• MAY 2–4: Mandy Gonzalez: La Vida Broadway (Pops)
• MAY 9 & 10: Grieg and Ellington (CSO)
• MAY 11: CSYO Concert Orchestra and Philharmonic Orchestra
9 Cincinnati Pops Principal Guest Conductor
Damon Gupton has a prolific career on stage as a conductor and on screen as an actor. Gupton has led the Pops many times over his 11 years with the Orchestra, and, in May, he makes his longawaited CSO subscription debut in a program crafted around Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige and featuring pianist Michelle Cann, pp. 9–11.
13
18
Part IV, the final installment of Fanfare Magazine’s series “Getting to Know Cristian Măcelaru” (pp. 13–17), focuses on what’s next as Cristi looks forward to his first season as Music Director, including what his vision is for the Orchestra and how he plans to fulfill it.
Fanfare Magazine’s “Why We Give” series shares the inspiring stories behind why donors give to the CSO and Pops. On pp. 18–19 read more about long-time supporters Dianne and J. David Rosenberg, whose passion for the Orchestra is clear, and find out why they are establishing the $10 million Dianne and J. David Rosenberg Innovation Fund.
A proud sponsor of the musical ar ts
Welcome
WE BELIEVE MUSIC LIVES WITHIN US ALL
regardless of who we are or where we come from. We believe that music is a pathway to igniting our passions, discovering what moves us, deepening our curiosity and connecting us to our world and to each other.
Our mission is to seek and share inspiration, and we exist to serve our community. Our entire community. Reflecting our community and the world around at every level — on stage, behind-the-scenes, and in neighborhoods throughout the region — is essential to our present and future and makes us a strong ensemble and institution.
Along with the online version of Fanfare Magazine, the CSO has developed a digital platform to deliver concertspecific content to audiences.
WELCOME
to the April/May issue of Fanfare Magazine
The cover story of this final issue of the 2024–25 season features Pops Principal Guest Conductor Damon Gupton, who will lead his first CSO subscription concerts on May 9 & 10. Writer Hannah Edgar talks with Gupton about his life on stage and on screen (he’s also a prolific actor) on pp. 9–11.
This issue of Fanfare Magazine also features the final installment of our “Getting to Know Cristian Mӑcelaru” series. On pp. 13–17, writer James M. Keller talks with CSO musicians about their new Music Director and with Cristi about his vision for the future.
The future of the CSO is as bright now as it has ever been, and this issue of Fanfare Magazine explores two reasons why — the appointment of a new President and CEO and the establishment of a $10 million innovation fund. Robert McGrath has been with the CSO for more than a decade and has made a significant impact on the organization. Learn more about McGrath and his impact on the CSO with writer Hannah Edgar on pp. 21–23. The Dianne and J. David Rosenberg Innovation Fund will catalyze programs that challenge traditional boundaries, elevate artistic excellence and encourage deep community engagement. On pp. 18–19, read about the passion the Rosenbergs have for the CSO.
FOLLOW US on social media for the latest updates!
Facebook:
@CincySymphony @CincinnatiPops
Instagram: @CincySymphony
YouTube: @CincySymphony
TikTok: @cincysymphony
Please enjoy these stories that have been curated for you in Fanfare Magazine, but also know that the Fanfare Magazine experience is not limited to a print publication available only at Music Hall concerts. You can always explore Fanfare Magazine at any time via our website at cincinnatisymphony.org/fanfare-magazine.
*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organization and its performances; msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.
Along with the online version of Fanfare Magazine, the CSO has developed a digital platform to deliver concert-specific content to concert audiences. To meet the CSO’s ongoing commitment to digital storytelling, innovation and accessibility, in the 2024–25 season this digital platform has expanded to o er early access to exclusive concert-specific content: full-length program notes, artist biographies, feature stories, up-to-the-minute information and much more! As a bonus, program notes and artist biographies for the entire season will be available on this digital platform in advance of the season-opening concerts, allowing you to engage with all the content before you arrive at Music Hall.
Unlike a print magazine, this digital platform is compatible with all smartphone accessibility features. The CSO’s digital platform is easily accessible — no app to download or subscription to manage. To explore our digital content, visit cincinnatisymphony.org/DigitalProgram or text the word PROGRAM to 513.845.3024.*
The CSO hopes you find inspiration within these pages and within the music — past, present and future — that reverberates at Music Hall and in the community. Thank you for being with us!
CINCINNATI SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA & CINCINNATI POPS
Music Hall, 1241 Elm Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202
Box Office: 513.381.3300
hello@cincinnatisymphony.org
Group Sales: 513.864.0196
groupsales@cincinnatisymphony.org
TTY/TDD: Use TTY/TDD Relay Service 7-1-1
cincinnatisymphony.org cincinnatipops.org
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
O cers
Dianne Rosenberg, Chair
Robert W. McDonald, Immediate Past Chair
Sue McPartlin, Treasurer and Vice-Chair of Finance
Gerron McKnight, Secretary
Kari Ullman, Vice-Chair of Volunteerism
Anne E. Mulder, Vice-Chair of Community Engagement
Charla B. Weiss, Chair Elect, Vice-Chair of Institutional Advancement
Melanie Healey, Vice-Chair of Leadership Development
Directors
Dorie Akers
Heather Apple
Michael P. Bergan
Evin Blomberg
Kate C. Brown
Ralph P. Brown
Trish Bryan*
Otto M. Budig, Jr.*
Andrea Costa
FANFARE MAGAZINE STAFF:
Managing Editor
Tyler Secor
Senior Editor/Layout
Teri McKibben
Graphic Design
Stephanie Lazorchak
CINCINNATI MAGAZINE:
Advertising and Publishing Partners for Fanfare Magazine
Publisher
Ivy Bayer
Production Director & IT Systems
Administrator
Vu Luong
Advertising Designer
Sophie Kallis
Account Representatives
Laura Bowling, Maggie Wint Goecke, Chris Ohmer, Julie Poyer, Joe Ho ecker
Operations Director
Missy Beiting
Business Coordinator
Erica Birkle
Advertising and Business O ces 1818 Race Street, Suite 301 Cincinnati, OH 45202 | 513.421.4300
BOARD OF DIRECTORS COMMITTEES & TASK FORCES and MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS COUNCIL
We thank our many partners who serve on the following CSO Board of Directors committees and task forces, as well as the Multicultural Awareness Council (MAC) as we collectively work to realize our vision to be the most relevant orchestra in America.
CSO Board of Directors Committees
Audience Engagement
Audit & Ethics
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Executive
Finance & Investment
Learning
Nominating & Governance
O cers Nominating
CSO Board of Directors
Task Forces
Board Governance Initiative
Government A airs
Philanthropy
Planned Giving
Non-Board Advisory Council
Multicultural Awareness Council
You are welcome to take this copy of Fanfare Magazine home with you as a souvenir of your concert experience. Alternatively, please share it with a friend or leave it with an usher for recycling.
Thank you!
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops acknowledge that Cincinnati Music Hall occupies land that has been the traditional land of the Myaamia (Miami), Shawandasse Tula (Shawanwaki/Shawnee), and Wahzhazhe Manzhan (Osage) peoples, who have continuously lived upon this land since time immemorial. We honor past, present and future Indigenous peoples.
We don’t make the music you’ll hear on stage, but for nearly 100 years, we’ve been the primary way Cincy’s arts are funded. Your gift to ArtsWave ripples out across our communities to create a more vibrant future for everyone. With tens of thousands of gifts from people like you, ArtsWave is proud to support the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, plus over a hundred other arts organizations and artists that make our region stronger.
Make your gift today at artswave.org
cincinnatipops.org/subscribe
Pops Principal Guest Conductor Damon Gupton conducts the Cincinnati Pops. (Credit: Mark Lyons)
COVER STORY
Damon Gupton is on Your Screens and on Your Stages
by HANNAH EDGAR
Don’t look at Damon Gupton’s calendar. Seriously, don’t.
Why? You might know Gupton as a prolific actor, spotted on Criminal Minds, Deadline, Black Lightning, The Big Door Prize, Happy Face and The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray, as well as in movies like The Last Airbender, La La Land and the forthcoming Lear Rex (Al Pacino playing Lear) and The Drama (playing Zendaya’s dad). But he’s just as accomplished as a conductor, with bona fides too long to list — from his early days at the Aspen Music Festival and National Conducting Institute, to assistantships and fellowships at the Kansas City and Houston symphonies, to now, guest-conducting most of the country’s leading orchestras.
“I don’t know anybody else who’s doing this,” Gupton told Fanfare Magazine with a disbelieving chuckle, calling from his home in Los Angeles. “But for whatever reason, I think I’ve been placed here to find di erent avenues for myself.”
So, yes, Gupton is booked and busy. Orchestras he works with tend to be understanding of that, he says. And the Cincinnati Pops — where he makes anywhere between two and four annual appearances — is more than understanding, having named him its Principal Guest Conductor in 2019. He first conducted the Orchestra in a 2014 concert with the Midtown Men, an experience he still singles out as one of his favorite concerts to date.
“The Cincinnati Pops is a jewel of the community,” he says. “I’ve always been impressed by people’s energy and fervor for the group. It’s their pride in something that represents their town and their roots, and Cincinnatians are very right to be proud of it.”
After more than a decade appearing with the Pops, Gupton is making a long-awaited subscription debut with the CSO on May 9 and 10. Given the occasion, Gupton says he wanted his
debut CSO concert to be “a little more personal.” To that end, he anchors the program with Duke Ellington’s big-band epic Black, Brown and Beige, arranged as a three-movement orchestral suite by Maurice Peress.
“It’s such a tremendous honor to get a subscription concert with the Orchestra. But coming up with pieces that balance the Ellington and honor the wonderful gift that the Orchestra is giving me — that was tricky,” he admits.
*Watch the 2019 episode of NPR’s From the Top featuring Damon Gupton and Michelle Cann at fromthetop.org/show/ nprs-from-the-topinterlochen-mi.
He had a sure thing, at least, in Michelle Cann, a pianist as probing as she is passionate and the CSO’s 2019 MAC Music Innovator. She and Gupton team up for the first time with this program, but the two had already met and collaborated for a 2019 episode of From the Top*, the NPR program spotlighting up-and-coming classical music talent. In the years since, Cann has joined the faculties of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music and Manhattan School of Music, and she just won a Grammy for Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price with the soprano Karen Slack.
“That was right before a lot of things really blew up and took off for her,” Gupton says of taping the episode.
Cann will perform the Edvard Grieg Piano Concerto, which taps into a throughline sparked by the Ellington: folk traditions and dance. The concerto’s finale especially embraces these themes, Gupton says: “The third movement of
the Grieg certainly shares its folk heritage and style with us after the defiance and elegance of the first movement, and the reflective and soulful nostalgia of the second movement.”
So does Dvořák’s The Noon Witch Dvořák’s symphonic poem depicts an eponymous ghoul from Slavic folklore, famous for trapping her victims with her incessant dancing. Gupton shouts out Music Director Designate Cristian Măcelaru’s recent interpretation of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 as leaving him feeling inspired for his own forthcoming turn to the composer — plus, he’s always a sucker for that “lovable Dvořák flair and folk bounce.”
From there, Gupton structured the concert’s second half as something of a lead-in to Black, Brown and Beige. He starts with Stravinsky’s Scherzo à la russe, whose basses and bass drum introduce an insistent beat that makes it a strong contender for the “grooviest piece on the program. He pays his own kind of homage to Hollywood and jazz, expatriate that he was,” Gupton says
Arthur Honegger’s Pastorale d’été follows it as the program’s “slow jam.” The Swiss composer was a member of Les Six, a group of 20th-century Francophone composers whose music tended to reflect a certain à la mode cosmopolitanism.
“Clearly, they liked their jazz. I wanted a link of sorts, and while this isn’t the most direct, I do enjoy its impressionistic and bluesy embraces,” Gupton says of Pastorale d’été. “It was always a very, very, very distant cousin to Miles Davis’ ‘All Blues’ [off the seminal 1959 record Kind of Blue] when I first heard it 20 years ago.”
Sound eclectic? That’s the point, Gupton says. He grew up admiring Erich Kunzel’s recordings
Pops Principal Guest Conductor Damon Gupton conducts the Cincinnati Pops. (Credit: Mark Lyons)
with the Cincinnati Pops, but his own 11 years working with the Orchestra have left him ever more astonished by its “versatility.” He wanted to “pay tribute” to that quality in his debut.
“One week they’re playing Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, and the next they’re playing rock ‘n’ roll standards,” Gupton says. “They’re able to switch on a dime and swing like crazy.”
Born and raised in Detroit, Gupton grew up not just on Cincinnati Pops albums but movie music, his first love. When he began playing trombone in his eighth grade band, he hoped the instrument could be a way to someday access those scores.
“My introduction to the orchestra’s palette wasn’t Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Schubert. It was John Williams,” he says.
He’s made good on that dream. Between the end of March and the beginning of August, Gupton will lead six live film scores with orchestras from Boston — its own legendary Pops orchestra, to be exact — to Baltimore. The closest Gupton has come to merging his twin loves of film and music on screen was when he was cast in the music conservatory drama Whiplash (2014), in which he plays a more sedate colleague of J.K. Simmons’ tyrannical jazz band instructor. (At least, so far: Gupton told Fanfare Magazine he dreams of someday producing a trilogy of biopics about Florence Price, William Grant Still and pathbreaking conductor Dean Dixon.)
Gupton ended up passing through Juilliard’s drama school, launching him into one of his two callings. Before that, however, he earned a bachelor’s degree in music education at the University of Michigan. (“One of my favorite things to do from the podium in Cincinnati is troll Ohio State,” he teases.) He made his conducting debut as a student there in 1992, leading a concert put on by the school’s Black Arts Council. Many of the students involved went on to renowned careers — like pianist Karen Walwyn; violinist Joseph Strickland, the Detroit Symphony’s first Black musician; and Guthrie Ramsey, an eminent musicologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Although balancing his dual careers can be hectic, he’s become increasingly grateful for it in recent years, particularly as he thinks about the challenges facing today’s young artists.
“When we were on strike as actors, there was music. And when we were locked and cooped up in our homes, there were projects that were shooting,” Gupton says. “Nowadays, you’d better do more than one thing.”
Indeed, at the time he connected with Fanfare Magazine, Gupton was contemplative about the state of the world. He was spared by the fires that devastated much of Los Angeles. Some of his favorite haunts, however, have vanished. Meanwhile, portents of increasing government involvement in the arts have pushed him to be more thoughtful than ever before about his own artistic presence and body of work.
How to do that, exactly? As he always has, Gupton finds answers in movies. In the past few months, he’s been drawn to gritty dramas from
the 1970s, like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, A Woman Under the Influence, Shaft and Jaws (a live film concert he’s also conducting later this season, with the Kansas City Symphony).
“We started that as a collective of Black music students, of whom there were quite a handful,” Gupton says. “It was a very active time politically for Black students on campus.”
Gupton returned to the University of Michigan in 2015 to give the commencement speech for the School of Music, Theater and Dance, an experience he described as “one of the deepest honors of my life.”
“I think that’s the greatest decade of cinema for its breadth of commentary: war, people not being able to be a part of their communities when they come home from war, alcoholism, divorce,” he says. “On my end, I’m asking myself: How can I keep the ball rolling? Is it with Duke Ellington? Is it with Grieg? Yes, OK, but what else?… It’s our call to say something bigger than us if we want to continue.” n
Pops Principal Guest Conductor Damon Gupton takes his initial bow before leading the Pops in a tribute concert to Tina Turner in January 2025. (Credit: JP Leong)
INVEST ENGAGE INNOVATE LEAD
Investing state and federal dollars, the Ohio Arts Council funds and supports quality arts experiences for all Ohioans to strengthen communities culturally, educationally, and economically.
Learn more about our grant programs and resources, find your next arts experience, or connect: OAC.OHIO.GOV.
Inspiration Studios, Inc., and Sonny Spot Too are two Southwest Ohio organizations serving people with developmental disabilities. In 2023, they collaborated to create a new mural for Sonny Spot’s computer and technology room.
Getting to Know Cristian Măcelaru
by JAMES M. KELLER
In this final installment of the Fanfare Magazine series introducing Music Director Designate Cristian Măcelaru, we learn what is next and how he plans to fulfill his vision for the Orchestra.
Credit: Mark Lyons
WWhen we spoke in mid-February, Cristian (“Cristi”) Măcelaru had just finished conducting his final week of concerts as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director Designate and was chomping at the bit to drop the “Designate” from his title. Since then, he’s been busy leading the two ensembles he has been most closely associated with in recent years: his final concerts as music director of the WDR Sinfonieorchester, in Cologne and on tour to other German cities, and the remainder of his penultimate season as chief conductor of the Orchestre National de France, in Paris and on tour to South Korea and China. In addition, he’ll sandwich in guest conducting weeks with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and the Minnesota Orchestra. That takes Cristi to the end of June, when he turns his attention to the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California, where he is music director/ conductor, followed by a return to the Interlochen Center for the Arts, where he holds the title of artistic director and principal conductor of
the World Youth Symphony Orchestra. Cristi’s summer will finish with the George Enescu Music Festival in his native Romania, which he oversees as artistic director — a gathering of some 80 ensembles from 28 countries. And then, before you know it, the calendar will read “October 3, 2025,” when he will ascend the opening-night podium as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s 14th Music Director.
He found his “designate week” very beneficial.
“This week gave me a better sense of the work ahead, of what I need to do, and how,” he said.
“People have asked me what I want to change with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The reality is that you can’t decide on something like that without really working with the Orchestra. It’s not predetermined; it emerges when you are building something together. The more I work with the Orchestra, the more I see how I can have an impact in a positive way, with how I would like things to develop.”
But even as he looks forward to that process of discovery, he knows that it will take place above what is already very firm bedrock. He was already struck by the Orchestra’s strengths when
Cristian Măcelaru leads his first Orchestra rehearsal as Music Director Designate, February 2025. (Credit: Charlie Balcom)
he dropped in on past performances. “When I listened to them from the audience, I remember being very impressed with the virtuosity of their tight, fast ensemble. This was really impressive. It’s not just a question of playing together, but of playing as a unified body — and that is what they did. I really admired it. And the sound the Orchestra is producing is very appropriate; there’s a brightness and directness to it that I find really good. I want to keep these elements that define their identity. My challenge and work will likely be expanding the understanding of the sound and how it relates to di erent repertoire, to di erent periods of music. It is less about the sound of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and more about the identity of each individual composer as interpreted by the CSO.”
The upcoming season will provide ample opportunities for delving into repertoire-specific sounds. Cristi will conduct seven di erent programs across 13 concerts, the whole comprising 18 compositions written from the 18th century through yesterday. (Because conductors’ calendars come together years in advance, his presence during the 2025–26 season will be a bit less than the “minimum 10 weeks per season” he envisions in ensuing years.)
Concertmaster Stefani Matsuo observes, “Our Orchestra is fortunate to play a wide variety of repertoire, which keeps us incredibly well rounded as musicians. Cristi supported this aspect when he was a candidate to be Music Director. He supports the idea that programs can’t all be ‘meat and potatoes,’ and, alongside our glorious standard repertoire, we need to include pieces that might become standard repertoire going forward. That outlook matches the CSO’s past history and its vision of the future.” So, along with promoting new music, Cristi is “also super-interested in Baroque and early Classical playing styles,” Matsuo continues. “Next year, he will explore that direction when he conducts Handel’s Messiah.”
