The Year in Performing Arts Music lovers were treated to a banquet

This year was unusually eventful in local classical music and dance.

Midori, the famed violinist, worked with both professional and amateur musicians during a five-day residency involving both the Winston-Salem Symphony and the Winston-Salem Youth Orchestra. Van Cliburn soloed with the symphony in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Robert Moody led a symphony presentation of Messiah, ending the Mozart Club's monopoly on full-length or nearly full-length performances of Handel's beloved oratorio.

The many significant developments in opera and musical theater started with the N.C. School of the Art's production of Our Town and ended with the Piedmont Opera's announcement that it would present Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza in October. Along the way, NCSA presented a memorable West Side Story, celebrating the 50th anniversary of that landmark work. And opera fans experienced what cutting-edge technology can do, taking in the Washington National Opera's simulcast production of La Boheme at the Stevens Center.

NCSA filled several leadership positions with people who are stars in their respective fields. Ethan Stiefel became the dean of dance. And Ransom Wilson, an NCSA alumnus who's also a flute virtuoso, took over the directorship of the school's symphony orchestra.

Entrepreneurship benefited classical music, resulting in Mignon Dobbins conducting the three local choirs she leads in a cantata by Norman Dello Joio. A similar can-do spirit among choreographers brought us performances by two recently formed companies in Winston-Salem, namely 87 Dance Productions and Clap If You're Confused.

And musicians and dancers from Winston-Salem did a lot of traveling and performing in such places as Los Angeles and Vienna.

❑ In May, the Winston-Salem Symphony and the Winston-Salem Youth Orchestra participated in the "Orchestra Residencies Program," one of five outreach initiatives that famed violinist Midori offers in addition to performing.

The residency turned out to be an extraordinary experience for the young musicians, who were all high-school-age or younger. During two "Classics" concerts by the Winston-Salem Symphony, for example, Midori teamed up Ana Calles, a member of the Winston-Salem Symphony Youth Orchestra, to perform Bach's Double Concerto. Katherine Mount performed the same piece with Midori at a "Kicked-Back Classics" concert.

Midori played with the Winston-Salem Youth Symphony at Reynolds Auditorium -- both by herself (in Mozart's Fifth Violin Concerto) and with three players in the group (in Vivaldi's Concerto for Four Violins). Artie Blanton, Rebecca Yarbrough and Jessie Snoke were the Vivaldi soloists.

Besides performing with the young players, Midori coached them and answered their many questions. She also wisely encouraged them to keep playing in amateur or semi-professional ensembles if they don't become professionals. And she urged them to consider careers in which a background in music performance is helpful.

❑ In October -- thanks to underwriting by Copey Hanes, a longtime symphony supporter -- Van Cliburn soloed with the Winston-Salem Symphony in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. The performance was one of two during the Moody era in which the symphony teamed up with a superstar soloist. The other, in 2006, featured violinist Itzhak Perlman.

When Cliburn walked on stage, one feeling became unmistakable: The crowd was reliving the fame that came his way -- and the pride that Americans felt during that famous ticker-tape parade through the streets of New York -- after Cliburn won the First International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. That was some 50 years ago, at the height of the Cold War.

Future performances by superstars or emerging superstars look possible. That's because, at a dinner on the night before Cliburn's performance, the symphony raised more than $250,000 for that part of its endowment that funds appearances by guest artists.

❑ In September the Winston-Salem Symphony performed PHOENIX for Orchestra by Dan Locklair, the composer in residence at Wake Forest University. The work was well received.

❑ Earlier this month, Moody led an excellent Winston-Salem Symphony presentation of Messiah, and the Mozart Club performed the same work several days earlier. Until then, the Mozart Club -- an amateur organization that along with a professional conductor, four solo vocalists and an orchestra -- had performed a full-length version of Handel's beloved oratorio in Winston-Salem nearly every Christmas season for more than 70 years. It had been the only organization to do so.

