Arkansas Symphony Encore!

February 26, 2012
“Ode to Joy”
-Dawn Scott

It’s a quiet Sunday morning, and I’m still on a high, literally reeling, from the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s “Ode to Joy” Masterworks performance.  Quiet, until my phone blows up with text messages from my dear friend and colleague Craig O’Neill.

“Did you go to the symphony last night?  Wasn’t it fabulous?  I never saw you…”

It was more than fabulous. It was grand, rich, magnificent, and impressive.

I usually see Craig and his wife at Robinson Center Music Hall on Saturday evenings.  But it was so crowded, overwhelming even finding a seat.  So we missed each other altogether.

But when I did finally talk to him, and he shared his thoughts, he echoed how I felt.

“I was stunned,” he said, “by the sheer wall of sound that enveloped me.  The sound truly washed over me.”

The night began with Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor From Warsaw, with narration by Star Trek actor George Takei (who in reality acted the part of concentration camp victim, having memorized it all).  It was dark and troubling, and boldly highlighted the harm we as humans have the capacity to do to one another, all the while posing a question which was answered in the next set.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and its choral “Ode to Joy” uplifted and, as conductor Philip Mann pointed out in an interview prior to the performance “celebrated the human spirit’s” triumph.

I love that the stage at Robinson was so packed with choruses from all over the state of Arkansas.  Mann had wanted Arkansans from each corner of the state to “lend their voices to the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.”  Indeed, they did.  It was jubilant, joyful and fulfilled Mann’s goal of showing “how a shared experience through music can move us all.”

While the some 400 voices, along with the Ninth Symphony, were clearly grand, I particularly enjoyed learning more about Takei’s time here in Arkansas when he was a child.  He spent time at a Japanese internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. It made his performance even more touching.

I shared the same feeling my friend Craig did Saturday night.  He told me the next day, “there was just a point I did not want it to end.”

February 12, 2012
“Valentine’s In New York”
-Dawn Scott

Bravo and, simply, “wow” to Associate Conductor Geoffrey Robson and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra!

This weekend, love was in the air at Robinson Center Music Hall, and it was absolutely perfect.

I saw couples on dates, some of them looked to have been together decades.  Others seemed as if they were out for the first times.  I watched dads hold their daughters hands.  And I saw others alone.  It didn’t matter because everyone was smiling.  Including me.

Although I was more mesmerized than anything else.  It was as if Broadway made it’s way to Arkansas with two brilliant soloists on stage throughout the show.

Soprano Melissa Errico and tenor Ryan Silverman literally shut people up.  Often you hear whispers in the crowd, and when I glanced across the hall, I only saw jaws dropped.  They were fabulous.

Typically, I take to the crowds at intermission, but this time, I sat quietly, soaking in what I had just heard:  “Maria” from West Side Story, crowd favorite “No Business Like Show Business,” and Errico’s own rendition of “The Summer Knows.”

After the break, it was more brilliance.  I soaked it in, dreaming of “Valentines in New York” (as the POPS performance was called), having to gently pinch myself to remind that I was still in Little Rock.

Music Director Philip Mann told me in my recent interview with him that Errico and Silverman were “singular artists that speak with a unique voice.”  He nailed it.  Previously unfamiliar with each performer, I am now a new fan.  And of course, I fall more and more in love with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra following each show.