(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Forum 360."

I'm Stephanie York, your host today.

And thank you for joining us for a global outlook with a local view.

Today, we're talking with Paul Jarrod, executive director of the Akron Symphony, and Maestro, I just like to say maestro, Christopher Wilkins, musical director, and conductor of the Akron Symphony.

The Akron Symphony is not like all others.

Yes, it produces exceptional symphonic music, but it also has embraced meaningful, collaborative and educational programming that welcomes, connects and engages a broad and diverse community.

The Akron Symphony simply is not your grandma's orchestra, and we are going to find out exactly why that is.

Welcome, Paul and Chris.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us today.

- Pleasure.

- Thank you.

- I love how you say all that.

It just, you should be on our staff.

- I should be.

So, Christopher, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and what brought you to the Akron Symphony?

- Well, I was born in Boston.

I'm an oboist and a pianist by training, and I started conducting in college.

I was living in Columbus, Ohio back in the first decade of this century.

And when this job opened up, I was working elsewhere.

I had a job in Orlando, Florida, but I had two school aged children at home, and I thought, well, wow, adding Akron, as just a two hour commute - - [Stephanie] Right.

- Would be a fantastic thing.

Also, I knew northeast Ohio already, 'cause I had worked for the Cleveland Orchestra, been on their conducting staff, and every year, in those days, the Cleveland Orchestra played in Akron, and I knew Alan Balter, who was one of my predecessors now.

So I, you know, I felt like I had just implicit strong connections with Akron already.

- Well, we're glad about that.

- Me, too.

- Because you landed here, and it's been fantastic.

- I've been here, that, it's like approximately 15 years now.

- Great.

- Yeah.

- And Paul, a little bit of your background and how you became the executive director?

- Sure, well, I was northeast Ohio born and bred, started on the west side, moved to the east side.

I had spent time with Cleveland Opera as a director of marketing, which I really enjoyed.

I really got into opera, and I had had a marketing background, so I just really liked sharing the story of music and the stories that we were telling on stage.

From there, I went to Apollo's Fire, and I spent a couple of years with that group, again in Northeast Ohio.

- [Stephanie] That's a great group.

- Fantastic, absolutely, world class, literally.

- Yes.

- And then about 10 years ago, much like Chris, I learned about this position and I started here, and what, I just absolutely love what we do, which I know we'll get into in more detail, but just what keeps me here is this whole collaborative nature of what we do, focusing on the Akron area.

- And I shouldn't interrupt already, but you also have a musical background, and it's worth saying, 'cause it's a very significant part of what you do for us.

- Yeah, I do.

I have a degree in music education, and I used to play in pit orchestras and things around town.

This kind of bass, not this kind of bass.

- Awesome.

Yeah.

- But - - More rock style?

- Yeah, yeah.

I would play "Rent," but not like "Showboat."

That sort of thing, yes.

- Got it.

Got it, fun.

Well, great.

We're glad you both landed in Akron in northeast Ohio.

So, there's so much to talk about today, and I'm constantly telling people that the Akron Symphony is not your grandma's orchestra.

So, let's just jump into that.

What does this season look like, and what's new and different?

- Well, we really, right now, have, we have a wonderful team.

I'm so proud of the entire organization, you know, board, staff, musicians, and our patrons and supporters, who, I think we're all very much on the same page that we want to push the boundaries.

We want to open up who we make music for, the kind of music that we're making, and what an orchestra's capable of being.

So, a lot of that's community based, like really strong connections to the community so that we're not just isolated, you know, in our little temple.

- [Stephanie] Sure.

- But a lot of it, too, is finding ways to connect with people's life stories.

And that's part of, I think, what Paul was talking about.

You know, music is essentially a community experience, a communal experience.

It's something to be shared.

So, orchestras, somehow over the last century, have done very much the opposite, played a very narrow range of music, mostly European, mostly by deceased composers.

