The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra Celebrates Its 80th Season In 2024

The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates its 80th season of programming with the 2024/25 TACO Classical Series and Amica Rush Hour Series, led by new Principal Conductor, Robert Spano, who will conduct two series concerts this season, plus the yet-to-be-announced 2025 Season 80 Gala!

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“This is an exciting time as we enter our 80th season,” said Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School Executive Director, David Beauchesne. “Anniversaries are about celebrating the past as well as the future. With Robert Spano debuting as Principal Conductor, the anticipated conclusion of our Music Director search and 13 RI Philharmonic Orchestra premieres, Season 80 is very much about the future. We also have many favorite conductors and guest artists returning, and a lot of familiar music from past seasons. We think audiences will enjoy this blend of looking forward and looking back.”

Beauchesne also noted the presence of works by five living composers, including Jessie Montgomery's Rounds, performed by pianist Awadagin Pratt, whose recording of the work recently won Montgomery a GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

Opening Night

Rachmaninoff & Gershwin

Open Rehearsal: Friday, September 13, 2024, 5:30PM

TACO Classical Series: September 14, 2024, 7:30PM

Leonard Slatkin, conductor

Olga Kern, piano

NELSON: Sarabande: For Katherine in April

CINDY MCTEE: Tempus Fugit

RACHMANINOFF: Rhapsody on a Theme of a Paganini

HOVHANESS: Symphony No. 2 (Mysterious Mountain)

GERSHWIN: An American in Paris

The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra's 80th Season kicks off with Rachmaninoff & Gershwin conducted by Leonard Slatkin and featuring Olga Kern on piano. Kern is a highly-praised soloist whom The New York Times calls “a whiz at the piano.” The performance features the RI Phil premiere of Sarabande: For Katherine in April by Ron Nelson, composed in 1954. Leonard Stalkin calls Nelson, who passed away in 2023, “the quintessential American composer.” Also included in the program is the RI Phil premiere of Tempus Fugit the second of two movements from Double Play by Cindy McTee. Commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the first performance was in 2010, under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of a Paganini is inspired by a simple tune by the early nineteenth-century violin virtuoso, Niccolò Paganini. Written for solo piano and symphony orchestra, Rhapsody on a Theme of a Paganini is his most significant work for piano and orchestra and, as The New Yorker said in a review of an early performance, “The succession of brilliances for the piano and old-fashioned bravura…It's something for the audiences.” Next in the program is Hovhaness' Symphony No. 2 (Mysterious Mountain) which had its premiere broadcast nationwide on NBC radio in October 1955. The piece's crescendos, decrescendos, and giant melodic arcs certainly work as musical metaphors for mountain skylines, although the natural world served as inspiration for much of Hovhaness' work. Last in the program is Gershwin's An American in Paris, a jazz-influenced symphonic poem for orchestra, first performed in 1928. Gershwin describes the work as a “a rhapsodic ballet…the most modern music I've ever attempted.”

Zukerman Plays and Conducts Beethoven

Amica Rush Hour Series: October 18, 2024 at 6:30PM

TACO Classical Series: October 19, 2024, 7:30PM

Pinchas Zukerman, conductor/violin

HAYDN: Violin Concerto in C major

HAYDN: Symphony No. 49 (La passione)*

BEETHOVEN: Romance No. 1

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 2

 *Not included in Amica Rush Hour Series performance

Zukerman Plays and Conducts Beethoven features one of today's most sought-after musicians, Pinchas Zukerman, in performance featuring three RI Philharmonic premieres. Zukerman is renowned as a virtuoso, admired for the expressive lyricism of his playing, singular beauty of tone, and impeccable musicianship, which can be heard throughout his discography of over 100 albums for which he gained two GRAMMY awards and 21 nominations.  Zukerman will be playing and conducting the RI Phil premiere of Haydn's Violin Concerto in C Major, a rarely heard work that Zukerman recorded with the LA Philharmonic in 1977. One of Haydn's most heralded symphonies, and another RI Phil premiere, Symphony No. 49 (La passione) in F minor, is a perfect example of the Sturm und Drang movement of the mid-late 1700s. The two Beethoven pieces on the program are Romance No. 1, a RI Phil premiere and one of his two lustrous violin romances — written to fit the traditions that violin soloists love –  and Symphony No. 2 a bold, inspired, and adventurous work which foreshadows Beethoven's heroic style and new symphonic vision that would take full flight in the monumental Eroica Symphony soon to follow.