On the one hand, directing Messiah is hardly a revolutionary act. Many major orchestras o er it as an annual holiday tradition. What is less usual is for an orchestra’s music director to lead it. More typically it provides an opportunity to welcome a guest conductor who specializes in early music or choral music. But Cristi happens to love conducting choral music, and he has had hands-on involvement with Baroque style. Back when he was climbing the ranks as a violinist, he studied Baroque violin, with its many nuances that di er from modern practice. In fact, his violin
Cristian Măcelaru discusses his vision for the Orchestra’s 2025–26 season, his first as Music Director, as CSO President and CEO Robert McGrath looks on. (Credit: JP Leong)
professor at Rice University was Sergiu Luca, who is thought to be the first person to record Bach’s Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas on a Baroque violin. “I spent a portion of my life becoming as close to being an expert on Baroque performance practice as I could be,” says Cristi, “but I now get to do so little of it, since that usually goes to specialists. We will not take a purist approach in the sense of using Baroque-era instruments and bows, but we will hope to find a fusion of historical style that also respects the possibilities of modern instruments.”
A sampling of contemporary works will also be on his schedule in 2025–26, including works co-commissioned by the CSO from Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason and American Lisa Bielawa. Matsuo observes, “The CSO has held on to the belief that new music can easily become part of the orchestral canon. [Cristi] does a lot with new music and he has friends who are successful composers, so I am very excited that we will have the opportunity to work with him in that area.”
He will also offer a solid serving of “meat and potatoes” — Beethoven, Brahms, Barber and others — but even those may harbor surprises. Mahler’s symphonies, for example, have long been part of the CSO’s repertoire: the Orchestra played the American premieres of his Fifth (in 1905) and Third (in 1914) symphonies, and, in just the past seven years, it has played seven of his nine symphonies. They would have played eight, leaving only Mahler’s Ninth missing
from recent programming, but a planned performance of the Third Symphony was cancelled during Covid times. Which Mahler symphony will Cristi conduct next season? None of them. Instead, he will lead the composer’s Totenfeier, a rarely played symphonic poem from the beginning of Mahler’s career that evolved into the opening movement of his Second Symphony. “I wanted to start working on Mahler,” Cristi explains, “since he is a composer I really want to explore in Cincinnati. This will take us to the beginning of it all.”
Cristi likes to approach even familiar pieces with fresh eyes. Principal Clarinetist Christopher Pell played in a performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 that Cristi conducted last season when he was still under consideration to become Music Director. “There’s a lot in that piece that can introduce you to a conductor’s approach, their philosophy, their identity as an interpreter,” says Pell. “It was clear that he cared deeply about what was on the page, that he was intent on being an honest arbiter of what Shostakovich intended, in the context of who he was and how he lived. It was a similar approach this February with Dvořák’s New World Symphony. [Cristi] talked about Dvořák and the way he would mark his parts, how to interpret those markings, how the same markings for different composers can mean different things. Discrepancies can be little pieces of treasure.”
Talking is not necessarily a way for conductors to endear themselves with orchestra players, who generally want to spend their time making music.
Subscribe to the CSO's YouTube channel and watch the three-part docuseries: Introducing Cristian Măcelaru
@CincySymphony
“I think he talked somewhat more when preparing the Dvořák than he did a year ago with Shostakovich,” Pell notes.
“This year, of course, there’s an element of him wanting to introduce himself, how he thinks about certain large concepts. But
CSO Concertmaster Stefani Matsuo (Credit: Tyler Secor) and CSO Principal Clarinet Christopher Pell (Credit: Mark Lyons).
his interpretation is in his beat patterns, in how he communicates while conducting.” Cristi, who has had much experience as an orchestral violinist, is well aware of the peril of long-windedness. “Many musicians complain about conductors who overly enjoy hearing the sound of their own voice,” Pell allows. “But I have never heard an orchestra complain if the conductor has something meaningful to say, something that can improve the performance.”
“There has always been a sense of camaraderie between him [Cristi] and the musicians, onstage and off,” says Matsuo. “During the search period it was clear he was the right person at the right time. His chemistry with the Orchestra is undeniable, and we really respond to how, in conversation, he shares our views about our role as musicians in the community, about making music available for everybody, about how we can make the experience of great music meaningful for our audience.”
Shortly after his selection as Music Director was announced in April 2024, Cristi held a Zoom meeting with all members of the Orchestra. “They seemed surprised that I asked questions,” Cristi recalls. “Somebody asked if I would tell them what I would like to record, and I said, ‘Of course, but how about you?’ The response was, ‘Well, you’re the Music Director. We want to know where you are taking us.’ That gave me a deep sense of our relationship; they have their individual passions and desires, but they were even more focused on how they wanted to embrace my vision.”
So it is with the music-making itself. Matsuo sums it up: “He projects a nice balance of being the ultimate person we look to for interpretation, but he also trusts us to make that vision happen with our instruments. He was an orchestral musician, so he knows what we need. In terms of sound and character, he holds us to a high standard. He will only improve what we already have going for us.” n
Music Director Designate Cristian Măcelaru leads the CSO in Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, From the New World. (Credit: JP Leong)
Why We Give: Dianne and J. David Rosenberg
by TYLER M. SECOR
From full concerts at Music Hall to small pop-up performances in local neighborhoods and everything in between, our generous and dedicated donors, sponsors and concertgoers make it all possible. This series shares the special stories behind why our donors give to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops. While each donor has a different reason, their passion for this Orchestra is a constant.
To join our family of donors online, visit cincinnatisymphony.org/donate or contact the Philanthropy Department at 513.744.3271.
n n n
As the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra warms up for an evening subscription concert, a young child, likely in second or third grade, enters Music Hall for the first time. The child’s quirky and unique aunt, who was also an exceptional teacher and taught at North Avondale School, had brought her to the concert.…
So began Dianne Rosenberg’s journey with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She recalls being “absolutely mesmerized by the vastness of Music Hall and the sound of the Orchestra…. Well, it’s something I will never forget.”
But Dianne’s first CSO concert had another memorable moment. “I was so excited,” recalls Dianne, “that I kicked the seat of the person in front of me. They turned around to my aunt and said ‘would you please tell your daughter to stop kicking me?’” Nevertheless, it was the “awe” of the evening that Dianne remembers most and can “still feel when I talk about that evening.”
Several decades later, Dianne is now Chair of the Board of Directors of the Orchestra and, alongside her husband, David, they have made significant gifts that will sustain the CSO long into the future.
David didn’t grow up in Cincinnati; instead, he spent his formative years in Lexington, Kentucky.
And in his late 20s, he came to know Music Hall through the American Financial Group’s annual holiday party, which continues to be held at Music Hall to this day.
“The hall was awesome,” remarks David. “There were some years when AFG would have the CSO as the entertainment and I would occasionally buy CSO concert tickets for a date night. But, when I started dating Dianne, she exposed me more regularly to the CSO.”
Admittedly, David’s classical music education is limited, but “Dianne has done her best to teach me the culture of classical music,” he says.
“How am I doing?” Dianne asks jokingly.
David laughingly replies, “Dianne finds it frustrating, but I tell her that it is not the teacher, but the student.”
This is quintessential David and Dianne: lively and witty repartee filled with starry-eyed love for each other and for their individual and shared passions.
“The CSO has obviously given Dianne such immense pleasure,” remarks David, “and I have enjoyed the partnership with her as we’ve attended as season subscribers. The CSO has enriched our lives immensely.”
Starting in 2012, Dianne took her love of the Orchestra beyond being a season subscriber to a service position as a Director on the CSO’s Board. Then, one morning in 2021, Dianne received a phone call from Rob McDonald, then-Chair of the Board, asking to meet with her later that afternoon. “I really didn’t know what he wanted, but I knew it had to be related to the Orchestra,” recalls Dianne. “I was absolutely floored when Rob told me that the Board wanted me to be the next Chairperson. I mean, I actually cried because I didn’t expect it, and it was a big deal.”
Dianne began her tenure as Chair in 2022, a term that wraps up at the end of this season. To honor her time as Chair, David told Chief Philanthropy Officer Mary McFadden Lawson he wanted to do “something significant.”
David has a history of doing “something significant” for organizations that the couple love and for whose mission they value. In 2020, David gave a historic gift of $20 million to his alma matter, the University of Kentucky Law School, now named the J. David Rosenberg College of Law. At the announcement of his gift, David said, “There is a saying that ‘education is an unfinished symphony. We make music to stir hearts and
minds, to force us to remember, and to compel us to commit to each other and to ideas larger than ourselves. We invest in education to honor those upon whose shoulders we stand who made our success possible, but also as an investment of faith in the future, the idea that what these students will compose and create as lawyers and leaders — ideas, laws and public policy — will deepen not only our understanding of the law, but how our society can be more just.”
The Rosenbergs also have a history of supporting the Orchestra, not just with their time and energy, but also through philanthropic giving. “For Dianne’s 70th birthday,” states David, “we endowed a chair in the first violin section.” During the renovation of Music Hall, the Rosenbergs provided a significant contribution resulting in the naming of the “Dianne and J. David Rosenberg Green Room.” For the 125th anniversary season of the CSO, the Rosenbergs underwrote the commission of Christopher Rouse’s Sixth Symphony — the last piece Rouse finished before his death.
Commissioning a piece of music was a new endeavor for the Rosenbergs, so what did they feel when they heard the piece for the first time? “Emotional,” Dianne recalls with an obvious catch in her voice. David echoes her sentiments. The CSO went on to record Rouse’s Sixth Symphony, which the Rosenbergs play regularly at home.
And now, in honor of Dianne’s tenure as Chair, the Rosenbergs have decided to give $10 million to establish the Dianne and J. David Rosenberg Innovation Fund, which is designed for the “CSO to experiment, take risks and expand the boundaries of what’s possible in orchestral music,” says Dianne.
Innovation? Expand boundaries? Haven’t orchestral music and orchestra concerts been the same as they’ve always been?
As a longtime member of the CSO community, Dianne can firmly say, “No, it’s not the way it’s always been. And it’s not going to be what it is today, 10 years from now. I don’t think I could even imagine what it’s going to be. What is really important to David and me is that this is not just about the here and now. The CSO needs to continue to look over the horizon — to be cutting edge. I’m confident that this organization will do that.”
“In 30 years, I hope the CSO as an organization is doing some things that are dramatically different from what they’re doing today,” remarks David. “And that they’re still occasionally doing the Rouse Symphony, and it sounds as dramatic in 30 years as it did the first time we heard it.”
“That’s a great way to put it,” agrees Dianne. n
Music Director Designate Cristian Mӑcelaru, Cheryl Huddleston, Dianne Rosenberg and J. David Rosenberg (Credit: Claudia Hershner)
For Robert McGrath, the CSO is Already Home
by HANNAH EDGAR
Even before becoming the organization’s new President and CEO in February, Robert McGrath had already left an outsize mark on the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. If you have enjoyed the most recent renovation of Music Hall, heard concerts conducted by Louis Langrée and Cristian Mӑcelaru, watched livestream concerts, heard pieces commissioned by the Fanfare Project during Covid-19, attended a CSO Proof concert, or seen CSO/CCM Diversity Fellows perform onstage, then you’ve felt McGrath’s impact firsthand — first as its Vice President and General Manager, then as its Chief Operating O cer. He was a lead voice for all of those projects, and he served on both Langrée’s and Mӑcelaru’s search committees.
But McGrath is just getting started.
“Over the last decade, I have been fortunate to form important relationships, particularly within the Orchestra and on our Board, as well as with many of our major donors. But, in a way, I need to reintroduce myself in this new capacity, not only internally but also to our community,” McGrath says. “My first 90 days as President and CEO are going to be spent doing exactly that.”
As a kid, McGrath dreamed of leading an orchestra — just not quite in the way he does now. He grew up shadowconducting to his father’s Time Life recordings of orchestral masterworks. Piano lessons followed, then, when he was old enough, band class in Texas’ legendary public-school music curriculum. A classroom personality test matched him with the bassoon, and it was happily ever after — for a while.
year was Mark Volpe, then the new president of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As Volpe described his work, McGrath was transfixed. Prior to that, he didn’t even know orchestra management “was a thing.”
“I learned that I loved music more than the bassoon,” McGrath recalls.
He had second thoughts that began to emerge during, of all things, his college graduation ceremony. He was about to walk across the stage to collect a degree in bassoon performance from the prestigious, hyper-selective New England Conservatory. The commencement speaker that
The dominoes tumbled quickly after that. After graduation, McGrath followed Volpe to the BSO, working as its major gifts coordinator. A year-long League of American Orchestras fellowship o ered him short placements at the Aspen Music Festival, the Pacific Symphony in Orange County, Calif., the
CSO President and CEO Robert McGrath (Credit: Claudia Hershner)
ROBERT McGRATH
Richmond Symphony and the Chicago Symphony. He ended up settling in the last city, pivoting to artistic production and general management in a role at Chicago’s Music of the Baroque. Positions in Louisville and St. Louis followed, before his arrival at the CSO in 2011.
At the C-suite level, orchestra executives tend to move laterally, trading the top desk at one major orchestra for another. McGrath’s trajectory — sticking with the organization for more than a decade before rising to President and CEO — stands out amid industry-wide musical chairs. The “culture of the organization,” he says, is what hooked him for good. He also credits his two predecessors, Trey Devey and Jonathan Martin, and the Orchestra Board with teeing up a healthy “financial foundation” for the Orchestra that makes his job a whole lot easier.
“This is an organization that has always been determined for greatness, with an appetite for innovation in its DNA,” McGrath says. “And this has always been a Board that has made long-term, generational strategic investments.”
It’s paying off.
The organization is breaking long-held notions of what an orchestral experience is like through CSO Proof, which McGrath oversaw and implemented. The series, with 10 installments so far, invites audiences to witness the test run of new and innovative concert formats — hence, “proof of concept.”
That could include a choreographer’s neon-lit ramble through Havana (2023’s “Surrealist el Tropical”), an immersive, audiovisual reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (2021’s “ANNO”), or a mashup between Baroque music and ballroom voguing (2020’s “Singulis et Simul”). And while the classical music industry frets over declining subscription sales, he helped inaugurate the CSO’s HarmonyPass, a new membership model that costs buyers just $10.99 a month for last-minute tickets. Some 350 patrons have signed up in recent months, and early data show that the program is incentivizing return visits. Not bad for something the price of a streaming subscription.
Still, some of McGrath’s most notable successes have been behind the scenes. He has been instrumental in contributing to 13 consecutive years of balanced operating budgets — exceedingly rare in the nonprofit arts world. He’s also negotiated every collective bargaining
From top: A frame from the July 4, 2020 Pops livestream showing CSO Principal Clarinet Christopher Pell playing a pandemic-era Fanfare Project piece; CSO Proof “Singulis et Simul”; CSO Proof Surrealist el Tropical (Credit: Tyler Secor).
agreement with the CSO since he joined the organization. He’s no master negotiator, he insists, noting, “You just have to go into those conversations with an established relationship. [That way], there’s trust that the organization cares about all the operational issues, personnel issues, morale issues and artistic issues that affect the Orchestra on a day-to-day basis.”
This is just the beginning. What McGrath has been able to accomplish over the last decade is but a glimpse of what’s to come under his leadership as President and CEO.
Take, for example, the audition and tenure process. The CSO became the first major American orchestra to adopt all recommendations by the Black Orchestral Network toward making the tenure process more equitable for orchestra members. The CSO adopted BON’s recommendations in last year’s agreement, improving probationary musician feedback and preventing conflicts of interest in auditions and tenure reviews, among other provisions.
“We take our vision very seriously. In order to be ‘the most relevant orchestra in America,’ we have to first be relevant to the everyday lives of people in our own community of Cincinnati. This is very important to us, and I am excited for what the future will bring.” n
cincinnatisymphony.org/harmonypass
The 2021–22 CSO/CCM Diversity Fellows (from left) Maalik Germany-Glover, Luis Parra, Luis Celis, Javier Otalora, Max Oppeltz, Samantha Powell, Tyler McKisson and Mwakudua waNgure.
INSIDE THE ORCHESTRA: The Ever-Changing Concert Experience
by TYLER M. SECOR
Sister Act (1992) where Sister Mary Clarence (Whoopi Goldberg) helps Sister Mary Robert (Wendy Makkena) find
her voice. After Mary Robert’s first weak attempt to sing an “a,” Mary Clarence says, “close your eyes. Visualize yourself in a room full of people, lots of silverware, people dropping stu , talking loud, drunks, women with trays going ‘what are you gonna have?’
“Inside the Orchestra” seeks to demystify the many routines or rituals that are often part of any orchestra concert. From the modern perspective, these routines seem fixed, but historical context demonstrates that the typical “orchestra concert” has rapidly and significantly changed.
Your voice has to carry over the din.”
Of course, Mary Clarence was describing a common experience from her job as a nightclub singer, but that description could easily describe a classical music concert in 18th century Europe.
For example, in his book Listening in Paris James Johnson sets the scene for a standard 1750 concert at the Paris Opéra:
While most were in their places by the end of the first act, the continuous movement and low din of conversation never really stopped. Lackeys and young bachelors milled about in the crowded and often boisterous parterre, the floor-level pit to which only men were admitted. Princes of the blood and dukes visited among themselves in the highly visible first-row boxes. Worldly abbés chatted happily with ladies in jewels on the second level, occasionally earning indecent shouts from the parterre when their conversation turned too cordial. And lovers sought the dim heights of the third balcony — the paradise — away from the probing lorgnettes. Forty soldiers with loaded muskets roamed the pit and patrolled each floor, ensuring, in the words of an edict from Versailles, “the order due a Royal House.”
Johnson goes on to say, “few complained about the noise and bustle.… In fact, eighteenth-century audiences considered music little more than an agreeable ornament to a magnificent spectacle, in which they themselves played the principal part.”
A young nobleman is even quoted as saying, “there is nothing so damnable as listening to a work like a street merchant or some provincial just o the boat.”
Mary Sue Morrow, former Professor of Musicology at the University of Cincinnati CollegeConservatory of Music, wrote, “the degree of attention paid to the music at both public and private performances varied widely, with
conversation, cards, flirtation, clattering teacups, and the like often competing with the music.”
As Alex Ross explains in “Why So Serious” (The New Yorker):
Public concerts didn’t become widespread until after 1800, and well into the nineteenth century they took the form of “miscellanies” — eclectic a airs at which all kinds of music were played before audiences that seldom sat still or quieted down. Movements of symphonies and concertos were mingled with solo-piano pieces, songs and arias, dances and other lighter items. Applause usually erupted after movements, and at times during them, if the audience heard something it particularly liked.
The types of concert experiences described above are not uncommon in today’s world. But in the arena of orchestra music, the silent, almost sacred rite-like concert experience is the dominate template. This modern understanding of the orchestra concert emerged in the 1950s, which, in the context of classical music history, is a recent development.
However, the concert experience is ever evolving. From the multi-media arena shows of Taylor Swift and the 360-degree immersive experience of The Sphere in Las Vegas to livestream concerts, VR concerts and CSO Proof, concert experiences that meet a 21st century audience’s needs have emerged.
The next concert experience is yet to be created, but the final words of Alex Ross’ 2010 lecture at the Royal Philharmonic Society, titled “Hold Your Applause: Inventing and Reinventing the Classical Concert,” are apropos.
I dream of the concert hall becoming a more vital, unpredictable environment, fully in thrall to the composers who mapped our musical landscapes and the performers who populate them.… What if a rock band wants to make us think and a composer wants to make us dance? Music should be a place where our expectations are shattered.
