We welcome soprano Amanda Powell, a multi-faceted artist equally at home under the lights on the orchestral concert stage and in the intimate clubs of the jazz and folk scenes. She has performed with the Cleveland-based, Grammy award winning ensemble Apollo’s Fire, and has been featured as a soloist on a number of staples of the baroque repertoire. Additionally, she is the lead singer of the group Alla Boara, which performs modern jazz arrangements of traditional Italian folk songs. Amanda also teaches voice at Cleveland State University and serves as Community Arts Liason for the Cultural Art ..read more

Our guest today is Hip-hop artist Jéan Pierre Johnson. Known artistically as Jéan P The MC, he shares a body of music that reflects his environment, touching on topics such as fatherhood, childhood experiences, spirituality, relationships, and his outlook on Hip-Hop, locally and nationally. Once Jéan settled in Athens, Ohio, he began to record a slew of mixtapes and perform locally, even sharing the stage with major artists such as KRS-One, Curren$y, Stalley, Dom Kennedy & Ace Hood. The 33-year-old MC was also featured on MTV’s “Get In The Game” with Sway, Juelz Santana & Trinidad Jame ..read more

Our guest today is GRAMMY Award-winning horn player and composer Jeff Scott. He rose to prominence as the founding horn player and twenty-plus-year member of the Imani Winds, a nationally renowned woodwind quintet made up of musicians of color. His horn career has also taken him to the pit of The Lion King on Broadway and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, as well on tour alongside such luminaries as Barbara Streisand. Jeff is also a prolific composer, whose new piece Song of the Uirapuru I had the pleasure of premiering here in Canton with violin soloist Seohyun Kim. A native of New York ..read more

We are joined today by Mario Lopez, Executive Director of the Billings Symphony in Montana. Prior to his appointment, he served in Education and Community Engagement roles with both the Knoxville Symphony and the Sarasota Orchestra. Originally a French horn player, he studied at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, then worked in the for-profit corporate world before returning to Classical music on the administrative side.  Orchestrating Change is available wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a new website! Go to www.orchestratingchange.com to sign-up for ..read more

This episode features Leni Boorstin, who spent over forty years working for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, most recently as Director of Government and Community Affairs. Her tenure included community engagement work surrounding the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the arrival of music director Gustavo Dudamel, as well as developing the expansive Youth Orchestra LA program from the ground up, a program that now serves over 1,000 young musicians each year. She also served as the Human Relations Commissioner for the city of Los Angeles under four different mayors, and founded Arts for L ..read more

Today we are joined by coloratura soprano Louise Toppin. She has performed all over the world at venues such as Carnegie Hall and with orchestras in such diverse places as Sweden, Uruguay, and Japan. She has conquered some of opera’s most beloved and challenging roles, including the famous Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, while also championing works by minority composers such as Scott Joplin and William Grant Still. Her career has brought her to Northeast Ohio several times, including a 1998 appearance here at the Canton Symphony Orchestra and this past November up the road wit ..read more

Today we are joined by Blake-Anthony Johnson, CEO of the Chicago Sinfonietta. He became the first African American to hold such a position with a nationally renowned orchestra when he began his tenure in 2020. He also serves on a number of boards and committees, including the Sir Georg Solti Foundation, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, and the EDI Orchestral Management Committee at the League of American Orchestras. He first became interested in orchestral management while a student at Vanderbilt University, from which he earned a Bachelor of Music in ..read more

We are thrilled to have the rare opportunity for a fully in-person podcast recording, as we welcome composer Wang Jie to our studio here in Canton! A native of Shanghai, China, she moved to the United States to study at Manhattan School of Music and still resides in New York City to this day. She holds an Artist’s Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with noted American composer Richard Danielpour. She was in town to hear the Canton Symphony perform her Symphonic Overture “America, the Beautiful”, an absolute "barn-burner" of a piece based on the patriotic hymn featuri ..read more

Today we are honored to welcome world-renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine. A celebrated interpreter of a wide range of standard and contemporary repertoire, she has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony, with which she made her debut when she was only ten years old. She is also a prolific recording artist, whose discography includes the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and all five of Mozart’s Violin Concertos with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in th ..read more

We are thrilled to be joined today by pianist extraordinaire Michelle Cann! She has performed as a soloist with many of this country’s finest orchestras, including the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras, and the Cincinnati, New Jersey, Atlanta, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies, among many others. We are beyond fortunate that she has managed to fit the Canton Symphony Orchestra into her busy schedule this year, joining us for our Masterworks concert on October 30th! A champion of the composer Florence Price, she gave both the New York and Philadelphia premieres of Price’s Piano Concerto in ..read more