Saturday, July 2, 2011

CONCERT IN THE PARK WITH YOSHIMI

                KALAMAZOO SYMPHONY MAESTRO YOSHIMI TAKEDA, Bronson Park, 1995

    Maestro Takeda welcomes you to the 1995 Summer Park Concert Series!
    This series was in place a year before Yoshimi Takeda took the helm of the
    Kalamazoo Symphony in 1974.  Under his 25-year tenure as Music Director
    of the KSO, he greatly expanded the size and scope of the programs offered.
    Bronson Park, the verdant heart of downtown Kalamazoo, became the center
    of the summer concert scene.
  
    He took the Kalamazoo Symphony "on the road" to perform the Summer
    Park Concert series in towns around Southwest Michigan.  Maestro Takeda
    saw this as an opportunity for valuable community outreach, and had lots of
    fun too!  Everyone had fun.

    The KSO always featured a singer or ensemble in a solo appearance with the
    orchestra.  It was a wonderful way to showcase new talent in a "star turn"
    with the Kalamazoo Symphony.

   "Guest conductors" (age 12 and under) were invited to come up and
    lead the orchestra from the conductor's podium, under Takeda's guidance,
    in the final bars of Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever or other familiar classics.
    This part of the program was an audience favorite, and a great way to end the
    evening.

                    

   'These popular concerts, jointly sponsored by the Department of Parks and Recreation
    and the Rotary Club, began what has become a stable feature of the summer season."
      -Zaide Pixley, GREAT ENSEMBLE:  The Story of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra,
       1997, p. 66.

   Takeda took the KSO's Bronson Park program to parks in other communities.  By the
   1990s,  the Kalamazoo Symphony had expanded the series to include Three Rivers,
   Vicksburg and Plainwell, in addition to their annual appearances in Portage,
   Parchment, and Bronson Park in downtown Kalamazoo.
  
    Fountain of the Pioneers, Bronson Park, downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan- photo by
    John Penrod; postcard c. 1960; copyright Penrod/Hiawatha Co., Berrien Center, MI
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