chorus)—all led by singer, composer, and song collector Moira Smiley. All songs in this accessible experience will be taught on the spot, so everyone can sing, and the concert is pay-what-you-will.
Publick Pleasure: Stop the Bells Tolling
Saturday, September 14, 7pm
Gloria Dei/Old Swedes' Church, 916 South Swanson Street, Philadelphia
Not many classical music organizations take part in the Philadelphia Fringe. But this year, there are several, and one is the Publick Pleasure, an early music collective led by cellist Eve Miller. The ensemble generally ties together music and the history of the times when it was written, and for this concert, they’ll explore changes in Philadelphia's musical landscape during the city's Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. Life ground to a halt, as music and even the city’s church bells were silenced. This concert will include texts from period newspapers and personal accounts of 1793, and the musicians—Miller, Edmond Chan (violin), Amy Leonard (viola), Jean Bernard Cerin (voice and narration), Steven Zohn (flute), and John Walthausen (harpsichord)—will play on historic instruments to recreate the sounds of the 1790s.
Delaware Symphony: Brunet Conducts Tchaikovsky
Friday, September 20, 7:30pm
Copeland Hall at the Grand Opera House, 818 North Market Street, Wilmington
This season, the Delaware Symphony is putting the spotlight on its four music director finalists, picked from a pool of 150 applicants. Each guest conductor will lead the orchestra in one masterwork, one orchestral work with a soloist, and one contemporary composition. First up is French native Mélisse Brunet, currently living in Philadelphia and one of the five conductors featured in the film Maestra (by Maggie Contreras) that’s currently making the rounds of festivals and film houses. She’ll conduct Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (with soloist Melissa White), and The Midnight Hour (2015) by Anna Clyne. The Delaware Symphony plans to solicit audience feedback about each of the four candidates.
Philadelphia Orchestra: Night after Night: Music of James Newton Howard
Friday, September 20, 8pm
Marian Anderson Hall at the Kimmel Center, 300 South Broad Street, Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Orchestra is having a movie music night! Ensemble Arts Philly presents a concert that recreates the cinematic world of M. Night Shyamalan via the music of James Newton Howard, who’s scored many of Shyamalan's films. There’s music from The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, Lady in the Water, The Village, After Earth, and The Last Airbender. The composer will conduct some starry names playing in this concert: Maya Beiser (cello), Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano), and Gil Shaham (violin), with the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir (Ryan Brandau, director). Shyamalan hosts the concert but expect only music—no films will be shown!
News from Opera Philadelphia, and The Listeners
Wednesday, September 25, 7pm
Friday, September 27, 8pm
Sunday, September 29, 2pm
Academy of Music, 240 South Broad Street, Philadelphia
Opera Philadelphia has really been on the move! They made national cultural news with the appointment this summer of star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanza as their new general director, his first such assignment. Last month, the company’s Ten Days in a Madhouse was named the Best New Opera of the 2023-24 season by the Music Critics Association of North America.
Also, the company recently announced that all tickets this season will be priced at $11 (though you can of course pay more), causing a box office storm. And you can use those tickets at their first production of the season, the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s The Listeners (libretto by Royce Vavrek), conducted by Corrado Rovaris and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. Performed in English, it too is one of the offerings on this year’s Fringe roster. Mazzoli and Vavrek also created the acclaimed 2016 opera Breaking the Waves.
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