Audience members entering the hall for the October 2024 CSO Proof: The Dark Night...is this a dream or reality? (Credit: JP Leong)
FIRST VIOLINS
Stefani Matsuo
Concertmaster
Anna Sinton Taft Chair
Felicity James
Associate Concertmaster
Tom & Dee Stegman Chair
Philip Marten
First Assistant Concertmaster
James M. Ewell Chair++
Eric Bates
Second Assistant Concertmaster
Serge Shababian Chair
Kathryn Woolley
Nicholas Tsimaras–
Peter G. Courlas Chair++
Anna Reider
Dianne & J. David Rosenberg Chair
Mauricio Aguiar§
Anne G. & Robert W. Dorsey Chair
Minyoung Baik
Jo Ann & Paul Ward Chair
James Braid
Marc Bohlke Chair given by Katrin & Manfred Bohlke
Rebecca Kruger Fryxell
Clifford J. Goosmann &
Andrea M. Wilson Chair
Elizabeth Furuta
Gerald Itzkoff
Jean Ten Have Chair
Joseph Ohkubo
Luo-Jia Wu
Jonathan Yi
SECOND VIOLINS
Gabriel Pegis
Principal
Al Levinson Chair
Yang Liu*
Harold B. & Betty Justice Chair
Scott Mozlin**
Henry Meyer Chair
Kun Dong
Cheryl Benedict
Evin Blomberg§
Sheila and Christopher Cole Chair
Rose Brown
Rachel Charbel
Ida Ringling North Chair
Chika Kinderman
Charles Morey
Hyesun Park
Paul Patterson
Charles Gausmann Chair++
Stacey Woolley
Brenda & Ralph Taylor Chair++
VIOLAS
Christian Colberg
Principal
Louise D. & Louis Nippert Chair
Gabriel Napoli
Acting Associate Principal
Grace M. Allen Chair
Julian Wilkison**
Rebecca Barnes§
Christopher Fischer
Stephen Fryxell
Melinda & Irwin Simon Chair
Caterina Longhi
Denisse Rodriguez-Rivera
Dan Wang
Joanne Wojtowicz
CRISTIAN MӐCELARU,
Music Director Designate
Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair
JOHN MORRIS RUSSELL, Cincinnati Pops Conductor
Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair
Matthias Pintscher, CSO Creative Partner
Damon Gupton, Pops Principal Guest Conductor
Louis Langrée, Music Director Laureate
Samuel Lee, Associate Conductor
Ashley and Barbara Ford Chair
Daniel Wiley, Assistant Conductor
Ashley and Barbara Ford Chair
CELLOS
Ilya Finkelshteyn
Principal
Irene & John J. Emery Chair
Lachezar Kostov *
Ona Hixson Dater Chair
Norman Johns**
Karl & Roberta Schlachter
Family Chair
Drew Dansby§
Daniel Kaler
Peter G. Courlas–
Nicholas Tsimaras Chair++
Nicholas Mariscal
Marvin Kolodzik & Linda S. Gallaher Chair for Cello
Hiro Matsuo
Laura Kimble McLellan Chair++
Alan Rafferty
Ruth F. Rosevear Chair
Tianlu (Jerry) Xu
BASSES
Owen Lee
Principal
Mary Alice Heekin Burke Chair++
Luis Celis*
Thomas Vanden Eynden Chair
Stephen Jones**
Trish & Rick Bryan Chair
Boris Astafiev§
Gerald Torres
Rick Vizachero
HARP
Gillian Benet Sella
Principal
Cynthia & Frank Stewart Chair
FLUTES
Randolph Bowman
Principal
Charles Frederic Goss Chair
Henrik Heide*
Haley Bangs
Jane & David Ellis Chair
PICCOLO
Rebecca Pancner
Patricia Gross Linnemann Chair
OBOES
Dwight Parry
Principal
Josephine I. & David J. Joseph, Jr. Chair
Lon Bussell*
Stephen P. McKean Chair
Emily Beare
ENGLISH HORN
Christopher Philpotts
Principal
Alberta & Dr. Maurice Marsh Chair++
CLARINETS
Christopher Pell
Principal
Emma Margaret & Irving D.
Goldman Chair
Joseph Morris*
Associate Principal and E-flat Clarinet
Robert E. & Fay Boeh Chair++
Ixi Chen
Vicky & Rick Reynolds Chair in honor of William A. Friedlander
BASS CLARINET
Ronald Aufmann
BASSOONS
Christopher Sales
Principal
Emalee Schavel Chair++
Martin Garcia*
Hugh Michie
CONTRABASSOON
Jennifer Monroe
HORNS
Elizabeth Freimuth
Principal
Mary M. & Charles F. Yeiser Chair
David Alexander
Acting Associate Principal
Ellen A. & Richard C. Berghamer
Chair
Molly Norcross** ‡
Sweeney Family Chair in memory of Donald C. Sweeney
Lisa Conway
Susanne & Philip O. Geier, Jr. Chair
Duane Dugger
Mary & Joseph S. Stern, Jr. Chair
Charles Bell
Donald & Margaret Robinson Chair
TRUMPETS
Anthony Limoncelli
Principal
Rawson Chair [OPEN]
Jackie & Roy Sweeney
Family Chair
Alexander Pride†
Otto M. Budig Family Foundation Chair++
Christopher Kiradjieff
TROMBONES
Cristian Ganicenco
Principal
Dorothy & John Hermanies Chair
Joseph Rodriguez**
Second/Assistant Principal Trombone
Sallie Robinson Wadsworth & Randolph L. Wadsworth Jr. Chair
BASS TROMBONE
Noah Roper
TUBA
Christopher Olka
Principal
Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair
TIMPANI
Patrick Schleker
Principal
Matthew & Peg Woodside Chair
Joseph Bricker*
Morleen & Jack Rouse Chair
PERCUSSION
David Fishlock
Principal
Susan S. & William A. Friedlander Chair
Michael Culligan*
Joseph Bricker
Morleen & Jack Rouse Chair
Marc Wolfley+
KEYBOARDS
Michael Chertock
James P. Thornton Chair
Julie Spangler+
James P. Thornton Chair
CSO/CCM DIVERSITY
FELLOWS
Lucas Ferreira Braga, violin
Melissa Peraza, viola
Manuel Papale, cello
Caleb Edwards, double bass
Wendell Rodrigues da Rosa, double bass
LIBRARIANS
Christina Eaton
Principal Librarian
Lois Klein Jolson Chair
Elizabeth Dunning
Associate Principal Librarian
Cara Benner
Assistant Librarian
STAGE MANAGERS
Brian P. Schott
Phillip T. Sheridan
Daniel Schultz
Mike Ingram
Andrew Sheridan
§ Begins the alphabetical listing of players who participate in a system of rotated seating within the string section.
* Associate Principal
** Assistant Principal
† One-year appointment
‡ Leave of absence
+ Cincinnati Pops rhythm section
++ CSO endowment only
Funded by The Mellon Foundation
CRISTIAN MĂCELARU
Music Director Designate
Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair
Grammy-winning conductor Cristian Măcelaru is the Music Director Designate of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the George Enescu Festival and Competition, music director of the Orchestre National de France, artistic director and principal conductor of the Interlochen Center for the Arts’ World Youth Symphony Orchestra, music director and conductor of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and chief conductor of the WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne, where he will serve through the 2024–25 season and continue as artistic partner for the 2025–26 season.
Măcelaru recently appeared at the Paris 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony, which was broadcast to 1.5 billion viewers worldwide. He led the Orchestre national de France and Chœur de Radio France in the performance of the Olympic Anthem as the Olympic Flag was raised at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Măcelaru and the Orchestre national de France continue their 2024–25 season with tours throughout France, Germany, South Korea and China. Guest appearances include his debuts with the Oslo Philharmonic and RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Turin as well as returns with the Wiener Symphoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in Europe. In North America, Măcelaru leads the Pittsburgh Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Măcelaru’s previous seasons include European engagements with the Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Concertgebouworkest, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Berlin and Budapest Festival Orchestra. In North America, he has led the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chicago and Boston symphony orchestras.
In 2020, he received a Grammy for conducting the Decca Classics recording of Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto with Nicola Benedetti and The Philadelphia Orchestra. His most recent album features Enescu’s Symphonies and two Romanian Rhapsodies with the Orchestre National de France, released on Deutsche Grammophon and winner of the 2024 Diapason d’Or of the Year and 2025 International Classical Music Awards.
JOHN MORRIS RUSSELL
Cincinnati Pops Conductor
Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair
John Morris Russell’s (JMR) embrace of America’s unique voice and musical stories has transformed how orchestral performances connect and engage with audiences. As conductor of the Cincinnati Pops since 2011, the wide range and diversity of his work as a musical leader, collaborator and educator continues to reinvigorate the musical scene throughout Cincinnati and across the continent. As Music Director of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina, JMR conducts the classical series as well as the prestigious Hilton Head International Piano Competition.
A Grammy-nominated artist, JMR has worked with leading performers from across a variety of musical genres, including Aretha Franklin, Emanuel Ax, Amy Grant and Vince Gill, Garrick Ohlsson, Rhiannon Giddens, Hilary Hahn, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Cynthia Erivo, Sutton Foster, George Takei, Steve Martin, Brian Wilson, Leslie Odom, Jr., Lea Salonga and Mandy Gonzalez. For over two decades, JMR has led the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s wildly successful Classical Roots initiative honoring and celebrating Black musical excellence. Guest artists have included Marvin Winans, Alton White, George Shirley, Common and Hi-Tek.
JMR has contributed seven albums to the Cincinnati Pops discography, including 2023’s holiday album JOY!. In 2015, he created the “American Originals Project,” which has won both critical and popular acclaim and features two landmark recordings: American Originals (the music of Stephen Foster) and the Grammynominated American Originals 1918 (a tribute to the dawn of the jazz age). The 2020 “American Originals” concert King Records and the Cincinnati Sound with Late Show pianist Paul Shaffer honored legendary recording artists associated with the Queen City. In the 2024–25 season JMR takes on the next installment of the project, offering a concert and recording celebrating the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, and presents a national PBS broadcast of Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey. JMR’s American Soundscapes video series with the Pops and Cincinnati’s CET public television station, has surpassed one million views on YouTube since its launch in 2016.
PNC is proud to be the Pops Season Presenter and to support the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops. Thank you for mastering the art of making Greater Cincinnati a more beautiful place.
BEN FOLDS | 2024–25 SEASON
TUE APR 15, 7:30 PM Music Hall
BEN FOLDS singer-songwriter/pianist
DANIEL WILEY conductor *
For nearly two decades, Emmy-nominated composer, singer-songwriter and pianist Ben Folds has performed with some of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras. Tonight, he makes a return appearance with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra for a night of exceptional music. Widely regarded as one of the major musical influences of our generation, Folds’ enormous body of genre-bending music includes pop albums with the Ben Folds Five, multiple solo albums and numerous collaborative records. His latest album, 2023’s What Matters Most, is a blend of pianodriven pop rock songs, while his 2015 Concerto for Piano and Orchestra from So There soared to No. 1 on both the Billboard classical and classical crossover charts.
*A biography for tonight’s conductor, Daniel Wiley, is on p. 54.
Please do not record the concert.
The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra is grateful to Pops Season Presenter PNC
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation, the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign, the region’s primary source for arts funding. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts
The CSO in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust
For exclusive content, such as full-length artist biographies, please text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*.
*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organization and its performances; msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.
FRI APR 18, 11 AM SAT APR 19, 7:30 PM Music Hall
CASE SCAGLIONE conductor
SIMONE LAMSMA violin
Lili BOULANGER D’un matin du printemps (“Of a Spring Morning”) (1893–1918)
Max BRUCH
Concerto No. 1 in G Minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 26 (1838–1920)
Vorspiel: Allegro moderato— Adagio
Allegro energico
INTERMISSION
Ludwig van Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, Eroica BEETHOVEN
Allegro con brio (1770–1827)
Marcia funebre: Adagio assai
Scherzo: Allegro vivace
Finale: Allegro molto
For exclusive content, such as full-length program notes and artist biographies, please text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*.
*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organization and its performances; msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.
These performances are approximately 110 minutes long, including intermission.
The CSO is grateful to CSO Season Sponsor Western & Southern Financial Group and Fort Washington Investment Advisors and Encore Sponsor Messer Construction
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation, the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign, the region’s primary source for arts funding. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts
Pre-Concert Talks are made possible by an endowed gift from Melody Sawyer Richardson
WGUC is the Media Partner for these concerts.
The CSO in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust
Listen to this program on 90.9 WGUC June 1, 2025 at 8 pm, followed by 30 days of streaming at cincinnatisymphony.org/replay.
n ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Case Scaglione, conductor
Case Scaglione is currently in his sixth season as Music Director of Orchestre national d’Île-de-France. He previously served as associate conductor with the New York Philharmonic and as music director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra of Los Angeles.
Scaglione opened the 2024–25 season with Orchestre national d’Îlede-France by recording Berio’s Folk Songs with Iva Bittová, scheduled to be released and toured in 2026–27. Additional season highlights with the orchestra include Rita Strohl’s Symphonie Forêt, a tour featuring Steven Isserlis performing Dvořák, and a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 7. To close the season, Scaglione reunites with the Chœur de Radio France to perform Schubert’s Mass in A-flat Major.
Scaglione’s most recent accomplishments include the completion of a sixyear tenure at Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn and a highly acclaimed debut at the Opéra national de Paris for a production of Elektra by Richard Strauss.
Debut highlights of the 2024–25 season include collaborations with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano and Komische Oper Berlin. In the U.S., Scaglione will return next season with the Utah and San Diego symphony orchestras. In Asia, Scaglione has led concerts with the China Philharmonic Orchestra as well as the Shanghai and Guangzhou symphony orchestras, in addition to regular returns to the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. imgartists.com
Simone Lamsma, violin
Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma is respected by critics, peers and audiences as one of classical music’s most striking and captivating musical personalities. With an extensive repertoire, Lamsma has been the guest of many of the world’s leading orchestras and performed with a long list of eminent conductors.
In the 2024–25 season, Lamsma returns to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, Antwerp Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and Hallé Orchestra, among other engagements such as concerts with the Tonkünstler Orchester, Stavanger and Melbourne symphony orchestras, and a tour with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. She premieres a piece by Danish composer Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen cocommissioned by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Vancouver Symphony and will be artist-in-residence for the Dutch Radio Avrotros Series. In this context, she will, among several other performances, premiere a work by leading Dutch composer Joey Roukens at the Tivolivredenburg Utrecht and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.
In 2022, her most recent recording was released to great acclaim, featuring late works by Rautavaara, including a world premiere, with the Malmö Symphony and Robert Trevino for the Ondine label. Other recordings include Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto and Gubaidulina’s In Tempus Praesens with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic under James Gaffigan and Reinbert de Leeuw on Challenge Classics, and a recital album of works by Mendelssohn, Janáček and Schumann with pianist Robert Kulek, also on Challenge Classics. In 2019, Lamsma was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London. simonelamsma.com
Lili Boulanger: D’un matin du printemps (“Of a Spring Morning”)
Composed: 1918
Premiere: Piano trio version premiered February 1919 in Paris; orchestral version premiered March 13, 1921 at the Paris Conservatoire by the Pasdeloup Orchestra, Rhené-Baton conducting
The name of Boulanger was indelibly inscribed into the annals of music by Nadia Boulanger, the 20th century’s most influential teacher and mentor of composers. Despite her seismic impact on modern music, Nadia never considered herself a composer, and firmly held that the family’s creative talent had been inherited by her younger sister, Lili, whose musical talent was evident from her earliest years. Lili could reliably carry a tune by age two and, three years later, began tagging along with Nadia to sit in on her older sister’s classes at the Conservatoire. Lili studied harp, piano, cello and violin with some of the city’s best teachers during the following years, but steady bouts of ill health, precipitated by a near-fatal attack of pneumonia when she was three, precluded the physical exertions necessary to master any of those instruments. She turned instead to composition, beginning serious study of that discipline in 1909 with Georges Caussade and Paul Vidal. Three years later, she was formally admitted to the Conservatoire, but illness prevented her from participating in the Prix de Rome competitions that year. A stay at a sanitarium on the English Channel restored her health su ciently enough for her to win the Prix in 1913 with her cantata Faust et Hélène, the first woman to earn that coveted honor. That same year, she also received the Prix Lépaulle
Born: August 21, 1893, Paris, France
Died: March 15, 1918, Mézy-par-Meulan, France
Born: January 6, 1838, Cologne, Germany
Died: October 2, 1920, Friedenau, Berlin, Germany
and the Prix Yvonne de Gouy d’Arsy. The start of her tenure at the Villa Medici in Rome (as stipulated by the Prix de Rome) was delayed by illness until March 1914, and, even then, weakened by the trip and the activity of the preceding year, she was confined to her room for nearly a month and could not resume work until late in the spring.
Lili was granted special permission to leave the Villa Medici for a visit home in July, and she had to remain in France when World War I broke out the following month. She did not return to Rome until early 1916. There she set to work on an operatic version of Maeterlinck’s La Princesse Maleine, with whose lonely heroine she identified, as well as other projects, but her health was in steady decline during the ensuing months. In February 1917, she went to convalesce at Arcachon, on the Atlantic coast near Bordeaux, but she did not improve and was taken to Paris in July for emergency surgery that brought only little, and temporary, relief. She next went to the family summer home at Gargenville for several months and returned to Paris in December, but soon had to leave for Mézy, west of the city, when the capital was subjected to heavy German bombardment early in 1918. She died in Mézy on March 15.
Despite her early death and the debilitating state of her health, Lili Boulanger completed a substantial number of compositions in which she demonstrated a highly developed creative personality imbued with the pastel impressionism so characteristic of turn-of-the-20th-century France. The complementary works D’un matin de printemps (“Of a Spring Morning”) and D’un soir triste (“Of a Sad Evening”) of 1918 were the last scores Lili Boulanger wrote with her own hand; her final work, a setting of Pie Jesu probably envisioned as part of a complete Requiem Mass, was dictated to her sister. The composer conceived each piece in three versions: one for orchestra, another for piano trio and a third for violin (or flute) and piano (D’un matin de printemps) and cello and piano (D’un soir triste). The two compositions share a common idea for their thematic material but exhibit the contrasting moods implied by their titles — D’un soir triste is mournful and painted in somber tones, while D’un matin de printemps is bright and festive.
—Dr. Richard E. Rodda
Max Bruch: Concerto No. 1 in G Minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 26
n Composed: 1865–66
n Premiere: April 24, 1866, Koblenz, Germany, with the composer conducting and Otto von Königslöw, violin
n Instrumentation: solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings
n Duration: approx. 24 minutes
Max Bruch had an extremely long career. At age 11 he started composing. At age 12 he won prize money for his string quartet, which enabled him to formally study composition, music theory and piano in his native Cologne. At age 20 he completed his first opera, and at age 83 he wrote his last works. Yet it is his Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 26, written in his 20s, that first launched him to international recognition and earned status as one of the jewels of the violin solo repertoire.
In September 1865 Bruch was appointed to what he was sure would be his dream job: director of the Royal Institute for Music and of the Koblenz Subscription Concert series in Koblenz, Germany. Although his administrative duties kept him busy, he completed a handful of large-scale works for choir and orchestra during his first two years. When he took his first cautious steps composing in a newer, less familiar genre, he confided his doubts to his friend Hiller:
My violin concerto is progressing slowly — I do not feel sure of my feet on this terrain. Do you not think that it is, in fact, very audacious of me to write a violin concerto?
His work on the piece, which would eventually become known as his Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26, progressed in tentative fits and starts over the course of the next several years. By April 1866 he had completed his first draft, and had it performed. Unhappy with the results, he sent the manuscript to the violinist Joseph Joachim for advice.
The edits that Joachim sent back to Bruch consisted largely of violinistic concerns, adjustments to make the piece fit better under the hand on the fingerboard. But his recommendations regarding the pacing and forward motion of the piece display an astute grasp of musical architecture that only a trained composer would possess. He urged Bruch:
Finish it very quickly and then allow me, if you do not find my request too forward, to write out a solo part so that I may learn the concerto before we meet, which I hope will be soon.
Bruch made changes to the piece, which he detailed in a written response to Joachim. As helpful as he found the violinist’s suggestions, he was concerned about how others might perceive them.
