Gerds/Review: Classical music scene on the mend | WFRV Local 5

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – The classical music scene in Northeastern Wisconsin took a hard punch because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the music makers didn’t go away.

Here is an overview of how some groups are coming back:

Expert musicians from across America are continuing to perform in the first Peninsula Music Festival in three seasons. Three of the festival’s nine concerts remain this week at Door Community Auditorium in Fish Creek.

The organization is in the midst of its search for a successor to its beloved conductor/music director Victor Yampolsky, whose title is now Conductor Laureate.

For small-ensemble classics, the group called Midsummer’s Music provides dozens of concerts throughout the summer.

Following the close of the Peninsula Music Festival, The Midsummer’s Music season will continue at such newer venues as the Carol and Donald Kress Pavilion in Egg Harbor.

Heading into fall, the Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra will have a new conductor/music director, Ernesto Estigarribia, chosen from a pool of 107 applicants from 14 countries.

With the orchestra heading into its 104th season, it also will have a new executive director. Joshua Hernday is arriving from leading the Green Lake Music Festival and the concert stage.

Door County/Brown County’s own Griffon String Quartet will start its season of concerts next month in many locations.

Brown County Civic Music Association is expecting its first uninterrupted season in a few years, with three of its performances set in Green Bay’s Weidner Center for the Performing Arts.

University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Weidner Philharmonic will have a bit more of a presence in the center, starting Sept. 24 with “Women’s Work” featuring compositions by women.

The American International Czech and Slovak Voice Competition – the area’s one and only international voice competition – after postponement returns in October for three days in UWGB’s Fort Howard Hall in the Weidner Center.

Organizers Sarah Meredith Livingston and Sharon Resch are bringing in gifted singers from North America and abroad.

Conductor/music director Seong-Kyung Graham of the Civic Symphony of Green Bay has a huge day lined up Nov. 19 – “Gridiron Gala with the Symphony” – with multiple events and a concert in the Lambeau Field Atrium.

On tap for the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra’s season are two world premieres, one of them composed by John Henneken of the St. Norbert College faculty in De Pere.

Developments about these and other items will continue to be part of my columns on this site.