NWI Symphony Conductor Kirk Muspratt loves a great party.
Traditionally, the orchestra’s umbrella arts entity South Shore Arts hosts a spring celebration reception closing out the season and unveiling the exciting concert programming for the next year.
This year, that same celebration has a special emphasis to also fete the quarter of a century anniversary of Muspratt’s first season stepping behind the baton as maestro for the NWI Symphony Orchestra.
At 6 p.m. Thursday, May 1, in the Backman Art Gallery at The Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1040 Ridge Road in Munster, a party will herald the music and memories associated with the maestro for the past 25 years.
“This year marks an incredible milestone for our Maestro Kirk Muspratt’s 25th anniversary as the creative force behind Northwest Indiana Symphony,” said Tammie Miller, coordinator for marketing for the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra.
“For a quarter of a century, Kirk’s passion has elevated our community through inspiring performances, enlightening music education, and his unwavering commitment to the Youth Orchestra.”
She said the celebration will include the unveiling of a new South Shore Line poster featuring Muspratt by artist John Rush and sponsored by Mechanical Concepts, Inc. There will also be live performances by musicians from both the Symphony and Youth Orchestra as well as heavy hors d’oeuvres, desserts and an open bar.
Tickets are $80 and available online at https://nisorchestra.org/kirk25 or call 219-836-0525.
Muspratt, 70, divides his time and duties between his home in the John Hancock Building in downtown Chicago and his assignments as not only the maestro for the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra but also as music director of New Philharmonic Orchestra based in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, and artistic director and music director of DuPage Opera Theatre and New Philharmonic Opera, the latter as musical assignments he began in 2004.
Six months ago, in October 2024, New Philharmonic musicians joined guests who trekked to the suburbs to toast Muspratt at a fundraising dinner at the Abbington Banquets in Glen Ellyn celebrating New Philharmonic’s teaming with Maestro Muspratt and his 20 years as music director and conductor.
A native of Alberta, Canada, during his prior career, he assisted orchestra directors in Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Utah before Muspratt was introduced to communities in Northwest Indiana in February 2000 as the newly announced conductor for the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra.
From 1976 to 1996, the NWI Symphony was conducted by Robert Vodnoy, of Valparaiso, who is now 74 and serves as conductor of the Whiting Park Festival Orchestra. Vodnoy was succeeded by then 47-year-old Tsung Yeh in July 1997, who stayed only two seasons, before assuming the role of music director for the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, and later retiring at age 65 in 2015.
Muspratt said six months before stepping in as conductor of the NWI Symphony, in August 1999, he had traveled to Northwest Indiana as a guest conductor to lead the NWI Symphony Orchestra for an outdoor concert at Whiting Park, and had already previously raised his baton before with the Northwest Indiana Symphony in 1997 as the guest conductor for a season concert starring violinist Rachel Barton.
The Northwest Indiana Symphony and Muspratt conclude the 2024-25 season with “Salute to John Williams,” with 7 p.m. concerts both Thursday, May 15, and Friday, May 16, at the auditorium at Living Hope Church, 9000 Taft Street, Merrillville.
Hailed as “the greatest American film composer of all time,” Williams, who turned 93 in February, has written some of the most popular, recognizable and critically acclaimed film scores in cinematic history in a career spanning more than six decades. Williams has won 24 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.
The May concerts will include selections from “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” “Far & Away,” “The Patriot,” “Superman,” “Memoirs of a Geisha” and others in this tribute to an American icon.
Tickets for the concerts range from $45 -$79 each and students are $10, all available by calling (219) 836-0525 or visit www.NISOrchestra.org.
For the NWI Symphony’s 2022-23 Season, Muspratt led the orchestra in a concert rendition of “West Side Story,” a programming highlight that was originally announced for the 2020 season which was canceled due to the pandemic.
Muspratt has always had a special connection to the late, great Leonard Bernstein, who composed “West Side Story,” and even spent some student time guided by Bernstein’s iconic baton.
When New Philharmonic wrapped its season with “West Side Story in Concert” in April 2022 at the McAninch Arts Center at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Maestro shared his wonderful recollections of his time with Bernstein with me and my Tribune feature writer colleague Annie Alleman, when we were writing season concert finale stories for our assignments for The Post-Tribune and sister newspaper The Naperville Sun.
In 1981, Muspratt was a student at Tanglewood, which is the home of the annual music school and festival of the same name near Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusettes. It is also the stage space “summer home” to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Bernstein devoted half a century to teaching and performed there in the summer months.
“It is the pantheon of conducting classes,” Muspratt told this pair of Tribune writers in 2022.
“If you make it to the Tanglewood conducting class, you must be one of the new young conductors. It is the apex of the conducting schools. There were 16 conductors. I had a lesson with Bernstein one day. Everybody is there because Bernstein is doing his conducting class. I happened to be the last one, the 16th guy. I was supposed to have 15 minutes, that’s what we’re allowed. I’m terrified. He’s got two cigarettes going and two glasses of Scotch in wine glasses. He said, ‘Mr. Canadian, what do you want to conduct?’ And I said, ‘Brahms 2, Second movement.’ And he said, ‘No. You can’t conduct that. You’re not old enough.’”
Muspratt said he begged and pleaded.
“So he looks up to the ceiling with these eyes going up in the air,” Muspratt recalls.
“So he goes, ‘OK go ahead. Try it. You’re not old enough.’ So I start conducting and he just rips me apart. Tears me to smithereens. But instead of my 15 minutes, he gave me two hours. And the conducting teacher even said, ‘Maestro, the time is up.’ And he said, ‘No. This kid here, I want to work with him.’ I don’t even remember walking out. I was floating.”
Bernstein died at age 72 in October 1990.
Philip Potempa is a journalist, published author and weekly radio host on WJOB 1230 AM. He can be reached at philpotempa@gmail.com.
