IMAGINE: Passing the Baton
Season Finale

Celebrate legacy, growth, and the music that connects generations. Featuring David Coucheron, Concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, pianist Julie Coucheron, this exhilarating finale showcases Mendelssohn’s brilliance, from the enchanting Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to the expressive Double Violin Concerto, and the energy of his Symphony No. 4. It’s a fitting close to an unforgettable season and a powerful beginning under Maestro Henry Cheng’s direction.

What does it mean to grow-as an artist, as a family, as a community? 

Our season finale and IMAGINE season closer, offers a celebration of legacy, lineage, and the way music connects generations. It’s about more than a performance-it’s about passing something on. From composer to performer. From teacher to student. From one sibling to another. From orchestra to audience. And from dream to reality.

We open with the effervescent Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a piece first imagined by a 17-year-old prodigy and later refined by the mature composer. Its shimmering textures and fleet rhythms transport us into a world of creative possibility-the spark that ignites the journey.

That spark takes center stage in Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto in D minor, written when he was just 14. Rarely performed in its full orchestral version, this concerto is youthful in spirit but rich with emotion and craft. 

We close with Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A major, the jubilant “Italian” Symphony-the product of a young artist coming into full voice. Radiant, rhythmic and full of life, it’s the perfect mirror for JCSO as we step into a new era of growth. This orchestra, too, is evolving. 

Tonight’s performance is both a culmination and a promise-a baton passed not only from one generation to the next, but from imagination to action, and from one season into the future. 

We’ve spent this season imagining what could be. Tonight, we honor what we’ve built together and look ahead to everything still to come.

May 23, 2026 – 7:30 p.m.
Mount Pisgah Church
2850 Old Alabama Rd
Johns Creek, GA 30022

Sponsored by the City of Johns Creek
and the Music Performance Trust Fund, in association with the American Federation of Musicians