Concert season offers historical performances

The 2022–2023 season offered concertgoers a wealth of memorable performances. The Yale Philharmonia, led by Principal Conductor Peter Oundjian, gave the world-orchestral premiere of Helen Hagan’s Piano Concerto in C minor using a new orchestration by Soomin Kim ’21MM ’22MMA and featuring pianist and musicologist Dr. Samantha Ege as the evening’s soloist. The performance took place on the same Woolsey Hall stage that Hagan presented her work, in 1912, with an ensemble of peers. Hagan was the first Black woman to graduate from the School of Music. The Yale Philharmonia also premiered a new edition, by Professor Emeritus of Music Paul Hawkshaw, of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony on a program that also featured a performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto with faculty violinist Augustin Hadelich. The orchestra welcomed to the podium this season distinguished guest conductors Carolyn Kuan and Leonard Slatkin.

Yale Opera presented a new production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, directed by Candace Evans, at the Legacy Theatre in Stony Creek following Fall Opera Scenes and Liederabend programs and a gala concert with the Yale Philharmonia. Yale Opera’s year concluded with performances of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory.

Alumni were well represented during the 2022–2023 season, no more so than during the Yale Clarinet Celebration organized by faculty clarinetist David Shifrin. More than 30 alums and current students joined Shifrin for a performance of music ranging in style from ragtime to contemporary.

Jazz, too, was explored during this past concert season. Fifty years after Willie Ruff ’53BM ’54MM, now Professor Emeritus of Music, invited more than 40 giants of the art form to Yale, local drummer Jesse Hameen II and his band, Elevation, celebrated America’s classical music with a performance that paid tribute to some of those same artistic giants. As part of the performance, Hameen received the School’s prestigious Duke Ellington Medal. In April, the Ellington Jazz Series presented Epitaph: 100 Years of Mingus, a performance by the revered Mingus big band, with Grammy Award-winning saxophonist, YSM Lecturer in Jazz, and Director of Yale Jazz Ensembles Wayne Escoffery and Yale students, of Charles Mingus’ rarely performed big-band