- [Stephanie] Correct.

- How does that serve you in connecting with contemporary audiences?

It simply doesn't, and yet we've done it because of the age old belief that you have to play things that people are familiar with.

Well, that's a self-reinforcing circle.

If you only play things that people are familiar with, that's all that people are familiar with.

- [Stephanie] They're only familiar with that.

- Exactly.

So, we're really pushing at those boundaries.

That's one thing I would say.

- Absolutely, and, you know, we can't ignore the fact that there is a world class orchestra 30 minutes north.

- [Stephanie] Sure.

- And, you know, we're not going to compete with the Cleveland Orchestra.

They are who they are, and we're so fortunate to have them here, because it makes us good.

It makes our players good.

They study with those players.

They substitute in Cleveland.

But what we are able to do is focus that energy completely on the Akron area, and sharing our stage with the community itself.

And I think one of the thing, one of the tenets that we like to follow is how are we listening to the community with the same level of intensity and intention as we ask them to listen to us when we perform.

So, there's a lot of listening that we do.

Christopher and I find ourselves in meetings with all kinds of community groups, not your typical other arts partners, usually.

- [Stephanie] Right, so, you're collaborating with the community.

- Exactly right.

- And one of those collaborations just happened this past weekend.

- Yes, it did.

- And it sets you apart from all other orchestras.

The collaboration was with EarthQuaker Devices.

What is EarthQuaker?

And tell me about that collaboration.

What the heck happened this weekend?

- I'll leave that to, Paul can begin 'cause he has a family connection to EarthQuaker.

- I have a family connection, and I, really, I started with started with a personal connection.

When I mentioned that I played this kind of bass.

- [Stephanie] Yes.

- I've always been into guitar and effects and synthesizers and have a home studio, and so, when I realized that EarthQuaker was based in Akron, I went there as the executive director of the symphony, but also as a fan of what they do.

And literally just said, I'd love to just start talking about.

- [Stephanie] What do they do?

- Well, okay, so they make guitar effects pedals.

So, they're used by musicians all over the world.

They're an international company.

They're huge.

And I think there wasn't a lot of notice that they were based in Akron.

They hand make these things that are used by, if you go on tour and see a band or listen to a record, chances are their effects are on their guitars.

- [Stephanie] Okay.

- My son happens to work for them, too, but that came after.

So, we just started talking about, you know, we're both in this world.

We're both in this musical world where we're interested in pushing the boundaries and interested in interesting collaborations.

So, what could this evolve into?

How could we affect, you know, what they do with affecting sound with what is a centuries old tradition of a typical orchestra?

- So, you made the orchestra electronic?

- Somewhat.

- Somewhat?

- Yes, so, what we did was we had a composer, and I'll let Christopher talk about this a little bit more, but a composer and a sound designer who, yeah, essentially amplified section, individual instruments throughout the orchestra, and was, it was manipulated as it went on.

It would've been real easy to do, like, let's put a clarinet through a distortion pedal and oh, this sounds like rock music.

But I think what we did was, I know what we did was much more than that.

It was really just really infusing the sound with this sort of electronic atmospheric feel to it.

- Modernize it.

- Yes.

Yes.

- Really?

- Right, EarthQuaker sort of suggested one of the two composers.

So, it was co-composed.

Jon Sonnenberg is a EarthQuaker artist.

He's actually also an electronic engineer, and he has designed or helped design a number of the EarthQuaker pedals, effects pedals.

So he knows that world intimately and performs with this equipment all the time.

He's also a composer.

So, he had a lot of music rumbling around in his head that would be really cool - - [Stephanie] Right.

- To put instruments through effects, but then, but he doesn't typically write for orchestra.

- [Stephanie] Right.

- And what we wanted was something magnificent for an 85 piece orchestra.

And so, a young composer that I know well, who's done a number of projects with me, who teaches at Ithaca College collaborated.

So, Jake Gunnar Walsh collaborated with Jon.

