Editor’s note: As Encore Atlanta turns 10 this month, we look at the accomplishments of our partners — the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Opera, Broadway Across America Atlanta, the Fox Theatre and Theater of the Stars.
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Any serious look at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s past decade must begin with Robert Spano, who became music director with the 2001-02 season.
Before his ASO tenure began, when he was still in charge of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Spano was touted as the next big catch for a major orchestra. The classical music world considered him a smart young maestro with a disciplined baton and infinite energy, clearly comfortable with the classic repertoire but equally fond of modern scores.
Those opinions have only strengthened.
“Spano has gone on to become perhaps the most admired conductor of his generation,” The Boston Globe observed not long ago, after the maestro conducted at the Tanglewood Music Festival.
Spano is popular with ASO musicians, too. “Robert brings an incredible amount of enthusiasm and excitement to the podium, which is contagious to the musicians,” principal cellist Christopher Rex has said. “Most importantly, his ego is always subservient to the music.”
Great catch, Atlanta.
The 2012-13 season marks the ASO’s 68th anniversary year, the ASO Chorus’ 42nd and the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra’s 38th. The partnership between Spano and Principal Guest Conductor Donald Runnicles enters an unprecedented 12th season. They are under contract through the end of the 2013-14 season.
One of the most memorable elements of Spano’s tenure has been the creation and nurturing of new works. He has planted his flag with the Atlanta School of Composers, a group of young American composers, which, as Spano himself explains, favors tonal melodies, intense emotions and an underlying awareness of cinematic and world or pop music.
The school includes Michael Gandolfi, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Adam Schoenberg and Christopher Theofanidis, and is open to growing.
Since 2001, Spano and the ASO have performed more than 100 contemporary works (composed since 1950), including 16 ASO-commissioned world premieres, 14 additional world premieres and three U.S. premieres. Spano-conducted ASO recordings have won numerous Grammy Awards, including Higdon’s City Scape, Golijov’s Ainadamar and a disc that features Theofanidis’ The Here and Now.
Since 1986, when the ASO won its first Grammy, it has collected 27 of the awards, winning in classical music categories every year from 1988 to 1991, and in 1996, 1998-99, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009.
In 2007, the ASO received ASCAP’s highest award, the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music, the second ASCAP honor in Spano’s tenure. It honors programming that demonstrates a strong commitment to contemporary music.
The ASO has recorded regularly on several labels. Last season, however, it released its first recording on its own label, ASO Media. The debut recording features On a Wire, a new concerto by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Higdon, and QED: Engaging Richard Feynman, a new choral work by Gandolfi.
The ASO is scheduled to make a return call to Carnegie Hall on Oct. 27 to perform the Suite from Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. It will mark Spano’s seventh trip to the New York City landmark with the ASO, which played there 12 times with director Robert Shaw (1967-88) on the podium and five times with Spano’s predecessor, Yoel Levi.
This season, the orchestra is scheduled to perform three world premieres and 13 works it has never played before. The world premieres come Jan. 10-12, with Gandolfi’s Concerto for Clarinet and Strings, and April 4-5, with a new piano concerto by Marcus Roberts, featuring the Marcus Roberts Trio, plus a new work by ASO bassist Michael Kurth. The orchestra commissioned all three pieces.
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Kathy Janich is Encore Atlanta’s managing editor. You can reach her at [email protected].
