The South Carolina Philharmonic’s 60th anniversary season kicks off next week (Friday, Oct. 18) with “Juliet & Her Romeo,” featuring guest artist Katherine Liu on piano.
From exciting world premiere works to special guests like Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn to the return of favorites like “Halloween at Hogwarts” and “Wolfgang & Wine,” the Phil has a stacked season in store — and we got a behind-the-scenes look thanks to Music Director Morihiko Nakahara.
Can you tell us a bit about this upcoming season?
There are several exciting changes happening this season. We have rebranded the six Masterworks concerts as “Capital Concerts.” In these concerts, we will be exploring a wide array of symphonic repertoire ranging from the beloved classics by familiar composers including Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky to vibrant contemporary works by some of the leading composers today.
To complement the Capital Concerts series, we are adding more shows at the Koger Center this season including live-to-projection performances of “Star Wars: A New Hope” and a Led Zeppelin tribute as well as family-oriented programs like the annual “Halloween at Hogwarts” concert.
The Phil is celebrating a big anniversary this year: 60 years. How does that influence the programming?
We will be celebrating our 60th anniversary in several ways, including some very special guests who will be performing with us throughout the season. In February, we are welcoming back the incredible Béla Fleck. This will be his fourth time performing with us (including once with the Flecktones and twice as a concerto soloist), and what will make this collaboration unique is that both Béla and his wife Abigail Washburn will be joining us on stage.
In April, the Columbia native Andy Akiho will be back with one of his latest compositions that we co-commissioned along with a few other orchestras around the country. Circling back to how we are doing more shows at the Koger throughout the season and stepping out of the more traditional classical realm, this is something we have wanted to lean into for some time, and it feels like the big anniversary season is a perfect time to bring it to reality.
Beyond the orchestral programming at the Koger, I am excited about the new partnership with Andy Armstrong’s outstanding chamber music series (“Andy and Friends”). Also, with our expanded educational and outreach programming, you will see our musicians in more places throughout the Midlands.
Many of our readers attended (and loved) the Star Wars concert screening this summer. What was it like conducting that epic score?
I have been fortunate to conduct a few of these “live-to-projection” presentations around the country over the last five years, ranging from “Psycho” and “Jurassic Park” to the Star Wars original trilogy. Synchronizing a full orchestra in real time with the actions on the big screen is an absolute thrill, albeit rather terrifying or exhausting at times.
These presentations have opened up a whole new audience for many orchestras around the world by demonstrating that symphonic music and orchestral sound are exciting and closer to everyone’s lives than they had previously thought.
Which show this season are you most excited about, personally?
It is difficult to pick just one, but I would have to say the aforementioned collaboration with Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn in February.
What would you say to readers who have yet to attend a Philharmonic concert?
After watching several hours of the Paris Olympics coverage during the summer, I am struck by how music, like sports, can be an agent of unity through shared experience. Whereas orchestras might have been considered outdated and stuffy in the past, we are committed to bringing down the barriers between the music and our potential audiences. We are creating more points of contact (“gateways”) by using a wider variety of settings and genres throughout the Midlands, which I hope will encourage more people to take us out for a spin at some point during each concert season.
