Kentucky Symphony Orchestra Swinging the Classics

Kentucky Symphony Orchestra Swinging the Classics

To close the KSO’s 33rd season, music director James Cassidy has assembled a regional all-star big band to play classically inspired works as swing. Re-imagining classical music as jazz has been in vogue since Ragtime of the early 1900s. Composer-arrangers grew up on the classics, and their familiarity made spinning war horses in a new genre a natural extension of their talents.

The evening kicks off with Eugen Cicero’s adaptation of C.P.E. Bach’s Solfeggio in C minor for jazz piano trio, followed by a newer Jeremy Levy big band adaptation of Gustav Holst’s “Mars” from The Planets. Several Billy May charts (from the 1950s) follow including classical hits by Ketèlbey, Dvorak, Bizet, Verdi, Brahms and a killer re-working of Franz von Suppe’s Poet and Peasant Overture. Following intermission the band turns to current big band guru Gordon Goodwin and his forays into the music of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, as you’ve never heard it. (See the full playlist below)

The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra swings the classics — 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 10 at Greaves Concert Hall on the campus of NKU. For additional info and tickets —kyso.org or (859) 431-6216. The KSO will livestream the performance — $35 Virtual pass is per household, with unlimited views until June 11th. For tickets and additional information visit kyso.org or call (859) 431- 6216. 

For more information call 859-431-6216 or visit kyso.org/event/american-pie/