Even after a private performance with the Royal Court Orchestra, conducted by the composer and with Joachim as soloist, Bruch was still not pleased with the work. Another violinist and composer, Ferdinand David, offered advice, but David’s revisions to the solo part were not entirely welcome. Even Bruch’s friend, the conductor Herman Levi, got involved. Levi stirred up Bruch’s own insecurities to such a point that their friendship chilled. After “nearly half a dozen” revisions the concerto was formally premiered.
The title of Bruch’s first movement Vorspiel, “prelude,” serves a dual purpose. It defines the first seven minutes of music in terms of its relationship to the Adagio that follows, but it also prepares the audience for its unorthodox structure, curbing expectations of a traditional sonata-form opening. In fact, there is no initial orchestra statement of the theme, just the exchange of musical ideas between orchestra and soloist that call to mind the opening of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 from 75 years previous. The second theme offsets the brilliant opening with a simple folk tune that rises and soars.
The Vorspiel settles seamlessly into the second movement with no break, much as Mendelssohn had done in his Violin Concerto decades earlier. This Adagio is the heart of the work, and it is exemplary of Bruch’s talent for breathtaking simplicity. Like the first movement, the Adagio is trimmed down to its bare essentials: each theme appears only once before Bruch launches into the finale. The Allegro energico has a bounce to it that Brahms seems to echo a decade later in his own violin concerto and its Hungarian flavor seems to be a nod to Joachim’s Magyar roots.
In spite of the emotional honesty of its simpler tunes, the concerto is a virtuoso’s dream. Bruch employs open strings, the high register, four-note chords and rapid passages in double stops, all to great effect.
—Dr. Scot Buzza
NOTABLE: A bizarre epilogue to the story of the Opus 26 Violin Concerto concerns two charlatans: the sisters Ottilie and Rose Sutro, a duo-piano team who first crossed Bruch’s path in Berlin. Find details in the digital program, available by texting PROGRAM to 513.845.3024.
Born: December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany
Died: March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, Eroica
n Composed: 1802–04
n Premiere: April 7, 1805, Theater an der Wien, Beethoven conducting
A careful look at music history shows that the quainter the anecdote, the less likely it is to be historically true. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 has been saddled with several canards. One of the most famous, first reported by the composer’s secretary, Anton Schindler, alleges that the French general Bernadotte inspired Beethoven to compose a musical homage to “the greatest hero of the era.” This is improbable: Bernadotte had been in Vienna only briefly, five years before Beethoven began work on the symphony; furthermore, Schindler made a habit of fabricating stories about Beethoven to exaggerate his own influence and intimacy with the composer. Another legend about the Eroica comes from Beethoven’s physician, Bertolini, who told biographers that Beethoven’s funeral march in the second movement was an allusion to Napoleon’s march to Egypt and the rumored deaths of general Abercrombie and vice-admiral Nelson at the Battle of Abukir. Here too, the timeline makes no sense: the events referred to had taken place five years previous.
The most persistent story, however, is that Beethoven had originally dedicated the composition to Napoleon with an inscription on the title page, but after Napoleon crowned himself emperor, Beethoven tore up the title page in a rage and yelled, “He is no different than an ordinary man! Now he will trample all human rights underfoot, indulge only his ambition; now he will place himself above all others, become a tyrant!” Although theatrical, this account is at least partially supported by evidence: the gouges and erasure marks on the title page of the composer’s manuscript, where the paper was scraped away (although certainly not torn up).
Beethoven had indeed been initially fascinated and impressed by the ideals and achievements of the French general, but the history of his score to his Third Symphony demonstrates how that opinion flip-flopped repeatedly over the course of his career. After obliterating the original dedication, Beethoven had changed his mind again, reporting to the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in August 1804 that “the symphony is actually entitled Bonaparte.” He vacillated again five years later, in 1809, when he added the subtitle “Heroic symphony composed to celebrate the death of an unknown hero” to the London editions of the score. Changing his mind once more many years later, he penciled in “written for Bonaparte” at the bottom of the original title page.
Beethoven’s sympathies for the French Revolution were no secret. Upon his arrival in Vienna in 1892, he had purchased a subscription to Eulogius Schneider’s book of Jacobin verse, and his penchant for public, alcohol-fueled rants against politicians and clergy eventually attracted the attention of the emperor’s police.
Indeed, Beethoven’s support of the French Republic further fueled his disdain for Vienna and the Viennese. Resentful, he disparaged the city and its politics both in public and in his private letters (which were sure to be read by censors, in any case). He quietly plotted his move to Paris, which he was certain would be better, both personally and professionally. The move never came to pass: he eventually obtained a stipend to stay in Vienna from several Viennese aristocrats, including Prince Joseph von Lobkowicz, to whom he wrote a revised dedication to his Eroica symphony in exchange for 400 ducats.
The Eroica premiered at Vienna’s Theater and der Wien in April of 1805, with the composer conducting. The sheer scale and length of the work was overwhelming to audiences, and the response of listeners was mixed. The work required audiences not merely to listen passively but to focus on its musical content in a way that they previously had not. From the opening phrase of the first movement, the audience must “listen through” a much denser soundscape to discern melodies and harmonic twists of an uncustomary complexity. The manipulation of the opening triadic theme and its unexpected lurch into chromaticism lead to secondary themes spread throughout the movement, which then become the musical building blocks that Beethoven uses, in constantly changing ways, to extend the movement to a full 16 minutes or more. However, the composer also rewards the careful listener in several ways: with constant innovation, with some expectations fulfilled in a musically satisfying way, and other expectations blatantly thwarted, such as the famous “false entrance” from the horn player.
Hector Berlioz viewed the second movement of the Eroica as a brilliant, self-contained, one-act play in commemoration of the symphony’s eponymous hero. He commented, “I know no other example of music of a style wherein grief is so able to sustain itself consistently in forms of such purity and nobility of expression.”
Indeed, this march is not the quick two-step of military bands, but rather, a funeral cortège, briefly interrupted by a fugue, before the oboe takes up the theme. Berlioz wrote, “the wind instruments cry out as if it were the last farewell of the warriors to their companions-in-arms.”
Beethoven’s third movement is more than double the length of the corresponding third movements of his first two symphonies; it was unprecedented, but it created the template for the expansive symphonic scherzo that would then persist throughout the 19th century. He extends the usual three-part scherzo template with a coda consisting of a spectacular crescendo, building from pianissimo to fortissimo. His sketches show that this sensational effect had been conceived from the earliest stages of composition as the intended climax to the previous 15 minutes of music.
In the final movement, the composer recycled themes he had used several years previous, in his Op. 36 piano variations, as well as his ballet, Creatures of Prometheus. Beethoven’s first sketches of the movement are headed “Variations” and “Fuga,” but the piece in its final form dissolves those distinctions into a fast-slow-fast structure followed by a coda that reiterates the previous themes before concluding with another theatrical outburst: a sudden crash and flurry by the orchestra, leading to three triumphant chords.
Nowadays it is difficult to imagine this symphony in any other form, because of its place of pride in the orchestral repertoire. However, it is easy to underestimate the intellectual achievement it represented and the excitement it caused in the early 19th century: it was bigger, louder, longer and denser, and it required much more concentration than what audiences were accustomed to. In the Eroica, Beethoven effectively brought the symphony into the 19th century: a new standard was set, and the public notion of the genre was permanently changed.
—Dr. Scot Buzza
FRI APR 25, 7:30 PM SAT APR 26, 7:30 PM Music Hall
JAAP van ZWEDEN conductor
Gustav MAHLER
Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, Tragic (1860–1911)
Allegro energico, ma non troppo
Scherzo: Wuchtig
Andante moderato
Finale: Allegro moderato
For exclusive content, such as full-length program notes and artist biographies, please text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*.
*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organization and its performances; msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.
These performances are approximately 85 minutes long, there is no intermission.
The CSO is grateful to CSO Season Sponsor Western & Southern Financial Group
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation, the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign, the region’s primary source for arts funding. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts
Pre-Concert Talks are made possible by an endowed gift from Melody Sawyer Richardson
WGUC is the Media Partner for these concerts.
The CSO in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust
Listen to this program on 90.9 WGUC June 8, 2025 at 8 pm, followed by 30 days of streaming at cincinnatisymphony.org/replay.
n ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Jaap van Zweden, conductor
Jaap van Zweden is currently music director of the Seoul Philharmonic and music director-designate of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. From the 2018–19 season through the 2023–24 season he served as the 26th music director of the New York Philharmonic, and, for 12 seasons running, from 2012 to 2024, he was the music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic. He has conducted orchestras on three continents, appearing as guest with distinguished ensembles in Europe and the U.S.
Van Zweden began his 2024–25 season in Amsterdam with tour performances with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in the Concertgebouw, and a concert performance of Der fliegende Holländer with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra. He will also be part of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s celebration of Anton Bruckner’s Bicentenary and, later, he leads the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in the orchestra’s annual presentation of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He also leads the Chicago Symphony, both in Chicago and then on a European tour, returns to the Dallas Symphony, where he served as Music Director 2008–18, and leads orchestras in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, in addition to his work with the Seoul Philharmonic.
Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden, at age 19, was appointed the youngest-ever concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and began his conducting career almost 20 years later, in 1996. He remains conductor emeritus of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and honorary chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, where he was chief conductor 2005–13. He was named Musical America’s 2012 Conductor of the Year and was the subject of an October 2018 CBS 60 Minutes profile upon his arrival at the New York Philharmonic.
In 1997 Jaap van Zweden and his wife, Aaltje, established the Papageno Foundation to support families of children with autism. The foundation has grown into a multifaceted organization that focuses on the development of children and young adults with autism. As part of these efforts, van Zweden will lead the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in a special sensory-friendly concert called Access to Music on Sunday, April 27 at Music Hall (see p. 43). arsis-artists.com
n PROGRAM NOTES
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, Tragic
n Composed: 1903–04
n Premiere: May 27, 1906 in Essen, Mahler conducting n Instrumentation: 4 flutes (incl. 2 piccolos), piccolo, 4 oboes (incl. 2 English horns), English horn, 4 clarinets (incl. E-flat clarinet), bass clarinet, 4 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 horns, 6 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, bells, chimes, cowbells, crash cymbals, hammer, rute, snare drums, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, triangles, xylophone, two harps, celeste, strings
n Duration: approx. 80 minutes
Perhaps nowhere is the complex, fascinating, slightly disturbing character of Gustav Mahler better seen than in the composition of his Sixth Symphony: perfectionist conductor, obsessive creator; doting father, loving but insensitive husband; universal philosopher, filled with self-doubt — all are reflected in this awesome work that many regard as his greatest symphony for its masterful reconciliation of form and matter.
In 1902, Mahler married Alma Schindler, daughter of the Viennese painter Emil Schindler. Alma was a talented musician, a fellow pupil with Arnold Schoenberg of the teacher Alexander von Zemlinsky, privy to the highest circles of Austrian cultural aristocracy. She was said to be the most beautiful woman in Vienna. Later in the year, their first child, Maria, was born. Little “Putzi,” as they nicknamed her, became the joy of Mahler’s life, and she was one of two things that could get his mind off his work. (Strenuous physical exercise was the other.)
Born: July 7, 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia Died: May 18, 1911, Vienna, Austria
Mahler loved Alma as well, of course, and often expressed his affection in charming ways, as she recounted: “In the summer of 1903, two movements of the Sixth were finished and the ideas for the remaining movements were completed in his head. Since I was playing a lot of Wagner at that time, Mahler thought of a sweet joke. He composed for me the only love song he ever wrote, “Liebst du um Schönheit” [‘If you love for beauty, do not love me’], and he put it between the title page and the first page of Die Walküre. Then he waited day after day for me to come across it, but for once I did not open this score at that time. Suddenly he said: ‘Today I fancy having a look at Walküre.’ He opened the book and the song fell out. I was happy beyond words and we played the song that day at least twenty times.”
Yet this same man was just as often completely insensitive to her needs. She had to miss many parties and receptions for lack of the proper evening clothes demanded by Viennese society but which it never occurred to him to provide for her. She had to manage the household around his schedule, desires and ambition. One of the conditions of their marriage was that she give up composing, a discipline in which she had shown a fine talent as a young woman and which was her primary creative outlet. Despite her loving devotion to Mahler and his work, she accumulated a latent anger with him during the years of their marriage.
The summers of 1903 and 1904 spent at the family’s country retreat in the village of Maiernigg on the Wörthersee in Carinthia, when he was working on the Sixth Symphony, were times of apparent happiness for Mahler and his family. Although Alma’s misgivings about their life together were already beginning to fester, the birth of a second girl, on June 15, 1904, gave her a more pressing focus for her thoughts than her own disappointments. Mahler adored his daughters and loved the country, and he seemed contented. He was at the height of his creative powers and work on the new symphony went so well that he even found time to compose some songs.
The music he wrote, however, was far removed in mood from the halcyon happiness of Maiernigg. Alma noted in September 1904:
He finished the Sixth Symphony and added three more songs to the two Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on the Death of Children”) he had composed in 1901. I found this incomprehensible. I can understand setting such frightful words to music if one had no children, or had lost those one had.... What I cannot understand is bewailing the deaths of children who were in the best health and spirits, hardly an hour after having kissed them and fondled them. I exclaimed at the time: “For heaven’s sake, don’t tempt Providence!”
Of the Sixth Symphony, she said:
In the third movement, he represented the a-rhythmic games of the two little children, tottering in zigzags over the sand. Ominously, the childish voices become more and more tragic, and at the end die out in a whimper. In the last movement he described himself or, as he later said, his hero: “It is the hero, on whom fall ‘three blows of Fate,’ the last of which fells him like a tree.” Those were his words.
Mahler’s explanation for writing such music? “I don’t choose what to compose. It chooses me,” he said, fatalistically. The visions of terror and death that Mahler created on a beautiful Austrian summer’s day were more than simply upsetting — they were prophetic. The finale’s “three blows of Fate,” portrayed by a shattering cry from the full orchestra and the strongest possible stroke from a hammer (usually played on the bass drum), befell Mahler in 1907. Early in the year, a serious heart ailment was discovered; on June 15, his darling “Putzi,” not yet five years old, died; one month later, he was forced from his directorship of the Vienna Opera by criticism and the city’s subtle but powerful anti-Semitism. In her preface to Mahler’s letters, Alma commented, “He said so often: All my works are an anticipando of the life to come.”
—Dr. Richard E. Rodda
Why We Give: Western & Southern Financial Group and Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Inc.
by MYA GIBSON
A city’s culture is its legacy, and, for decades, Western & Southern Financial Group and Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Inc. have played a vital role in ensuring that Cincinnati’s musical traditions continue to thrive.
For Tracey Stofa, managing director and head of the Private Client Group for Fort Washington, supporting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra isn’t just business, it’s personal.
“I actually didn’t grow up with the arts,” Stofa admits. “My schedule was packed with academics and athletics, so there wasn’t much room for music or theater. But in my late 20s, I won symphony tickets in a ra e, and that first concert completely changed my perspective.”
That experience sparked a love for the arts that has only grown over time. Now, through her work at Fort Washington and her involvement in organizations like ArtsWave, Stofa is passionate about making sure others in the community have similar opportunities to discover and enjoy the arts.
The same is true for John Barrett, chairman, president and CEO of Western & Southern, whose love for the symphony orchestra started in early elementary school when he attended an orchestra performance of Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, which he found incredibly moving — he has been hooked ever since.
Stofa says, “Whether it’s a grand orchestra performance or a fun Pops concert, music has a way of uniting people from all walks of life. The CSO is the backbone of our great arts community, and we’re proud to support an organization that creates such memorable experiences.”
So, why do Western & Southern and Fort Washington give? The answer is simple: our city is a better place when its cultural institutions thrive. The CSO, with its rich heritage and commitment to musical experiences, embodies the vibrant spirit of the city.
“We’re committed to making Cincinnati the best place to live, work and celebrate life,” Stofa notes. “By supporting the Orchestra, Western &
Southern and Fort Washington a rm that the arts are an essential ingredient in building a community that is innovative, thriving and connected.”
Western & Southern and Fort Washington have long recognized that investing in the arts creates a ripple e ect throughout the community. Employees regularly attend performances, host clients at concerts and take pride in being part of an organization that helps keep the arts alive. Their contributions help ensure that the CSO can attract and retain the world’s best musicians, conductors and artistic talent. This level of artistic excellence not only enhances the performances themselves but also fuels the Orchestra’s broad educational initiatives and free community concerts.
For Barrett, philanthropic giving hits a bit closer to home. His mother and father were huge supporters of the CSO and the arts in Cincinnati. He strives to carry on their tradition and is proud to follow in their footsteps.
Stofa remarks, “We invest in organizations that put people first and preserve the city’s traditions to advance the common good. These traditions bring us all together for shared experiences and community connections.”
As Cincinnati continues to grow, so does its artistic legacy, and, thanks to dedicated partners like Western & Southern and Fort Washington, the CSO will play on for generations to come.
Tracey Stofa, managing director and head of the Private Client Group for Fort Washington Invesment Advisors, and John Barrett, chairman, president and CEO of Western & Southern Financial Group.
ACCESS TO MUSIC | 2024–25 SEASON
SUN APR 27, 2 PM Music Hall
JAAP van ZWEDEN conductor*
Gioachino ROSSINI Overture to La gazza ladra (“The Thieving Magpie”) (1792–1868)
Johann STRAUSS, Jr. Overture to Die Fledermaus (“The Bat”) (1825–1899)
Edward ELGAR “Nimrod” from Enigma Variations, Op. 36 (1857–1934)
Leonard BERNSTEIN Overture to Candide (1918–1990)
Johann STRAUSS, Jr. An der schönen blauen Donau (“On the Beautiful Blue Danube”) Waltz, Op. 314
Johann STRAUSS, Sr. Radetzky March, Op. 228 (1804–1849)
John WILLIAMS Main Theme from Star Wars (b. 1932)
This concert is an all-ages, sensory-friendly performance that celebrates the connection between autism and music, both of which exist on a vast spectrum.
*A biography for conductor Jaap van Zweden is on p. 39.
This performance is approximately 55 minutes long, there is no intermission.
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation, the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign, the region’s primary source for arts funding. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts
The CSO in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust
FRI MAY 2, 7:30 PM SAT MAY 3, 7:30 PM SUN MAY 4, 2 PM Music Hall
MANDY GONZALEZ vocalist
Best known for starring on Broadway in Wicked and Hamilton, and for her portrayal of Nina Rosario in the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights, Broadway icon Mandy Gonzalez joins JMR and the Pops in a celebration of the Latine voices of Broadway, such as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rita Moreno and Linda Ronstadt.
There will be one 20-minute intermission.
Please do not record the concert.
The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra is grateful to Pops Season Presenter PNC and Series Sponsor HORAN Wealth
The Cincinnati Pops is grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Val Cook, whose generous endowment supports this performance.
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation, the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign, the region’s primary source for arts funding. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts
JOHN MORRIS RUSSELL conductor For exclusive content, such as full-length artist biographies, please text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*.
*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organization and its performances; msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.
The CSO in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust
DAMON GUPTON conductor MICHELLE CANN piano
FRI MAY 9, 11 AM SAT MAY 10, 7:30 PM Music Hall
Antonín DVOŘÁK
The Noon Witch, Op. 108 (1841–1904)
Edvard GRIEG
Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (1843–1907) Allegro molto moderato Adagio— Allegro moderato molto e marcato
INTERMISSION
Igor STRAVINSKY
Scherzo à la russe (1882–1971)
Arthur HONEGGER Pastorale d’été (1892–1955)
Edward K. (“Duke”) Black, Brown and Beige ELLINGTON Work Song— (1899–1974) Come Sunday— arr. Peress Light
For exclusive content, such as full-length program notes and artist biographies, please text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*.
*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organization and its performances; msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.
These performances are approximately 130 minutes long, including intermission.
