Aug 28, 2025
0 Comments
As the Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra steps into their 90th Season of presenting engaging concert experiences, a colorful series of musical programming aptly titled An Ode To Joy blends together a diverse array of performances designed to join both our aural and visual sensibilities together, which definitely fortifies their esteemed reputation for musical innovation.
Created as a project of the Saginaw Department of Parks and Recreation back in 1935, the SBSO have performed an annual concert series every year since they were created.
A fully-professional ensemble which draws its members from throughout Michigan, in addition to its classical concerts the Orchestra has produced a wide variety of chamber, pops, educational, and historical concerts, as well as opera, ballet, and modern dance.
Since their inception the SBSO has showcased approximately 5,000 community performers, half of whom are children, that have shared the stage with the Orchestra in performances over the years. And there is little doubt that since its creation the SBSO has established a proud legacy of providing quality musicianship, innovative programming, and excellent educational experiences for residents throughout the Great Lakes Bay Region and beyond.
Another serendipitous anniversary that parallels this 90th season of performances is the fact this 2025-26 season also marks the tenth year Maestro Fouad Fakhouri has served as Musical Conductor of the SBSO, having assumed this formidable role back in 2016 after the departure of former conductor Brett Mitchell.
With a decade of involvement working to build and shape the legacy of the SBSO, and as a preface to our discussion about the upcoming season, a good place to begin is with the Maestro’s impressions about how the orchestra has evolved in relation to the goals he set upon taking the helm.
“Honestly, I wasn’t thinking and didn’t make the connection about this also being the start of my tenth season with the orchestra, but that’s a very good question,” he reflects. “Overall, when you take over an orchestra you set up a 5-year or a 10-year plan and then go forward. From 2016 up to 2019-2020 I was focused on how to best work with the orchestra by getting to know them and having them get used to working with me and vice versa - figuring out where we need to make changes and fill certain roles; but then a lot ended up changing because of things that were not in our control, such as the Pandemic. The pandemic put us into a low point for about three years, as it did with many arts organizations; but overall we’ve been on the way back up and in terms of growth I’m really pleased with how things have been going, especially in the last few years.”
One of Fakhouri’s pivotal achievements in recent years has centered upon his success with bridging the generational gap between older and younger audiences engaged with Classical music by showcasing more blended programming involving newer contemporary works with older iconic compositions, adding visual multimedia elements into the mix, and adding thematic similarities into the compositions selected with each performance.
This upcoming 90th Season continues to build upon that momentum, so without further ado, let’s break it down:
Saturday, September 27th • LIGHTS, CAMERA, ORCHESTRA
With this upcoming season opener, SBSO goes to the movies with a collection of film scores, video game themes, and familiar television scores designed to attract a cross-generational audience, which Fakhouri says contains movies and themes general audiences and families have grown up with.
“For this performance we’ll open with a piece from the X-Men Apocalypse movie series that is really good, followed by a suite of James Bond theme songs written by John Barry that I’m sure everybody is familiar with, and then we’ll do Leonard Bernstein’s march from the movie The Great Escape, followed by a few of John Williams’ important movie scores from the Star Wars series, as well as some music from Harry Potter & the Sorcerer Stone. The one I'm really excited about and think our older audience will recognize and know is Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho. It's a short suite for string instruments and is as exciting as watching Hitchcock’s scene when she's getting in the shower.”
“Next we’ll perform music from the video game Medal of Honor and then we perform a piece that I love, but don't know how many people here in the United States will know it. It was from a 1994 French movie called The Professional. This will be followed by the Beauty & the Beast Overture and then one I’ve never performed before, but am happy to have found the arrangement, and that’s the opening title for the Main Theme from The Simpsons TV series written by Danny Elfman; then we’ll end the evening performing Mission Impossible by Lalo Schifrin.”
Tuesday • December 9 • HOLIDAY with SAGINAW’S STARS
This annual Holiday Pops Concert returns featuring Saginaw’s ‘3 Tenors’; Todd Michael Hall, Billy Petty, and Charles Allen, along with many favorite holiday selections including Josh Groban’s You Raise Me Up, Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, and the Christmas singalong, featuring side-by-side performances with Saginaw Bay Youth Orchestra.
“I’ve been following a little bit of a format with our annual Holiday Pops Concert because it resonates when we include local talent,” reflects Fakhouri. “People never get tired of hearing the talent we have in Saginaw performing holiday pop music. We've had Todd Michael Hall perform with us two times in the past, Billy Petty performed with us along with his wife Amy Petty about five or six years ago, and this year I thought I would invite Charles Allen. I've never worked with Charles, but I have worked with his mother Sharrie Williams, so I had the idea of featuring these three tenors at this year’s Holiday Pops.”
