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Charlotte Symphony's New Maestro, Kwamé Ryan, Thrills a Packed House

Perry Tannenbaum, CVNC -- 

The audience at Belk Theater didn't rise and sing the National Anthem as we do at the start of every new Charlotte Symphony season, but the occasion -- Tchaikovsky & Brahms -- was auspicious enough for CSO president David Fisk to take the stage, notes in hand, and introduce the orchestra's newly designated music director, Kwamé Ryan. On the heels of CSO's announcement that they were already at over 80% in reaching its $50 million fundraising campaign ensuring financial stability, Classics subscribers had multiple reasons to express their enthusiasm -- as Fisk spoke and when Ryan made his entrance. Both events had been sufficiently ballyhooed in the press. Fisk could wait a leisurely eight minutes after the normal starting time to make his appearance, so the usual curtain-up helter-skelter of late arrivals had subsided. Unless Ryan raised his eyes to the uppermost balcony, he saw a packed house ready to erupt.

Ryan's greeting was even more personable than Fisk's intro, so audience adoration actually rose a couple of notches before quiet prevailed and he could put his baton to use. This really was the beginning of a new Kwamé Ryan era, and the director designate did not fail to take advantage of that vibe. Instead of the "Star-Spangled Banner," Ryan began his reign with what felt like the next best thing. With the composer seated in the orchestra, poised to receive more audience adulation, Ryan and the CSO performed Wang Jie's Symphonic Overture "America, the Beautiful." A self-professed "lover of adventure on mountains and cliffs," Jie was thrilled when the Colorado Springs Philharmonic asked her to create a work inspired by nearby landmark Pikes Peak and the song written by Katherine Lee Bates in 1895 to a melody composed more than a decade earlier by Samuel A. Ward.

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