Colorado Symphony 2016/17 Season Presenting Sponsor:
MASTERWORKS • 2016-2017 AN EVENING OF BERNSTEIN’S BEST COLORADO SYMPHONY TEDDY ABRAMS, conductor MORGAN JAMES, vocals Saturday’s Concert Is Gratefully Dedicated To Dr. Paul and Mrs. Harriet Rosen Sunday’s Concert Is Gratefully Dedicated To University of Colorado Foundation
Friday, September 30, 2016, at 7:30pm Saturday, October 1, 2016, at 7:30pm Sunday, October 2, 2016, at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall
BERNSTEIN/arr. Peress BERNSTEIN
Overture to West Side Story “Tonight” from West Side Story “I Can Cook Too” from On the Town “Simple Song” from Mass “Lonely Town” from On the Town “Some Other Time” from On the Town “Times Square 1944” from On the Town “Ain’t Got No Tears Left” from On the Town — INTERMISSION —
“Mambo” from West Side Story “Dream With Me” from Peter Pan “It Must Be So” from Candide “Conquering New York” from Wonderful Town “My House” from Peter Pan “Glitter and Be Gay” from Candide
SOUNDINGS 2016-2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES
O’NEIL ARNOLD
TEDDY ABRAMS, conductor An unusually versatile musician, Teddy Abrams is a widely acclaimed conductor, pianist, clarinetist, and composer. Music Director of both the Louisville Orchestra and Britt Classical Festival, he also serves as Resident Conductor of the MAV Symphony Orchestra in Budapest, which he first conducted in 2011. He previously served as Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Teddy’s 2016-17 season includes debuts at the Kennedy Center with members of the National Symphony Orchestra; the Colorado, North Carolina, and New Jersey Symphonies; and a return to the New World Symphony. Recent guest conducting highlights include engagements with the San Francisco, Houston, Vancouver, Phoenix, Indianapolis, and Jacksonville Symphonies. From 2008 to 2011, Abrams was the Conducting Fellow and Assistant Conductor of the New World Symphony, which he has conducted in Miami Beach, Washington, D.C., and at Carnegie Hall. He recently returned to conduct the NWS on subscription with Joshua Bell as soloist. Dedicated to exploring new and engaging ways to communicate with a diverse range of audiences, Abrams co-founded the Sixth Floor Trio in 2008. Together, they founded GardenMusic, the music festival of the world-renowned Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami.
MORGAN JAMES, vocals “A phenomenal talent whose feel for classic soul music is bone deep... This woman is on fire.”—The New York Times. One voice is all it takes. The right vocalist can make you fall in love at first listen, elicit tears, or bring you back to a different era altogether. A microphone and a stage remain the only necessities. That holds true for New York-based soul singer, songwriter, and Broadway chanteuse Morgan James. On her full-length debut for Epic Records, Hunter, she casts an unbreakable spell with a powerhouse voice, theatrical swing, and a soulful poise. Hunter boasts powerful and personal renditions of Prince’s “Call My Name“(reached Top 15 at Urban AC radio and #1 most added) along with Hall & Oates’ “She’s Gone” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark”. Morgan assumed co-writing duties on eight of the collection’s eleven tracks and even performed all of her own background vocals and harmonies. She is proud to note that no vocal tuning of any kind has been used on any of her albums. From the empowering farewell of “Fed Up On You” to the mournful rumination of “Say The Words,” or the soulful duet with Grammy Award-winner Robert Glasper, “Let Me Keep You,” she continually bares it all—both emotionally and musically. In addition to Hunter, Morgan has released a live tribute to Nina Simone, Morgan James Live, as well as an EP featuring some of her fan’s favorite covers, YouTube Sessions. (She can also be heard on countless theatre and concept soundtracks.) Since Hunter’s release, Morgan’s music videos have accumulated more than 45 million views (and climbing). With viral sensation Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, Morgan toured the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. She is currently touring with her band and in the midst of writing her next album!
PROGRAM 2 SOUNDINGS 2016-2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
introducing...
BRETT MITCHELL, recently appointed Music Director Designate for the Colorado Symphony! Get to know the Colorado Symphony’s Music Director Designate Brett Mitchell when he appears on the podium for 5 concerts during the 2016/17 Season! See all the concerts and subscribe to this package today at the Box Office or buy now at coloradosymphony.org!
