ASO Blog

After the second encore–or maybe it was the third–the Spanish audience started clapping in a Flamenco rhythm, displaying an exuberance, a hunger for more, that a simple ovation couldn’t convey.

Sitting on stage at the Teatro Auditorio Riberas de Guadaíra in Seville, heads spinning thinking of what to play to reward their listeners, the musicians of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra simply beamed. None of them had ever heard an audience beg for four encores.

For Sullivan Fortner, the piano is a playground.
In a piano-vocal duo with longtime collaborator Cecile McLorin Salvant, or as a leader on his recent album “Leave that in There,” the jazz pianist tinkers, pushes and pulls, playing with melody, rhythm and harmony.

This November, Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann leads the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in two programs featuring new Artist-In-Residence, pianist Anna Geniushene, whom Stutzmann personally appointed, performing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 and Schumann’s Piano Concerto.

Joe Alterman is a storyteller. For the jazz pianist, whose hard-bop piano improvisations usually seem tinged with a sunny optimism, weaving an informative narrative around the music is a crucial part of performance.

“I've realized how much it can add to the experience,” he said, “both in terms of feeling closer to the music and the person that you're watching.”

Abruptly pivoting to face the first violins, Nathalie Stutzmann started jousting Thursday night, her baton piercing the air. Like a kid playing make believe, a wry smile on her face, she poked and prodded to highlight a musical attack. Later in the evening, she crouched closer to the orchestra, like a basketball coach mapping out a play amid a huddle of players. 

When Gloria Allgood first performed the Brahms Violin Concerto, tears welled in her eyes. The bassist, who has been part of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) since 1984, got a chance to play the piece as a teenager during a summer trip to Interlochen Center for the Arts, but the music had been imprinted on her mind long before.

Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks,” written in 1749, never goes out of style for a reason: There’s something refreshing, optimistic and joyful about the soaring trumpets, the robust string section supporting a courtly-dance melody in lockstep. It’s a refined, timeless sound. 

Our Bruckner 4 recording has continued to garner praise and attention in press outlets around the world. Gramophone magazine ran a great article based on an interview with Nathalie about the recording, which is worth reading. In a related review, Gramophone went on to state, “This recording of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony is a bold statement of artistic vision and ambition.”

On Thursday, Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann turned to Mahler’s Second Symphony not as a symbol of an orchestra rising from the ashes but as a celebration of what the organization has become. Or maybe there’s no deeper symbolism at all. Could it have been a surface-level celebration of exceptional music making, no greater depth needed? After all, the expansive work calls for ASO’s best asset, its chorus.
 

On certain special nights, orchestra, guest soloist and conductor align so well, create such memorable music that something like a 150-year-old Russian composition can become a contemporary commission written expressly for the ensemble. On Thursday night, Daniel Lozakovich, in his second trip to Atlanta, played Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto as if the composer had worked hand-in-hand with the 25-year-old Swedish violinist to develop the piece.

The ASYO offered a path to the ASO for nine current members.

As a junior in high school, Jake Darnell doesn’t remember especially wanting to play the timpani. But in his second concert with the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, he found himself on stage in Symphony Hall, sticks in hand, anchoring the ensemble in Ernest Bloch's “Schelomo: Hebrew Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra.” To say it was a new experience is putting it mildly.

Always stay for the encore.

Thursday night at Symphony Hall, after the final notes of Bernstein’s Second Symphony, “Age of Anxiety,” guest pianist Conrad Tao brought out another piece of American music. His transcription of an Art Tatum “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” recording from 1953 put an unexpected and thoroughly delightful touch on a richly rewarding program.

Music is connection, relaying emotion from performer to listener when simple words can’t suffice. But there’s also the connection among performers, the flow-state bond created when making music at a high level. When on-stage collaborators are working hand in hand, that close-knit feeling naturally transmits to the audience. Listeners, in turn, radiate appreciation and positivity back to the performers on stage.

Robert Spano leads two weeks of ASO concerts, contributing a throughline of storytelling to the America @ 250 series. In a recent interview with Lois Reitzes, Spano reflects on the themes of the featured repertoire and his collaboration with many of the highlighted musicians.

It’s good to see an old friend.

