Events at this location

Ben Kim, piano*

Willamette Master Chorus, Paul Klemme, director^

September 27th, 2025, Pre-Concert talk at 6:45 with Maestro Adam Flatt.

We are excited to start the season off with a powerful tribute to one of the greatest composers of all time.

The concert begins with Elegía Andina, by Gabriela Lena Frank. She grew up with neurosensory high-moderate/near-profound hearing loss. Regardless of this challenge, Frank has become an incredible force in the world of music. This piece is dedicated to her older brother Marcos and explores what it means to be from different ethnical persuasions through traditional Peruvian elements.

Next we move on to Jake Runestad’s moving exploration of Beethoven’s deafness. Pianist Ben Kim and the Willamette Master Chorus led by Dr. Paul Klemme, join the Newport Symphony for this transformative music is set to a poem by the composer’s friend, Todd Boss. This text explores Beethoven’s mindset at his growing deafness while using some of the maestro’s own musical ideas.

Our friends in the chorus take a well earned break as Ben Kim and the NSO put Beethoven front and center with his aptly titled “Emperor” concerto. This is without question a masterwork although it has a sad asterisk alongside the grand title. Piano Concerto No. 5 was the first of Beethoven’s concertos that he did not premiere himself, this because his hear was deteriorating significantly. Nonetheless, he has given us a remarkable work that has changed the landscape of all the concertos that follow.

The concert closes with the great Choral Fantasy in C minor. We welcome the Willamette Master Chorus back to the stage with Ben Kim, Maestro Adam Flatt, and the great Newport Symphony Orchestra. On the night of December 22, 1808, Beethoven was giving the Viennese premiere of Symphony No. 5, Symphony No. 6, his Fourth Piano Concerto, with him as the soloist, and he decided he needed a grand finale, of sorts, to bring this FOUR HOUR concert to a close. The result, this Choral Fantasy. The musicologist William Runyan writes, “Beethoven may have ground out the Choral Fantasy in haste at the last minute, to serve the dubious function as a concert-ending flag waiver, but the audience that night got much more than it expected.”

We think you’ll agree! This is a great way to start the 2025-2026 NSO season!

For tickets and more information, visit newportsymphony.org

Ben Kim, piano*

Willamette Master Chorus, Paul Klemme, director^

September 27th, 2025, Pre-Concert talk at 6:45 with Maestro Adam Flatt.

We are excited to start the season off with a powerful tribute to one of the greatest composers of all time.

The concert begins with Elegía Andina, by Gabriela Lena Frank. She grew up with neurosensory high-moderate/near-profound hearing loss. Regardless of this challenge, Frank has become an incredible force in the world of music. This piece is dedicated to her older brother Marcos and explores what it means to be from different ethnical persuasions through traditional Peruvian elements.

Next we move on to Jake Runestad’s moving exploration of Beethoven’s deafness. Pianist Ben Kim and the Willamette Master Chorus led by Dr. Paul Klemme, join the Newport Symphony for this transformative music is set to a poem by the composer’s friend, Todd Boss. This text explores Beethoven’s mindset at his growing deafness while using some of the maestro’s own musical ideas.

Our friends in the chorus take a well earned break as Ben Kim and the NSO put Beethoven front and center with his aptly titled “Emperor” concerto. This is without question a masterwork although it has a sad asterisk alongside the grand title. Piano Concerto No. 5 was the first of Beethoven’s concertos that he did not premiere himself, this because his hear was deteriorating significantly. Nonetheless, he has given us a remarkable work that has changed the landscape of all the concertos that follow.

The concert closes with the great Choral Fantasy in C minor. We welcome the Willamette Master Chorus back to the stage with Ben Kim, Maestro Adam Flatt, and the great Newport Symphony Orchestra. On the night of December 22, 1808, Beethoven was giving the Viennese premiere of Symphony No. 5, Symphony No. 6, his Fourth Piano Concerto, with him as the soloist, and he decided he needed a grand finale, of sorts, to bring this FOUR HOUR concert to a close. The result, this Choral Fantasy. The musicologist William Runyan writes, “Beethoven may have ground out the Choral Fantasy in haste at the last minute, to serve the dubious function as a concert-ending flag waiver, but the audience that night got much more than it expected.”

We think you’ll agree! This is a great way to start the 2025-2026 NSO season!

For tickets and more information, visit newportsymphony.org

Adam Flatt, conductor

Johnny Gandelsman, violin*

November 8th, 2025, Pre-concert chat with Maestro Adam Flatt at 6:45pm

We begin this evening’s concert with renowned American composer, Jennifer Higdon. Written in 1999, Blue Cathedral was commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the Curtis Institute. Titles of musical compositions are often—most often it can seem—misleading, but this one is singularly apt. Cast in a single short movement of lush, soothing cascades of orchestra sound, the over-used descriptor, “shimmering,” is more than apropos in this case. Imaginative scoring for strings and delicate percussion—including exotic bells and water glasses—are the foundation for an evocation of the atmosphere of the title. Short motives from various wind instruments provide aphoristic commentaries throughout, but generally without what we would call “tunes.” The whole weft of sound seems to gently and constantly float upward without having to start all over at the “bottom.” It’s a remarkable and sensual musical experience, and justly deserves its popularity as perhaps the composer’s most performed composition.