The CSO is grateful to CSO Season Sponsor Western & Southern Financial Group and Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Performance Sponsor Pyro-Technical Investigations, Inc., Show Sponsor Thompson Hine and Digital Access Partner CVG Airport Authority
This concert is made possible by the Vicky and Rick Reynolds Fund for Diverse Artists
The appearance of Michelle Cann is made possible by a generous gift from the William Hurford and Lesley Gilbertson Family Fund for Guest Pianists
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation, the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign, the region’s primary source for arts funding. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts
Pre-Concert Talks are made possible by an endowed gift from Melody Sawyer Richardson
WGUC is the Media Partner for these concerts.
The CSO in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust
Listen to this program on 90.9 WGUC July 6, 2025 at 8 pm, followed by 30 days of streaming at cincinnatisymphony.org/replay.
n ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Damon Gupton, Pops Principal Guest Conductor
Damon Gupton is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Cincinnati Pops. A native of Detroit, he served as American Conducting Fellow of the Houston Symphony and held the post of assistant conductor of the Kansas City Symphony. His conducting appearances include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Detroit Symphony, Boston Pops, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Toledo Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Florida Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Chineke!, NHK Orchestra of Tokyo, Orquesta Filarmonica de UNAM, Charlottesville Symphony, Brass Band of Battle Creek, Brevard Music Center, and Sphinx Symphony as part of the 12th annual Sphinx Competition. He led the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra on two national tours with performances at Carnegie Hall, and he conducted the finals of the Seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition and the 2021 Classic FM Live at Royal Albert Hall with Chineke!.
Gupton received his Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Michigan. He studied conducting with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin at the Aspen Music Festival and with Leonard Slatkin at the National Conducting Institute in Washington, D.C.
An accomplished actor, Gupton is a graduate of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School. He has had a number of roles in television and film, including in the upcoming Paramount+ series Happy Face and the film Lear Rex with Al Pacino, as well as on stage.
He is represented by Harden Curtis Kirsten Riley Agency (HCKR), SMS Talent and Brookside Artist Management.
Read more about Damon Gupton on p. 9 of this issue of Fanfare Magazine
Michelle Cann, piano 2019 MAC Music Innovator
Grammy-winning pianist Michelle Cann is one of the most sought-after artists of her generation. Recent engagements include appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Her honors include the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. In 2024, she was named the inaugural Christel DeHaan Artistic Partner of the American Piano Awards.
Highlights of Cann’s 2024–25 season include appearances with the San Francisco Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. She performs solo and collaborative recitals on prominent series in venues such as the 92nd Street Y, Duke University, the Royal Conservatory of Music and Shriver Hall. She also performs a recital as the headline artist at the national conference of the Music Teachers National Association.
Recognized as a leading interpreter of the piano music of Florence Price, Cann gave the New York City premiere of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra in 2016. Her recording of the concerto with the New York Youth Symphony won a Grammy in 2023 for Best Orchestral Performance. She won a Grammy in 2025 for Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, recorded with soprano Karen Slack. Her acclaimed debut solo album Revival, featuring music by Price and Margaret Bonds, was released in 2023.
Cann holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and an Artist’s Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music. She joined the Curtis piano faculty in 2020 as the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies. She is also on the piano faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. michellecann.com
Premiere: Semi-public performance June 3, 1896, at the Prague Conservatory, Antonín Bennewitz conducting; public premiere November 21, 1896 in London, Henry Wood conducting
By 1891, Antonín Dvořák had composed eight symphonies and was a professor at the Prague Conservatory when he was invited by Jeannette Thurber, an American philanthropist, to become the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. She had founded the school with hopes of establishing a distinctly American style of classical music on par with European traditions. Since Dvořák was known for defining his own country’s musical identity, Thurber believed he was the perfect person to help develop a new generation of American composers.
Dvořák and his family arrived in New York City in 1892 and stayed for three years. During that time, he composed some of his most beloved works, including the “American” String Quartet, the New World Symphony and his cello concerto. The family returned to Bohemia in 1895, and, aside from occasional trips abroad to conduct and attend performances of his music, Dvořák remained there for the rest of his life.
A very patriotic man, Dvořák was thrilled to be home and turned his musical sights toward national subjects. In 1896, he began work on three symphonic poems based on poetry by Karel Jaromír Erben, the o cial archivist of the city of Prague. Erben had published a small volume of ballads based on traditional
folktales in 1841. From this collection, Dvořák chose to depict The Water Goblin, The Golden Spinning Wheel and The Noon Witch. Like so many folktales, these stories are gruesome and violent: The Water Goblin captures a young woman to live in his kingdom and destroys her child when the woman escapes to visit her frail mother; in The Golden Spinning Wheel, a beautiful village girl who is betrothed to the king has her feet and hands cut off by her stepmother and stepsister, who are in turn thrown to the wolves for their brutal murder.
The plot of The Noon Witch is no less disturbing. A mother threatens her son to behave or else she will summon the Noon Witch to take him away. The witch heeds the mother’s words and, at the stroke of noon, demands the naughty child. The terrified mother grasps her child but faints, accidentally smothering the boy in her attempts to protect him from the witch. Later, the father returns home to find his wife on the floor with their child dead in her arms.
Dvořák’s music closely follows this grim story, expressing the characters and drama through colorful orchestration.
—Catherine Case
Edvard Grieg: Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16
n Composed: 1868
n Premiere: April 3, 1869, Copenhagen, Holger Simon Paulii conducting, Edmund Neupert, piano
Edvard Grieg’s great-grandfather left Scotland in the mid-18th century and settled in the coastal city of Bergen, Norway, where the young Edvard grew up within a musical family, surrounded by mountains and sea. He learned piano from his mother and first tried composing in his teens. At the age of 15, Grieg had the privilege of meeting the famous Norwegian violin virtuoso Ole Bull. Bull was seen as a hero in Norway for his nationalism. Norway had been ruled by Denmark and then Sweden for hundreds of years and was growing increasingly independent — the country gained full independence in 1905 — and interest in the native culture was gaining momentum. Bull helped to establish the Norwegian Theater in Bergen and supported Henrik Ibsen when he was an obscure young playwright.
When Bull heard some early compositions by Grieg and recommended that he travel to Leipzig to study music, Grieg heeded the advice. The two remained in contact and Bull was influential in opening Grieg’s eyes to the value of Norwegian folk music; the young composer grew determined to forge a career that would contribute to an emerging national style of classical music. He more than succeeded in this endeavor, becoming known during his lifetime as Norway’s greatest composer and writing music that bore a national identity and embraced the vibrant folk traditions of his country.
Most of Grieg’s works are miniature in scope: his short Lyric Pieces for solo piano and the incidental music from Peer Gynt are charming character studies that draw from Norway’s folksongs and scenic landscapes for inspiration. The Piano Concerto is Grieg’s only foray into orchestral writing on a grand scale and was an instant hit at its premiere in 1869, when Grieg was just 24 years old.
After completing his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany, Grieg lived in Copenhagen for three years, where he enjoyed the vibrant culture and met a singer, Nina Hagerup, who became his wife four years later. After moving back to Norway, the couple enjoyed extended holidays in Denmark, and it was during one such trip that Grieg composed his Piano Concerto. The work was first performed in Denmark in 1869 with the young Norwegian virtuoso Edmund Neupert at the piano. Grieg was an accomplished pianist himself but only played the solo part a few times, preferring others to take the spotlight. He returned to the concerto throughout his life, revising it four separate times. His
Born: June 15, 1843, in Bergen, Norway Died: September 4, 1907, in Bergen, Norway
final revision, which included adding the third and fourth horns, was sent to his publisher just six weeks before his death in 1907.
A highlight of Grieg’s time as a student in Leipzig was the opportunity to hear Clara Schumann perform her late husband Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. The concert affected him deeply, and the fact that Grieg modeled his concerto on Schumann’s is undeniable. He chose the same key of A minor and included an opening gesture that mirrors Schumann: a dramatic flourish from the piano followed by a hushed theme in the woodwinds. The second theme is introduced by the lyrical and dark cellos before the piano takes it up. (The first of Grieg’s revisions in 1872, which mostly involved tweaks to the orchestration, had this melody in the trumpets.) Toward the end of the movement, the soloist plays a cadenza that begins quietly and builds to a dramatic climax of arpeggios and rich chords. During the premiere performance, the audience was so excited by Neupert’s virtuosic display that they burst into applause in the middle of the movement.
—Catherine Case
Born: June 17, 1882,
Igor Stravinsky: Scherzo à la russe
n Composed: 1943–44
n Premiere: September 4, 1944 over the NBC Blue Network by Paul Whiteman; orchestral version premiered in March 1946 by the San Francisco Symphony, Stravinsky conducting
In 1943, with war raging in Europe, two of the main sources of Stravinsky’s income — commissions and performance royalties — virtually dried up. To recoup, he sought other work. Living in Hollywood, he reasoned, it was only natural that he should write some music for the movies. He quickly realized, however, that the exigencies of film production would require such wholesale alterations of his ideas that little of his original intention would remain, so the film projects ultimately came to nothing — at least as motion pictures. He did make some sketches for scores for war movies, one set in Norway (those ideas were the basis of the Four Norwegian Moods) and another, set in Russia, which spawned the Scherzo à la russe
Paul Whiteman, the initiator of “symphonic jazz” and the catalyst for Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, commissioned Stravinsky in 1943 to gather his movie sketches into a brief concert work. Whiteman played the piece over the NBC Radio Network in September 1944, but it had only a modest success, probably because the Scherzo has just the merest hints of jazz and the original version for jazz band created an unhappy marriage of medium and message. Stravinsky took up the score again and, by May 1945, had finished a second version, for symphony orchestra, which better matched the music’s content and sonority. The Scherzo à la russe is now regarded among the finest of the many small, highly polished musical gems in Stravinsky’s output.
The Scherzo à la russe has a distinct flavor of Stravinsky’s native Russia and may have been inspired by an affectionate remembrance of the Russian carnivals he visited as a boy; the work’s scoring and accordion-like chord streams recall the fair scenes from Pétrouchka. The Scherzo à la russe comprises three separate pieces — the Scherzo proper and two intervening trios. The Scherzo is a bright, jaunty tune led by a trio of trumpets punctuated by occasional emphatic climaxes from the full orchestra. The first trio, a canon in close imitation, employs bell-like, Asian timbres from the harp and piano, and is decorated with rapid figurations by the solo violin. The second trio was originally a “little chorus for children,” composed in January 1943 and here given symphonic treatment.
—Dr. Richard E. Rodda
Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg Died: April 6, 1971, New York City
Arthur Honegger: Pastorale d’été
n Composed: 1920
n Premiere: February 17, 1921 in Paris, Vladimir Golschmann conducting n Instrumentation: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, strings
n Duration: approx. 8 minutes
Arthur Honegger was born in Le Havre, France of Swiss parents, and maintained a strong allegiance to (and citizenship of) Switzerland throughout his life. He studied for two years at the Zurich Conservatory before transferring to the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included André Gédalge, Charles-Marie Widor and Vincent d’Indy. Honegger’s first important work, a violin sonata, appeared in 1918, at about the time he was arbitrarily inducted by a French journalist into the group of composers known as “The French Six.” Although Honegger was respectful of these musicians and supportive of the vibrant musical activity they brought to Paris, his sympathies were as heavily weighted toward the traditions of Germany as to those of France, and he drifted away from “Les Six” in the 1920s.
Honegger’s oratorio King David (1921) and the “Symphonic Movement” Pacific 231 (1923), which evokes the speed and power of a locomotive, brought him international prominence, and he toured widely in Europe and the Americas for the last three decades of his life as lecturer, conductor and pianist. His large output comprises 30 stage works, including operas, oratorios, ballets and vaudevilles; a vast quantity of incidental music and film scores; five symphonies; many independent orchestral compositions; scores for chorus and orchestra; chamber music and songs.
The lovely Pastorale d’été (“Summer Pastorale”) is one of Honegger’s earliest orchestral creations and still bears traces of the impressionist influence that slipped from his work in later compositions. He composed the Pastorale during a vacation in August 1920 amid the breathtaking beauty of Wengen, in the shadow of the Jungfrau near Interlaken, and it bears the unmistakable imprint of a halcyon Swiss summer. The score was headed with a quotation from Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations: J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été (“I embraced the summer dawn”). The Pastorale d’été has been among the most frequently heard of Honegger’s orchestral works since its premiere in 1921, when it was awarded the Prix Verley by unanimous audience acclaim.
—Dr. Richard E. Rodda
Edward K. (“Duke”) Ellington, arr. Peress: Black, Brown and Beige
n Composed: 1943
n Premiere: original version, 1943 at New York’s Carnegie Hall, by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra; symphonic suite arranged by Maurice Peress (1930–2017) premiered in 1970 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival, Peress conducting n Instrumentation: 3 flutes (incl. alto flute and piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto/baritone saxophone, 3 bassoons (incl. contrabassoon), 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, drum set, bass drum, bells, chimes, crash cymbals, marimba, ratchet, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tams, wind chimes, harp, jazz bass, strings
n Duration: approx. 18 minutes
Black, Brown and Beige is considered one of the seminal works in Duke Ellington’s extensive musical catalog. The musical and cultural narrative presented through the work is emblematic of Ellington’s rejection of the commercialized jazz idiom, his embracing of the ideology of the New Negro that underscored the activity of the Harlem Renaissance and his efforts to advance racial pride. Decades before James Brown sang the words “Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud,” Duke Ellington promoted this idea.
The debut of Black, Brown and Beige at Ellington’s historic 1943 Carnegie Hall concert marked the unmasking of what had been a more latent aspect of Ellington’s compositional voice. The bandleader’s popularity prior to this point
Born: March 10, 1892, Le Havre, France
Died: November 27, 1955, Paris, France
Born: April 29, 1899, Washington, D.C.
Died: May 24, 1974, New York, New York
had largely been framed through the idiom of conventional jazz arrangements like “Mood Indigo,” “In a Sentimental Mood,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got that Swing).” However, a closer listen to compositions like Creole Rhapsody, Reminiscing in Tempo and Symphony in Black, all of which date from the 1930s, reveals evidence of Ellington’s symphonic aspirations. This is not surprising, given the music and representations of a Black intellectual tradition that characterized the sound worlds the pianist engaged in during his formative years in Washington, D.C., and later in New York. These musical aspirations paralleled the sounds and activity that surrounded the Harlem Renaissance. More directly, they linked Ellington’s large-scale works with an advancing Black symphonic aesthetic that was first framed in the 1930s through the orchestral works of William Grant Still, Florence Price and William Dawson.
Rather than write for the conventional symphonic orchestra, Ellington reimagined the tonal possibilities of the jazz orchestra. Even when reflecting conventional forms, Ellington’s arrangements displayed an understanding of possibilities that lie in the individual sound identities of his musicians. Those elements became emblems of the Ellington sound and contributed much to the harmonic color of his large-scale works.
Ellington characterized Black, Brown and Beige as “a parallel to the history of the Negro in America.” The extensive work consisted of three sections and nine movements. Each section — Black, Brown and Beige — portrayed a di erent epoch in the transmutation of the enslaved African to the American Negro. Much like Still, Price and Dawson, Ellington used references to Black folk practices and cultural sites as a means of conveying contexts of Black identity.
Initial reviews of Black, Brown and Beige were mixed, with some critics, while acknowledging the originality of the work, criticizing its length. Others questioned if Ellington was abandoning jazz. All seemed to have informed the composer’s thoughts about the work and it was never performed again in its entirety. Instead, Ellington reworked portions of Black, Brown and Beige into shorter segments that were presented as a suite. He further revised the work to be sung by Mahalia Jackson, a version preserved on the singer’s acclaimed 1958 recording with Ellington and his orchestra.
When interest in the composition heightened in the 1960s, Ellington published a set of seven full scores with Tempo Music. Also around this time, conductor Maurice Peress began discussing with the composer reorchestrating the work for symphony orchestra. The result was a symphonic suite, a reimagining of Black into three movements titled “Work Song,” “Come Sunday” and “Light.” The Peress arrangement is featured in this weekend’s concerts. Both the original and re-orchestrated versions of Black, Brown and Beige follow a narrative based on a poem written by Ellington. The poem traces the life of a mythical African named Boola from the point of his enslavement in Africa through emancipation and, finally, World War II-era Harlem. The poem covers a time and cultural chronology of almost three centuries. Originally, this narrative was spread across the larger sections of “Black,” “Brown” and “Beige.” However, the suite version condenses this larger story into the framework of the three movements.
—Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle
2024–25 SEASON
CSYO CONCERT ORCHESTRA: Sinfonia Espansiva
SUN MAY 11, 2 pm, Music Hall
FELIPE MORALES-TORRES conductor
Maurice RAVEL Boléro (1875–1937)
arr. Andrews
Carlos CHÁVEZ
Symphony No. 2, Sinfonia India (1899–1978)
PAUSE
Carl NIELSEN
Symphony No. 3, Sinfonia Espansiva (1865–1931)
Allegro espansivo Andante pastorale Finale (Allegro)
CSYO PHILHARMONIC: Seascapes
SUN MAY 11, 7 PM, Music Hall
DANIEL WILEY conductor
AUTUMN RINALDI cello
Benjamin BRITTEN
Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes (1913–1976)
Dawn: Lento e tranquillo
Sunday Morning: Allegro spiritoso
Moonlight: Andante comodo e rubato
Storm: Presto con fuoco
Piotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY
Variations on a Rococo Theme in A Major, Op. 33 (1840–1893)
Theme: Moderato assai quasi andante—Moderato semplice
Variation 1 Tempo della Thema
Variation 2 Tempo della Thema
Variation 3 Andante
Variation 4 Andante sostenuto
INTERMISSION
Ernest BLOCH
Poems of the Sea (1880–1959)
Frank BRIDGE
The Sea (1879–1941)
Seascape
Sea-Foam
Moonlight
Storm
Ellen and Richard Berghamer Foundation
The Charles H. Dater Foundation For program notes, please visit our digital program by texting PROGRAM to 513.845.3024.
Support provided by the Ellen and Richard Berghamer Foundation, The Charles H. Dater Foundation and Chemed Corporation
The Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestras is a program of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and receives generous support in the form of rehearsal space from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and Walnut Hills High School.
n ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
CSYO Concert Orchestra
FELIPE MORALES-TORRES, conductor
Felipe Morales-Torres is an award-winning conductor and educator with a passion for inspiring the next generation of musicians. In addition to his role as Conductor of the CSYO Concert Orchestra, Morales is the assistant director and program manager with The Bornoff Foundation for the Advancement of String Education and previously served as orchestra director for Anderson High School and Winton Woods City Schools. He is also an active guest conductor and clinician for student orchestras in the U.S. and Latin America, traveling to Costa Rica each summer to teach and conduct for FASE. He was a recent guest of the National Symphony Orchestra of Chile, where he conducted and studied alongside its director, Leonid Grin.
As a Latin-American teaching artist, Morales is driven to engage diverse student musicians and to make quality opportunities accessible to them. He has played a part in several community music programs, including the Louisville Youth Orchestra and the Dayton Philharmonic’s Q The Music, an El Sistemainspired outreach program.
Morales started his musical life as a violist, and later pursued bassoon studies as an undergraduate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. In 2019, he completed a master’s degree in Music Education and Orchestral Conducting, earning the university’s Excellence in Teaching Award for his work with undergraduate music education majors.
CSYO Philharmonic
DANIEL WILEY, conductor
Daniel Wiley has quickly become a notable young conductor on the rise, having made appearances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Ballet, Kansas City Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Toledo Symphony, Orchestra Iowa & Quad City Ballet, Salisbury Symphony, Windsor Symphony Orchestra, Windsor Abridged Opera, London Symphonia, Boise Philharmonic, Abilene Philharmonic, Denali Chamber Orchestra, Meridian Symphony, Equilibrium Ensemble and the University of North Florida Opera.
