Symphonic excursions: Albany Symphony Orchestra bringing international flavor to new season

ALBANY — Season tickets will go on sale after Labor Day for the 2016-17 Albany Symphony Orchestra season, which will kick off a little later than normal as the organization starts implementing a five-year plan to get funding lined up ahead of the concerts.

“We’ll have the three major concerts and then LinkUp, which is for school children, and two (chamber concerts) on Sundays,” said Mari Wright, executive director for the symphony.

“We’ve adjusted to a five-year strategic plan,” Music Director Claire Fox Hillard said. “We want to get our timetable to where we’re prefunding the concerts. We’re starting the season a little bit later so we’ll be getting the funding up front.

“We’re trying to get ahead of the ball, get the funding before we need it.”

Seating also will be planned differently this season. Reserved seats will be restricted to balcony dress circle seats and two rows on the orchestra level.

“All the rest of the seats in the auditorium will be general admission,” Wright said. “We think that is going to appeal to people.”

“That is a new innovation,” Hillard noted.

Wright said all the general admission seats will be sold at two prices — $25 for adults and $10 for children and students. She said the change was an attempt to make evenings out for classical music more affordable. Last year, adult general admission tickets for individual concerts were $35 and had assigned seating. This year the general admission tickets are good for any seat except those in the reserved seating areas.

“We’re excited about it,” she said. “We want to encourage people to come out. One thing we hear is that it’s so expensive. It’s expensive to bring children or you have the expense of a babysitter. … I think that (new pricing structure) is going to go over quite well.”

Hillard said the symphony also will reach out to area communities this season with “run-outs” — Sunday matinees on Nov. 13 at Bainbridge State College and on March 26 at Tift County High School in Tifton. The LinkUp educational event will have two concerts, the first, as usual, in Dougherty County for public and private schools, and a second at Lee County High School in Leesburg. He said symphony officials hope that Sumter County schools will participate at the Leesburg one.

“It’s nice once in a while to go to them,” Hillard said of the outreach efforts this season. “We’re putting the symphony on the map, so to speak, with our excursions.”

“We’re the only symphony orchestra in Southwest Georgia,” Wright observed. “We serve this large area. Our goal in the next five years is to reach out to the communities.”

Hillard noted the March 25-26 performances by the symphony at its usual home at the Albany Municipal Auditorium and in Tifton will feature vocalists with the Albany Chorale, the Southwest Civic Chorus of Americus and choral groups with Albany State University, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton and Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus.

The season will get started later than normal, and this is the first time in recent memory that the symphony won’t have a December holiday concert, whether a subscription one like in recent seasons or the predecessor Peppermint Pops. Instead, the symphony will open just before the heavy Thanksgivings and Christmas holidays with a Nov. 12 concert focusing on American classics titled “Salute to America.”

Coming immediately after Veterans Day and the anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Marine Corps, Hillard said, “We’re going to salute the armed forces as well.”

But while the music will be American in nature — Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” will be featured — it will also feature the international theme that is running through the symphony’s three major performances. Accompanying the orchestra will be Steinway Artist Kadisha Onalbayeva, a Kazakhstan native who is an associate professor of music at the University of Mobile, and the Kazakh Quartet — the National String Quartet of Kazakhstan.

“It’s going to be our splashy opening,” said Hillard, who previously has conducted the Kazakh Quartet. “They’re coming to this country to make their Carnegie Hall debut” only days after the Albany concert. He said as part of the symphony’s outreach, he’s hoping to schedule a visit by the group to Lee County High School on the week leading to the Saturday symphony performance.

From there, the season will take a Germanic turn with “A Romantic Evening” on Feb. 11. The TransAtlantic Horn Quartet will join the orchestra as it performs Schumann’s Concert Piece for 4 Horns.

“The February one has a French horn quartet,” Hillard noted. “They’re coming to the Albany State series as part of the (T. Marshall Jones Fine Arts) Lyceum Series. Then they’ll perform with us on Saturday.”

The final concert of the full orchestra series will be on March 25, “A French Excursion.” With the support of the college, university and local choral groups, the program will feature Durufle’s Requiem, Op. 9.

For the past few seasons, the symphony has conducted a Sunday afternoon chamber concert series of guest ensembles at the Albany Museum of Art. There will be two of those 4 p.m. concerts this season, but the venue will move to a pair of downtown Albany churches.

On Oct. 23, the Peachtree Street Quartet will perform at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The second will be scheduled for either April 23 or 30 at First United Methodist Church of Albany and will feature the female percussion group Chix with Stix.

“We feel like, again, it gets the symphony out into the community,” Wright said.

Tickets for the Sunday afternoon concerts are $20 for adults and $10 for students and children. Those tickets were $25 and $10, respectively, last season.

Season tickets for the three major concerts are $70 for adult general admission, while the $150 VIP tickets include seats in the reserved seating areas and admission to the post-concert Conductor’s Circle reception, where concertgoers can mingle with the musicians at the Albany Area Arts Council next door to the auditorium. Admission to the Conductor’s Circle for an individual concert is $20, down $5 from last season. Tickets go on sale after Labor Day and can be purchased online at albanysymphony.org or by calling the symphony offices at (229) 430-8933.

Not everything is changing. Doors for the Saturday evening concerts will open at 6 p.m. with the pre-concert notes by Hillard and guest performers, available to all ticketholders at no additional charge, at 6:30 p.m. Performances start at 7:30 p.m.

“We’re invigorated,” Wright said. “We have a lot of great new things happening.”