Greeting from the Board Chair and Executive Director
Dear Friends,
On behalf of the May Festival, May Festival Choruses and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, welcome to the 2024 May Festival!
For the fourth year in a row, BBC Music Magazine has named the May Festival as “One of the Best Classical Music Festivals in the United States and Canada.” This worldwide recognition is one measurement of our success in focusing on our mission to engage, energize and connect our community with the highest quality performances and our vision to be the most exciting force in the choral world.
The guidepost for any nonprofit service organization is their mission and vision. As the May Festival continues to grow, adapt and evolve in making these ideals a reality, there will be moments of change and renewal. We are honoring the past 150 years and looking ahead to the next 150!
This Festival is one of transformation, as we depart from the traditional model of a single artistic leader and embark on a new journey—one that will bring new ideas, fresh faces and new concert experiences to the Festival each May. Hannah Edgar’s article, “New Model, Same May Festival” dives deeper into our new Festival Director model, which opens the door to some very exciting future Festivals.
This May Festival is also bittersweet, as it will be the final Festival for our longtime Executive Director Steven R. Sunderman and Director of Choruses Robert Porco.
Steven joined the CSO and May Festival staff in January 1986 and became Executive Director of the May Festival in 1996. His 28-year tenure as Executive Director—the longest tenure in the May Festival’s history—has been simply remarkable. Steven has grown the May Festival’s endowment from approximately $2 million to $26 million and more than tripled the annual budget from approximately $1 million to $3.55 million. The total cumulative earned and contributed revenue raised during his tenure totals $62.55 million. In addition, the Festival has enjoyed a financially sound history of 33 consecutive years of balanced budgets and financial metrics that are unsurpassed in the industry.
Steven has also overseen the 125th and 150th anniversary seasons and the expansion of our music education offering, and he was instrumental in bringing the World Choir Games, the Chorus America national convention and the American Choral Directors Association national conference to Cincinnati. Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg of Steven’s achievements. The May Festival will always be deeply grateful for his dynamic and enthusiastic leadership.
After an unprecedented 35-year tenure as Director of Choruses, Robert Porco will transition to become an honorary May Festival Board member at the end of the 2024 May Festival. Bob has prepared 532 distinct choral works for 170 May Festival concerts, 26 of which he conducted. Again, this is just a small fraction of the impact Bob has made on the May Festival. David Lyman’s article, “Robert Porco: Reflecting on 35 Years as Director of Choruses,” provides insights from Bob on his final May Festival as Director of Choruses.
Please join me, the board and the entire May Festival community in thanking both Steven and Bob for their years of dedication and leadership.
From the Choruses, Orchestra, artistic leadership, crew, staff and soloists, we express our deep gratitude for every single audience member, donor and sponsor. Without all of you, none of this would be possible! Enjoy the Festival!
Christy Horan, Chair, Board of Directors
Dear Friends,
Thank you for joining us for the 2024 May Festival!
We have worked hard behind the scenes to bring this new artistic model to life for the 2024 Festival. I cannot tell you how excited I am to welcome Julia Wolfe as our inaugural Festival Director and for you to hear these amazing concerts. Julia is a multi-dimensional and collaborative artist who seeks to bring people into community around music, which makes her the perfect artist to serve as our first Festival Director!
At the heart of Julia’s music and her curation of the Festival is the element of storytelling. From the coal mines of Pennsylvania to the struggle for equal rights to redefining the word “pretty,” Julia’s music takes you on a narrative journey. “Julia Wolfe Wants to Tell You a Story” by Hannah Edgar describes Julia’s ethos, history and vision.
For my 28-year tenure as Executive Director of the May Festival, my counterpart has been Director of Choruses Robert Porco, who will become an honorary May Festival Board member at the end of this Festival.
Bob is the longest-tenured Director of Choruses in the history of the May Festival and has worked with more than 1,300 individual singers of the May Festival Chorus. In addition to the performances at the May Festival, notable events during Porco’s tenure include highly acclaimed appearances by the Chorus at Carnegie Hall: a 1991 performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Jesús López-Cobos and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO); a 1995 performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Robert Shaw, The Cleveland Orchestra, the May Festival Chorus and other choruses; a 2001 performance of Britten’s War Requiem with then-May Festival Music Director James Conlon and the CSO; and a 2014 performance of Dett’s The Ordering of Moses with Conlon and the CSO, as part of the Spring for Music Festival. In addition, the May Festival Chorus’ 2008 performance of the Pulitzer Prize-winning On the Transmigration of Souls, under the baton of the composer John Adams, led Adams to write in his memoir, “The pure American quality of their enunciation and their perfectly balanced sonorities lifted the matter-of-fact plainness of the words to a transcendental level.” Bob Porco was also responsible for the popular a cappella recording, Christmas with the May Festival Chorus, for which he prepared and conducted the Chorus.
The impact of Bob’s tenure will be forever part of the May Festival’s and May Festival Chorus’ legacy. We are deeply grateful for his leadership and friendship.
This will also be my final Festival as Executive Director of the May Festival. I am deeply honored to have been part of the incredible legacy of the May Festival and I will be forever grateful for the community that surrounds the May Festival, who have made my tenure one of joyful growth. Thank you for 28 wonderful years.
Enjoy the 2024 May Festival.
Steven R. Sunderman, Executive Director