The Symphony of Northwest Arkansas continues its season with a performance Sunday afternoon at the Walton Arts Center. SoNA’s Executive Director Ben Harris and guest conductor David Glover joined Ozarks at Large’s Matthew Moore in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio earlier this week.
This season will feature six different guest conductors. Harris says the response from both the symphony and the audience has been great.
Harris: We had our first concert back in September with a guest conductor named Lawrence Loh, and it was really fun. I think it was really interesting for the orchestra to have someone new out in front conducting them, and it was really interesting for us on staff as well as for the audience, just to see how the orchestra responded to a new person.
I’ve got to tell you, in the lobby immediately after the concert, there was a lot of very positive energy from the audience. People really are getting into the process and enjoying being part of it, because we’re surveying our audience after every concert to get their feedback.
Moore: David, for you, hearing that — do you feel a bit of pressure, or is it just a bit like, ‘I’m going to provide the best performance you can and letting the chips fall where they may?’
Glover: I mean, of course, with any interview process, there’s always that type of thing in the back of your mind. But really, the job is just what it is on every concert, which is what you said — to get the music across, to inspire the orchestra to play the best it can, and to give the audience a great two hours at the theater. So for me, it’s really focusing on that — focusing on the music and that communication between stage and audience.
Moore: So let’s focus on the music here. Tell me about the pieces that were chosen and why — why this program?
Glover: Sure. So it all started with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which is one of my favorite pieces of music because it’s just so exciting. It’s so celebratory. He wrote this piece all based on dance rhythms, so it has this rhythmic energy and vitality that makes you want to move.
The final movement, I think, is about the most exciting thing you’ll ever hear in the concert hall. So we took that idea — that it’s such a celebratory piece, and that it’s a piece about movement — and that’s where we came up with Celebration in Motion, the title for the concert.
Then I started brainstorming: what other ways did classical composers celebrate? Sort of taking a really wide look at that world. So we’re opening the concert with William Grant Still’s Festive Overture.
He grew up right here in Arkansas, and he wrote this piece very interestingly in the 1940s — during the Second World War. But the piece doesn’t have any of that darkness about it, and that’s really intriguing to me. Sometimes composers in really dark times write really happy pieces, or vice versa. This one is very celebratory.
Then I also thought of Bedřich Smetana and his piece Má vlast, which means ‘My Homeland.’ It was a way of celebrating his culture of Bohemia, or what’s now the Czech Republic — celebrating the landscape and celebrating folk tales. We’re doing two movements of that, celebrating Czech culture in very different ways.
And finally, we have a wonderful American composer named Jessie Montgomery and her piece Starburst, which is celebrating the natural world — this big explosion of energy in the sky where stars are born. But it’s also about human abilities. She wrote this for the Sphinx Organization, which is an organization that gives opportunities to young Black and Latino musicians. So the piece has a double meaning — it’s also the starburst of new talent. She’s celebrating both the natural and the human in this piece.
Moore: For you, as you get to work with different guest conductors, you get to hear their creative lenses. How does that inspire you and shape how you think programmatically about the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas?
Harris: Well, it’s very interesting because working with each guest conductor on the programming- it’s inspiring to see how they put programs together and design their programming around a theme. I think that kind of enthusiasm for the programming spills over into the orchestra and hopefully into the audience as well.
I’m really interested to see how people respond to this idea of Celebration in Motion, picking up on the dance rhythms of Beethoven and the other celebratory aspects that David just talked about. I think it’s going to be a great concert. I’m really excited about it.
Moore: Ben, can you give us a rundown of what people need to know about the concert? When where- those details?
Harris: Sure. Sunday afternoon at the Walton Arts Center at 2 o’clock. Tickets are on sale at sonamusic.org.
We’re also doing a thing called The Creative Conversation that takes place on stage at 1 o’clock, an hour before start time. We’ll have our good friend Randy Wilburn on stage with David, and they’ll be having a very casual, informal conversation about the program — letting people know what to expect, what to listen for.
So any ticket holders who want to come a little early and learn more about the music they’ll be hearing, there will have that opportunity at 1 o’clock on stage.
Ben Harris is the executive director of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas. David Glover is the guest conductor. They spoke with Ozarks at Large’s Matthew Moore earlier this week.
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