Several Mozart Choristers protested that Moody was undermining their tradition by creating two Messiahs in a city that could support only one. But attendance at both the symphony's and the Mozart Club's performances was solid. And listeners got to hear two different performances of a great masterwork, making their experience more like that in many U.S. cities, where multiple Messiah performances are the norm.

❑ Opera students tend to focus on learning repertory from the late 19th century and earlier. They rarely get to perform a piece that is less than a year old.

But that's what happened in February when the Fletcher Opera Institute at NCSA presented the Southeastern premiere of Our Town in a nicely sung, visually arresting performance at the Stevens Center. Our Town -- which is based on the play of the same name by Thornton Wilder -- features music by Ned Rorem, a leading American composer, and a libretto by J.D. McClatchy, a poet and an expert on Wilder and his work.

The performance of Our Town the opera followed a performance of the play that the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem presented at the Arts Council Theatre. It was conducted by James Allbritten, with direction by Steven LaCosse. NCSA, thanks largely to Allbritten's lobbying, became one of five organizations that jointly commissioned and staged the opera.

❑ In September, Washington National Opera's simulcast production of La Boheme, featuring a young and attractive cast, was beamed by satellite from the Kennedy Center to more than 30 schools around the country, including the N.C. School of the Arts, where it was shown on a large movie screen in the Stevens Center.

The effort didn't fulfill its marketing goals of reaching novice patrons, particularly students. Most of the crowd appeared to be the far-older audience that goes to productions by Piedmont Opera.

Still, the simulcast raised some intriguing possibilities for similar efforts in the future.

The Metropolitan Opera might, for example, bring its broadcasts to the Stevens Center as well. They're now being shown in movie theaters in other cities. And some day, NCSA's music and film divisions might collaborate in simulcasts of the school's opera productions.

❑ In May, the Stevens Center came alive with the sights and sounds of a rare all-school musical: West Side Story. The production, conducted by John Mauceri with stage direction by Gerald Freedman, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the musical.

The cast, consisting mainly of NCSA students, did what Freedman suggested it had to do. The dancers learned to act, the actors learned to dance, and the singers did both -- so well that it was often impossible to tell who was who among them. The dancing and the sets were spectacular.

NCSA's West Side Story was restaged at the Ravinia Festival, a summer music festival near Chicago. And it is documented in a recently published book of photographs by Donald Dietz called Celebrating West Side Story: North Carolina School of the Arts, a 50th Anniversary Production, the first book for NCSA's new publishing arm, North Carolina School of the Arts Press.

❑ In November, Piedmont Opera announced that next season it will present Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza, a Tony Award-winning musical from 2005. Shows will be Oct. 10, 12 and 14 in the Stevens Center.

The production of Light, described as "complex and lyrical enough to stand comparison with any opera," will mark just the second time that the Piedmont Opera has presented a work by a living composer in its 30-year history. The company was content with tried-and-true classics. But it could be moving in a new direction, one that eventually combines popular classics with local premieres of contemporary, rarely produced or obscure works of merit.

❑ In November, Ransom Wilson made his debut as music director of the NCSA Symphony Orchestra, leading that group in a well-received concert at the Stevens Center.

The performance featured a work by a living composer -- something that Wilson said he would program for every concert. Wilson, an NCSA alumnus who became a flute virtuoso before taking up conducting more 25 years ago, said last spring that he has "a lot of ideas" for the orchestra and for the conducting curriculum. These include a "lab orchestra," which would enable conducting students to practice their craft with real people, an indispensable part of the learning process.

❑ In October, Ethan Stiefel -- who was named the "dean designate" of NCSA's School of Dance just a few weeks earlier -- performed in tribute to his predecessor, Susan McCullough, at the Stevens Center. He teamed up with his girlfriend, Gillian Murphy, an NCSA alumna who is a principal at American Ballet Theatre.

McCullough, having served NCSA as its dance dean for 19 years, is now on sabbatical. She is to return to NCSA next fall as an instructor. Alex Ewing will be the school's interim dance dean until Stiefel becomes dean in the fall.

Stiefel is widely regarded as one of ballet's stars. He joined New York City Ballet when he was 16, has appeared in several films and is now a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre in New York.

■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.