Wiley currently holds posts as assistant conductor with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Kansas City Symphony, and he is the music director of the Salisbury Symphony in North Carolina.
During the pandemic, Wiley was instrumental in expanding the Windsor Symphony’s educational footprint by creating a digital education concert series that includes 12 hours of interactive music curriculum for schools. In 2019, Wiley was a prize recipient of both the Smoky Mountain International Conducting Institute and Competition and the Los Angeles International Conducting Competition. Wiley has also spent time conducting new music ensembles, including for the Musicbed Music and Film Corporation based in Fort Worth, Texas. He has also participated in the Composing in the Wilderness program as part of the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Fairbanks, Alaska.
As a former public school music teacher, Wiley has a unique passion for music education and frequently donates his time as a guest clinician to support students and teachers in music programs across North America.
AUTUMN RINALDI, cello
2025 CSYO Concerto Competition Winner
Sixteen-year-old cellist Autumn Rinaldi lives in Indian Hill and is a sophomore at Cincinnati Country Day School. Rinaldi discovered her passion for the cello at age 5, when she heard one being played at a birthday party, and began private studies immediately thereafter. Rinaldi currently studies with Dr. Sarah Kim, professor of cello at Miami University. She also considers CSO cellist/CCM professor Alan Rafferty and professor Hans Jørgen Jensen at Northwestern University influential teachers and mentors. Rinaldi has been a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestras for the past four seasons and has served as Assistant Principal Cello of its Philharmonic ensemble the past two. This past winter, Rinaldi served as principal cellist of the 2025 OMEA All-State Orchestra and principal cellist of the 2024 OMEA Southwest Regional Orchestra.
As the Senior Strings winner of the 2024 Jack and Lucille Wonnell Memorial Competition, Rinaldi made her solo debut this past March with the Blue Ash Montgomery Symphony Orchestra. Other solo competitions in which she has been recognized include the 2024 Cleveland Cello Society Scholarship Competition, the 2023 OhioMTA State Buckeye Auditions, and the 2021 and 2023 Jack and Lucille Wonnell Memorial Concerto Competition.
Rinaldi has attended numerous camps and festivals and is an avid chamber musician with a love for collaboration. Recently, Rinaldi combined her interest in singing with cello, performing vocal-cello duos with fellow CSYO Philharmonic cellist Sonya Moomaw.
Her composition, Walk, for violin and percussion, which she composed as a 2024 fellow with the composition program Cincinnati, From Scratch! was premiered and recorded by CSO percussionist Joe Bricker and violinist Hannah Christiansen. Walk was also choreographed in the 2024–25 season by Taylor Carrasco for performance by the Second Company of the Cincinnati Ballet.
SAVE THE DATES
2025 Brady Block Parties
Join the CSO in neighborhoods around the city this summer
Thursday, June 5: Pride Block Party
Location: ICON Festival Stage at Smale Park at The Andrew J. Brady Music Center®
Pre-concert activities: 6:30pm | Concert: 7:45pm
Sunday, June 22: West End Block Party
Location: Ezzard Charles Park
Pre-concert activities: 6:30pm | Concert: 7:45pm
Community Partner: Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses
Friday, July 11: Price Hill Block Party
Location: Dunham Recreation Center
Pre-concert activities: 6:30pm | Concert: 7:45pm
Community Partners: Cincinnati Recreation Commission, BLOC Ministries
Friday, July 18: North Avondale Block Party
Location: North Avondale Recreation Center Fields
Pre-concert activities: 6:30pm | Concert: 7:45pm
Community Partners: North Avondale Neighborhood Association and Avondale Community Council
Friday, August 1: Woodlawn/Lincoln Heights Block Party
Location: Woodlawn Community Center
Pre-concert activities: 6:30pm | Concert: 7:45pm
Community Partners: Woodlawn & Lincoln Heights Community Councils
For the most up-to-date information, visit cincinnatisymphony.org/BlockParties.
Caravan Juan Tizol and Edward K. (“Duke”) Ellington
CSO Beethoven Symphony No. 3: APR 18 & 19
Barrington of Oakley
Bellevue High School
Breathitt County High School
Christian Village at Mason
Conner High School
Maple Knoll Village
Marielders
Otterbein Retirement Community
Twin Lakes at Montgomery
The Kenwood
Seasons Retirement Community
The Knolls of Oxford
Bayley at Green Township
Owensboro High School
Seasons Retirement Community
CSO Grieg & Ellington: MAY 9 & 10
Barrington of Oakley
Christian Village at Mason
Maple Knoll Village
Otterbein Retirement Community
Twin Lakes at Montgomery
The Kenwood
Seasons Retirement Community
The Knolls of Oxford
Program subject to change.
CSO Mahler Symphony No. 6: APR 25 & 26
Twin Valley South High School
Seasons Retirement Community
For exclusive content, such as full-length program notes and artist biographies, please text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*.
*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organization and its performances; msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.
ENJOY THE MUSIC, TOGETHER!
• Groups of 10+ save 20% on most concerts and seniors and students save even more!
• Curate your own event with a private reception, guided tour or meet and greet — the possibilities are endless.
Contact CSO Group Sales: 513.744.3252 or wmarshall@cincinnatisymphony.org cincinnatisymphony.org/groups
Musical Café | May 11/12, 2025
Musical Café | May 11/12, 2025
Michelle Cann has become one of the most sought-after pianists of her generation After performing with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, she will join the dynamic cellist Tommy Mesa and the CSO’s distinguished Concertmaster Stefani Matsuo for Linton’s season finale. This vibrant program will include an array of musical styles, including music by Claude Debussy, Winton Marsalis, Clara Schumann, and Paul Schoenfield’s dazzling Café Music
Michelle Cann has become one of the most sought-after pianists of her generation. After performing with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, she will join the dynamic cellist Tommy Mesa and the CSO’s distinguished Concertmaster Stefani Matsuo for Linton’s season finale This vibrant program will include an array of musical styles, including music by Claude Debussy, Winton Marsalis, Clara Schumann, and Paul Schoenfield’s dazzling Café Music
Michelle Cann has become one of the most sought-after pianists of her generation After performing with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, she will join the dynamic cellist Tommy Mesa and the CSO’s distinguished Concertmaster Stefani Matsuo for Linton’s season finale This vibrant program will include an array of musical styles, including music by Claude Debussy, Winton Marsalis, Clara Schumann, and Paul Schoenfield’s dazzling Café Music
Michelle Cann has become one of the most sought-after pianists of her generation After performing with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, she will join the dynamic cellist Tommy Mesa and the CSO’s distinguished Concertmaster Stefani Matsuo for Linton’s season finale This vibrant program will include an array of musical styles, including music by Claude Debussy, Winton Marsalis, Clara Schumann, and Paul Schoenfield’s dazzling Café Music
The Charleston James P. Johnson
Anthem of Praise
Richard Smallwood
Electric Boogie (The Electric Slide)
Bunny Wailer
CSYO CONCERT ORCHESTRA ROSTER 2024–25
FIRST VIOLIN
Eva Cate Wesley1, Co-Concertmaster
Ishanvi Karthikeyan2, Co-Concertmaster
Claire Wolford3, Co-Concertmaster
Grace Barnett, Assistant Concertmaster
Joel Butler
Carmen DeAtley-Rosales
Hyori Han
Allyson Kim
Elaine Peng
Sarah Perpignan
Santhosh Rajan
Clara Schmid
Sarang Srikanth
Kevin Wen
Clairette Yang
Angela Zhang
SECOND VIOLIN
Julia Lancman, Principal
Ben Truong, Assistant Principal
Thanh-Tú Buchholz
Youngwoo Choi
Elessar DeHoff
Eli Hu
Evie Hu
Grace Kim
Nathan Lee
Andy Li
Brianna Luo
Madeline Mozlin
Ella Shadix
Sarah Wang
Iris Xu
Jenna Zhang
VIOLA
Isabella Wang, Principal
Lucia Schartung, Assistant Principal
Sam Butler
Sylvia Fatten
Christin Wheeler
Emily Winner
CELLO
William Yeoh, Principal
Vivian Niu, Assistant Principal
Alexander Berger
Thanh-Nhã Buchholz
Sieun Ghim
Marie Godarova
Reign Matu
Adhi Nayak
Clara Rafferty
Alana Williams
Michelle Xu
Alex Zhuang
DOUBLE BASS
Kaden Theile, Principal
Alaz Erdem
Gerrit Johnson
Darcy McMahon
FLUTE/PICCOLO
Mona Allen
Francesca Harper
Camille Kolar
Riya Tummala
Sammi Wong
OBOE/ENGLISH HORN
Sophia Cheng
August Hagen
Sabareesh Rajan
CLARINET
Lucian Chang
Vincent DiCicco
Emily Gibbs
Jackson Runtenelli
Evelyn Shin
BASSOON
Sean Hayes
Gabriel Johnson
Isabella Loberg
Josie Youstler
HORN
Nathan Barkley
Evan Blubaugh
Charles Healy
Cate Mahoney
Eden Proctor
Madelyn Ryan
CSYO PHILHARMONIC ROSTER 2024–25
FIRST VIOLIN
Vivian Chang, Concertmaster
Angela Tang, Assistant Concertmaster
Hollis Chan
Andrew Cheng
Anna Christos
Marley Feng
Yuhan Gu
Paul Ku
Annie Li
Norika Oya
Ian Shang
Isabelle Tardivon
Ethan Yao
Yeming You
Irene Zhang
Emily Zhao
SECOND VIOLIN
Kieran Niska, Principal
Angelina Chen, Assistant Principal
Sophia Hamel
Caitlin Hartley
Cecilia Lehmann
Julia Li
Will Oertel
Jubilee Shang
Alexander Wang
Kyle Wang
Mia Wang
Kenneth Wu
Raina Yang
Elizabeth Yeoh
TRUMPET
Samuel Goetz
Ryan Metsker
Ben Yoby
TROMBONE
Brandon Hutchins
Mikayla November
Conner Perkins
TUBA
Gino Calipo
George Kaiser
PERCUSSION
Adolphus McCullom II
John Troyer
+Begins the alphabetical listing of players who participate in a system of rotated seating within a string section.
All wind players are considered principals and rotate between pieces.
Concertmaster Rotation 1 Ravel 2 Chávez 3 Nielsen
VIOLA
Grace Yu, Principal
Maeve Henderson, Assistant Principal
Zamar Deering
Ethan Goehring
Noah Huber
Seth Israel
Christy Kim
Lainie Stautberg
Kasinda Willingham
Alina Zhang
CELLO
Sonya Moomaw, Principal Autumn Rinaldi, Assistant Principal
Lucy Beatty
Lillian Duhaime
Nathan Lehmann
Jayden Lu
John Opalinski
Kate Wells
Kallea Willingham
Jihye Woo
Brandon Yang
DOUBLE BASS
Matteo Meli, Co-Principal
Aaron Scott, Co-Principal
Evan Butler
Loki Wirman
FLUTE/PICCOLO
Maya Hansen
Grace Kim1
Sam Waspe3
Mingjia Zhang2
OBOE/ENGLISH HORN
Ella Bill1,3
Heather Bromwell2
CLARINET
Hannah Huh1
Rylan Palmer2
Walter Piper IV
Liheng Wang3
BASS CLARINET
Walter Piper IV
HORN
Lucas Elmore
Lucas Monjot2
Jayce Mullins3
Jordan Reid
Lily Wheatley1
TRUMPET
Katie Koziel2
Thomas Stricker1
Trent Stricker3
TROMBONE
Karna Gajjar1
Tvasta Gajjar2
Colin Van Niman3
TUBA
Owen Kearney
PERCUSSION
Braeden Brown
Knox Dowell
Benjamin Hofmann
Benjamin Schuler
+Begins the alphabetical listing of players who participate in a system of rotated seating within a string section.
Wind Principals 1 Britten 2 Bloch 3 Bridge
The CSYO CCM Conducting Fellow for 2024–25 is Stephen Hardie
INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT
Local and national foundations, businesses, and government agencies are integral to the Orchestra’s vibrant performances, community engagement work, and education activities. We are proud to partner with the following funders.
ANNUAL SUPPORT
SEASON AND SERIES SPONSORS
Season Presenter
CSO Season Sponsor
PLATINUM BATON CIRCLE ($50,000+)
Anonymous
ArtsWave
Charles H. Dater Foundation
Dr. John & Louise Mulford Fund for the CSO
Ellen and Richard Berghamer Foundation
Harold C. Schott Foundation / Francie and Tom Hiltz, Trustees
H.B., E.W., F.R. Luther Charitable Foundation
Local Initiative for Excellence Foundation
Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation
Margaret McWilliams Rentschler Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
Nina Browne Parker Trust
Ohio Arts Council
Oliver Family Foundation
PNC Bank
Robert H. Reakirt Foundation Equities
The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation
The Fifth Third Foundation
Mellon Foundation
The Thomas J. Emery Memorial Western & Southern Financial Group
GOLD BATON CIRCLE ($25,000–$49,999)
George and Margaret McLane Foundation
HORAN Wealth
Louis H. and David S. Ingalls Foundation Inc.
The Cincinnati Symphony Club
The Ladislas & Vilma Segoe Family Foundation
United Dairy Farmers & Homemade Brand Ice Cream
SILVER BATON CIRCLE ($15,000–$24,999)
ArtsWave Flow
Johnson Investment Counsel
Peter E. Landgren and Judith Schonbach Landgren
The Procter & Gamble Company
The Rendigs Foundation
Scott and Charla Weiss
Wodecroft Foundation
Series Title Sponsor Foundation
Series Sponsor
CONDUCTOR’S CIRCLE ($10,000–$14,999)
Bartlett Wealth Management
Graeter’s Ice Cream
Chemed Corporation
Crosset Family Fund
CVG Airport Authority
Kelly Dehan and Rick Staudigel
Messer Construction Co.
Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
The Daniel & Susan Pfau Foundation
YOT Full Circle Foundation
CONCERTMASTER’S CIRCLE ($5,000–$9,999)
Interact For Health
JRH Consultants
Keating Muething & Klekamp PLL
Metro
Pyro-Technical Investigations, Inc.
Queen City (OH) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated
The Willard & Jean Mulford Charitable Fund
Thompson Hine LLP
ARTIST’S CIRCLE ($2,500–$4,999)
American Modern Insurance Group
Charles Scott Riley III Foundation
Closing the Health Gap
d.e. Foxx and Associates, Inc.
Hispanic Chamber Cincinnati USA
Huntington Bank
Learning Links Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation
NAMI Urban Greater Cincinnati
Visit Cincy
BUSINESS & FOUNDATION PARTNERS (up to $2,499)
African American Chamber of Commerce
Albert B. Cord Charitable Foundation
American Red Cross, Greater Cincinnati-Dayton Region
Earthward Bound Foundation
Frances L. P. Ricketts Sullivan Memorial Fund
Hixson Architecture Engineering Interiors
Journey Steel
League of American Orchestras
Robert A. & Marian K. Kennedy Charitable Trust
The Blue Book of Cincinnati
The Kroger Co.
The Voice of Your Customer
William G. and Mary Jane Helms Charitable Foundation
Join this distinguished group!
Contact Sean Baker at 513.744.3363 or sbaker@cincinnatisymphony.org to learn how you can become a supporter of the CSO and Pops. This list is updated quarterly.
2025 ARTSWAVE PARTNERS
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops acknowledge the following partner companies, foundations and their employees who generously participate in the Annual ArtsWave Community Campaign at the $100,000+ level. Thank you!
$2 million+
P&G
$1 million to $1,999,999
Fifth Third Bank and Fifth Third Foundation
$500,000 to $999,999
GE Aerospace
$250,000 to 499,999
altafiber
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
The Cincinnati Insurance Companies
Great American Insurance Group
The H.B., E.W. and F.R. Luther Charitable Foundation, Fifth Third Bank, N.A., Trustee
Western & Southern Financial Group
$100,000–$299,999
Cincinnati Open
Cincinnati Reds
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP
Duke Energy
The E.W. Scripps Company and Scripps Howard Foundation
The Enquirer | Cincinnati.com
Greater Cincinnati Foundation
The Kroger Co.
Messer Construction Co.
National Endowment for the Arts
IDEA
PERMANENT ENDOWMENTS
Endowment gifts perpetuate your values and create a sustainable future for the Orchestra. We extend our deep gratitude to the donors who have provided permanent endowments in support of our programs that are important to them. For more information about endowment gifts, contact Kate Farinacci, Director of Special Campaigns & Legacy Giving, at 513.744.3202.
ENDOWED CHAIRS
Grace M. Allen Chair
Ellen A. & Richard C. Berghamer Chair
Robert E. & Fay Boeh Chair
The Marc Bohlke Chair given by Katrin & Manfred Bohlke
Trish & Rick Bryan Chair
Otto M. Budig Family Foundation Chair
Mary Alice Heekin Burke Chair
Michael L. Cioffi & Rachael Rowe— the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones Chief Inclusion Officer
Sheila and Christopher Cole Chair
Peter G. Courlas–Nicholas Tsimaras Chair
Ona Hixson Dater Chair
The Anne G. & Robert W. Dorsey Chair+
Jane & David Ellis Chair
Irene & John J. Emery Chair
James M. Ewell Chair
Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair for Assistant Conductor
Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair for Assistant Conductor
Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair for Principal Tuba
Susan S. & William A. Friedlander Chair+
Charles Gausmann Chair
Susanne & Philip O. Geier, Jr. Chair+
Emma Margaret & Irving D. Goldman Chair
Clifford J. Goosmann & Andrea M. Wilson Chair
Charles Frederic Goss Chair
Jean Ten Have Chair
Dorothy & John Hermanies Chair
Lois Klein Jolson Chair
Josephine I. & David J. Joseph, Jr. Chair
Harold B. & Betty Justice Chair
Marvin Kolodzik & Linda S. Gallaher Chair+
Al Levinson Chair
Patricia Gross Linnemann Chair+
Alberta & Dr. Maurice Marsh Chair
Stephen P. McKean Chair
Laura Kimble McLellan Chair
The Henry Meyer Chair
The Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chairs
Rawson Chair
The Vicky & Rick Reynolds Chair in honor of William A. Friedlander+
Ida Ringling North Chair
Donald & Margaret Robinson Chair
Dianne & J. David Rosenberg Chair+
Ruth F. Rosevear Chair
The Morleen & Jack Rouse Chair+
Emalee Schavel Chair
Karl & Roberta Schlachter Family Chair
Serge Shababian Chair
Melinda & Irwin Simon Chair+
Tom & Dee Stegman Chair+
Mary & Joseph S. Stern, Jr. Chair+
Cynthia & Frank Stewart Chair
The Jackie & Roy Sweeney Family Chair
The Sweeney Family Chair in memory of Donald C. Sweeney
Anna Sinton Taft Chair
Brenda & Ralph Taylor Chair
James P. Thornton Chair
Nicholas Tsimaras–Peter G. Courlas Chair
Thomas Vanden Eynden Chair
Sallie Robinson Wadsworth & Randolph L. Wadsworth Jr. Chair
Jo Ann & Paul Ward Chair
Matthew & Peg Woodside Chair
Mary M. & Charles F. Yeiser Chair
ENDOWED PERFORMANCES
& PROJECTS
Eleanora C. U. Alms Trust, Fifth Third Bank, Trustee
Rosemary and Frank Bloom Endowment Fund*+
Cincinnati Bell Foundation Inc.
