Tchaikovsky's Pathétique

Sunday, May 11, 2025 at 3 pm

Roger Glass Center for the Arts – 29 Creative Way, Dayton, OH 45479

General Admission Seating.   Tickets at the door or in advance (ticket link below) $22-Adults  $18-Senior/Military/Student

Park in lots D or S1 (Rubicon and K St.)     Accesible parking adjacent to the building off of the Creative Way side entrance

Contact MVSO at 937-530-0515 or send email to info@mvso.org for general questions

The Music

• Mahler                 Songs of a Wayfarer
• Grieg                    Piano Concerto in A minor
• Tchaikovsky       Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique"

About the Program

        Gustav Mahler set his poetry to music in Songs of a Wayfarer, a tale of love and life. Edvard Grieg's piano concerto features one of classical         music's most famous and dramatic openings, offers a poignant reflection on the birth of his daughter Alexandra, and closes with rousing         melodies of Norwegian folk dance.

        Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his “Pathétique” a mere nine days before he died on November 6th,1893. His final work was also         his best.The 6th symphony is filled with inspiring melodies, grand emotion, and passion. The composer's own original title, "Pateticheskaya,"         meaning "passionate," is far more descriptive of the emotion of this masterpiece than the commonly used French title.

Performing Artists

• Awadagin Pratt Conducting
• Simon Barrad - Baritone
• Soojin Kim - Piano

Simon Barrad

The versatility of Grammy-nominated baritone, Simon Barrad, has been heard in genre-bending concerts across the United States and Europe. His talent for unique and innovative programming and arranging – melding new and old, jazz and drama, classical technique and heartfelt folk idioms – has led to recent features at the Metropolitan Opera, Wigmore Hall in London, the Columbus Symphony, the Ravinia Festival, Stanford Live, the Marlboro Music Festival, and Cincinnati Opera. The 2015/16 Fulbright scholar to Finland has also headlined several concerts in Europe including performances at Helsinki’s Musiikkitalo, Finland’s National Opera House, and the Berlin Philharmonie. Through his performing and as a former mentor for ArtSmart, which provides free music and singing lessons to teenagers in underserved communities, Simon strives to build a more equitable world of empathy and understanding through music.

Simon is also an avid lover and performer of jazz, new music, and ensemble singing. He is a four-time Downbeat magazine national award winner for vocal jazz, and he has performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival, ADCA conventions across the country, and the Grammys as a member of the Grammy vocal jazz ensemble. Simon regularly performs with Austin-based ensemble, Conspirare, and was the baritone soloist for their national tour of Considering Matthew Shepard. In the realm of new music, he has consistently championed new works, giving premiere performances of works by John Harbison, David Lang, Craig Hella Johnson, Mason Bates, and others, as well as performing at the John Duffy Composer Institute under the direction of Libby Larsen. As a Jewish musician, he served as the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur soloist for over a decade at the historic Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati, and is currently the soloist at San Francisco’s Congregation Sherith Israel. He recently founded the musical group JIVE: Jewish Innovative Voices & Experiences with countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg.

Mr. Barrad holds a Master of Music degree from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music where he studied with Kenneth Shaw. He has collaborated with artists including Mitsuko Uchida, Jonathan Biss, Awadagin Pratt, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn. Mr. Barrad also holds a BM in Voice and a French Language minor from the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University, Long Beach, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He has completed word for word translations and IPA transcriptions of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, Borodin’s Prince Igor and a side by side comparison of the libretti of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and Katerina Izmailova.

Soojin Kim

Soojin Kim, whose career spans three continents, is celebrated not only for her excellence as a soloist but also for her sensitive work as a collaborative artist. Lavishly praised for her superb musicianship and exquisite artistry, she continues to captivate audiences internationally with profoundly beautiful and spirited performances. Her playing was described as "mesmerizing, with indescribable beauty" by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The Kukmin Ilbo in Korea wrote that "Soojin Kim plays with intelligence, and incisive and utter honesty." The Chosun Ilbo described her performances as “taking you beyond infectious energy with their sensitivity and sense of space.”

Born in South Korea, Soojin started playing the piano at the age of six, and violin at the age of nine. When she was 11, the King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyade attended one of her concerts, and subsequently invited her to perform throughout Thailand, beginning a relationship with that country that continues still today. In her native Korea, she is regularly heard in recital throughout the country, has had her live performances broadcast on TBS Korean National TV, and has performed with the Busan Philharmonic, Daegu Symphony, Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra, among many others. In 2009, in recognition of her performances on both the violin and piano throughout Korea and Thailand, she was selected as one of the "Top 35 Most Promising and Influential People of Korea” by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

She began graduate studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln where she was awarded highest honors upon graduation. She has since established a lively career in Europe performing recitals in the most illustrious halls in Cologne, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Aachen, Montepulciano, Milan, Rome, Paris, and Malaga. As a concerto soloist, she has performed with the WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne, Sinfonieorchester Münster. She has been broadcast live in Germany on Cologne WDR and DLF. In 2019, while pursuing her doctoral degree in piano at Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, on a collaborative assistantship, she joined the opera program faculty. Since then, she has performed frequently across the US as a chamber musician, while remaining in high demand as a vocal coach/pianist. She currently serves on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.