Wichita Symphony Orchestra’s 2021-22 season makes up for lost time

The Wichita Symphony Orchestra’s 2021-22 season will patch together remnants of the past year-and-a-half of dormancy while taking many of its pandemic-era innovations to the next level.

The changes include bolstering the WSO Connect program introduced last year, converting most of its concerts to single performances rather than two in a weekend, and extending its outreach with more shows outside of the Century II concert hall.

“That is part of our ongoing evolution,” symphony CEO Don Reinhold said. “Audiences are not going to come back to the level that they were pre-pandemic probably for a year or two. This allows us to basically reinvest the money it would take to perform something twice into some other audience development things we are doing.”

The WSO Connect program, designed to deliver audio and video streaming to patrons during a time when live attendance was impossible or discouraged, will serve as a membership portal, offering discounts on tickets, presale access to special performances, exclusive digital content, access to live audio recordings for a 30-day window, as well as other perks, for a $99-per-household fee. Registration begins today at wichitasymphony.org.

Reinhold said the unpredictable nature of crowd restrictions during the past year made WSO Connect a more logical program than going back to its subscription program.

“On a month-to-month basis we’re able to control the inventory, which in a pandemic can really change,” he said. “There are a lot of people who don’t want to sit next to anybody. We want to protect the social distancing. I think we all would prefer the traditional reserved-seat subscription, but at this point in time we’re not quite there yet.”

Programming for the concerts this season will, conductor and musical director Daniel Hege says, reflect the “twin pandemics happening” during the past year.

“The actual pandemic of COVID-19, but also more focus on racial tensions and bringing up the fact that there are many, many composers and artists who deserve to be represented that haven’t been in the past,” said Hege, who begins his 12th season with WSO this fall.

Many of the concerts, he said, will include works by lesser-known and/or modern composers of color.

The ’21-’22 season includes works and performers that were previously on the ’19-’20 and ’20-’21 schedules.

“It’s a blend, quite honestly,” Hege said. “There were certain things we had planned that were postponed or canceled from our repertoire that were added and subtracted to make it work cohesively for the entire season.”

The symphony will not return in full until its January concerts.

“We wanted to make sure we were erring on the side of being cautious for our audience as well as our orchestra players,” Hege said.

Here’s a look at the 2021-22 season:

“Old Cowtown Suite,” 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9

Composer George S. Clinton, whose film scores include the “Austin Powers” and “Mortal Kombat” movies, visited Wichita in January 2019 when the symphony performed a teaser of his “Rose of Sonora” suite (which will conclude the season in April).

While here, he and concertmaster Holly Mulcahy wanted to tour Old Cowtown and got a private tour along with Reinhold on a cold winter Saturday morning.

“George was so moved by the experience that that’s what inspired the whole Cowtown Suite,” Reinhold said.

The piece, Reinhold said, was written for strings, piano and percussion, and that a few brass and woodwind players could be added.

The world premiere, a rarity for WSO, will be on the performance as well as a piece by Quinn Mason, a 25-year-old Black composer based in Dallas, and Aaron Copland’s “Clarinet Concerto,” featuring principal clarinetist Trevor Stewart.

Composer at the Keys, 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7

Pianist-composer Michael Brown, whom the New York Times called “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers,” plays his own “Concerto for Piano and Strings.”

“We thought it was just the right fit for this program,” Hege said.

The concert will begin with selections from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a mixed-race, English composer from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and conclude with Brahms’ “Symphony No. 2 in D Major,” a piece that was supposed to be played in March 2020 but canceled a day the day before dress rehearsal.

“It’s sentimental, because the musicians remember it as the last thing they rehearsed before they had to part,” Hege said.

Make it Mozart, 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 5

Laura Jackson, resident conductor with the Atlanta Symphony and music director/conductor for Nevada’s Reno Philharmonic Orchestra, will be the guest conductor.

Pianist Daniela Liebman, who was supposed to perform during the 2020-21 season, will be featured in Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major.” The program also includes music by Jimmy Lopez Bellido, a classical composer from Peru, and Tchaikovsky’s “Suite No. 4 in G Major.”

The Universe at an Exhibition, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 22 and 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 23

Jose Francisco Salgado, an astronomer and multimedia artist who displayed his photography alongside the symphony in 2018, returns this time to accompany WSO’s performance of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

“He’s not a musician by training, but he seems to have a sensitive way of being able to use images to go with the music he’s listening to,” Hege said.

The concert will open with composer Valerie Coleman’s “Seven O’clock Shout,” composed during the pandemic and inspired by the 7 p.m. balcony shout-outs given to medical workers and EMS personnel in New York.

It also includes Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite” and Aram Khachaturian’s “Masquerade: Suite.”

Movie Music, Feb. 5

Ron Spigelman, music director of the Lake Placid Sinfonietta in New York and principal pops conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony, returns to lead the symphony in cinematic scores, with selections to be determined.

“It’s kind of low-hanging fruit for a symphony orchestra to get to play some of those really great and colorful scores that go with cinema,” Hege said.

A New World Masterpiece, 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 20

A “Rediscovered Symphony” by Black composer Florence Price (1887-1953) begins the program.

“This piece is just breathtaking, quite honestly,” Hege said. “You listen to the first movement and you can’t believe it hasn’t been played more often.”

It will be followed by Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G Minor” with soloist Natasha Paremski, scheduled to be performed at the first concert canceled last spring; and Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

Mass Appeal: Wichita Symphony Chorus, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 12

Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides (Finigal’s Cave),” which Hege calls “the best thing that Mendelssohn wrote” and “one of the greatest poetic pieces to begin a concert” opens, followed by Schubert’s “Mass No. 2 in G Major.”

The symphony chorus joins for Schubert’s “Mass in G.”

The Rose of Sonora, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 9 and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 10

Composer George S. Clinton’s music caps the season, with a five-scene work that was originally scheduled for April 2020.

Concertmaster Holly Mulcahy leads the playing of the fictional story of a woman that is a composite of several real Wild West trailblazers.

Parts of the program will be accompanied visually by WestwaterArts, featuring multiple projections of cowboy and western images throughout the story.

“It’s more than just a slide show,” Reinhold said.

Gardens, Kristin Chenoweth and more

Although not yet scheduled, Reinhold said Symphony in the Gardens, performed at social distance in May at Botanica, and that sold out within the first four days of ticket sales, will return.

So will Concerts in the Park, which took small ensembles throughout the city last year and were well-received, Reinhold said.

“These types of projects could be summarized as efforts by the symphony to take the music to where the people are,” he said. “There’s a lot of them that aren’t coming downtown, for whatever reason, and we need to build our audiences as part of that strategy.”

The Symphony 360 concert, in the round at Century II’s convention hall last weekend, was termed a success and likely to return next summer, depending on Music Theatre Wichita’s schedule.

“The audiences are eager and hungry for music,” Hege said. “The musicians are elated to get to do this. They’re eager to share this music, and we’ll carry this right into the fall.”

Also, a scheduled pops concert featuring Tony- and Emmy-award winning performer Kristin Chenoweth, from last May – co-produced by the Wichita cultural-philanthropic organization Grumpy Old Men – is likely in the future, Reinhold said.

“We’re working on it,” he said.

This story was originally published July 18, 2021 at 3:09 AM.