“They will perform two songs separately, one will be a holiday pop Christmas song and another song that is either a rock song or something else, and then they'll come together to perform a couple of duets and then they have one piece that's a big finale. But what's interesting about that concert is the first half will have those soloists with the orchestra, and then the second half we will have a side-by-side with the youth orchestra.”
Saturday, February 7 • RACHMANINOFF, DVORAK & THE NEW WORLD
This performance will include a celebration of one of the most beloved piano pieces in history, along with a beloved masterpiece. Celebrated pianist Natasha Paremski performs Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, also featuring Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9. ‘From The New World’ and Barber’s Adagio for Strings.
“I’ve never worked with Natasha before and found out about her as I was researching guest pianists to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2, which is one of the pieces she’s really well-known for,” explains Fakhouri. “She's a great pianist and I'm excited to work with her. This particular concert program happened because inevitably, we had a person very supportive of the symphony who loves that piece of music and has wanted to hear it performed by the SBSO for a long time.
“We started the conversation two years ago about how do we bring this piece of music with a big Steinway piano we typically rent from Detroit along with a guest artist to our stage, and we finally got it to work, so Natasha is not only going to perform that concert for our audience, but we're also scheduled to do it as a Youth Concert where we invite kids from all the schools on Friday to come and attend her performance of that particular piece on piano, while also having an opportunity to interact with her as well.”
Saturday, March 28 • MUSIC REFRAMED • PICURES at an EXHIBITION
This concert will feature two timeless classics along with two modern original compositions performed by their composers. Special guest Kebra-Seyoun Charles, rising star of the orchestra landscape, performs his composition Nightlife: Concerto for Bass, following the concerto’s recent premiere at Carnegie Hall.
Additionally, this program with feature the Michigan premiere of Trance, an original composition by our own composer and Music Director, Fouad Fakhouri. Also featured in the program is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with accompanying visual effects.
“This is a program I'm very excited about and like a lot because it combines new music with pieces that are familiar. Pictures at an Exhibition is a well-known, popular, and celebrated work and when we started talking about it the idea developed to display the pictures that Mussorgsky based the piece upon projected on the screen, so you can actually see what he was thinking when he performed and put the piece together.”
“The original composition Nightlife: Concerto for Bass comes from a very interesting bass player. Charles wrote the piece, he performs it, and he has some extended techniques and things that are really interesting and different.”
“Plus, I also have a piece on this particular program that I premiered last year in Wichita Falls, Texas that is titled Trance. This will be the second time it's performed and is a piece I wrote to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Wichita Falls Orchestra. When I was growing up I loved Electronic Dance Music, and I still do - especially Trance music and EDM - so I wrote a piece that sort of reflects that aesthetic and makes you feel like you're in the club pulsing to the beat and the bass.”
Saturday, May 9 • SBSO’s 90th • AN ODE TO JOY
This massive joint celebration of SBSO and The Saginaw Choral Society’s 90th seasons will converge as the full choral society joins the SBSO for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, one of the most famous compositions of all time.
“When you asked about my goals for the SBSO at the start of our conversation, this is one of them. It’s one of those pieces that every single season for the past 10 years typically more than one or two board members or audience members would always ask me when they would be able to hear Beethoven’s Symphony #9, so seeing as this is the 90th season it presents a good opportunity to perform that piece, which is obviously a difficult work of music. It requires a lot of people, including a vocal soloist, and is not easy to put together. With this special occasion presenting itself there was a certain symmetry in pulling this together for the grand finale of our 90th season.”
“I'm really looking forward to this upcoming season, which follows the general trajectory of our last three seasons,” concludes Fakhouri. “We did a lot of things with movie music and projection and it was wonderful, and then this past season we decided to figure out another way of reaching out to people, so we staged some concerts at Saginaw Valley State University, and we're still trying to explore new ways to reach out to our audience.”
“This season is more similar to what we did two seasons ago with props, visual elements, and Pops performances, but my hope is that as we continue to explore, we continue to grow our audiences and attract more and more people to the wonderful artistry we have to offer.”
Season tickets and single show tickets for all performances of the Saginaw Bay Symphony’s 90th Season are available by phoning 989-755-6471 or visiting their website at SaginawBayOrchestra.com
info@review-mag.com
989-780-4162
Comments (0)