And the idea was that we would, EarthQuaker sent a bunch of pedals to Jake.

He had students and colleagues at Ithaca College play their instruments, a horn, a clarinet, a violin, a cello, a piano, a harp through these effects pedals.

And he chose, I know we had like a dozen different effects in the end up there, you know, which ones would be really cool.

And then, together, they sort of dreamt up what would be the journey that this piece would take us on.

It was about a 20 minute excursion into a fantasy world of sound that I've never experienced before.

And, honestly, I'm not sure quite what we've done, we did, has ever been done before.

I've heard orchestras use effect pedals, but not completely - - [Stephanie] Immersing.

- Immersed into the orchestral setting, and it was extraordinary - So, did you conduct this piece?

- And I conducted it.

- Did you have to change your anything or, like, was that a little difficult or a learning curve or what?

- Well, as always, I had to take the composer's vision, and that vision is written down in code.

It's the musical score.

It's the notation, but the distance between that black dot with, you know, those sharps and flat signs, and what you're hearing is, those are different worlds.

So, it's a matter of sort of interpreting what's there.

I had the advantage of my co-composers on my left and on my right, because they both also soloed.

Jon was there as the mix master.

- [Stephanie] Nice.

- Live mixing everything.

And then Jake is a marvelous oboe player.

So, he was soloing at the same time on the oboe and also playing an instrument designed by his co-composer, who happens to be an electrical engineer.

- It sounds crazy.

- It was, yeah.

- The whole thing was over the top.

- So, how did it go?

What in the audience?

Let's hear it?

- So, I was so nervous because, you, we have our traditional audience coming in, but we also knew that we had a lot of people who had never been to an orchestra before coming to this.

- [Stephanie] Sure.

- And I loved it.

I loved walking through the hall before the concert, seeing people in flannel and jeans and seeing people in suits and ties.

And, as soon as the piece ended, and there's amplifiers, so people are gonna be like, it's too loud just 'cause they saw speakers.

- [Stephanie] Yeah, yeah.

- I was nervous about that.

The moment the piece ended, there was a gentleman in the front row in the center, older gentleman, white tuxedo, red bow tie, immediately stood up.

- [Stephanie] Oh wow.

- He led the standing ovation.

- [Stephanie] Wow.

- This is exactly what we were looking for.

- That's cool.

I didn't know that.

Of course, I couldn't see it.

- Right.

- Yeah, it was perfect.

It was perfect.

- It was standing O.

And also, a lot of young people in the audience.

So, part of the hope was, EarthQuaker has a huge fan base, and we have a big fan base.

I guarantee you there's very little overlap between the two.

- Right.

- But there was in EJ Thomas Hall on Saturday night.

- That's amazing.

I hope you'll bring more of that.

- That's certainly the plan.

- So, I'm gonna show you a clip now, and I want you to explain what the heck we're seeing, okay?

(exciting music) What was that?

- I know, it's.

- What was that?

And what does it have to do with the Akron Orchestra?

- It's not what you would expect to see at a symphony concert.

- No.

- Those are children living in a refugee camp in Turkey, on the Syrian border.

And they've lived there for years.

They're, of course, refugees from war, and the music was composed by Sahba Aminikia, who's a composer now based in San Francisco, but has spent years traveling to this refugee camp to work with the children.

What you're seeing there is something called House of Circus, which is a program set up to teach children circus performance acts and videography and music.

- [Stephanie] Wow.

- At the same time.

And we had first spoken with Sahba during the pandemic, prior to the pandemic, because we wanted to bring him to Akron and to work with our refugee community here in Akron.

And so, we started to form a plan where he would compose something that would be premiered by the Akron Symphony to a film like that.

The film didn't yet exist.

The music didn't yet exist.

When the pandemic struck, he went ahead with the project on a sort of smaller scale and worked with a different orchestra in Michigan, and they went ahead, and what you're seeing there actually is the orchestra in Michigan recorded, having recorded that virtually.

