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Through New Lifestyle and Career Membership, Elevate, Greenwood also Provides Exclusive Access to the One-Night Only, Sold Out Performance
ATLANTA–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Greenwood , the digital banking platform for Black and Latino individuals and businesses, is powering the debut performance of Classically Ours , a new concert series that blends the music of some of the biggest names in popular music with world-class symphonic orchestras. This first performance will feature renowned rapper Jeezy with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for a one-night only show. As part of its new lifestyle and career membership, Elevate , Greenwood has provided Elevate members exclusive access to the sold out show, taking place tonight at Atlanta Symphony Hall. “Jeezy is one of hip-hop’s most celebrated artists, whose career and music has influenced millions of people across both his hometown of Atlanta and the globe. From his days with Boyz N Da Hood, to now performing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Jeezy embodies the spirit of ELEVATION, personally and professionally, which is synonymous with our Greenwood Elevate card product,” said Ryan Glover, Greenwood’s Chairman who co-founded Greenwood alongside Dr. Paul Judge, Civil Rights leader Andrew J. Young, and rapper and activist Michael “Killer Mike” Render. “Through a single Elevate membership, individuals across the Black and Latino communities can advance their careers, unlock exclusive experiences, travel in style, build community and spend with confidence – all while celebrating our culture.”
Launched last November, Elevate is a brand new membership created by Greenwood to provide an all-access pass to take your career and lifestyle to the next level. Combining key lifestyle offerings across the Greenwood ecosystem, Elevate provides access to The Gathering Spot’s private membership network with physical clubhouses in Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, and to Valence’s professional networking platform, including tens of thousands of job listings through the recruiting database. Elevate also unlocks a range of invitation-only events and experiences, like Jeezy at Atlanta Symphony Orchestra tonight, as well as A3C Conference & Festival , one of the country’s premier music, tech, and culture festivals which is held annually in Atlanta. Elevate includes other benefits such as luxury travel amenities, access to Priority Pass lounges, and concierge services. About Greenwood
Greenwood is the digital banking platform for Black and Latino individuals and businesses. Greenwood’s mission is to support financial freedom for minorities through community building, career advancement, and financial services. Greenwood’s flagship product is a best-in-class digital banking service provided by partnering with FDIC-insured banks. Greenwood Inc, includes The Gathering Spot, a private membership network and Valence, the career development and job recruiting platform. The combined community has over 1 million people. Greenwood’s founders include Civil Rights leader Andrew J. Young and Ryan Glover, founder of the Bounce TV Network. Greenwood has raised funding from six of the largest banks including Citi, JPMorgan Chase, PNC and Truist as well as other companies including Pendulum, TTV Capital, Mastercard, and Visa. Contacts

Greenwood Powers ‘Classically Ours’ Featuring Jeezy with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Provides Exclusive Access to Elevate Members

Through New Lifestyle and Career Membership, Elevate, Greenwood also Provides Exclusive Access to the One-Night Only, Sold Out Performance
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January 27, 2023 07:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
ATLANTA--( BUSINESS WIRE )-- Greenwood , the digital banking platform for Black and Latino individuals and businesses, is powering the debut performance of Classically Ours , a new concert series that blends the music of some of the biggest names in popular music with world-class symphonic orchestras. This first performance will feature renowned rapper Jeezy with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for a one-night only show. As part of its new lifestyle and career membership, Elevate , Greenwood has provided Elevate members exclusive access to the sold out show, taking place tonight at Atlanta Symphony Hall. “Jeezy is one of hip-hop’s most celebrated artists, whose career and music has influenced millions of people across both his hometown of Atlanta and the globe. From his days with Boyz N Da Hood, to now performing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Jeezy embodies the spirit of ELEVATION, personally and professionally, which is synonymous with our Greenwood Elevate card product,” said Ryan Glover, Greenwood’s Chairman who co-founded Greenwood alongside Dr. Paul Judge, Civil Rights leader Andrew J. Young, and rapper and activist Michael “Killer Mike” Render. “Through a single Elevate membership, individuals across the Black and Latino communities can advance their careers, unlock exclusive experiences, travel in style, build community and spend with confidence – all while celebrating our culture.”
Launched last November, Elevate is a brand new membership created by Greenwood to provide an all-access pass to take your career and lifestyle to the next level. Combining key lifestyle offerings across the Greenwood ecosystem, Elevate provides access to The Gathering Spot’s private membership network with physical clubhouses in Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, and to Valence’s professional networking platform, including tens of thousands of job listings through the recruiting database. Elevate also unlocks a range of invitation-only events and experiences, like Jeezy at Atlanta Symphony Orchestra tonight, as well as A3C Conference & Festival , one of the country’s premier music, tech, and culture festivals which is held annually in Atlanta. Elevate includes other benefits such as luxury travel amenities, access to Priority Pass lounges, and concierge services. About Greenwood
Greenwood is the digital banking platform for Black and Latino individuals and businesses. Greenwood’s mission is to support financial freedom for minorities through community building, career advancement, and financial services. Greenwood’s flagship product is a best-in-class digital banking service provided by partnering with FDIC-insured banks. Greenwood Inc, includes The Gathering Spot, a private membership network and Valence, the career development and job recruiting platform. The combined community has over 1 million people. Greenwood’s founders include Civil Rights leader Andrew J. Young and Ryan Glover, founder of the Bounce TV Network. Greenwood has raised funding from six of the largest banks including Citi, JPMorgan Chase, PNC and Truist as well as other companies including Pendulum, TTV Capital, Mastercard, and Visa. Contacts

