Maestro Kevin Rhodes Returns to Springfield to Conduct Film Music of John Williams and Popular Classics Next Month

MOSSO, the Musicians of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, will celebrate the film music of John Williams on Thursday, July 21, at 7:30 PM in Springfield Symphony Hall. MOSSO will perform excerpts from Williams' scores to ET, Schindler's List, Superman, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and more. Some popular classics, including Rossini's Overture to The Barber of Seville, Massenet's Meditation from Thaïs, and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite open the program.

Maestro Kevin Rhodes was Music Director and Conductor of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra for twenty seasons before the pandemic. He returned to Springfield to conduct his musicians last October in front of a packed house at Symphony Hall, featuring many musical highlights from his tenure as their Music Director. Rhodes was recently appointed Chief Conductor of the Slovak National Opera and Ballet in Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. In this role he will have a leading artistic position in a European city noted for its cultural diversity, while he continues to serve as Music Director for the Traverse Symphony Orchestra in Michigan, and as Principal Conductor of Boston's Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra. Maestro Rhodes has been a presence in the major musical capitals of Europe for over 25 years, with credits including The Paris Opera, The Vienna State Opera, The Berlin State Opera, La Scala of Milan, The Dutch National Ballet, The Verona Ballet, The Stuttgart Ballet, and many others.

Yevgeny Kutik has twice performed to acclaim with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. A native of Minsk, Belarus, Kutik immigrated to the United States with his family in 1990 at the age of five. His 2014 album, Music from the Suitcase: A Collection of Russian Miniatures (Marquis Classics) commemorates their emigration from the Soviet Union, and debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard Classical chart. The album garnered critical acclaim and was featured on NPR's All Things Considered and in The New York Times. In 2021, Kutik launched Finding Home: Music from the Suitcase in Concert, a five-episode docu-recital series filmed at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, MA, based on the album. Each 30-40-minute episode features music performances, including works from the album, interwoven with Kutik's personal narrative storytelling about anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, his family's months as "stateless" refugees, and the amazement and challenges of starting a new life in the United States.

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