Jerry Hou, who served as an assistant conductor in Atlanta from 2020 to 2023, returned to Symphony Hall Thursday in his debut as guest conductor with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

He brought with him a program that spotlighted an emerging talent in Nicky Sohn; Philip Glass, a champion of minimalism rarely heard on the Symphony Hall stage; and Russian master Sergei Rachmaninoff’s earliest symphony.

A jazz pianist stepping out with the orchestra, two commissions and a season-spanning Brahms cycle: it’s all there in the 2026-2027 Atlanta Symphony Orchestra season

Across Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann’s 10-concert series in Atlanta, she’ll lead the orchestra in all four Brahms symphonies; four concertos; his Academic Festival Overture; and the choral masterwork Ein deutsches Requiem.

Did Bach want to go big? Did he yearn to hear his work on a truly monumental scale?
On Thursday at Symphony Hall, Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann confronted this question with her interpretation of the composer’s sprawling, 27-movement “Mass in B Minor.” Listed in the program as 114 minutes long (it perhaps felt a little more zippy than that timing would suggest), the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performed the work in two sections, with an intermission in between.

Nearly four decades ago, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, led by guest conductor Franz Wesler-Most, performed Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony for the first time. The orchestra then shelved the score for the next 37 years.
Thursday at Symphony Hall, Stutzmann resurrected the heraldic, expansive world-creating Bruckner work.

Wynton Marsalis recently punctuated his Atlanta farewell as head of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with an uptempo “Cottontail,” a Duke Ellington classic that typifies the approach to jazz he envisioned for the band when he started leading it 35 years ago.

Flutist Robert Cronin will soon return to the spotlight.

After more than 35 years with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Cronin is a familiar presence during performances at Symphony Hall, nestled comfortably in the woodwind section.

The bells toll from a keyboard, issuing forth as a woozy, electronic sound, grounded by a throbbing, insistent beating from the harp. Flute and woodwinds drift through the soundscape with a slow melodic figure, growing, expanding, exploring. Cellos rise from the depths in a dirty, earthy glissando.
In this initial tableaux, darkness pervades, but it’s the kind of black nothingness before the dawn, not of the endless night.

FEB 13 | Is there a more American music than swing? On Thursday at Symphony Hall, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s second America @ 250 celebratory concert featured guest conductor Teddy Abrams leading clarinetist Martin Fröst through two seminal works born from Big Band greats. (It so happens that Symphony Hall is welcoming a slate of jazz musicians this spring, including a two-night residency with the phenomenal vocalist Samara Joy)

After a joyous evening of classical and gospel music performed by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus alongside the Ebenezer Baptist Church Choir and Band, there was one more surprise in store: Ebenezer’s director of worship and the arts stepped up to the church piano. Audience members more familiar with the ASO than with Ebenezer may not have suspected what came next.

Brianne Turgeon witnessed a transformation at the symphony.
As the music and chorus teacher at Springdale Park Elementary School, she brings her classes to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra every year as part of the organization’s Students at the Symphony program.

Think of a stereotypical American piece of classical music. What do you hear? There might be a bit of jazz, a sprinkling of gospel or perhaps an Appalachian folk melody. Perhaps you’re thinking of a tonal composition filled with innovative rhythms. Odds are that there’s a tune-fulness to the music, a complete ear-worm of a melody.  That’s what Music Director Laureate Robert Spano imagines when he thinks of American classical music: a melting pot of sounds, an aural tapestry that incorporates the soundscapes of the country.  

I’ve heard programming a concert is like composing a satisfying, multicourse meal. There are myriad routes to take for a filling, thrilling experience: conductors can present courses that play off each other, are vastly different, present a unified theme in different ways – the recipes are endless.

Does the Ninth always make for a monumental gathering?

In his book “The Symphony,” Michael Steinberg, who spent decades writing program notes for the San Francisco Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra, noted that when programming turns to Beethoven’s final symphony, “a performance of it can never be an ordinary event, just another concert.”

Holiday music is for everyone.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra created the new “Sounds of the Season” with this maxim in mind. The goal is to spread seasonal cheer to as many communities as possible.
Atlantans still have “Christmas with the ASO” and the annual singing of Handel’s “Messiah.” This new offering welcomes listeners with different holiday traditions as well as those who simply need more non-denominational music to get in the spirit.

