Grand Rapids Symphony Opens Their New Season This Weekend

The Grand Rapids Symphony opens their new 2017-18 season this Friday and Saturday night with a bang. They open the season with Ravel's Bolero, a super fan favorite.

The Grand Rapids Symphony’s own Marcelo Lehninger will conduct his first season-opening concerts as music director leading the orchestra in Ravel’s Bolero, an all-time audience favorite, well known from such movies as “10,” the 1979 film starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek.

The gifted and glamorous Sarah Chang, one of the greatest violin soloists in the world, will be featured in Suite from West Side Story for Violin and Orchestra, arranged by Hollywood film composer David Newman from the original musical score by Leonard Bernstein. Chang last appeared in Grand Rapids in as St. Cecilia Music Center’s Great Artist in 2011.

Also, the Symphony will give the premiere of Jeremy Crosmer’s Ozark Traveler. Assistant principal cellist of the Grand Rapids Symphony for the past five years, as well as an occasional country fiddler, the native of the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, who graduated from the University of Michigan, recently joined the cello section of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Both performances begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, September 15-16, 2017 at DeVos Performance Hall, 303 Monroe Ave. NW, Grand Rapids, MI 49503.