Violinist Geneva Lewis plays Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto this weekend with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Motti Fang-Bentov)
Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is one of the most frequently performed works in the repertoire, so most violinists might have to consider how to make it fresh for audiences. Violinist Geneva Lewis doesn't have that problem. She learned the piece as a student, of course, but this will be the very first time she'll be playing it in its entirety, all the way through, with an orchestra. The orchestra is the Arkansas Symphony. The guest conductor, making his second appearance with the orchestra, is Stephen Mulligan. The concerts this Saturday and Sunday at Little Rock's Robinson Center Performance Hall are the second set in the orchestra's 2022-23 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks season. "I'm playing it a few times this season," Lewis says of the e-minor concerto, "but Arkansas will be my first, and it's the first time I'll have played the whole concerto with an orchestra. I played the first movement alone when I was younger. "It's one of my favorite pieces; it has a whole lot of surprises that I'll find out at the time" when she plays it with a full band behind her, she says. "And I'll be glad to play it with such a fantastic orchestra." Lewis, 24, studied with Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory of Music, which is lending her her current violin, the so-called "Joachim-Ma" Stradivarius, which the famed Cremona, Italy, luthier made around 1714. The name comes, in part, from one of its famous former owners, Joseph Joachim, one of the most famous violinists of the mid- to late 19th century and a friend and colleague of Johannes Brahms. (Lewis' "usual" violin was also built in Cremona by Zosimo Bergonzi, circa 1770.) Though it'll be her Arkansas Symphony and Little Rock debut, it won't be her first Arkansas performance — she teamed up with cellist Gabriel Martins to play works by Maurice Ravel, Zoltan Kodaly and Hector Villa-Lobos in a January recital at Harding University in Searcy. "We had a great time there," she recalls. She also recently (Oct. 15) paired with Martins to play Brahms' "Double Concerto" for violin and cello with the Gulf Coast Symphony in Gulfport, Miss. They've played the piece together a couple of times previously and will again in February with the South Florida Symphony in Fort Lauderdale and Key West. (The finale for that concert, by the way, as with this one, is Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 5.) Also in February, Lewis, a New Zealand native, will play Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto with the Auckland Philharmonia. "It'll be my first time going back to New Zealand since my family left in 2005," she says. She was 7 at the time. She and her family now make their home in Charleston, S.C. She reports they suffered "no major damage" from Hurricane Ian. Conductor Stephen Mulligan makes his second appearance with the Arkansas Symphony in concerts Saturday and Sunday at Robinson Center Performance Hall. (Democrat-Gazette file photo)  Mulligan, associate conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and music director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, says he's working this time with a program that was "given to me by the orchestra," not one of his own. But he says Sibelius' Fifth Symphony is "one of my all-time favorites," noting that he wrote his senior thesis on the Finnish composer. His research included a trip to Sibelius' home, Ainola, in the town of Jarvenpaa, Finland, north of Helsinki. "I hopped the fence," he admits. Later he learned that one of his mentors, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director laureate Robert Spano, had once done the same thing. He calls the symphony "a difficult piece rhythmically" with a tricky finale that keeps the audience in suspense as to when it actually ends. ■  ■  ■