The Passion of Tchaikovsky

Open Rehearsal: Friday, November 8, 2024, 5:30PM

TACO Classical Series: November 9, 2024, 7:30PM

Anna Handler, conductor

Blake Pouliot, violin

John Adams: The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra

MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concerto

TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 1 (Winter Daydreams)

Anna Handler is a young German-Colombian conductor and pianist and a current Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the 2023/2024 season.  She will conduct The Passion of Tchaikovsky featuring violinist Blake Pouliot, winner of the Grand Prize at the 2016 Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Manulife Competition. The evening features John Adams' The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra. This companion piece to Adams' opera Nixon in China is a combination of stylized pseudo jazz inflections, chugging rhythms, and colorful orchestration and diatonic harmonies. Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto follows, one of the most lyrical and flowing works of its type and one of the most frequently performed of all violin concerti. The evening concludes with the RI Phil premiere of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1 (Winter Daydreams): “With its dreamlike and romantic melodies, combined with Russian folk music themes, the symphony conjures up visual images of Russian winter landscapes and already has unique footprints of what makes Tchaikovsky one of the most important Russian composers of the 19th century.” (Bachtrack)

Handel's Messiah

December 15, 2024, 3PM

Christine Noel, conductor

Providence Singers, Christine Noel, Artistic Director

Eleonore Cockerham, soprano

Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano

Thomas Cooley, tenor

Nicholas Newton, baritone

The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra's holiday tradition continues with Handel's Messiah. Christine Noel conducts and the Providence Singers (Christine Noel, Artistic Director) return for this paragon of music. Providence Journal said of the Providence Singers' Messiah performance in 2019: “A triumph…the Singers have never sounded better.” Soloists include Eleonore Cockerham, soprano, Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano, Nicholas Newton, baritone and Thomas Cooley, whose “penetrating tenor had power and depth…he floated high, soft phrases with an ethereal delicacy” (The New York Times).

Spano Conducts Beethoven's Eroica

Amica Rush Hour Series: January 17, 2025, 6:30PM

TACO Classical Series: January 18, 2025, 7:30PM

Robert Spano, conductor

SHOSTAKOVICH: Festive Overture

Side by Side performance with students from the RI Philharmonic Music School

JENNIFER HIGDON: All Things Majestic*

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 3 (Eroica)

*Not included in Amica Rush Hour Series performance

The new year commences with Spano Conducts Beethoven's Eroica featuring the RI Philharmonic's new Principal Conductor, Robert Spano, at the helm for an evening of music from the 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Spano explains: “I've lived my life in music feeling like the works of living composers inform our understanding of the works of the past. They keep reinvigorating our understanding of these masterpieces.” The evening begins with Shostakovich's Festive Overture featuring students from the RI Philharmonic Music School. Composed in only three days, Festive Overture is “a joyous bubble starting with a brilliant fanfare.” (Interlude) The evening features the RI Philharmonic debut of Jennifer Hidgon's All Things Majestic. In the piece, each movement represents a musical postcard from the grandeur of mountain ranges to the unpredictability of rivers and streams, every part contributing to the sheer majesty of nature. The evening concludes with Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) one of his most celebrated works that marked the beginning of his innovative “middle period.” Provoked by both personal crisis and geopolitical turmoil, Eroica is filled with ferocious struggle and ultimate transcendence.

Boléro!

Amica Rush Hour Series: February 14, 2025, 6:30PM

TACO Classical Series: February 15, 2025, 7:30PM

Earl Lee, conductor

Awadagin Pratt, piano

RAVEL: Boléro

JESSIE MONTGOMERY: Rounds

RACHMANINOFF: Symphonic Dances

February brings Boléro! featuring Korean-Canadian conductor and winner of the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Earl Lee, as well as the preeminent pianist Awadagin Pratt.  The evening includes Ravel's Boléro, one of the composer's most popular works. The piece, inspired by Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz' Iberia, is ingeniously simple. Ravel created a single theme, introduced by the flute over a simple rhythmic pattern, and repeated it over and over, in different – and brilliant – instrumental combinations.  The performance also features The RI Phil premiere of Jessie Montgomery's GRAMMY-winning Rounds, inspired by the imagery and themes from T.S. Eliot's epic poem Four Quartets. When Awadagin Pratt performed Rounds with the Utah Symphony, the Utah Review raved, “Pratt led the way with exceptional lucid playing that rewarded and enriched the listener's experience. Pratt achieves the work's alluring effect, with preeminent skill.”  The evening concludes with Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. Composed in 1940, Rachmaninoff combined a modernist rhythmic element—inspired by Stravinsky and Prokofiev—with his own unquenchable penchant for this big, sweeping composition.

Rhapsody in Blue

Amica Rush Hour Series: March 14, 2025, 6:30PM

TACO Classical Series: March 15, 2025, 7:30PM

Aram Demirjian, conductor

Jeffrey Biegel, piano

IVES: Symphony No.4: Fugue

(From Greenland's Icy Mountains)

