The main business of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra is music making, of course. But like any good symphony orchestra, it has many fortes.

Among them is the orchestra’s keen sense of community and its dedication to fostering it —not just through educational programs, but through its selection of composers and artists. So it’s not surprising that the opening concert of the orchestra’s 2011-2012 season, Saturday evening at the Michigan Theater, is something of a family affair.

With Music Director Arie Lipsky on the podium, the concert features a work by not just an Ann Arbor composer, but its best-known one, the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Bolcom. The concert opens with one of his typically eclectic works, “Ragomania, A Classic Festival Overture.”

Meanwhile, the concert’s featured artist is cellist Julie Albers, whom Lipsky, a cellist himself, calls his “favorite young American cellist.” In fact, he likes this 30-something rising star so much, it’s the second time she’s appeared with the orchestra. She played the first Haydn cello concerto with the A2SO a few years back, in 2003; now she returns for the Schumann Cello Concerto in A Minor.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47—a work Lipsky calls “an epic journey of despair and triumph” and “one of the greatest 20th century symphonies”—completes the program.

If the name “Albers” rings a bell with A2SO patrons, it’s not just for fond memories of Albers’ 2003 performance here. Albers has two stellar musical sisters, one of whom, violist Rebecca, joined violinist Yeonatan Berick and the A2SO last season for the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major, for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, K. 364. Now all we need is a visit from violinist Laura Albers, associate concertmaster of the San Francisco Opera, to complete the family picture.

The idea is not so far-fetched. The three play together as the Albers Trio. Did their parents set them up with complementary instruments to assure their future as a threesome?

“Not at all,” Julie says with a laugh, speaking by phone from New York. Rebecca, for example, was a violinist till the moment she auditioned for college, switching to viola, an instrument she had dabbled in, just before auditions. Julie herself played violin first, at age 2—“I have no memory of it,” she says—switching to cello around age 4. She also played piano seriously for 18 years.

She’s about to move from New York to Macon, Georgia, to head the cello department at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University. One of the things she’s most excited about is finally having enough space in her home for her piano.

Her cello—an 1872 Vuillaume—has been a constant companion, though. The Schumann concerto, among the most popular pieces in the cello repertoire, has been less of a longtime friend.

“It’s a piece I didn’t play much when I was younger,” she says. “But I’m happy I didn’t play it younger—I think you need a certain amount of life experience.”

She first played the concerto with orchestra four years ago, she says, and she can count the number of times she’s played it since—a rarity for standard literature. “It’s a special piece, and each time I play it, I fall in love with it,” she says.

What’s remarkable about it for her, she says, is the way in which Schumann uses the cello in the piece.

“It’s similar to a human voice,” she says, “and the range is incredible. The second movement is the most beautiful writing, and the third movement is incredibly virtuosic after the lyricism of the second movement.”
Her favorite moment in the piece?

“The bridge from the first to the second movement—the eight bars that set up the second-movement theme. Every time I hear it or play it, I absolutely love it.”

Watch a promo video for the concert, created by A2SO intern Jackie Turner:

Opening Night from Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra on Vimeo.