Volkswagen will host 5 CSO concerts

Friday, January 1, 1904

photo Kayoko Dan, Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra conductor.

CONCERT SERIESSept. 23 -- Heroes: Napoleon to SupermanNov. 4 -- Dvorak Symphony No. 6Jan. 13 -- Concierto de AranjuezMarch 3 -- Hurray for HollywoodApril 28 -- Elvis and Mahler

Volkswagen will host five Chattanooga Symphony and Opera concerts at the automaker's Enterprise South industrial park site starting in September.

Open to the public, the five-concert series will be held in the VW Academy's conference center which will seat up to 1,000 people, officials said Tuesday.

"Volkswagen has supported the symphony for several years now, and I'm very pleased we can expand our partnership this year," said Hans-Herbert Jagla, VW's executive vice president of human resources in Chattanooga.

The series will start Sept. 23 and run periodically through April 28. Tickets are priced at $25 each, though VW employees can purchase them for $15.

"I see our Passat as a piece of art," Jagla said about the Chattanooga-made midsize sedan. "It's a symphony of engineering."

He said four of the concerts will be repeated from earlier symphony performances.

Kayoko Dan, the symphony's music director and conductor, said a March 3 concert titled "Hurray for Hollywood" will be a musical tribute to the movies and developed exclusively for the VW series.

She said it will feature Hollywood film writer George S. Clinton as guest conductor.

"We're really excited we get to perform music for a different community that we may have not been able to reach out to until now," Dan said.

Susan Rich, the symphony's board president, said the VW Academy is in a part of Hamilton County that's growing.

"We're hoping we'll have even more people be able to come to our concerts with the Sunday series," she said.