Geneva Concerts launches 2022-23 season
GENEVA — In the mid-1940s, a group of Geneva citizens organized as the Geneva Civic Music Association — later, Geneva Concerts — with the intention of making classical music and other cultural offerings available to their community and to promote the appreciation and understanding of the arts.
It’s 2022, and Geneva Concerts is still at it, with the same mission: Bringing the arts to the community, and finding ways to help people access and appreciate them. There are additional goals: promoting arts opportunities for students in an age when many schools’ music and arts programs have diminished; and helping people become comfortable with a major community resource, the Smith Opera House, which has been host to the Geneva Concerts programs for years.
“We’re trying to get them to feel comfortable in the Smith,” said Scott McKinney, member and past president of the Geneva Concerts board of directors. “For many people it’s kind of an intimidating place; we’re trying to get people to see that it’s theirs.”
Geneva Concerts launches its 76th season Friday, Sept. 16, with a 7:30 p.m. performance by Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre at the Smith Opera House, 82 Seneca St. The Chicago-based company will present original choreography and musical compositions – selections, according to a Geneva Concerts release, chosen to “express the ensemble’s core values of cultural diversity, community, collaboration, and creativity.”
Founded in 1999 by a choreographer/dancer, a painter, and a composer/musician, Cerqua Rivera has developed as a collective of creative artists across three disciplines – dance, visual arts, and music. That interdisciplinary approach mirrors the approach taken by Geneva Concerts itself, which has committed to diversity in genre — hosting orchestras, chamber ensembles, jazz performers, musical theater, ballet companies, Celtic step dancers and more — as well as in composers and performers.
“We think of our demographics and community – Geneva is an ethnically and culturally diverse place,” said Sally Webster, a vice president for publicity with Geneva Concerts. The approach is reflected in the performers booked: Recent years’ performances have, along with Geneva Concerts standbys like the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Syracuse-based Symphoria, included African dance, Celtic step dance, a Hungarian orchestra, and the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
As with most arts organizations, Geneva Concerts had to weather a lengthy pause due to the onset of COVID-19. The final concert of the 2019-20 season had to be canceled, as did the entirety of the 2020-21 season, due to the resulting requirements about social distancing. And as with most arts organizations, planning a new season (2021-22) once they were able to was a cautious process, pulled together over a summer. It depended on the availability of performers, some of whom were just getting back into the swing of performing (and traveling) together. It required flexibility: At least one substitution had to be made in the case of an unvaccinated performer. And it required a trust that audiences would be comfortable gathering together again — a concern eased a bit by the 1,300-plus capacity of the Smith venue.
“They were a little nervous at the beginning — we were a little nervous at the beginning — but it worked,” McKinney said.
As in previous years, the concerts are free for children up through grade 12 through Geneva Concerts’ Sponsor-A-Student program, part of the organization’s effort to encourage arts appreciation among young people. As well, performers generally take part in outreach programs in the community, giving presentations and performances at area schools, for instance, and in some cases master classes for Hobart and William Smith Colleges students.
“In many schools, music education and arts education have been seriously curtailed," Webster said. “We try to give students the opportunity to attend a performance. We are able to provide this opportunity to the schools, and we generally get a very favorable response from the principals and the music program.”
The remainder of the 2022-23 season is as follows, with all performances at Smith Opera House:
Nov. 6: The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra performs at 3 p.m. with Vinay Parameswaran conducting and award-winning violinist Tai Murray playing Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto in D Major. Also on the program is Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major.
March 10: Symphoria, a musician-led musical cooperative based in Syracuse, performs at 7:30 p.m. Conductor Lawrence Loh is paired with acclaimed pianist Awadagin Pratt to perform Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds for Piano and String Orchestra.” Also on the program are Sean O’Loughlin’s “Symphoria,” Robert Sierra’s “Fandangos,” Duke Ellington’s “Three Black Kings" and Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait.”
April 23: Symphoria returns for a concert at 3 p.m. featuring Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, Johann Strauss Jr.’s “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major. Conductor Michelle Merrill will lead the orchestra.
Single-ticket prices at the box office are $35 for adults and seniors; $10 for full-time college students and free for students through grade 12. Regular subscription prices are $120 for adults/seniors, $35 for full-time college students (free through grade 12); send order and payment to Geneva Concerts Inc., P.O. Box 709, Geneva, NY 14456 or download the subscription form from GenevaConcerts.org. Season tickets can be used for any concert in the 2022-2023 season. Subscribers to Geneva Concerts will receive four tickets to use in any combination (one to each of four concerts, all four to one concert, etc.).
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FRONT-ROW SEAT is a column that showcases the area’s art, music, theater, film and general all-around creative scene. If you’re a musician with an upcoming live online performance or album release; or if you have any information in the arts/entertainment sphere to report, please send your information to L. David Wheeler at dwheeler@messengerpostmedia.com.
This article originally appeared on MPNnow: Geneva Concerts launches 2022-23 season
