The Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra Paints a Musical Canvas of Timeless Classics & Modern Originals March 28th

As they continue to blend an engaging mix of timeless classics with innovative and original modern compositions to paint upon the musical canvas of their 90^th season, The Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra is busily preparing for their next creatively concocted thematic concert performance titled MUSIC REFRAMED • PICTURES at an EXHIBITION, which is set to happen on Saturday, March 28^th at 7:30 PM at Saginaw’s Temple Theatre.

In addition to showcasing the timeless and celebrated classical masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition, written by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, this concert will also feature two modern original compositions performed by their composers, including special guest Kebra-Seyoun Charles - a rising star of the orchestral landscape - who will perform his composition titled  Nightlife: Concerto for Bass, which he premiered at Carnegie Hall, followed by the Michigan premier of TRANCE - an original composition written by none other than the SBSO’s own musical director, Fouad Fakhouri.

“This is a program  I'm very excited about  because it combines new music with pieces that are familiar, reflects Fakhouri. “Pictures at an Exhibition is a well-known, popular, and celebrated work, and the original composition Nightlife: Concert for Bass comes from a very interesting bass player who not only wrote this piece, but also performs it with some extended techniques  that are very interesting and different.”

“Plus, I will also feature 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 this piece, which sort of reflects that aesthetic and makes you feel like you're in a nightclub pulsing to the beat and the bass.”

Framing a Musical Masterpiece • Pictures at the Exhibition

Pictures at an Exhibition was written in 1874 by Modest Mussorgsky and is a musical depiction of touring an exhibition featuring the artwork of architect and painter Viktor Hartmann that was put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual work, some of which are now lost.

Written as a piano suite in ten movements and threaded together with a recurring and varied Promenade theme to give the composition continuity, this work has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists, and became widely known from orchestrations and arrangements produced by other composers and contemporary musicians, ranging from progressive rock groups like Emerson, Lake & Palmer to  Maurice Ravel's 1922 adaptation for orchestra, which is the most recorded version and the one the SBSO will be performing.  The suite, particularly the final movement, "The Bogatyr Gates", is widely considered one of Mussorgsky's greatest works.

“One of the reasons I think this piece works so well is that movement known as The Promenade that takes you from one transitional piece to another and keeps reoccurring, almost as if you’re going on a journey through a museum and seeing one picture after another through the music, so I think it resonates with audiences. Plus, Ravel is such a great orchestrator that he makes the piece work even better than the original piano scores.”

Given there are so many different interpretations of Pictures, is Fakhouri planning on injecting any of his own touches into the piece?  “No, I’m not personally reworking any of Ravel’s orchestrations at all, but one thing I have done this time that I haven’t done as much in the past is compare the Ravel orchestration with the original piano piece written by Mussorgsky, because I wanted to see what parts Ravel takes liberties with that Mussorgsky didn’t - so in some cases I’m trying to go back to the original adaptation.”

It's All About That Bass

Guest composer Kebra-Seyoun Charles is an innovative rising star on the contemporary orchestra landscape and his composition  Nightlife: Concerto for Bass is truly an exercise in tantalizing instrumental dynamics.

Fakhouri says he became aware of Kebra’s talents through his manager, Dan Visconti, who runs a small boutique type management group in New York representing atypical and unique artists performing on the contemporary classical music circuit.  “Dan really picks unique artists that are really edgy and doing new things inside the field of the classical music, and Kebra fills that space beautifully with some fascinating techniques.   He is in that sort of space where he really stands out as a creative soloist on the bass, but also writes music like this amazing concerto we will be featuring, which truly showcases his combined talents as both a soloist and a composer.”

“This concerto has brought him a lot of national attention and it’s a great piece of music, incorporating a lot of different styles, which gets audiences snapping their fingers at certain points of time, almost as if they were attending a revival.”

TRANCE • An Homage to Electronic Dance Music

As Maestro Fouad Fakhouri explains the origins of his featured original composition titled TRANCE, which will have its Michigan debut at this upcoming concert performance, it’s fascinating to hear how much inspiration he derived from the Electronic Dance Music of his youth.

“I grew up in the ‘90’s and back then there were a lot of those Raves going on along with the spontaneous Club hopping that was going around, so it was part of my upbringing and one of those things really grabbed my attention,” he reflects. “I still like EDM music and this original piece I wrote is about 12 minutes long and it takes the spirit of that music with the real hard driving rhythm and big bass and that repetitive Boom Boom Boom that you would hear in clubs, and builds itself around that idea to take you on a journey through that type of environment.”

When asked if he achieves this sound through amplification of any of the acoustic classical instruments or adding any electronics into the mix, Fakhouri says it’s all done orchestrally.

“I wrote this piece on commission back in 2023 for the 75^th anniversary of an orchestra I work with in West Texas,” he explains. “Then in 2025 I re-edited and reworked it and was very close to adding electronics to it, especially a keyboard that would sound more synthesized or amplified, but then I thought it was originally conceived without any of that, so decided not to add it despite the temptation.”

The Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra’s performance of ‘MUSIC REFRAMED: PICTURES at an EXHBITION will be happening on Saturday, March 28^th at 7:30 PM at Saginaw’s historic Temple Theatre. Tickets start at only $20 plus fees and are available by visiting this link.