Peter Boyer: Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue

GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue

DAWSON: Negro Folk Symphony

The season continues with Rhapsody in Blue with Aram Demirjian (conductor) and Jeffrey Biegel (piano).  Recipient of The Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Demirjian has built a reputation as an insightful interpreter of the symphonic repertoire and an engaging, “enthusiastic, even electric” (San Francisco Classical Voice) presence. Soloist Jefferey Biegel has a long list of credits, having made his recital debut in 1986. A recent review of his performance with the Canton Symphony raves; “Biegel's virtuosity was breathtaking…his playing was a warm, slow pouring out of rapturous grace." (Cleveland Classical). The evening features three RI Philharmonic premieres by Charles Ives, Peter Boyer and William Dawson. Ives' Fugue (from Symphony No. 4) is a pilgrimage into the depths of Ives' memory, both musical and extra-musical. Deriving its subject from the hymn “From Greenland's Icy Mountains,” Ives referred to this movement, Fugue,as “an expression of the reaction of life into formalism and ritualism.” Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue, composed by Rhode Island native Peter Boyer and commissioned by pianist Jeffrey Biegel, will be performed by 54 orchestras in all 50 of the United States, a rare milestone for any new musical work. Biegel commissioned the celebratory piece to mark the centennial of George Gershwin's iconic Rhapsody in Blue, which received its premiere on February 12, 1924. Boyer is a graduate of Rhode Island College who has gone on to receive composition commissions from some of the world's finest orchestras. The evening continues with Rhapsody in Blue, a rapturous burst of music that has become a motif of the nation's creative spirit. In a New York Times obituary of Gershwin, the paper wrote, “What [Gershwin] wanted to do most, he said, was to interpret the soul of the American people,” and with Rhapsody in Blue, he does just that. The final RI Philharmonic premiere of the night is Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony. A major success upon its 1934 premiere, the Negro Folk Symphony offers a symbolic musical repair of the break in the human chain wrought by the transatlantic slave trade.

Saint-Saëns Thundering Organ Symphony

Open Rehearsal: April 11, 2025, 5:30PM

TACO Classical Series: April 12, 2025, 7:30PM

Radu Paponiu, conductor

Rachel Barton Pine, violin

GABRIELA ORTIZ: Kauyumari

BILLY CHILDS: Violin Concerto No. 2

SAINT-SAËNS: Symphony No. 3 (Organ)

Radu Paponiu, Artistic and Music Director of the Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, will conduct Saint-Saëns Thundering Organ Symphony featuring Rachel Barton Pine on violin, whom The Washington Post describes as having “dazzling technique.” The RI Phil premiere of Gabriela Ortiz's Kauyumari starts the evening off. Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2021, Kauyumari is a comprehension and celebration of the fact that each of life's rifts is also a new beginning.  Billy Childs' Violin Concerto No. 2 is another RI Phil premiere. Composed in 2020, during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was commissioned by Rachel Barton Pine. Childs explains, “The violin is, in my mind, the voice of the piece, describing each sentiment through melodic shapes. The orchestra is used in a variety of ways: as accompanist, as interjector, and as a foil for the leading violin voice.” Closing out the evening is Saint

Saëns' Symphony No. 3 (Organ) written in 1886 at the peak of his artistic career, this symphony is a remarkable example of scoring for keyboard instruments, including piano four-hands, in a symphonic context.

Spano Conducts Brahms' Requiem

Open Rehearsal: May 9, 2025, 5:30PM

TACO Classical Series: May 10, 2025, 8PM

Robert Spano, conductor

Jessica Rivera, sopranoWill Liverman, baritone

Providence Singers, Christine Noel, Artistic Director

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

BARBER: Knoxville: Summer of 1915

BRAHMS: A German Requiem

The season concludes with Spano Conducts Brahms' Requiem, featuring the Providence Singers (Christine Noel, Artistic Director) and soprano Jessica Rivera, whom Spano himself has called “mesmerizing.” The first piece of the evening, Vaughan Williams' Fantastia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, borrows a theme from his great 16th century forebear and extends it into an elaborate, richly textured fantasia for double string orchestra and a solo string quartet. Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, inspired by a passage from A Death in the Family by James Agee,. possesses the immediate sense of childhood memories and the sudden shifts of a child's train of thought. Closing out the season is Brahms' A German Requiem, initially written to commemorate the death of his mother.. Brahms created his own highly personal version of the traditional liturgy from excerpts of the Lutheran Bible and apocrypha, with a focus on creating comfort for the living. The New York Times explains, “A German Requiem, it appears, has become something of an anthem for our time, with grand social and political reverberations…This human focus, as well as the work's freedom from angry religious judgment, makes it easy to seize on in our more vaguely spiritual time.”

Tickets and More Information

The Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School will continue to offer a wide swath of educational opportunities for Rhode Islanders of all musical and economic backgrounds. Visit riphil.org/music-school or call 401.248.7001 for more information.

Subscriptions are now available for both the TACO Classical Series and Amica Rush Hour Series, including Compose Your Own Packages of 4 to 7 concerts. Subscriber benefits include exclusive access to the virtual concert archive, presale access to special events, vouchers to attend Open Rehearsals, the best pricing as well as the best seats in the house, including the opportunity to always have the same seats at every concert and convenient flexibility with easy-to-accommodate ticket options if any conflicts arise.

For more information visit riphil.org/2024-2025-season.

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