The first note from Kala Ramnath’s violin, a guttural, primal sound that was somehow joyful and full of sorrow at the same time, made me hold my breath. Or maybe it took my breath away. All I remember is that when she began playing “Concerto for Hindustani Violin and Orchestra,” I suddenly had to remind myself to breathe.   

For the latest Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut, the ASO Chamber Chorus, focused to about half its normal size, stood in a semicircle at the backs of a similarly compressed orchestra.

In this new series from local music journalist Jon Ross, he reflects on the ASO’s Delta Classics Series with fresh insights into each concert, hot off the presses.

For some ASO musicians, it’s all about the music, all the time.

Standing in front of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the guest violinist took a breath, paused, then slowly, with a steady hand and a full, gorgeous tone, revealed the first notes of “Adoration” by Florence Price.

Later, her excitement practically jumped through the computer screen.

“Solo at SIXTEEN? With the ASO? Who would have thought?” she wrote on Instagram after the show.

This season, Bruce Kenney retires from the ASO after 40 years of service. He started with the orchestra in 1985 and has been an important member of the horn section since that time. He offered this reflection: “My journey as a musician began, honestly, I don’t know when. There’s an innate fascination, then some sort of noisemaker is put in your hands and you begin sorting out how to make differing sounds with it! Perhaps it’s not more complicated than that?

May, 2025

Choral music mavens have a lot to celebrate this coming year. A quick glance at Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s 2025-2026 season announcement reveals that within a delightfully well-balanced cornucopia of musical offerings, audiences will be treated to a delectable sampling of choral masterpieces that span the late Baroque to the height of the Romantic era, including works by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mahler.

This year marks a significant milestone in the cultural fabric of Atlanta: the 80th anniversary of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO). To commemorate this remarkable journey, a special exhibition is on display in the lobby of the Memorial Arts Building throughout the first part of March. The exhibition follows a timeline highlighting key milestones in the ASO’s history. The 80th is known as the “Oak” anniversary and this exhibition draws a parallel between the strength and longevity of the oak tree and the enduring legacy of the ASO, which has firmly rooted itself in the cultural landscape of Atlanta and beyond.

One of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s most cherished events was revived in January with the return of the King Celebration, on January 4th at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. 

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Nathalie Stutzmann likens the orchestra’s next challenge to climbing a mountain, and not just any middling mountain. “For any orchestra in the world, a Beethoven cycle is a Himalaya,” she says. “I think it's incredibly exciting for us, but also for the audience, because it's rare to be able to hear the full symphony cycle plus the Triple Concerto plus the Missa solemnis.”

That’s the marching order for the ASO’s Beethoven Project, which starts Jan. 23 and runs through the fall, culminating, of course, with the Ninth.

As the holidays approach, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus (ASOC) gathers to celebrate a cherished tradition: the annual Christmas concert. For many members, this concert is not just a performance; it's a yearly celebration of the chorus' rich legacy and impact within Atlanta's community.

This year marks the Atlanta Symphony’s 50th anniversary of broadcasting our classical series concert recordings on WABE, 90.1 FM. For over five decades, WABE has been instrumental in disseminating these recordings, providing a platform for the orchestra to showcase their talent to a broader audience who could listen from the comfort of their homes.

October, 2024

Elizabeth Koch Tiscione, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's principal oboist is our featured soloist for Francaix's L'horloge de flore (The Flower Clock). Liz, who joined the orchestra at the age of 21 in 2007, is a part of the rich tapestry-woven artistry of the ASO.

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September, 2024
Written by June Scott. Edited by John Scott and Sally Parsonson

Until his passing in June 2024, Michael Kenady held the distinction of being the longest-serving current musician in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He played the double bass with the ASO for 59 years with all five Music Directors.

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June 1, 2024
By Holly Hanchey

In March of this year, singer-songwriter Faye Webster released her new studio album, Underdressed at the Symphony. Webster is an Atlanta native who is currently on a world tour and was recently featured in a story in Rolling Stone magazine. The title track is about a romantic break-up, with the lyrics, "I'm underdressed at the symphony/Crying to songs/That you put me on."

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