Clarkston High School will have the Sounds of Summer flowing through its Performing Arts Center as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra presents their Neighborhood Festival series on Thursday.
“On behalf of the DSO we are pleased to return to Clarkston,” said Kareem George, managing director of community programs. “We are so grateful to the community for welcoming us back. I want to thank Clarkston High School and Clarkston for hosting us. It means a lot. We appreciate their support and enthusiasm. We wouldn’t be nearly as successful in broadening our impact if we didn’t have great partners.”
The Sounds of Summer series features something for everyone, from classic masters Tchaikovsky and Dvorak to recent compositions from John Williams and Irving Berlin.
“We are really excited to launch this festival this year,” George added. “This is the first time we are doing a neighborhood summer festival.”
The series is part of the Neighborhood Residency Initiative the DSO began in 2011 to reach music enthusiasts in communities surrounding Detroit.
“We had tremendous success and it continues to grow,” George added. “This summer we wanted to bring more music to the community and have four additional concerts in July.”
“It’s great,” he said about visiting communities and reaching more people. “It’s what our music director, Leonard Slatkin, has wanted to do from day one. He really wanted to show our orchestra is for the entire community. We realize there are some locations in the metro Detroit area like Clarkston where it is not easy to get downtown as frequently as many would like to.”
The orchestra visited Clarkston in September 2012 when the community was selected out of 100 venues for a concert.
It is the first visit for Hunter Eberly, their new principal trumpet who is soloing in Arutunian’s Trumpet Concerto.
“The Trumpet Concerto is one of the staples of the trumpet repertoire,” he said. “It’s really cool. It’s Russian. It’s romantic. It should be a lot of fun for everyone to listen to.”
Eberly added the response to the summer series has been great and audience members can expect an exciting evening.
“It is cool to see more communities and how people react to the music in their own setting,” he said. “We can go to your home and share the music. It’s fun.”
General admission tickets are $20 for adults; $10 for children under 18 and students. Tickets are available at Rudy’s Market, 9 S. Main Street, or online at www.dso.org/neighborhood The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. at 6093 Flemings Lake Road.