The Knox-Galesburg Symphony will open its 75th anniversary season Saturday night with a Galesburg native at the podium on the Orpheum Theatre stage.
Maurice Cohn is now the director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra.
But he’s coming home to conduct the first orchestra he ever played with.
“This is the orchestra that made me want to be a musician in the first place,” Cohn told TSPR. “I was five, six, seven, eight years old sitting in the top balcony, looking down at Bruce Polay conducting the orchestra and Carolyn Suda on the cello.”
At four years old, Cohn started cello lessons with Suda using the Suzuki method. He went on to study piano locally with Mary Runyon Gibbs and trombone with Dave Ericson. He played in the Galesburg High School marching band and jazz band, while also playing cello with the Knox-Galesburg Symphony.
“I don't think I knew it at the time,” Cohn said. “But in retrospect, it was such a lucky place to explore all these different musical worlds.”
Looking back on those experiences, Cohn sees the Galesburg music community as welcoming and encouraging.
“No one was territorial,” Cohn said. “I’ve met many people now in my life as a professional musician who grew up under a tremendous amount of pressure, of teacher rivalries and after-school programs that are fighting with each other about what you should do, and oh, if you do this we're not going to let you do that. And if you do that, then we're not going to let you do this. Galesburg was not like that for me.”
From Galesburg, Cohn went on to a double degree program at Oberlin College, earning a bachelor of music in cello performance from the Oberlin Conservatory as well as a bachelor of arts in math and history. He then earned a master of music degree in conducting from the Eastman School of Music.
Cohn was the assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for three years before becoming the conductor and music director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra in 2023. He said the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra is a remarkable organization and the largest performing arts organization of any kind in the state — and that it really tries to be an orchestra for the entire state.
“The orchestra plays in cities all around the state and we have a very extensive string education program through a partnership with the school districts,” Cohn said. “It’s been an incredibly rewarding thing to be part of and is an orchestra that I think is making a tremendous impact for its community.”
He said it’s very similar to the Knox-Galesburg Symphony and the central role it has in the community with schools, students, and mentorships.
Cohn conducts performances throughout the United States and abroad. He’s come home to perform with the Knox-Galesburg Symphony before, but conducting the orchestra that gave him his start in the musical world is a new experience.
“I'm really excited to sort of come home as it were to the Orpheum for a million reasons. Of course, the orchestra itself is wonderful,” Cohn said. “The people who make up the orchestra, these incredible musicians and supporters and audience and community that makes this orchestra work is incredibly impressive.”
Cohn will conduct the Knox-Galesburg Symphony in “A Little Night Music,” which begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17 at the Orpheum Theatre, 57 S. Kellogg St. Tickets are available online or at the door.
The program pairs three pieces that each conjure a different type of light. It opens with the first movement of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik — the piece that gives the concert its title, and one Cohn says almost everyone already knows without realizing it.
"Even if you've never heard this piece, you've heard this piece," Cohn said. "Whether you've heard it as a cell phone ringtone or underneath a beer commercial, you have heard this piece, I promise."
From there, the program moves to something less familiar: Antrópolis, a 2019 work by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz. Cohn calls Ortiz one of the most exciting composers working today. He said the piece grew out of her own memories of Mexico City nightlife — Ortiz danced there as a kid, and structured the piece as four sections, each modeled on one of her favorite dance halls.
"It's a fantastic and fun sort of romp from beginning to end," Cohn said. "It's dance music, but a different kind of night music."
The concert closes with Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, a suite drawn from the stories of One Thousand and One Nights. Cohn calls it a showcase for what he sees as the composer's greatest strength — deciding which instruments should carry which musical idea, a skill musicians call orchestration.
“Rimsky-Korsakov is the number one orchestrator in the history of music. He's the best at it. And so the piece is incredibly colorful and these combinations of instruments,” Cohn said. “You'll have all the instruments in the orchestra, but he combines them in ways that actually make you feel like maybe there are even more instruments. It's sort of like colors. When you mix two colors together, you get something that wasn't there before. And instruments are the same way.”
Cohn said the piece gives nearly every section of the orchestra a moment to stand out, calling it a fitting way to kick off a season built around celebrating the KGS's 75 years.
For Cohn, that celebration is about more than the music itself — it’s about what an orchestra means to the place it calls home.
“It doesn’t work unless there’s a personal connection. It needs to feel like yours,” Cohn said. “That’s what the KGS is, and that’s what it was for me. It was a group of people who were not intimidating, who were not telling you that they were better than you are, but who sharing with you something that they love and that they thought you might love, too. And it turns out, I did love it, and now this is what I do with my life.”
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