Culver City Symphony opens new season with Veterans Day Concert

The Culver City Symphony Orchestra will kick off its 2025-26 season with a free concert at Veterans Memorial Auditorium on Saturday, Nov. 15 at 7:30 p.m. In honor of Veterans Day, the orchestra will perform works by many American composers like John Williams, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, and William Grant Still. Joining them in the program are the SoCal Chorale, led by Marya Basabara, who will perform works by Mozart, Verdi, and more. 

While the music selection includes pieces by great American composers to celebrate Veterans Day, one of the composers on the program has a deeper connection to the orchestra. Culver City Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors President and cellist Stephen Turk says that William Grant Still, one of the first well-known Black American composers, was close friends with George Berres, the orchestra’s founder.

“Still offered [his] piece to the orchestra and came to the rehearsals, came to the concert, coached George on the music and so on,” Turk told Culver Crescent. 

The influence of Still and Berres’ friendship can still be felt today. The community orchestra not only plays the usual large-scale symphonic works you can expect from a symphony orchestra, but they also seek out living composers in the community as well as music by underrepresented groups or composers in the classical music world.

“Even going back to ‘66, we were including in our programs current works by living composers, including Black composers, who could actually come to concerts,” Turk added. “We have done, over the years, a variety of programs. Music by local composers, programs and music by women composers, and so on.”

In addition to showcasing music by living composers, the Culver City Symphony Orchestra also promotes young artists through their Parnell Concerto Competition, with winners performing with the orchestra the following year.

For the first time since the pandemic, the winners of the 2023-24 competition will be able to perform. Music Director and Conductor Clyde Mitchell has carefully curated a symphonic program that incorporates the winners’ chosen concertos into a theme. Three winners, one from each age category, will play a concerto accompanied by the Orchestra. 

At the Robert Frost Auditorium on January 25, Senior winner Esme Arias-Kim’s performance of Barber’s Violin Concerto will be accompanied by Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 — a continuation of Mitchell’s progression through Brahms’ symphonies. 

Junior winner Alicia Huang and Intermediate winner Minji Choi’s violin concertos — composed by Kabalevsky and Tchaikovsky respectively — will be featured in the Orchestra’s third concert at the Robert Frost Auditorium on April 19. The Culver City Symphony Orchestra will continue the theme of music by Russian composers with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 and Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia.

With two concerts dedicated to showcasing young musicians and symphonic music, the last concert of the season — scheduled for June 20 at the Robert Frost Auditorium — will be a tribute to Black American composers. In addition to playing music by William Grant Still, the orchestra will be performing pieces by Florence Price, George Walker, and Scott Joplin. 

The common thread that pulls all of these concerts together, however, seems to be the orchestra’s focus on encouraging the community to come and enjoy free music. Before the pandemic, the Orchestra charged admission in order to make the budget work. After the pandemic, they discovered something more important.

“When we reopened after the pandemic, we thought ‘What the heck, let’s make this a free concert,’” Turk commented. “We don’t know how many people are going to be willing to come out to a concert after the pandemic. First just open the doors and invite people in and see how many show up.’”

The result was twice as many people attending the concert after the pandemic than before. The sign, according to Turk, was clear.

“We need to just keep on doing free concerts for the community,” Turk said. “We’re trying to provide a concert to Culver City, to the community, not to a limited demographic within the city.”

To learn more about the Culver City Symphony Orchestra and their upcoming concerts, visit their website.