The concert opens with the premiere of "Beyond Sensorial Portals" by James Lee III, a co-commission by Arkansas Symphony, the Colorado Symphony and the Orlando Philharmonic. The Florida orchestra had been scheduled to give the piece its world premiere in early October to mark the opening of its new concert space, Steinmetz Hall, but Hurricane Ian forced a postponement of the concert, so it'll receive more or less simultaneous premieres this weekend in Orlando and Little Rock. Eric Jacobsen is conducting it in Orlando. Mulligan says he'll get a chance to consult on the piece with the the composer, who will be shuttling back and forth this week between Florida and Arkansas. "We changed our rehearsal schedule to accommodate him," he adds. Lee, a Michigan native who teaches at Morgan State University in Baltimore, describes the piece in his program notes as "a rhapsodic orchestral work that can also be summarized with one word, celebration! ... The title of the work is inspired by the idea of concertgoers anticipating going to an orchestral concert and hearing great music." The Arkansas Symphony's opportunity to join in the commission resulted from ASO Artistic Director Geoffrey Robson's invitation to the Orlando ensemble to join in the consortium that commissioned Tania Leon's "Pasajes," which the orchestra premiered in the 2021-22 season. A few months later, Jacobsen invited the Arkansas Symphony to participate in the commission of Lee's piece. "One of the most important but also satisfying duties of an orchestra is being involved with the creation of new music," Robson explains. "It is a unique artistic challenge to perform a piece of music for the first time, and a special experience for an audience to collectively hear music for the first time." ■  ■  ■
The orchestra is being somewhat coy about its 2022-23 Masterworks lineup being essentially the last part of the audition process in its long, pandemic-interrupted search for a permanent music director to replace Philip Mann, who departed the podium at the end of the 2018-19 season. However, four of the season's five guest conductors are making second appearances. And all of them, as well as Robson, appear to be still under consideration for the full-time job. "I'm very grateful," Mulligan says. Being named music director of the Arkansas Symphony, he adds, "would be a dream come true." "It was a fun week," he says of the Sept. 29-30, 2021, concerts in which he led the orchestra in the 1919 version of Igor Stravinsky's "Firebird" Suite and, with cellist Martins, Robert Schumann's Cello Concerto. The program also included "The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra" by John Adams and Maurice Ravel's suite "Le Tombeau de Couperin," with, to the audience's delight, an additional movement that Mulligan himself orchestrated from the composer's piano version. ■  ■  ■
The Arkansas Symphony is partnering with Arkansas Foodbank on a food drive. Patrons who bring a donation of at least 12 non-perishable food items to this weekend's concerts will receive a voucher good for a pair of tickets to a future concert. Visit ArkansasSymphony.org/food-drive. Arkansas SymphonyOrchestra Masterworks
When/where: 7:30 p.m. Saturday Nov. 12, 3 p.m. Sunday Nov. 13, Robinson Center Performance Hall, 426 W. Markham St. at Broadway, Little Rock
What: Violinist Geneva Lewis solos in the Violin Concerto in e minor, op.64, by Felix Mendelssohn. Stephen Mulligan conducts. Also on the program: James Lee, III: “Beyond Sensorial Portals” (co-commission with Orlando Philharmonic and Colorado Symphony); Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 5. Sponsor: DoubleTree Hotel
Tickets: $16-$72, $10 for students and active-duty military, free to the Sunday matinee for K-12 students with a paying adult via the Entergy Kids’ Ticket. Information: (501) 666-1761, Extension 1; ArkansasSymphony.org
Print Headline: Familiar piece, new take
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Familiar piece, new take: ASO hosts violinist’s first full ‘run’ at Mendelssohn Concerto

