PBS To Broadcast Milwaukee Symphony's Season Opening Concert

On Friday, December 17, 2021 at 8PM CT/9PM ET, PBS will premiere the national broadcast of Live from Bradley Symphony Center: Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The recording is of Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra's (MSO) October 2, 2021 season opening concert, A Grand Opening, which featured the world premiere of Eric Nathan's Opening. After its December 17 broadcast, the program will be available to stream online for 30 days. Watch the trailer for the program recording and watch an excerpt from Opening. Check local PBS station listings for future broadcasts.

This December 17 broadcast is a reprise of the October 2 live broadcast that was free for viewers in the Milwaukee, WI region, made possible by a partnership between MSO and Milwaukee PBS. Performed at the Bradley Symphony Center, the program recording also includes James B. Wilson's Green Fuse, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue featuring pianist and Artistic Partner Aaron Diehl, Ellington's New World A-Comin', and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite led by MSO Music Director Ken-David Masur.

Eric Nathan's 8-minute Opening (2021) was commissioned by MSO and The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress to open MSO's 2020-21 season and inaugurate its new home, the Bradley Symphony Center. After the pandemic and with the return of in-person performances for the 2021-22 season, the long-awaited premiere of Opening has made Nathan consider the meaning and significance of a full orchestra and audience finally meeting in their new concert hall for live music and embarking on a highly-anticipated musical journey together.

Nathan explains, "Composing this piece was itself a willful act of hope. Opening juxtaposes music of stillness and activity in a series of broadening gestures that unfurl over the course of its eight-minute trajectory. It asks us to listen to ourselves in the space that we inhabit together. Solo players are placed around the hall surrounding the audience, participating in intimate dialogues that reach across to the other soloists and players on the stage. The musicians also resound forcefully, enveloping the hall from all sides in resonance. At times, players in the strings are asked to play their parts asynchronously, as if they are soloists within a larger collective, creating a communal sense of singing. Opening begins with reverence and closes in celebration."