Thomas Wilkins to guest conduct UNCSA Symphony in Mahler's epic Fifth Symphony

The School of Music will present the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra in an in-person concert performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 20, in the Stevens Center. Artist-in-Residence Thomas Wilkins, the principal conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, will conduct this triumphant and moving symphony.

Tickets are $20 regular, $15 for students with a valid ID online or by calling the box office at 336-721-1945. The Stevens Center will be open at full capacity on the orchestra level. Audience members are required to wear masks.

This is the second program of three featuring the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra as the full orchestra returns after a yearlong absence due to COVID-19. It is also the second orchestra performance of the year led by a celebrated guest conductor in the School of Music’s ongoing commitment to expose its students to a diverse range of music and musicians across the classical canon.

"We are thrilled to offer our student-artists the opportunity to perform an epic work like Mahler's Fifth Symphony under the leadership of Maestro Thomas Wilkins," said Dean of Music Saxton Rose. "This is sure to be an experience they will treasure, and our audience will not soon forget."

Hailed as a master at communicating and connecting with audiences, Maestro Wilkins has led orchestras throughout the United States, including the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and the National Symphony.

Rose said 96 student musicians have rehearsed at the Stevens Center, where the large stage allows for social distancing. Full rehearsals are supplemented by study sessions via Zoom and faculty-led sectionals on campus. Students who play strings, harp and percussion remain masked throughout rehearsal and performance, while wind and brass players remove their masks while playing.

“We are following protocols used by professional orchestras to limit the spread of COVID-19,” Rose said. “Our student-artists are very happy for the opportunity to perform live again.”

Johammee Romero, a second-year graduate student at UNCSA, will perform the iconic trumpet fanfare that opens the symphony.

Romero is already a working musician who performs regularly with the Salisbury, Western Piedmont, and Charlotte symphony orchestras. He also plays with the Tonez, a party band that performs in a variety of genres.

He said that Mahler’s Fifth requires the trumpet to express all of its aspects and be sensitive to all the ranges of emotion.

“It’s an incredible piece that exemplifies the genius, complexity and even superstitious characteristics of Mahler’s persona,” Romero said. “The ability of the trumpet to be sensitive is sometimes overlooked. And showing it is one of the most difficult challenges for a musician.”

The themes of Mahler’s Fifth are death and rebirth. Although the symphony takes the listener on an emotional roller coaster, it was written during one of the happier times in Gustav Mahler's life: his courtship with his wife-to-be, Alma Maria Schindler. The fourth movement is composed of exquisite musical love letters to Alma.

“The inspiration for the funeral march came from a dream of his own death,” Romero said. “And from that dream, he created the opening fanfare, but, oddly, it had already appeared in his Fourth Symphony as another trumpet call. It was written 100 years after Beethoven’s Fifth, and it inverts the opening of that symphony.

“Mahler takes the melody and transforms and transcends it so that it drives the whole symphony. The trumpet represents death in the beginning of the piece, and a transformation occurs when the French horn takes over in the third movement. That is the beginning of the theme of rebirth.

“For the post-Romantic era, it brings together everything that you could possibly imagine at that time.”

About Thomas Wilkins

Devoted to promoting a lifelong enthusiasm for music, Thomas Wilkins brings energy and commitment to audiences of all ages. Following his highly successful first season with the Boston Symphony, the Boston Globe named him among the “Best People and Ideas of 2011.”  In 2014, Wilkins received the prestigious Outstanding Artist award at the Nebraska Governor’s Arts Awards for his significant contribution to music in the state, and in 2018 Wilkins received the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society conferred by Boston’s Longy School of Music. In 2019 the Virginia Symphony bestowed Thomas Wilkins with their annual Dreamer Award.

Wilkins is principal conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; the Boston Symphony’s artistic advisor, education and community engagement; principal guest conductor of the Virginia Symphony; and holds Indiana University’s Henry A. Upper Chair of Orchestral Conducting. He completed his long and successful tenure as music director of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra at the close of the 2020-21 season. Other past positions have included resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony and Florida Orchestra (Tampa Bay), and associate conductor of the Richmond (Virginia) Symphony. He also has served on the music faculties of North Park University (Chicago), the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Wilkins has been guest conductor of the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras, the Symphonies of Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, San Diego and Utah; and the Buffalo and Rochester Philharmonics, as well as at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago.

His commitment to community has been demonstrated by his participation on several boards of directors, including the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, the Charles Drew Health Center (Omaha), the Center Against Spouse Abuse in Tampa Bay, and the Museum of Fine Arts as well as the Academy Preparatory Center both in St. Petersburg, Florida. Currently he serves as chairman of the board for the Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund and as national ambassador for the non-profit World Pediatric Project headquartered in Richmond, which provides children throughout Central America and the Caribbean with critical surgical and diagnostic care.

A native of Norfolk, Virginia, Wilkins is a graduate of the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.  

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