Mr. & Mrs. Val Cook
Nancy & Steve Donovan*
Sue and Bill Friedlander Endowment Fund*+
Mrs. Charles Wm Anness*, Mrs. Frederick D. Haffner, Mrs. Gerald Skidmore and the La Vaughn Scholl Garrison Fund
Fred L. & Katherine H. Groll Fund for Musical Excellence
Fred L. & Katherine H. Groll Fund for Great Artists
Fred L. & Katherine H. Groll Trust Pianist Fund
The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation Endowment Fund
Anne Heldman Endowment Fund**
Mr. and Mrs. Lorrence T. Kellar+
Lawrence A. & Anne J. Leser*
Mr. & Mrs. Carl H. Lindner**
Janice W. & Gary R. Lubin Fund for Black Artists
PNC Financial Services Group
The Procter & Gamble Fund
Vicky & Rick Reynolds Fund for Diverse Artists+
Whitney Rowe and Phillip Long Fund for Emerging Artists
Melody Sawyer Richardson*
Rosemary and Mark Schlachter Endowment Fund*+
The Harold C. Schott Foundation, Francie and Tom Hiltz Endowment Fund+
Peggy Selonick Fund for Great Artists
Dee and Tom Stegman Endowment Fund*+
Mr. & Mrs. Joseph S. Stern, Jr. Fund for Great Artists
U. S. Bank Foundation*
Sallie and Randolph Wadsworth Endowment Fund+
Educational Concerts
Rosemary & Frank Bloom *
Cincinnati Financial Corporation & The Cincinnati Insurance Companies
The Margaret Embshoff Educational Fund
Kate Foreman Young Peoples Fund
George & Anne Heldman+
Macy’s Foundation
Vicky & Rick Reynolds*+
William R. Schott Family**
Western-Southern Foundation, Inc.
Anonymous (3)+
GIFT OF MUSIC: December 21, 2024–February 10, 2025
OTHER NAMED FUNDS
Ruth Meacham Bell Memorial Fund
Frank & Mary Bergstein Fund for Musical Excellence+
Jean K. Bloch Music Library Fund
Cora Dow Endowment Fund
Corbett Educational Endowment**
Belmon U. Duvall Fund
Ewell Fund for Riverbend Maintenance
Linda & Harry Fath Endowment Fund
Ford Foundation Fund
Natalie Wurlitzer & William Ernest Griess Cello Fund
William Hurford and Lesley Gilbertson Family Fund for Guest Pianists
The Mary Ellyn Hutton Fund for Excellence in Music Education
Josephine I. & David J. Joseph, Jr. Scholarship Fund
Richard & Jean Jubelirer & Family Fund*
Anne C. and Robert P. Judd Fund for Musical Access
The Kosarko Family Innovation Fund
Elma Margaret Lapp Trust
The Richard and Susan Lauf Fund
Jésus López-Cobos Fund for Excellence
Mellon Foundation Fund
Nina Browne Parker Trust
Dorothy Robb Perin & Harold F. Poe Trust
Rieveschl Fund
Thomas Schippers Fund
Martha, Max & Alfred M. Stern Ticket Fund
Mr. & Mrs. John R. Strauss Student Ticket Fund
Anna Sinton & Charles P. Taft Fund Lucien Wulsin Fund
Wurlitzer Season Ticket Fund
CSO Pooled Income Fund
CSO Musicians Emergency Fund
*Denotes support for Annual Music Program Fund
**Denotes support for the 2nd Century Campaign
+Denotes support for the Fund for Musical Excellence
The following people provided gifts to the Gift of Music Fund to celebrate an occasion, to mark a life of service to the Orchestra, or to commemorate a special date. Their contributions are added to the Orchestra’s endowment. For more information on how to contribute to this fund, please call 513.744.3271.
In honor of Haley Christine Bangs
Terry Bangs
In honor of Cristian Măcelaru becoming the next Music Director of the CSO
Marie Speziale
In honor of Robert McGrath’s promotion to President & CEO of the CSO
Richard & Carmen Kovarsky
In memory of Frank Bloom
Gerald Skidmore
In memory of Horst W. Hehmann
Margaret Champion
Karen Pettit
In memory of
William B. Vonderhaar, Sr.
Kimberly Holthaus
Mr. and Mrs. Bryan Jones
Doryne Nippert
John and Chris Phelps
HONOR ROLL OF CONTRIBUTORS
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops are grateful to the following individuals that support our efforts by making a gift to the Orchestra Fund. We extend our heartfelt thanks to each and every one and pay tribute to them here. You can join our family of donors online at cincinnatisymphony.org/donate or by contacting the Philanthropy Department at 513.744.3271.
PLATINUM BATON CIRCLE
Gifts of $50,000 and above
Mr. and Mrs. Frederick E. Bryan, III §
Robert W. Dorsey §
Kathy Grote in loving memory of Robert Howes §
Healey Liddle Family Foundation, Mel & Bruce Healey
Harold C. Schott Foundation, Francie & Tom Hiltz
Florence Koetters
Jo Anne and Joe Orndorff
Vicky and Rick Reynolds
Ann and Harry Santen §
Irwin and Melinda Simon
Tom and Dee Stegman
Jackie and Roy Sweeney Family Fund*
Mr. Randolph L. Wadsworth Jr. §
Ginger Warner
Scott and Charla Weiss
GOLD BATON CIRCLE
Gifts of $25,000–$49,999
Joe and Patricia Baker
Dr. and Mrs. John and Suzanne Bossert §
Robert and Debra Chavez
Sheila and Christopher C. Cole
Stephen J Daush
Kelly Dehan and Rick Staudigel
Dr. and Mrs. Carl G. Fischer
Ashley and Bobbie Ford §
George L. and Anne P. Heldman Fund* §
Dr. Lesley Gilbertson and Dr. William Hurford
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Isaacs
Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Joffe
Mrs. Andrea Kaplan
Marvin P. Kolodzik and Linda S. Gallaher §
Calvin and Patricia Linnemann
Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Maloney
George and Margaret McLane Foundation
Susan McPartlin & Michael Galbraith
G. Franklin Miller and Carolyn Baker Miller
Dianne and J. David Rosenberg
Moe and Jack Rouse §
Mark S. and Rosemary K. Schlachter §
Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Ullman
Mrs. James W. Wilson, Jr.
Anonymous (1)
SILVER BATON CIRCLE
Gifts of $15,000–$24,999
Mr. and Mrs. Larry Brueshaber
Mr. Gregory D. Buckley and Ms. Susan Berry-Buckley
Mr. and Mrs. Tom Evans
The Garber Family
Tom and Jan Hardy §
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph W. Hirschhorn §
Mrs. Erich Kunzel
Peter E. Landgren and Judith Schonbach Landgren
Will and Lee Lindner
Mark and Tia Luegering
Alan Margulies and Gale Snoddy
Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. McDonald
Joseph A. and Susan E. Pichler Fund*
Jacqueline Sifri
In memory of Mary and Joseph S. Stern, Jr
Mrs. Theodore Striker
Sarah Thorburn
DeeDee and Gary West §
In Loving Memory of Diane Zent
Mr. and Mrs. James M. Zimmerman §
CONDUCTOR’S CIRCLE
Gifts of $10,000–$14,999
Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Akers
Jan and Roger Ames
Ms. Melanie M. Chavez
Michael L. Cioffi & Rachael Rowe
Mrs. Thomas E. Davidson §
K.M. Davis
Dianne Dunkelman and Clever Crazes for Kids
Emory P. Zimmer Insurance Agency
Dr. G Russell and Renee S Frankel
Lynne Friedlander and Jay Crawford
John B. and Judith O. Hansen
Patti and Fred Heldman
Ms. Barbara Johnson
Robert Johnson
Michael and Marilyn Kremzar
John and Ramsey Lanni
Adele Lippert
Phillip Long
Holly and Louis Mazzocca
In memory of Bettie Rehfeld
James and Margo Minutolo
Melody Sawyer Richardson §
Martha and Lee Schimberg
Mike and Digi Schueler
Mr. Lawrence Schumacher
Dr. Jean and Mrs. Anne Steichen
Ralph C. Taylor §
Nancy C. Wagner and Patricia M. Wagner § Anonymous (2)
CONCERTMASTER’S
CIRCLE
Gifts of $5,000–$9,999
Mr. Nicholas Apanius
Heather Apple and Mary Kay Koehler
Thomas P. Atkins
Mrs. Thomas B. Avril
Kathleen and Michael Ball
Robert and Janet Banks
Michael P Bergan and Tiffany Hanisch
Louis D. Bilionis and Ann Hubbard
Robert L. and Debbie Bogenschutz
Thomas A. Braun, III §
The Otto M. Budig Family Foundation
Sally and Rick Coomes
George Deepe and Kris Orsborn
Bedouin and Randall Dennison
Dennis W. and Cathy Dern
Mrs. Diana T. Dwight
David and Kari Ellis Fund*
Dr. and Mrs. Alberto Espay
Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fitzgerald
Marlena and Walter Frank
Dr. and Mrs. Harry F. Fry
L. Timothy Giglio
Thomas W. Gougeon
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Hamby
Ms. Delores Hargrove-Young
William and Jo Ann Harvey
Dr. James and Mrs. Susan Herman
Barbara M. Johnson
Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Keenan
Mrs. Barbara Kellar in honor of Mr. Lorrence T. Kellar
Holly King
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Kovarsky
Richard and Susan Lauf
The Lewis and Marjorie Daniel Foundation
Mrs. Robert Lippert
Elizabeth and Brian Mannion
David L. Martin
Mr. Jonathan Martin
Mandare Foundation
Barbara and Kim McCracken §
Linda and James Miller
Ms. Mary Lou Motl
Dr. E. Don Nelson and Ms. Julia Sawyer-Nelson
Mr. Arthur Norman and Mrs. Lisa Lennon Norman
The Patel-Curran Family
Poul D. and JoAnne Pedersen
David and Jenny Powell
Ellen Rieveschl §
Elizabeth and Karl Ronn §
James and Mary Russell
Dr. and Mrs. Michael Scheffler
Brent & Valerie Sheppard
Rennie and David Siebenhar
Mr. Gerald Skidmore §
Michael and Donnalyn Smith
Brett Stover §
Mr. and Mrs. David R. Valz
Christopher and Nancy Virgulak
Mrs. Paul H. Ward §
M. Elizabeth Warner
Donna A. Welsch
Ms. Diana Willen
Cathy S. Willis
Andrea K. Wiot
Irene A. Zigoris
Anonymous (4)
ARTIST’S CIRCLE
Gifts of $3,000–$4,999
Dr. Charles Abbottsmith
Mr. and Mrs. Gérard Baillely
Ms. Marianna Bettman
Glenn and Donna Boutilier
Peter and Kate Brown
Dr. Ralph P. Brown
Chris and Tom Buchert
Daniel A. Burr
Janet and Bruce Byrnes
Andrea D. Costa, Esq.
Peter G. Courlas §
Marjorie Craft
Jim and Elizabeth Dodd
Dr. and Mrs. Stewart B. Dunsker
Ann A. Ellison
Hardy and Barbara Eshbaugh
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Fencl
Mrs. Amy Forte
Yan Fridman
Linda P. Fulton §
Frank and Tara Gardner
Naomi T. Gerwin
Dr. and Mrs. Ralph A. Giannella
Anne E. Mulder and Rebecca M. Gibbs
Phyllis Myers and Danny Gray
Jim and Jann Greenberg
Lesha and Samuel Greengus
John and Elizabeth Grover
Esther B. Grubbs §
Mr. and Mrs. Byron Gustin
Dr. and Mrs. Jack Hahn
Mr. and Mrs. Robert R. Heidenreich
Donald and Susan Henson
Mr. Fred Heyse
Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hicks
Karlee L. Hilliard §
Ruth C. Holthaus
In Memory of Benjamin C. Hubbard §
Mr. and Mrs. Bradley G. Hughes
Mr. and Mrs. Michael C. Hughes
Karolyn Johnsen
Dr. Richard and Lisa Kagan
Dr. Robert W. Keith and Ms. Kathleen Thornton
John and Molly Kerman
Don and Kathy King
Lynn Keniston Klahm
Marie and Sam Kocoshis
Frank and Ann Kromer
Carol Louise Kruse
Mr. Shannon Lawson
Richard and Nancy Layding
Merlanne Louney
Luke and Nita Lovell
Larry and Mary Geren Lutz
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Marshall
Glen and Lynn Mayfield
The Allen-McCarren Trust
Becky Miars
Ms. Sue Miller
Mr. and Mrs. David E. Moccia §
George and Sarah Morrison III
Alice Perlman
Mark and Kim Pomeroy
Drs. Marcia Kaplan and Michael Privitera
Michael and Katherine Rademacher
Sandra Rivers
James Rubenstein and Bernadette Unger
Mr. & Mrs. Peter A. Schmid
Carol J. Schroeder §
Sandra and David Seiwert
Mr. Rick Sherrer and Dr. Lisa D. Kelly
Sue and Glenn Showers §
Elizabeth C. B. Sittenfeld §
William A. and Jane Smith
Nancy Steman Dierckes §
Elizabeth A. Stone
Peggy and Steven Story
Emily Terwilliger
Mr. and Mrs. J. Dwight Thompson
Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Tinklenberg
Neil Tollas and Janet Moore
Dr. Barbara R. Voelkel
Dr. and Mrs. Matthew and Diana Wallace
Dr. and Mrs. Galen R. Warren
Jonathan and Janet Weaver
Jim and George Ann Wesner
Stephen and Amy Whitlatch
Jo Ann Wieghaus
In Memory of Bruce R. Smith
Ronna and James Willis
Steve and Katie Wolnitzek
Carol and Don Wuebbling
Anonymous (4)
SYMPHONY CIRCLE
Gifts of $1,500–$2,999
Jeff and Keiko Alexander §
Lisa Allgood
Judy Aronoff and Marshall Ruchman
Dr. Diane S. Babcock §
Beth and Bob Baer
Mrs. Gail Bain
Pamela & Jeffrey Bernstein
David and Elaine Billmire
Neil Bortz
William & Mary Bramlage
Ms. Jaqui Brumm
Rachelle Bruno and Stephen Bondurant
Dr. Leanne Budde
Bob and Angela Buechner
Barbie Wagner
Ms. Deborah Campbell §
Donors John and Molly Kerman, Mark Mandell-Brown and Ann Hanson with Music Director Designate Cristian Mӑcelaru. Credit: Claudia Hershner
Tom Carpenter and Lynne Lancaster
Dr. Alan Chambers
Gordon Christenson
Susan and Burton Closson
Carol C. Cole §
Mr. and Mrs. Philip K. Cone
Randy K. and Nancy R. Cooper
Charles and Kimberly Curran §
Mark Dauner and Geraldine Wu
Robert B. Dick, Ph.D.
Tom and Leslie Ducey
Mrs. Shirley Duff
David and Linda Dugan
Amy Dunlea and Lois Mannon
Mr. and Mrs. John G. Earls §
Barry and Judy Evans
Dr. and Mrs. William J. Faulkner
Ms. Barbara A. Feldmann
Philip Ficks
Anne and Alan Fleischer
Mrs. Charles Fleischmann
Janice and Dr. Tom Forte
Richard Freshwater §
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Fricke
Carol S. Friel
Dudley Fulton
Louis and Deborah Ginocchio
Mr. Mark W. Glogowski
Donn Goebel and Cathy McLeod
Dr. and Mrs. Glenn S. Gollobin
Drew Gores and George Warrington
Bill and Christy Griesser
Catherine K. Hart
Mrs. Jackie Havenstein
Mr. John A. Headley
Heidi Jark and Steve Kenat
Andrew MacAoidh & Linda Busken Jergens §
The Marvin Jester Family
Mr. and Mrs. Paul H. Johnson
Ms. Sylvia Johnson
Christopher and Felecia Kanney
Holly H. Keeler
Mr. and Mrs. Woodrow Keown, Jr.
Bill and Penny Kincaid
Pat and Randy Krumm §
Mark & Elisabeth Kuhlman
Everett and Barbara Landen
Evelyn and Fred Lang
Charles and Jean Lauterbach
Mary Mc and Kevin Lawson
Mrs. Jean E. Lemon §
Andi Levenson Young and Scott Young
Mr. Peter F. Levin §
Mr. and Mrs. Lance A. Lewis
Paula and Nick Link
Mr. and Mrs. Clement H. Luken, Jr.
Edmund D. Lyon
Mark Mandell-Brown, MD and Ann Hanson
Robert and Heather McGrath
Mr. Gerron McKnight
John and Roberta Michelman
Mr. and Mrs. David A. Millett
Eileen W. and James R. Moon
Mrs. Sally A. More
Nan L. Oscherwitz
Rev. Dr. David V. Schwab
Sandy Pike §
Dr. Aik Khai Pung
James W. Rauth §
Dr. and Mrs. Robert Reed
Beverly and Dan Reigle
Stephen and Betty Robinson
Marianne Rowe §
Frederick R. Schneider
Tim and Jeannie Schoonover
Stanley and Jane Shulman
Ms. Martha Slager
Mark M. Smith (In memory of Terri C. Smith)
Stephanie A. Smith
Stephen and Lyle Smith
Albert and Liza Smitherman
Bill and Lee Steenken
Mrs. Donald C. Stouffer
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Stradling, Jr.
Mr. Mark Stroud
Rich and Nancy Tereba
Susan and John Tew
Dr. Judith Vermillion
Michael L. Walton, Esq
Ted and Mary Ann Weiss
Mr. Donald White
Virginia Wilhelm
Rev. Anne Warrington Wilson
Judy Wilson
Drs. Marissa S. Liang and Y. Jeffrey Yang
David and Sharon Youmans
Anonymous (7)
CONCERTO CLUB
Gifts of $500–$1,499
Christine O. Adams
Dr. Mary Albers
In memory of Carol Allgood & Ester Sievers
Mr. Thomas Alloy & Dr. Evaline Alessandrini
Patricia A. Anderson
Paul and Dolores Anderson
Dr. Victor and Dolores Angel
Nancy J. Apfel
Lynne & Keith Apple, Honoring our Family
Ms. Laura E. Atkinson
Mr. David H. Axt and Ms. Susan L. Wilkinson
Ms. Patricia Baas
Mrs. Mary M. Baer
Todd and Ann Bailey
Mr. and Mrs. Carroll R. Baker
Jack and Diane Baldwin
Peggy Barrett §
Glenda Bates
Michael and Amy Battoclette
N. Lorraine Becker
Dr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Bell
Drs. Carol and Leslie Benet
Fred Berger
Dr. Allen W. Bernard
Barbara and Milton Berner
Glenda and Malcolm Bernstein
Aggie Nichols and Jeff Berry
Ms. Henryka Bialkowska-Nagy
Sharon Ann Kerns and Mike Birck
Michael Bland
Milt and Berdie Blersch
Randal and Peter Bloch
Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Bloomer
Ms. Sandra Bolek
Ron and Betty Bollinger
Clay and Emily Bond
Dr. and Mrs. Kevin Bove
David & Madonna Bowman
Dr. Carol Brandon
David A. Brashear
Briggs Creative Services, LLC
Joan Broersma
Kathryn L. Brokaw
Harold and Gwen Brown
Jacklyn and Gary Bryson
Gay Bullock
Angie & Gary Butterbaugh
Jack and Marti Butz
John & Terri Byczkowski
Dorothy and Harold Byers §
Ms. Cindy Callicoat
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Carothers
Stephen and Karen Carr
Mike and Shirley Chaney
Dee and Frank Cianciolo Fund*
James Civille
Mr. and Mrs. John Clapp
Bob and Tisha Clary
James Clasper and Cheryl Albrecht
Mr. Robert Cohen and Ms. Amy J. Katz
Dr. George I. Colombel
Fred W. Colucci
Marilyn Cones
Dr. Margaret Conradi
Janet Conway
Robin Cotton and Cindi Fitton
Dennis and Pat Coyne
Martha Crafts
Tim and Katie Crowley
Susan and John Cummings
Adrian and Takiyah Cunningham
Jacqueline Cutshall
Mr. and Mrs. Henry F. Dabek, Jr.
