Hampton Roads’ two most accomplished, most famous and finest (classical) musicians meld their talents April 30 at Norfolk State’s Wilder Performing Arts Center for the Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s “Happy Birthday, Hailstork” concert. JoAnn Falletta conducts seven works by Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork III, PhD, thirteen days after he turns a still creative 85.
We caught up with the peripatetic Falletta by phone on Easter, just hours before she flew to Puerto Rico, to conduct an “all American program with the Puerto Rico Symphony.” (Copeland, Barber, and Bernstein.) “This is a very big deal for Dolph,” she said, adding lots praise for Hailstork as a composer, colleague and friend.
They go back, she said, to when she and Hailstork both arrived here in ’91, she as the Symphony’s new Music Director and he as its Composer in Residence…