At Symphony 360, the audience will surround 32 string players at Century II

Like arts organizations worldwide for the past year and a half, the Wichita Symphony has had a choice of being dormant until the pandemic subsided or experimenting with new ways of bringing their work to the people.

The symphony chose the latter route, including concerts at Botanica and various parks throughout Wichita.

The experimentation continues next weekend, moving next door from its traditional performing home, the concert hall at Century II.

Symphony 360 will put audience members in the round at the Century II convention hall, surrounding 32 string players of the orchestra, conducted by music director Daniel Hege.

“This gets the people sitting around the orchestra a chance to view it from the orchestra member’s perspective to watch Daniel,” symphony CEO Don Reinhold said. “Or you can look over the bass player’s shoulder to see what they’re doing. It’s an interesting perspective.”

Keeping social distance protocol in mind, he said, 125-150 people could comfortably attend the concert. If needed, additional audience members could sit in the theater-style seats in the bleachers.

The players will be arranged in the standard arc lines of a symphony formation.

With most of its 2020-21 season wiped out because of the pandemic, Reinhold said the symphony was trying to program a rare summer concert. Since Music Theatre Wichita was abandoning the Century II concert hall this summer for the Capitol Federal Amphitheatre in Andover and the CII convention hall, Reinhold said the symphony considered a summer concert there.

But the hydraulic lift that raises the orchestra pit to the stage was under repair, he said, and thoughts turned to the convention hall.

Since the brass and woodwind sections got their own concerts last fall, Reinhold said, it was time for the Wichita Symphony strings to take center stage.

The program will lead off with contemporary composer Peter Boyer’s “Three Olympians.”

Reinhold said it would be good on the program, with the Summer Olympics scheduled to be played later this month. Hege liked the work and put it on the program.

Reinhold chuckled recalling the research he began doing on the work.

“It actually has nothing to do with athletics,” he said. “It references three gods who lived on Mount Olympus in Greek mythology.”

Two movements of avant-garde composer Philip Glass’s second violin concerto, called “The American Four Seasons,” will feature concertmaster Holly Mulcahy on violin.

Unlike the classic Vivaldi “Four Seasons,” Reinhold said, Glass’s work does not specify which season is being featured.

“That’s up to the listener to decide for themselves,” he said. “It’s an open-ended question that people can make their own decisions on.”

Concluding the approximately one-hour concert is Edvard Grieg’s “Holberg Suite,” written in 1884 to commemorate the bicentennial of poet Ludwig Holberg, an artistic contemporary of Bach and Handel.

“He’s sometimes considered the father of Norwegian literature,” Reinhold said. “This music captures that spirit and is an early occurrence of what has become neo-classic.”

The suite, he said, is considered to be one of the greatest string ensemble pieces of all time.

The Symphony 360 concert, Reinhold said, is an example of adjustments necessary to continue bringing arts programming to Wichita Symphony patrons.

“It’s an innovation for us to see what can work,” he said. “It may be a huge success or we may think, ‘Oh well, we’ve tried it.’”

If successful, he said, the concerts may continue once or twice a summer in the convention hall.

“We go forth as we adapt and adopt,” Reinhold said.

Symphony 360

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 10

Where: Century II convention hall, 225 W. Douglas

Tickets: $65 and $35, from wichitasymphony.org or 267-7658