Cincinnati Song Initiative Unveils its 2024-2025 Season
Cincinnati OH - Cincinnati Song Initiative (CSI) has revealed its ninth season. Titled A Cultural Tapestry, the 2024-2025 slate of concerts and artists highlight global cultural influences to create a patchwork of exceptional musical experiences.
“To anyone looking for something fresh, exciting, powerful, and unlike anything else they’ve been offered at a classical music concert, this entire season is for you,” says CSI Founding Artistic Director Samuel Martin. “The stories told through these songs, brought to life so beautifully by these world-class artists, will make us feel hope, connectedness, passion, and exhilaration.”
The season kicks off in just one month on November 3 with Goethe: Unbounded, the first of two concerts celebrating the German literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In a unique compare-and-contrast concert curated by Kenneth Griffiths, artists will explore several of the writer’s iconic poems and offer multiple settings of each poem by various composers from around the world.
Goethe: Aus den Büchern completes CSI’s four-year series The Belletrists overviewing the greatest German poets. This second celebration of Goethe on February 2 explores songs taken from his books. The world of Wilhelm Meister offers songs with notes of innocence, suffering, and longing, while The Book of Suleika brings out the interplay of passionate earthly love and transcendent, spiritual desire in a blend of Eastern and Western literary traditions.
On February 18, Cincinnati Song Initiative’s Mobile series returns for a collaboration with Music For All Saints Red Door Chamber Music Series and artists of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Intimate Voices beautifully intertwines nature and intimacy. The combination of Gerald Finzi's song cycle By Footpath and Stile and Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2 "Intimate Letters" creates a tapestry of heartfelt reflection and deep emotional landscapes, inviting us to explore the complexities of human connection against the backdrop of the natural world.
April brings a unique mini-festival celebrating Jewish culture, heritage, and art in partnership with the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust and Humanity Center. On April 5, Harmonies of Heritage explores rarely-performed classical songs in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino languages for a powerful and unique evening of music. The next day, April 6, the four artists of JIVE (Jewish Innovative Voices & Experiences) invite you to Dayenu to experience the story of Passover like never before through vibrant multi-genres, new works and arrangements, and the soulful and diverse Jewish musical traditions of the holiday.
From April 23-25, CSI teams up once again with the University of Hartford for its Festival of American Song. Building upon the success of the inaugural festival in 2024, CSI artists will perform alongside faculty and students of The Hartt School in a three-day celebration of our country’s contributions to the genre. A culminating concert of the 2025 Festival features the music of composer Kurt Erickson, who will be in residence to help prepare his music and speak to the Hartford community about his life and career.
In addition to four exhilarating Mainstage concerts and two unique Mobile events, CSI continues its Song Connect educational series. On December 8, join four singer-pianist duos as they work with the renowned Scottish pianist and coach Iain Burnside. Get an exclusive inside look into the perfection of not only song performances, but the collaborative process of interpretation between singers and pianists. And on January 14, the magnanimous scholar Susan Youens delves into the profound contributions of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in an engaging lecture held at the historic Mercantile Library. Both events are free to attend, with early-bird access for registration available to Friends of CSI.
From May 12-17, CSI returns with its second year of The Fellowship of the Song. This week-long festival offers a deeply enriching experience for ten chosen Fellows to come to Cincinnati to study, learn, and perform. Additionally, this year’s festival offers additional public events for audiences to enjoy. Each day comes with open song workshops, classes, and world-class concerts by Fellows and guest artists available to all.
About Cincinnati Song Initiative
Since its founding in 2016, Cincinnati Song Initiative has connected thousands of people through the unique and intimate power of classical song, and is a recipient of Ovation TV’s Stand for the Arts Award based on how well an organization empowers the community, builds strategic partnerships, drives engagement through volunteerism, and delivers creative programming.
Smaller in scale than opera, choral music, or other theatrical genres, the performance of song most commonly features one singer and one pianist in a visceral musical experience. Cincinnati Song Initiative creates these experiences with a pioneering spirit to engage communities in thoughtful and innovative ways. Deriving its texts from a variety of sources such as poetry, prose, speeches, or plays, song portrays the immediate and deep personal experiences we encounter throughout everyday life. Audiences enjoy close interaction with the artists, hearing them discuss the relevance of the music in relation to today’s cultural and societal context, and enjoy engaging with them - and each other - during post-performance receptions.
Cincinnati Song Initiative remains devoted to the innovation of twenty-first century song by commissioning and premiering new works. CSI aims to connect with today's audiences and lead the way in original digital content among arts organizations, continually adding to its rich suite of resources with educational webinars, live interviews with artists and composers, and innovative performance projects imagined for the virtual realm.