Next up, we celebrate the welcome return of local favorite and MacArthur Genius Fellow, Johnny Gandelsman. Mendelssohn wrote several concertos for both piano and for violin. The last concerto, for violin, is one of the most important solo works of the nineteenth century. Finished in the fall of 1844, after many years of work, the concerto is the product of a man at the height of his artistic powers. At the time Mendelssohn was literally the toast of Europe, composing fervidly, visiting everywhere as guest conductor and composer, serving as music administrator of a new conservatory in Leipzig, and all the while trying to cope with the bedeviling trials of an official appointment at the Prussian court at Berlin and Potsdam. He was literally working himself to death, and his life indeed only lasted a few more years. The concerto was premièred in 1845 in Leipzig by Mendelssohn’s friend, the great violinist, Ferdinand David, himself a noted composer (yay trombones!) but the performance of it by the very young virtuoso of violin, Joseph Joachim, one month before Mendelssohn’s death in 1847 must have been a particularly poignant one. At the time he was driven to incapacitation by the death of his beloved sister; that and his onerous professional schedule led to a series of strokes that killed him. Johnny Gandelsman’s performance is certain to move you to new emotional heights.

The evening concludes with Tchaikovsky’s massive Symphony No. 6. Maestro Adam Flatt and the Newport Symphony will take you on a powerful journey into the depths of the composer’s very soul. This symphony is Tchaikovsky’s last work—he died of cholera only nine days after its première—and it is universally hailed as one of his finest. It exhibits all of the characteristic passion and melodic beauty for which the composer justly is known, and is suffused with a dark and tragic essence. Tchaikovsky struggled all of his life with his identity, fears of social rejection, and frustrated relationships with others. By the end of his life these issues had surely come to a head, and the composer freely spoke with his brother of the reflection of his suffering in this final, gripping composition. There is even a current musicological fight over whether or not he poisoned himself to end his life (under threat of social disgrace), or deliberately drank the un-boiled glass of water during an epidemic. In any case, the circumstances of his life’s final struggles are manifest in this beautiful and tragic work. In the event, he had at first actually considered “Tragic” as a subtitle for the symphony, but his brother suggested the Russian for “pathos,” and the French equivalent, “pathétique,” is the evocative descriptor that we all know. But, be aware of inexact translations–there is nothing pathetic here.

For tickets and more information, visit newportsymphony.org

Adam Flatt, conductor

Johnny Gandelsman, violin*

November 8th, 2025, Pre-concert chat with Maestro Adam Flatt at 6:45pm

We begin this evening’s concert with renowned American composer, Jennifer Higdon. Written in 1999, Blue Cathedral was commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the Curtis Institute. Titles of musical compositions are often—most often it can seem—misleading, but this one is singularly apt. Cast in a single short movement of lush, soothing cascades of orchestra sound, the over-used descriptor, “shimmering,” is more than apropos in this case. Imaginative scoring for strings and delicate percussion—including exotic bells and water glasses—are the foundation for an evocation of the atmosphere of the title. Short motives from various wind instruments provide aphoristic commentaries throughout, but generally without what we would call “tunes.” The whole weft of sound seems to gently and constantly float upward without having to start all over at the “bottom.” It’s a remarkable and sensual musical experience, and justly deserves its popularity as perhaps the composer’s most performed composition.

Next up, we celebrate the welcome return of local favorite and MacArthur Genius Fellow, Johnny Gandelsman. Mendelssohn wrote several concertos for both piano and for violin. The last concerto, for violin, is one of the most important solo works of the nineteenth century. Finished in the fall of 1844, after many years of work, the concerto is the product of a man at the height of his artistic powers. At the time Mendelssohn was literally the toast of Europe, composing fervidly, visiting everywhere as guest conductor and composer, serving as music administrator of a new conservatory in Leipzig, and all the while trying to cope with the bedeviling trials of an official appointment at the Prussian court at Berlin and Potsdam. He was literally working himself to death, and his life indeed only lasted a few more years. The concerto was premièred in 1845 in Leipzig by Mendelssohn’s friend, the great violinist, Ferdinand David, himself a noted composer (yay trombones!) but the performance of it by the very young virtuoso of violin, Joseph Joachim, one month before Mendelssohn’s death in 1847 must have been a particularly poignant one. At the time he was driven to incapacitation by the death of his beloved sister; that and his onerous professional schedule led to a series of strokes that killed him. Johnny Gandelsman’s performance is certain to move you to new emotional heights.

The evening concludes with Tchaikovsky’s massive Symphony No. 6. Maestro Adam Flatt and the Newport Symphony will take you on a powerful journey into the depths of the composer’s very soul. This symphony is Tchaikovsky’s last work—he died of cholera only nine days after its première—and it is universally hailed as one of his finest. It exhibits all of the characteristic passion and melodic beauty for which the composer justly is known, and is suffused with a dark and tragic essence. Tchaikovsky struggled all of his life with his identity, fears of social rejection, and frustrated relationships with others. By the end of his life these issues had surely come to a head, and the composer freely spoke with his brother of the reflection of his suffering in this final, gripping composition. There is even a current musicological fight over whether or not he poisoned himself to end his life (under threat of social disgrace), or deliberately drank the un-boiled glass of water during an epidemic. In any case, the circumstances of his life’s final struggles are manifest in this beautiful and tragic work. In the event, he had at first actually considered “Tragic” as a subtitle for the symphony, but his brother suggested the Russian for “pathos,” and the French equivalent, “pathétique,” is the evocative descriptor that we all know. But, be aware of inexact translations–there is nothing pathetic here.

For tickets and more information, visit newportsymphony.org