We are delighted to announce that the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra will present an in-person, outdoor pops concert on Wednesday, April 28, 2021, beginning at 7:30 pm, at the new Lowcountry Celebration Park at Coligny.
John Morris Russell will lead members of the HHSO in a program to include music by George Gershwin, Dizzie Gillespie, Scott Joplin, Astor Piazzolla, and more. Vocalist Kimberly Hawkey, pianist Assaf Gleizner, and saxophonist Daniel Dickinson will be featured. Hawkey, who was supposed to perform at the April, 2020, Symphony Under The Stars will finally have her opportunity to sing with the HHSO!
The intermission-less concert will take place, rain or shine, with performers playing from the Pavilion stage. Distanced audience members will be seated on the expansive park grass individually and in couples in the 8-foot diameter hula-hoop “pods” debuted during our November, 2020 Holiday Pops concerts on Lagoon Road. Audience members will be required to wear masks when not within their pods, and they will be encouraged to keep their masks on throughout the event. They will bring their own chairs and can bring food and beverages. Hand sanitizing stations will be placed around the concert site. This will be a “pack it in, pack it out” event; we ask patrons to take all of their belongings and refuse with them after the concert.
Tickets for this special concert—the first major event at the park—are $60 per person and the ticket price includes a half-bottle of wine for individuals and a full bottle for couples. In order to safely space attendees, less than 500 tickets will be sold. Tickets may be ordered through the HHSO website, hhso.org, or by calling the HHSO office at (843) 842-2055. When ordering, please request red or white wine (or no wine).
To avoid unnecessary contact, all ticket sales will be in advance—there will be no tickets available for sale at the gate. In order for us to secure the necessary wine, ticket orders must be received no later than 12:00 pm on Friday, April 23, 2021.
This concert is made possible with sponsorship support from Dividend Assets Capital, LLC, Rock Fish Seafood and Steaks, Coligny Plaza, and JR and Leslie Richardson.
For more information, please go to the HHSO website, at hhso.org.
I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. That life philosophy has been put to the test this past year. Indeed, a recent New York Times newsletter piece cited a survey showing that a high percentage of U. S. national media reporting was dedicated to negative news. This should not be terribly surprising, given the past 12 months; however, the tendency has been going on for much longer. A few years ago when Wilmington, DE, arts leaders were petitioning the local daily paper to better cover the arts, the response was, “car crashes and crime are what readers read.” In the age of digital media, this sad commentary can be easily documented and confirmed.
As HHSO Board Chair Bob Cherichella is fond of saying, “the sun is coming out and the roads are drying!” It is true that we see a path forward for resuming normal HHSO activity, including full orchestra concerts, SoundWaves in-person presentations, and our many Education and Community Engagement activities. We’re also looking at some of the new endeavors that circumstances forced us to try this year to see if some are worth continuing in the future. More on that to come at a later time.
In the nearer term, we are working to put together programming for the 2021-2022 season (the HHSO’s 40th and John Morris Russell’s 10th as Music Director) that will bring us back to some sense of normalcy. Elsewhere in this issue, Mario Incorvaia hints at some exciting new presentations we are planning at SoundWaves. We are delaying the “rolling out” of next season until sometime in May, to allow us to be more certain that what we program can take place safely and responsibly. In the very near term, we are thrilled to present one of the first large events at the brand new Lowcountry Celebration Park: an outdoor pops concert on Wednesday, April 28, 2021. Details about that concert can be found within this newsletter.
That evening, with my heart full, I began programming for our HHSO 2021-2022 season in earnest, with a sense of normalcy no one has had in a year. Yes, it’s been a fun challenge to figure out all the SoundWaves programs we’ve been performing all season—music for chamber ensembles to accommodate social distancing, lovely and interesting bon-bons that we don’t perform all that often—but to contemplate full orchestra works again has got me positively giddy. My mind is spinning with symphonic works that nourish the spirit and celebrate the communal experience we have all so deeply missed during in-person concerts this season.
In November, following months of subscription concert inactivity, as a re-entry into the live-audience concert realm, we assembled HHSO brass and percussion musicians, directed by John Morris Russell and featuring singer Mikki Sodergren, to perform a festive holiday program - our first ever outdoor concert at SoundWaves. Many of those who attended our socially distanced, winter beach weather affair cherished for the first time in as many months the exhilarating experience of live music. For many others, it was too soon to return to a live concert. We understood.
Encouraged by the generous support of our subscription patrons, we embraced the streaming opportunity inherent to our SoundWaves at Coligny home.
For the League, our Luncheon and Fashion Show continues to be on pause and our Spring Fling will not take place this May. But as we lament all that we were unable to do this past year, we are excited for what the year ahead will bring.
Some good news! We have a new League Fundraiser. Mark your calendars for Monday, November 15th when the League will present a Golf Fundraiser at Wexford Golf Club. We are in the planning process now and will have more information to share soon. If you are interested in participating either as a golfer or as a volunteer please contact the event chair, Linda Moloney, at lam@127fw.com. This is a wonderful opportunity for the League and for the HHSO. Many thanks to Linda for agreeing to chair our new fundraiser and to Bob Cherichella for his help in securing Wexford Golf Club.
—Linda DeLuca, President, HHSO League
For the first time ever, the Hilton Head International Piano Competition’s annual fundraiser, A Musical Feast, was held virtually. We broadcast from the “living room” of Custom Audio Video with a little decorating assistance from Interior Motives in Bluffton. For our first outing in the virtual landscape, it was very successful. We have raised over $26,000 thus far and are hoping for more donations as the event webpage will remain on the Internet for some time. Thank you to all who contributed.
Bradley Fuller, host of Sonatas and Soundscapes (which airs on SC Public Radio) was our host. He was terrific! - knowledgeable, affable and very engaging. The evening centered around 5 performances by pianists known to the HHIPC audiences.
Charlie Albright was the headliner of the evening. He provided 15 minutes of improvisation, including an inspiring performance of “America the Beautiful.” He was followed by performances by Priscila Navarro, Sullivan Fortner, Lavon Stevens, and Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe. Each of these performers will be taking the stage at BravoPiano!. They showcased repertoire that is not typically performed during a competition year and highlighted the theme of the festival, Celebrating Music of the Americas.
We are cautiously optimistic that BravoPiano! Festival will actually take place in June. The dates are June 4 -12. The theme of the festival is Celebrating the Music of the Americas. The repertoire will be culled from works written by composers from Canada all the way to Argentina. Some works will be familiar and many will be new to audiences.
There are 10 concerts planned during the Festival which will showcase the piano as a solo instrument, as well as in ensembles with other instruments and vocalists. There will be classical, chamber, jazz, blues, and Gullah-Geechee music of the Lowcountry. The events will take place around the Lowcountry, both on Hilton Head Island and Bluffton.
The Finale concert will be with the HHSO and will include 3 works:
• The Edward McDowell Piano Concerto No. 2 - a gorgeous, lyrical concerto in the Brahms or Tchaikovsky style played by Reed Tetzloff, an HHIPC medalist in 2016.
• The Florence Price Piano Concerto, written in one movement.The soloist for this work will be Michelle Cann. She is one of the premier interpreters of this work. This will be one of the first performances with the recently discovered original orchestration written by Price herself.
• Stewart Goodyear’s Callaloo Suite will conclude the Finale. The soloist for this work will be none other than the composer himself, Stewart Goodyear!
Information on all the Festival artists and schedule will be on the HHIPC website in early April.
—Mona Huff, Director, Hilton Head International Piano Competition