- Wow.

- So, everybody at home playing their individual part, and somebody mixed it together.

We did some of that during the pandemic, too.

It's labor intensive.

- [Stephanie] Right.

- But it can produce some very interesting results, as you see.

So, we're gonna show that film with the Akron Symphony, full Akron Symphony now performing, and Sahba, the composer, will come and speak to us.

We'll work with the International Institute, who are now incredibly busy resettling refugees, especially now working on Afghanistan, and during the same concert, we'll bring a former student of mine who's an Afghan refugee.

I taught in Kabul for a month about six years ago at a wonderful music school there, and I met him there.

He's a pianist and a composer and a conductor.

And so, we're also gonna play a work by Milad Yousufi, this young man, and he will be in Akron working with the International Institute, and - - [Stephanie] Wow.

- And interfacing with newly arrived Afghan immigrants.

So, that's on a program all about Akron's immigrant community, which is, you know, particularly in the North Hill area.

- Absolutely.

- Is a extremely vibrant, active, dynamic and ever changing populace.

- I cannot wait.

So, I wanna remind our viewers and those who may have joined late that we are here with Executive Director Paul Jarrod and Maestro Christopher Wilkins, both from the Akron Symphony.

And we are learning why the Akron Symphony is not your grandma's orchestra.

So, why, let's talk about the orchestra, and how it's trying to achieve more diverse audiences, diverse in race, age, sex, economics.

Tell me about that.

- Sure, and I think, you know, what Christopher was just talking about with this particular program for next year called Global Circus is a perfect example of this, of, this is why I love working for the Akron Symphony, is we have a music director, you know, and everything that we do branches out from the programming.

It starts with the music and high quality music.

But what we do is we involve as wide a range of the community as we can in coming up with those programs.

We don't sit in a bubble, or we try not to sit in a bubble, as we alluded to earlier, and say, we should do Brahms and Beethoven, and we check those boxes and here we go.

But really, it's listening to the community so that the community feels like its story and its representation is reflected in the programming and in the performers, allowing the community to hear and tell its own story.

So, it's a long process.

It would be easy, you know, this EarthQuaker thing.

It would've been easy to do a piano concerto and a - - [Stephanie] Yep.

- You know, "Symphonie Fantastique" and call it a night, and, you know, sell 500 tickets and be, you know, whatever.

But that's not gonna accomplish the mission, and it's not going to do exactly what you just said.

- [Stephanie] That's yesterday's orchestra.

- Exactly.

So, by doing this, it's, what we're, it's not just the stage, but it's starting to get now infused in all of our messaging.

How do we market what we're doing?

How do we share these stories with those in the North Hill area, who might not even know what EJ Thomas Hall is, or have even experienced an orchestra before?

So, we're looking at all those aspects of the organization and making sure that we are being as inclusive and as open as we can.

- And speaking of that, let's talk about the Julia Perry Project.

- Right, I was just - - Let's go right into that.

- I was just thinking, you read my mind, Stephanie, because a lot of this, the question of sort of opening up the repertoire and diversification and representation of the people who live here and their stories and their legacies and ancestors is cut off when your programming is driven by European music.

We love our Beethoven and our Brahms and Handel and Bach and all of that.

Of course we do.

And we play lots of it, but there's no way that Brahms can represent our traditions here.

- Right.

- So, in fact, when you look at what we've planned for next season, 59% of the works that we've chosen are American.

That is so unusual - - It really is.

- For any professional orchestra these days.

But how else could we tell the story of what it is to live in this area?

And before we even get to Julia Perry, Underground Railroad, Summit County Historical Society.

- Yes.

- John Brown House.

- Right here.

- Right here.

We have co-commissioned a work on Harriet Tubman by a composer whose training was at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

He assisted me when I was conducting the youth orchestra there.

