Philharmonic Returns to Heinz Hall
It’s the grand home of the world-class Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, a jewel in the Cultural District. And the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic returns to Heinz Hall in downtown Pittsburgh this Sunday for the final concert of the season, the Philharmonic’s first performance in the storied venue since the School of Music’s centennial in 2012.
Daniel Nesta Curtis, Interim Director of Orchestral Studies, will be conducting this remarkable program which includes a violin concerto played by Andrew Gray, the student winner of last year’s Philharmonic Soloist Competition, and a new work from the first opera written in the Chickasaw language. Curtis said, “I am especially excited that composer Jerod Tate will be joining us to perform the narration to his composition “Spider Brings Fire,” an excerpt from his opera, Lowak Shoppala’. Jerod’s music is incredibly powerful, his orchestration is wildly colorful, and I love the way his composition brings the audience through a story, beautifully written by Linda Hogan.”
The concert also includes rarely performed works by Scriabin and Boulanger, and begins at 7:45 with a pre-concert welcome by the COTRAIC Singers (Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center) in the main auditorium.
As part of their preparatory week of rehearsals, the students in the Philharmonic are privileged to be conducted at one of the rehearsals by Manfred Honeck, the longtime music director of the PSO and an international luminary.
It is a mark of the long relationship between the two institutions that there are currently 20 faculty members in the CMU School of Music who are musicians in the PSO, and that students regularly attend performances at Heinz Hall. For students, performing in this space where their teachers regularly work makes this a particularly meaningful concert cycle.
Garrett Gorby, a second-year graduate student, said, “Being able to perform at Heinz Hall is an incredible experience, and working with Manfred Honeck makes it even more inspiring. It feels like a glimpse into the professional world we’re all working toward.”
Curtis remarked, “This concert gives many of our students the chance to quite literally sit in their teacher’s chair and perform in the stunning, grand acoustic of Heinz Hall. I hope that this experience of performing in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District, in the home of the PSO, will inspire our students to dream big and see themselves playing an important role in the future of classical music.”