By RONALD BLUM Associated Press Nathalie Stutzmann, the French-born contralto turned conductor, will succeed Robert Spano as music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra starting with the 2022-23 season and become the second woman to lead a major American orchestra. The 56-year-old agreed to a four-year contract, and she plans to spend 10 weeks annually
The post Stutzmann to follow Spano as Atlanta Symphony music director appeared first on KVIA.

Stutzmann to follow Spano as Atlanta Symphony music director

A Female Conductor Joins the Ranks of Top U.S. Orchestras
Nathalie Stutzmann will be the only woman leading a major American ensemble when she takes the Atlanta Symphony’s podium next year. Read in app
A renowned singer, Nathalie Stutzmann began her conducting career only about a decade ago, but has swiftly risen in the field.Credit...Audra Melton for The New York Times
Oct. 13, 2021, 10:30 a.m. ET
The 25 largest orchestras in the United States have something in common: Not one is led by a woman. But that is about to change. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra announced on Wednesday that it had chosen Nathalie Stutzmann, a conductor and singer from France, as its next music director. Stutzmann, 56, will be only the second woman in history to lead a top-tier American orchestra when she takes the podium in Atlanta next year. She follows Marin Alsop , whose tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ended in August after 14 years. Stutzmann said she hoped her selection would inspire other orchestras to appoint women. “I’m not looking for a world dominated by women,” she said in a video call. “I’m just looking for equality — that we will one day not be considered as a minority, but as musicians, conductors and maestros.”
A renowned contralto known for performances of works by Mahler, Handel and Bach, Stutzmann began her conducting career only about a decade ago. She has rapidly risen in the field and last year was appointed principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She also serves as chief conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in Norway. The British conductor Simon Rattle, a longtime mentor of Stutzmann, said her background in singing would guide the sound of the Atlanta Symphony. “What she will do is give them more colors and more daring and more shape,” Rattle said in an interview. “She’s a wonderfully warm and explosive personality.”
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Stutzmann conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the BBC Proms in 2019.Credit...Chris Christodoulou
Conducting, a field long dominated by men, did not always seem like a viable career path for Stutzmann, the daughter of opera singers who grew up near Paris. As a 15-year-old studying at a French conservatory, she said her music teachers discouraged her from pursuing conducting because of her gender. “It was very clear to me early on that there was no chance for me to achieve my dream as a conductor,” she said. “I knew it was a disaster. I couldn’t even learn, so it was so hard and so frustrating.”
Stutzmann instead focused on singing, winning major competitions and engagements. Her career took off in 1984, when, at 19, she substituted for the American soprano Jessye Norman in Paris. She became one of the industry’s best-known contraltos — the female singers with the lowest vocal range — touring widely and making more than 80 recordings. “The contralto is not heading the way of the California condor just yet,” The New York Times wrote in 1995. “Hope is arriving in the form of Nathalie Stutzmann, a lanky young Parisian with eyes as deep and dusky as her voice.”
Even as her singing career flourished, Stutzmann made a point of studying conducting informally, closely observing the maestros she performed with. She eventually found mentors in Rattle and the Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, and began lessons with the eminent Finnish conductor and teacher Jorma Panula. Stutzmann loved singing. But she found conducting electrifying. “When you sing you have only one line, one melody,” she said. “When you conduct you have a hundred lines in your hands. The repertoire is immense. The joy of mutual music-making for me was a revelation. It was exactly like my dreams — maybe it was even better than my dreams.”
Stutzmann, the fifth music director in the Atlanta Symphony’s 76-year history, will work to build on the legacy of Robert Spano, who recently stepped down to become the music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. During his 20-year tenure , Spano helped raise the orchestra’s profile and was a champion of music by living composers. But there were also challenges, including persistent deficits that resulted in steep pay cuts for the musicians in 2012, when they agreed to be paid for fewer than 52 weeks a year, and a pair of lockouts. Image
“I’m not looking for a world dominated by women,” Stutzmann said. “I’m just looking for equality.”Credit...Audra Melton for The New York Times
Stutzmann, who will begin an initial four-year contract starting with the 2022-23 season, said she would maintain the ensemble’s tradition of playing contemporary music. But she said she was also eager to bring in more French music, as well as Baroque works. “In a way, the symphony orchestras don’t dare to play this repertoire,” she said of the Baroque. “But to play this music for a symphony orchestra is as important as playing Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich and Ravel — everything — because it’s very difficult, it’s very healthy, it’s very pure, it’s very imaginative.”
This week she will appear in Atlanta leading a program of Verdi, Tchaikovsky and the American composer Missy Mazzoli. Stutzmann said she also hoped to find ways to bring the orchestra closer to the Atlanta community — with, for example, projects combining music and dance, including genres like hip-hop. Jennifer Barlament, the Atlanta Symphony’s executive director, said the orchestra had considered more than 80 people in its search, which began in January 2018. But after three guest appearances, Stutzmann stood out for her chemistry with the players and her knowledge of choral works. (The orchestra has an acclaimed chorus from its time being led by Robert Shaw.) “It’s clear that musicians love working with her,” Barlament said. Stutzmann’s appointment comes amid a broader reckoning in classical music over a history of discrimination on the basis of gender and race. Some believe that change could be on the horizon: Roughly a third of the music directors at the 25 largest orchestras in the country are planning to step down over the next several years. (And some smaller organizations, including the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic, currently have female music directors.) Alsop, the first woman to lead a top-tier American ensemble, praised the selection of Stutzmann, describing her as a gifted musician. “She’s worked very, very hard at her conducting,” Alsop said in an interview. “She’s a natural talent, but it’s clear that she’s really invested the time and the energy and brought her profound musical experience, artistic experience, to the podium.”
Alsop said she was hopeful Stutzmann would be one of several women to win major posts in the coming years. “I hope it starts a trend,” Alsop said. “It’s a start. Let’s go, people.”
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A Female Conductor Joins the Ranks of Top U.S. Orchestras

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The partnership was announced on January 24th during the first performance by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at Kennesaw State University .

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