Diane and Wayne Dawson
Loren and Polly DeFilippo
Stephen and Cynthia DeHoff
Ms. Rhonda Dickerscheid
Nancy and Steve Donovan
Roger and Julie Doughty
Judy Doyle in memory of James Johnson
Ms. Andrea Dubroff
Tom and Dale Due
Mr. Corwin R. Dunn
Dale & Kathy Elifrits
Sally Eversole
Mr. Douglas Fagaly
Ms. Kate Farinacci
Ms. Jean Feinberg
Mr. Robert Ferrell
Mrs. Michelle Finch
Ilya Finkelshteyn and Evin Blomberg
Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Fischer
Mr. and Mrs. James Foreman
Mr. and Ms. Bernard Foster
Dr. Charles E. Frank and Ms. Jan Goldstein
Harriet and Bill Freedman
Mr. and Mrs. John Freeman
Susan L. Fremont
In memory of Eugene and Cavell Frey
Mr. and Mrs. James Fryman
Marjorie Fryxell
Mark S. Gay
Drs. Michael and Janelle J. Gelfand
Kathleen Gibboney
Dr. Jerome Glinka and Ms. Kathleen Blieszner
Dr. and Mrs. Charles J. Glueck
Dan Goetz
Dr. and Mrs. Richard Goetz
Ms. Arlene Golembiewski
Mr. William J. Gracie, Jr.
Anita J. and Thomas G. Grau
Robert and Cynthia Gray
Carl and Joyce Greber
Mary Grooms
Janet C. Haartz and Kenneth V. Smith
Mrs. R. C. Haberstroh
Mary Elizabeth Huey and Daniel Hadley
Mary and Phil Hagner
Peter Hames
Ham and Ellie Hamilton
Walter and Karen Hand
Roberta Handwerger, in memory of Dr. Stuart Handwerger
Mr. and Mrs. William Hardie
James and Sally Harper
Dr. Donald and Laura Harrison
Mariana Belvedere and Samer Hasan
Janet Heiden
Angie Heiman
Mr. A. M. Heister
Mrs. Betty H. Heldman §
Howard D. and Mary W. Helms
Mrs. E. J. Hengelbrok, Jr.
Mr. Jeff Herbert
Michelle and Don Hershey
Janet & Craig Higgins
The Rev. Canon and Mrs. George A. Hill III
Mr. and Mrs. William A. Hillebrand
Kyle and Robert Hodgkins
Susan and Jon Hoffheimer
Ms. Leslie M. Hoggatt
Tim and Connie Holmen
Richard and Marcia Holmes
Mr. Joe Hoskins
Ms. Sandra L. Houck
Deanna and Henry Huber
Melissa Huber
Mrs. Carol H. Huether
Dr. Edward & Sarah Hughes
Nada Christine Huron
Judith Imhoff
Caroline Isaacs
Ms. Idit Isaacsohn
Dr. Maralyn M. Itzkowitz
Mrs. Charles H. Jackson, Jr.
Joan and Richard Jackson
Marcia Jelus
Ruth and Frederick Joffe
Mrs. Marilyn P. Johnston
Mr. Andrew Jones
Elizabeth A. Jones
Scott and Patricia Joseph
Jay and Shirley Joyce
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Judd
Dr. James Kaya and Debra Grauel
Dr. and Mrs. Richard Kerstine
Mr. and Mrs. Dave Kitzmiller
Jack & Sharon Knapp
In Memory of Jeff Knoop
Paul and Carita Kollman
Carol and Scott Kosarko
Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Kraimer
Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Kregor
Kathleen B. and Michael C. Krug Fund*
Mrs. John H. Kuhn §
Pinky Laffoon
Patricia Lambeck
Asher and Kelsey Lanier
Ms. Sally L. Larson
Janet R. Schultz
Mrs. Julie Laskey
Joe Law and Phil Wise
Mrs. James R. Leo
Dr. Carol P. Leslie
Mrs. Maxine F. Lewis
Board member Kari Ullman and Jon Ullman with guest conductor Christian Reif and composer Jimmy López. Credit: CSO Staff
Board member Heather Apple and Mary Kay Koehler at the Symphony Circle reception on FEB 8. Credit: Claudia Hershner
Mr. Arthur Lindsay
Mr. and Mrs. James A. Link
Mitchel and Carol Livingston
Mrs. Marianne Locke
Steven Kent Loveless
JP and Footie Lund
David and Katja Lundgren
Mrs. Mary Reed Lyon
Marshall and Nancy Macks
Mr. and Mrs. Julian A. Magnus
Jenea Malarik
Barry and Ann Malinowski
Ms. Cheryl Manning
Ms. Wendy Marshall
Andrew and Jean Martin
Mr. and Mrs. Dean Matz
Ms. Mary Jane Mayer
Ms. Elizabeth McCracken
Dr. Janet P. McDaniel
Tim and Trish McDonald
Mark McKillip and Amira Beer
Stephanie & Arthur McMahon
Art and Stephanie McMahon
Stephanie McNeill
Charles and JoAnn Mead
Ms. Nancy Menne
Lee Meyer
Michael V. Middleton
Laura Milburn
Mr. Bradley Miller
Rachel and Charlie Miller
Terence G. Milligan
Sonia R. Milrod
Ms. Laura Mitchell
Mr. Steven Monder
Mr. and Mrs. Fred Moore
Regeana and Al Morgan
Janet Mott
Mr. Scott Muhlhauser
Kevin and Lane Muth
Alan Flaherty and Patti Myers § Hochwalt Naumann Fund
Mr. and Mrs. Norman Neal
Mrs. Sara Nemeth
Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Newcomer
Amy Paul and Jerry Newfarmer
Cheryl and Roy Newman
Ms. Jane Nocito
Susan E. Noelcke
Jane Oberschmidt §
Gary Oppito
Mr. Gerardo Orta
Ms. Sylvia Osterday
John A. Pape
Rozelia Park and Christopher Dendy
Mr. Joseph A. Pauley
Ms. Catherine J. Pearce
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Piazza
Anne M. Pohl §
Dr. Robert and Jackie Prichard
Mrs. Stewart Proctor
Mr. Robert Przygoda
Jerry Rape
Mrs. Genie Redman
Kenneth and Danielle Revelson
Dr. Robert Rhoad and Kitsa Tassian Rhoad
Becky and Ted Richards
Stephanie Richardson
Drs. Christopher and Blanca Riemann
Mr. David Robertson
Laurie and Dan Roche
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Rodner
Dr. Anna Roetker
Ms. Jeanne C. Rolfes
Catherine Calko
Dr. and Mrs. Gary Roselle
Amy and John Rosenberg
Ellen and Louis Ross
Mr. and Mrs. G. Roger Ross
Dr. Deborah K. Rufner
J. Gregory and Judith B. Rust
Mr. Christian J. Schaefer
Cindy Scheets
Ms. Carol Schleker
Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Schleker
Dr. and Mrs. Michael Schmerler
Alice and Charles Schneider
George Palmer Schober
Glenda C. Schorr Fund*
James P. Schubert
Mary D. Schweitzer
Dr. Joseph Segal and Ms. Debbie Friedman
Elaine Semancik
Mick and Nancy Shaughnessy
The Shepherd Chemical Company
Connecting
Alfred and Carol Shikany
Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Shoop, Jr.
Jacqueline M. Mack and Dr. Edward B. Silberstein
Ms. Joycee Simendinger
Doug and Laura Skidmore
Nancy McGaughey and Sally Skillman
In Honor of Kenneth Skirtz
Susan and David Smith
Phillip and Karen Sparkes
Mary Stagaman and Ron Kull
Marian P. Stapleton
Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Stautberg
Ms. Ruth M. Stechschulte
Mr. John Stein
Mary M. Stein
Christopher and Meghan Stevens
Susan M. and Joseph Eric Stevens
Mr. Jason V. Stitt
Stephanie and Joseph Stitt
Nancy and Gary Strassel
Ms. Susan R. Strick
Mr. George Stricker, Jr.
Kathryn Sullivan
Thomas and Keri Tami
Dr. Alan and Shelley Tarshis
Maureen Taylor
Mr. Fred Tegarden
Carlos and Roberta Teran
Linda and Nate Tetrick
Greg Tiao and Lisa Kuan
Marcia and Bob Togneri
Dr. Nicolette van der Klaauw
Mr. D. R. Van Lokeren
Jim and Rachel Votaw §
Mrs. Barbara J. Wagner
Ms. Barbara Wagner
Mr. and Mrs. James L. Wainscott
Jane A. Walker
Sarella Walton
Ping Wang
Claude and Camilla Warren
Chad and Betsy Warwick
Mary Webster
Michael and Terry Welch
Maryhelen West
Elizabeth White
Janice T. Wieland
Angela and Jack Willard
Marsha Williams
Mr. Dean Windgassen and Ms. Susan Stanton Windgassen §
Craig and Barbara Wolf
Donald and Karen Wolnik
Rebecca Seeman and David Wood
Judith R Workman
Linda Wul
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wylly III
Mr. John M. Yacher
Mrs. Darleen Young
Judy and Martin Young
Mr. David Youngblood and Ms. Ellen Rosenman
Cheryl Zalzal
Dr. and Mrs. Daryl Zeigler
Mr. and Mrs. John Zeller
Moritz and Barbara Ziegler
Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Zierolf
Mr. Richard K. Zinicola and Ms. Linda R. Holthaus
Mrs. Beth Zwergel
Anonymous (24)
List as of February 20, 2025
GIFTS IN-KIND
Michael Culligan
David and Carol Dunevant
Graeter’s Ice Cream
Paul and Anna Isaacs
Jones Day
List as of February 20, 2025
* Denotes a fund of The Greater Cincinnati Foundation.
§ Denotes members of The Thomas Schippers Legacy Society. Individuals who have made a planned gift to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Pops Orchestra are eligible for membership in the Society. For more information, please contact Kate Farinacci at 513.744.3202.
THE THOMAS SCHIPPERS LEGACY SOCIETY
Mr. & Mrs. James R. Adams
Jeff & Keiko Alexander
Mrs. Robert H. Allen
Dr. Toni Alterman
Paul R. Anderson
Carole J. Arend
Donald C. Auberger, Jr.
Thomas Schippers was Music Director from 1970 to 1977. He left not only wonderful musical memories, but also a financial legacy with a personal bequest to the Orchestra. The Thomas Schippers Legacy Society recognizes those who contribute to the Orchestra with a planned gift. We thank these members for their foresight and generosity. For more information on leaving your own legacy, contact Kate Farinacci at 513.744.3202.
Dr. Diane Schwemlein Babcock
Henrietta Barlag
Peggy Barrett
Jane* & Ed Bavaria
David & Elaine Billmire
Walter Blair
Lucille* & Dutro Blocksom
Dr. John & Suzanne Bossert
Dr. Mollie H. Bowers-Hollon
Ronald Bozicevich
Thomas A. Braun, III
Joseph Brinkmeyer
Mr. & Mrs. Frederick Bryan, III
Harold & Dorothy Byers
Deborah Campbell & Eunice M. Wolf
Catharine W. Chapman
Michael L. Cioffi & Rachael Rowe
Mrs. Jackson L. Clagett III
Lois & Phil* Cohen
Leland M.* & Carol C. Cole
Sheila & Christopher Cole
Grace A. Cook*
Jack & Janice Cook
Mr. & Mrs. Charles Cordes
Ms. Andrea Costa
Peter G. Courlas & Nick Tsimaras*
Mr. & Mrs. Charles E Curran III
Amy & Scott Darrah, Meredith & Will Darrah & children
Caroline H. Davidson
Harrison R.T. Davis
Ms. Kelly M. Dehan
Janice Denton*
Amy & Trey Devey
Robert W. Dorsey
Jon & Susan Doucleff
Ms. Judith A. Doyle
Mr. & Mrs. John Earls
Mr. & Mrs. Barry C. Evans
Linda & Harry Fath
Alan Flaherty
Mrs. Richard A. Forberg
Ashley & Barbara Ford
Guy & Marilyn Frederick
Rich Freshwater & Family
Mr. Nicholas L. Fry
Linda P. Fulton
H. Jane Gavin
Edward J. & Barbara C.* Givens
Kenneth A. Goode
Clifford J. Goosmann & Andrea M. Wilson
Mrs. Madeleine H. Gordon
J. Frederick & Cynthia Gossman
Kathy Grote
Esther B. Grubbs, Marci Bein & Mindi Hamby
William Hackman
Vincent C. Hand & Ann E. Hagerman
Tom & Jan Hardy
William L. Harmon
Mary J. Healy
Frank G. Heitker
Anne P. Heldman*
Betty & John* Heldman
Karlee L. Hilliard
Michael H. Hirsch
Mr. & Mrs. Joseph W. Hirschhorn
Daniel J. Hoffheimer
Kenneth L. Holford
George R. Hood
Mr. & Mrs. Terence L. Horan
Mrs. Benjamin C. Hubbard
Susan & Tom Hughes
Dr. Lesley Gilbertson & Dr. William Hurford
Mr. & Mrs. Paul Isaacs
Julia M. F. B. Jackson
Michael & Kathleen Janson
Andrew MacAoidh Jergens
Jean C. Jett
Anne C. & Robert P. Judd
Margaret H. Jung
Mace C. Justice
Karen Kapella
Dr. & Mrs.* Steven Katkin
Rachel Kirley & Joseph Jaquette
Carolyn Koehl
Marvin Kolodzik & Linda Gallaher
Carol & Scott Kosarko
Marilyn & Michael Kremzar
Randolph & Patricia Krumm
Theresa M. Kuhn
Warren & Patricia Lambeck
Peter E. Landgren & Judith Schonbach Landgren
Richard* and Susan Lauf
Owen & Cici Lee
Steve Lee
Mrs. Jean E. Lemon
Mr. Peter F. Levin
George & Barbara Lott
Janice W.* & Gary R. Lubin
Mr.* & Mrs. Ronald Lyons
Marilyn J. Maag
Margot Marples
David L. Martin
Allen* & Judy Martin
David Mason
Barbara & Kim McCracken
Laura Kimble McLellan
Dr. Stanley R. Milstein
Mrs. William K. Minor
Mr. & Mrs. D. E. Moccia
Mary Lou Motl
Kristin & Stephen Mullin
Christopher & Susan Muth
Patti Myers
Susan & Kenneth Newmark
Dr. & Mrs. Theodore Nicholas
Jane Oberschmidt
Marja-Liisa Ogden
Julie & Dick* Okenfuss
Dr. & Mrs. Richard E. Park, MD
Charlie & Tara Pease
Poul D. & JoAnne Pedersen
Sandy & Larry* Pike
Mrs. Harold F. Poe
Anne M. Pohl
Irene & Daniel Randolph
James W. Rauth
Barbara S. Reckseit
Mrs. Angela M. Reed
Melody Sawyer Richardson
Ellen Rieveschl
Elizabeth & Karl Ronn
Moe & Jack Rouse
Marianne Rowe
Ann & Harry Santen
Rosemary & Mark Schlachter
Carol J. Schroeder
Mrs. William R. Seaman
Dr. Brian Sebastian
Mrs. Robert B. Shott
Sue & Glenn Showers
Irwin & Melinda Simon
Betsy & Paul* Sittenfeld
Sarah Garrison Skidmore*
Adrienne A. Smith
David & Sonja* Snyder
Marie Speziale
Mr. & Mrs. Christopher L. Sprenkle
Barry & Sharlyn Stare
Bill & Lee Steenken
Tom and Dee Stegman
Barry Steinberg
Nancy M. Steman
John & Helen Stevenson
Mary* & Bob Stewart
Brett Stover
Dr. Robert & Jill Strub
Patricia M. Strunk
Ralph & Brenda* Taylor
Conrad F. Thiede
Minda F. Thompson
Carrie & Peter Throm
Dr. & Mrs. Thomas Todd
Nydia Tranter
Dick & Jane Tuten
Thomas Vanden Eynden & Judith Beiting
Mr. & Mrs. James K. Votaw
Mr. & Mrs.* Randolph L. Wadsworth Jr.
Nancy C. Wagner
Patricia M. Wagner
Mr.* & Mrs. Paul Ward
Jo Anne & Fred Warren
Mr. Scott Weiss & Dr. Charla Weiss
Donna A. Welsch
Anne M. Werner
Gary & Diane West
Charles A. Wilkinson
Ms. Diana Willen
Joan R. Wilson
Susan Stanton Windgassen
Mrs. Joan R. Wood
Alison & Jim Zimmerman
* Deceased
New Schippers members are in bold
ADMINISTRATION
SHARED SERVICES & SUBSIDIARIES. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s business model is unique within the orchestral industry because it provides administrative services for other nonprofits and operates two subsidiary companies — Music & Event Management, Inc. and EVT Management LLC. With the consolidation of resources and expertise, sharing administrative services allows for all organizations within the model to thrive. Under this arrangement, the CSO produces hundreds of events in the Greater Cincinnati and Dayton regions and employs hundreds of people annually.
SENIOR MANAGEMENT TEAM
Robert McGrath
President & CEO
Harold Brown
The Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones Chief Inclusion O cer
John Clapp
Vice President of Orchestra & Production
Rich Freshwater
Vice President & Chief Financial O cer
Felecia Tchen Kanney
Vice President of Marketing, Communications & Digital Media
Mary McFadden Lawson
Chief Philanthropy O cer
Anthony Paggett
Vice President of Artistic Planning
Kyle Wynk-Sivashankar
Vice President of Human Resources
EXECUTIVE OFFICE
Shannon Faith
Executive Assistant to the President & CEO
ARTISTIC PLANNING
Maddie Choi
Artistic Planning Intern
Theresa Lansberry
Artist Liaison
Shuta Maeno
Manager of Artistic Planning & Assistant to the Music Director
Sam Strater
Senior Advisor for Cincinnati Pops Planning
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Key Crooms
Director of Community Engagement
Vee Gibson
Classical Roots Coordinator
Pamela Jayne
Volunteer & Community Engagement Manager
Tiago Nunez
Community Engagement Intern
Molly Rains
Community Engagement Events Manager
FINANCE, IT & DATA SERVICES
Deborah Benjamin
Accounting Clerk
Julian Cann Accounting Clerk
Kathleen Curry
Data Entry Clerk
Elizabeth Engwall
Accounting Manager
Matt Grady Accounting Manager
Sharon Grayton Data Services Manager
Marijane Klug Sta Accountant
Shannon May Accounting Clerk
Kristina Pfei er Director of Finance
Judy Simpson Director of Finance
Tara Williams Data Services Manager
HUMAN RESOURCES & PAYROLL
Megan Inderbitzin-Tsai Director of Payroll Services
Natalia Lerzundi
Human Resources & Payroll Coordinator
Jenny Ryan Human Resources Manager
LEARNING
Carol Dary Dunevant Director of Learning
Hollie Greenwood Learning Coordinator
Kyle Lamb Learning Programs Manager
Anja Ormiston Education Programs Intern
MARKETING, COMMUNICATIONS & DIGITAL MEDIA
JoVahn Allen
Marketing Intern
Charlie Balcom
Social Media Manager
Leon Barton Website Manager
KC Commander Director of Digital Content & Innovation
Maria Cordes
Video Editor
Jon Dellinger
Growth Marketing Manager
Drew Dolan Box O ce Manager
Kaitlyn Driesen
Digital Media & Label Services Manager
Mya Gibson Communications Intern
Gabriela Godinez Feregrino
Publications Manager
Stephanie Lazorchak
Graphic Designer
Daniel Lees
Assistant Box O ce Manager
Michelle Lewandowski Director of Marketing
Tina Marshall Director of Ticketing & Audience Services
Wendy Marshall Group Sales Manager
Madelyn McArthur
Audience Engagement Manager
Noah Moore
Digital Content Intern
Amber Ostaszewski Director of Audience Engagement
Tyler Secor Director of Communications & Content Development
