Saturday, May 18, 2013

Cirque Musica: Nashville Symphony, circus to share stage
  
Cirque Musica peformer doing a handstand during the “Rolla-Bolla” act. Submitted
from tennessean.com
by Rennessean Music Team
May 17, 2013
There won’t be elephants or lions, but the circus is coming to town and stopping at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center this Thursday, May 23, through May 25.

Cirque Musica will bring along a program of familiar music, instrumental soloists, acrobats and a strongman — even a ringmaster of sorts — when it joins the Nashville Symphony Orchestra for three performances. Albert-George Schram will conduct.

The program is filled with selections from popular culture and the classical music repertoire, many of which have appeared in various Nashville Symphony series over the past couple of years. “Bald Mountain” was included in last fall’s Halloween Pied Piper concert, for example, while the William Tell Overture was performed at the beginning of the current season.

Excerpts from the “Star Wars” and “Superman” themes, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (here with a hula hoop act) and “Mars” from Holst’s “Planets” are also on the Cirque Musica program.

The idea of putting this circus inside the concert hall was the brainchild of Steve Cook, whose background includes working in marketing for the parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and later for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

“You see kids all over the place, people are clapping and cheering and standing to great classical music but they’re experiencing it in a different way,” Cook said of the typical Cirque Musica performance. He spoke about the concept from his office in Texas; here are excerpts from the conversation.

Circus plus classical standards?

Cirque Musica is sort of a theatrical version of my professional life in some instances... . When I started my own company it made sense to bring my two worlds together, which is the circus world and the symphonic world... . The thought behind Cirque Musica was to bring new people into the (concert) hall and to entertain subscribers and people who’ve been coming to the symphony for years.
What’s in the show?

All the acts are Ringling Bros. and Cirque de Soleil, veteran acts. At one point in the show we do Copland’s “Hoe-Down” and we have a cowboy act. In the scheme of the circus world it’s a simple act, a roper, but he’s amazing and people go nuts ... because it works so well with the music and the music is so good and so fun, so upbeat.
read more:
http://blogs.tennessean.com/tunein/2013/05/17/cirque-musica-nashville-symphony-circus-to-share-stage/
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