A season in pictures: Looking back at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 2022-'23
Jim Higgins
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra plays more home games in a year than the Milwaukee Brewers and Green Bay Packers combined.
By the time the MSO wraps up the final notes of "Jaws" on July 1, it will have performed 136 concerts this season, 116 of those in its newish home, the Bradley Symphony Center. This is the orchestra's second full season with live audiences in the BSC (following a mostly virtual season in the first half of 2021, with smaller clusters of musicians performing primarily for cameras).
Courtesy of photographer Jonathan Kirn, here's a look back at the season in photos, on and off stage.
The "Jaws" film-with-orchestra concerts June 30 and July 1 also will close Yaniv Dinur's eighth and final season as the MSO's resident conductor. After conducting more than 370 concerts for the MSO, the popular Dinur is moving on to his advance his career.
His significant departure is offset by announcement of an important new arrival: Violinist Jinwoo Lee will join the orchestra when the 2023-'24 season begins as its new concertmaster.
Music director Ken-David Masur is finishing his fourth season as the MSO's leader and artistic director. By season's end, he will have conducted 28 concerts, including some big ones yet to come: Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony June 16-17, and a June 20 program featuring star violinist Joshua Bell. True to his commitment to conduct all kinds of programs for the MSO in addition to the flagship Classics series, Masur has conducted a teen choral concert and a community concert in Ripon this season.
For the second consecutive season, Masur, who loves choral music, conducted holiday performances of Handel's "Messiah" featuring the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus. The full chorus sang in 16 concerts this season; the women of the chorus also sang in three performances of Holst's "The Planets."
The MSO hired seven new orchestra musicians this season: assistant principal bass Nash Tomey; violinists Allison Lovera and Yuanhui Fiona Zheng; bassists Brittany Conrad, Peter Hatch and Paris Myers; and clarinetist-bass clarinetist Taylor Eiffert. Violinist Laurie Shawger is retiring at the end of this season. The orchestra stands at 66 members and three acting members.
In keeping with both Masur's passion for education and the MSO's desire to cultivate a new generation of listeners, the orchestra performed 24 education and four family concerts this season, in addition to many in-school visits by musicians through its Arts in Community Education program.
More:What you need to know about Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra's 2023-'24 season