Conductor

As the May Festival enters a new era of artistic innovation and collaboration, it seems only fitting to begin the 2024 Festival with a work symbolizing creation. Few works of sacred music are more cheerful and joyous than Haydn's The Creation. It exemplifies Haydn’s own personal faith and optimism in humanity, as well as his profound belief in music’s ability to edify, uplift and inspire. Through the inspired use of soloists, full chorus and orchestra, The Creation depicts and celebrates the creation of the earth, and all of its flora and fauna, as narrated in Biblical passages from Genesis and Psalms, as well as from John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

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The Creation

Cincinnati Music Hall

Celebrate Bob Porco’s birthday and 35th year with the May Festival in a gathering of good food, conversation and memories with May Festival friends & family. Tickets are $35 (for 35 years!) and include an Italian- themed meal in the Music Hall Ballroom, followed by an informal rehearsal in Springer Auditorium.

Bob’s Big Sing: a May Festival Reunion

Mahler called his Eighth Symphony, “the biggest thing that I have ever done…in which the most beautiful instrument in the world is given its true place.” Music Director Laureate James Conlon concludes the 150th May Festival with a work of gigantic proportions—music of triumph and transcendence that celebrates the power of the human voice, featuring the sounds of the Chorus and the CSO in the breathtaking space of Music Hall.

Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand

Conductor James Conlon, the beloved former Music Director of the May Festival whose 37-year tenure as artistic leader remains the longest in Festival history, returns to lead a new work by American composer Julia Adolphe and Mozart’s famous music for a Requiem Mass. First performed by the May Festival in 1882, the Requiem radiates fearless brilliance—sacred music for The Last Judgement that touches on the sublime.

Mozart's Requiem

California State University LA

Celebrated maestra Marin Alsop makes her May Festival debut with a showcase of composers who crafted the American musical identity. Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a lyrical dream of the Tennessee summer, while Aaron Copland's "The Promise of Living" rings with the hope of prosperity. The "uncanny radiance" (The New Yorker) of Robert Nathaniel Dett's The Ordering of Moses— a work the Festival premiered in 1937—returns to Music Hall.

Robert Porco

Conductor

Events

May 17, 2024

The Creation · The May Festival

Mar 23, 2024

Bob’s Big Sing: a May Festival Reunion · The May Festival

May 27, 2023

Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand · The May Festival

May 25, 2023

Mozart's Requiem · The May Festival

May 20, 2023

Marin Alsop: American Voices · The May Festival

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in The Creation by Haydn

The May Festival

About

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