He's an old friend, a highly experienced performer and composer, Timothy Adams.

He will come and get involved with all of those organizations that I just mentioned to tell our story of our heritage in this region.

So, Julia Perry.

Julia Perry, to me, is representative of a larger question, which is, what has happened and how have we remembered these very important contributors to classical music from the Black community of Akron.

She is now not the only name that's highly significant.

In November, we will bring to Akron a revered figure in classical music today, Dr. Louise Toppin.

She is professor of voice at the University of Michigan.

She grew up in Akron.

Her father was Dr. Edgar Toppin, and he was the first Black professor hired at the university.

- Wow.

- And he was - - What a history.

- I, just extraordinary.

He was charged, to a large degree, with integrating, the term of the day, the University of Akron.

So, this is where she was born.

It's where she grew up.

She's hardly been back since.

She's incredibly excited to come.

It gives us a chance to open up a whole conversation about generations of contributions of Black musicians.

Kermit Moore is another terribly important musical figure who is a contemporary of Julie Perry.

They lived practically across the street from each other in this neighborhood that is now where the university's athletic fields are.

- Okay.

- This is a whole neighborhood that had prominent Black contributors, and it was an integrated community.

It was a mixed, racially mixed community.

So, Julia Perry had a great career.

As a young woman, she had a work performed by the New York Philharmonic and recorded, which you can hear on YouTube.

She traveled to France and to Italy, had several important works that won awards.

She was granted money to produce recordings.

She was a conductor.

She was a pianist, a violinist, a conductor.

- Wow.

- And a composer and a singer.

So, five musical skills and was quite in demand as a young person, supported by people like Aaron Copland.

And today, her music is completely forgotten.

- That's sad.

- I have to admit, until about five years ago, and I'd already been in this community for 10 years, I didn't even know the name.

So, we have a large scale project to help correct that really kind of - - I get goose bumps.

- Embarrassing mishap, right.

- That's great.

- Me, too.

And so, Dr. Louise Toppin will come from Michigan.

- Awesome.

- And one of the things that we'll do with her is perform a work by Julia Perry that has scarcely ever been performed before.

We hope to get a nice recording that we can broadcast.

And meantime, we are working to put her materials in good order, to work on understanding her biography and the biography of her family.

There were five girls in that family, all of them highly accomplished.

Her dad was highly accomplished.

He was an important doctor in Akron and a wonderful amateur pianist.

They, the family came from Lexington, Kentucky.

There's a whole wonderful history of the Perry family there.

They were horse trainers, including her grandfather was a Derby horse trainer, successfully.

It's just an amazing story that most Akronites don't know about, but we're working with many partners in our community, historians, the university, people like Louise Toppin, to tell her story now.

It's a beautiful thing to be involved with.

- That's awesome.

Now, how are we gonna get people to come to that, Paul?

And, no, so, people perceive the orchestra.

You have to wear nice, really nice clothes.

- [Paul] Yeah.

- You, they don't know when to clap.

I don't know when to clap.

Like, when it gets quiet, I clap.

- [Paul] Whenever you're moved.

- Well, when it gets quiet, I clap.

But sometimes, that's just in between movements, and you're not supposed to clap.

- Yeah, we could do a whole separate episode on that.

- I know.

So, how are we gonna get people to come to this?

- So, a beautiful thing happened Saturday night.

I keep going back to this EarthQuaker concert.

- [Stephanie] Yes, please.

- So, the timing is perfect.

We had all of these new people in the hall, and we had people that have never been to an orchestra concert before.

And, at the second half of the concert was a piece by William Dawson.

We played a symphony of his, and it had three movements.

And at the end of the first movement is this huge, giant, emotional dramatic ending.

And of course, immediately the place erupted into applause.

- [Stephanie] Right.

- And it was organic.

It was spontaneous, and it was well deserved.

It was how people felt in that moment.

And I just like, and you know, people are looking at, are we supposed to be clapping?

And so, I'm right up there with them.

- Yes.

- Absolutely.

You know, this notion of clapping at the wrong time is an artificial notion that was created about a hundred years ago, deliberately to keep people from coming to concert halls, to establish a class difference.

So, we have a lot of history to undo on our own.

- [Stephanie] Yes, but we want people to clap whenever they want.

- We want people to clap.

We want people to enjoy it.

We want people to feel that they can come and dress however they - - Jeans and a nice shirt.

- Whatever - - Whatever they want.

- Just be themselves.

If we're going to reflect the community, we want the community to feel comfortable coming in and being themselves in that atmosphere.

- [Stephanie] I love it.

- Yeah.

- I love it.

- Yeah, and actually, in Mozart's time, just to use an example, people leapt to their feet in the middle of a symphony and would applaud, and they would shout encore, and the orchestra would go back and play the movement again.

So, where did we come up with the rules?

- Right.

- I mean, none of us came up with rules.

- Let's throw out the rules.

- We just inherited it.

- Throw 'em out.

- They're gone.

- They're gone.

- We've ripped up the book.

- Our orchestra has no rules.

Okay, maybe not quite that much.

- That's not maybe entirely true, and that's - - There are some rules.

- Certainly.

- But.

- Yeah.

- Clap when you wanna clap, wear what you wanna wear.

- The golden rule.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- And rule number six.

- Yeah.

- You don't know rule number six.

- No.

Go ahead.

- Don't take yourself so damn seriously.

- Oh no, I never do.

I never do.

I live rule number six.

- You're - - So, we're almost, we're running out of time, but we didn't even talk about what COVID did to - - [Paul] Oh, wow.

- The orchestra and all that.

So, I'm not gonna get, I have, like, I only asked like four of my questions of my 20.

So, I do wanna know, things that came out of COVID.

- [Paul] COVID helped transform us.

- That are still - - It, this was, you know, we emerged out this as a completely different organization because of COVID, and when - - In a good way?

- In a very good way.

This allowed us to check off some things off our bucket list that we had always wanted to do.

Take small musical ensembles, go out in other places in the community, you know, turn the concert hall inside out.

Created new community partnerships with organizations that we hadn't worked with before, and musicians leaned heavily into it.

They loved this, and it allowed us to have these conversations with organizations that we typically wouldn't have.

- Yeah, so, you have a podcast now?

- Podcast.

- Because of that.

- Three podcasts podcasts.

- Three podcasts.

- Channels.

- We did 14 episodes with Rita Dove, the Gospel Meets Symphony Chorus was very involved.

Jonathan Turner, their director, was very involved.

We certainly put an emphasis on underrepresented repertoire.

That was a good thing, and all of this is carried forward.

- Yeah, so, the podcast is still active, and it's gonna continue, correct?

- Yeah, the podcast will continue, yes.

- What's it called?

- "Unorchestrated" is our signature podcast.

- Okay.

Just so people can look it up if they want.

- Yes.

- And tell me about the interlude season quick.

- Oh, that was a little bit, I mean, the podcast came out of that, these little ensembles had performed, plus a lot of digital content came out of that, as well.

- Okay, well, I wish I could get into all of it, but we can't because we're running outta time.

So, there is no question that classical music programs have come a long way, and that cannot be better illustrated than through our Akron Symphony.

The Akron Symphony embraces engaging, meaningful and diverse programming that captures the imaginations of all, breaking down barriers of race, religion, sex, age, economics, and more.

The Akron Symphony is simply not your grandma's orchestra.

And I challenge all of you to give it a chance.

You may just fall in love with music again and again and again.

Thank you, Paul and Christopher.

- [Announcer] "Forum 360" is brought to you by John S and James L Knight Foundation, the Akron Community Foundation, Hudson Community Television, the Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center of Akron, Blue Green, Electric Impulse Communications, and Forum 360 Supporters.