Photo: Roger Mastroianni
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES LEONARD BERNSTEIN: Born August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Died October 14, 1990, in New York City. Leonard Bernstein — conductor, composer, lecturer, pianist, personality (he often swept into a room in his later years wearing a dramatic black cape given to him by his mentor Serge Koussevitzky) — was a man of the theater, so it was probably inevitable that he composed prolifically for the musical stage, from the incidental music he wrote while a student at Harvard for The Birds (1938) and The Peace (1940) by Aristophanes to the opera A Quiet Place in 1984. During the intervening decades, while serving as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, maintaining an international conducting career, mentoring students at Tanglewood, and speaking out on controversial social issues, Bernstein composed a remarkable series of works for the theater: another opera (Trouble in Tahiti, 1951); three ballets (Fancy Free, 1944; Facsimile, 1946; Dybbuk, 1974); the score for the Oscar-winning On the Waterfront (1954), an operetta (Candide, 1956), the genre-defying Mass (1971); four Broadway musicals (On the Town, 1944; Wonderful Town, 1953; the epochal West Side Story, 1957; and the American bicentennial musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 1976); and incidental music for four additional plays (Peter Pan, 1950; The Lark, 1955; Salome, 1955; The Firstborn, 1958). This Colorado Symphony concert brings together a few of the many highlights from the creative career of Leonard Bernstein. West Side Story (1957) was one of the first musicals to explore a serious subject with wide social implications. More than just the story of the tragic lives of ordinary people in a small, shabby section of New York City, it was concerned with urban violence, juvenile delinquency, clan hatred, and young love. The show was criticized as harshly realistic by some who advocated an entirely escapist function for the musical, depicting things that were not appropriately shown on the Broadway stage. Most, however, recognized that it expanded the scope of the musical through references both to classical literature (Romeo and Juliet) and to the pressing problems of modern society. Brooks Atkinson, the distinguished critic of The New York Times, noted in his book Broadway that West Side Story was “a harsh ballad of the city, taut, nervous and flaring, the melodies choked apprehensively, the rhythms wild, swift and deadly.” West Side Story, like a very few other musicals — Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Pal Joey, A Chorus Line, Sunday in the Park with George, Rent, Hamilton — provides more than just an evening’s pleasant diversion. It is a work that gave an entirely new vision and direction to the American musical theater. Three of West Side Story’s most memorable numbers — Tonight, Somewhere, and Mambo — have been arranged into this Overture by the American conductor Maurice Peress, who was an assistant conductor to Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic and the conductor of the sensational premiere of his Mass in Washington, D.C., in 1971. In the story, Riff, leader of the Jets, an “American” street gang, determines to challenge Bernardo, head of the rival Sharks, a group of young Puerto Ricans, to a rumble. Riff asks Tony, his best friend and a co-founder of the Jets, to help. Tony has been growing away from the gang, and he senses better things in his future, but agrees. The Jets and the Sharks meet that night at a dance at the school gym, where Tony falls in love at first sight with Maria, Bernardo’s sister, recently arrived from Puerto Rico. Later that night, Tony meets Maria on the fire escape of her
PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2016-2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES apartment. The next day, Tony visits Maria at the bridal shop where she works, and they enact a touching wedding ceremony. Tony promises Maria he will try to stop the gangs’ rumble, but he is unsuccessful and becomes involved in the fighting. He kills Bernardo. At this pivotal point in the drama, Maria, unaware of the tragic events, excitedly sings I Feel Pretty as she awaits Tony’s return. In a stunning reversal of mood, she learns that Tony has slain her brother. Tony comes to her apartment but she cannot send him away, and they long for a place free from prejudice. Tony leaves and hides in a neighborhood drugstore. Maria convinces Anita, Bernardo’s girl, of her love for Tony, and Anita agrees to tell Tony that the Sharks intend to hunt him down. She is so fiercely taunted by the Jets at the drugstore, however, that she spitefully tells Tony that Maria has been killed. Tony numbly wanders the streets and meets Maria. At the moment they embrace, he is shot dead. The Jets and the Sharks appear from the shadows, drawn together by the tragedy. They carry off the body of Tony, followed by Maria. Much of the show’s electric atmosphere was generated by its brilliant dance sequences, for which Jerome Robbins won the 1957-1958 Tony Award for choreography. “The dance movements not only epitomize the tensions, brutality, bravado, and venomous hatred of the gang warriors but also had sufficient variety in themselves to hold audiences spellbound,” wrote Abe Laufe in Broadway’s Greatest Musicals. Mambo propels a competitive dance between the gangs during the dance at the gym. In April 1944, Bernstein’s ballet Fancy Free was introduced to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera House. The plot of the ballet, according to the composer, concerned three sailors “on leave in [New York City] and on the prowl for girls. The tale tells of how they meet first one, then a second girl, and how they fight over them, lose them, and in the end take off with still a third.” The ballet’s setting and characters were the inspiration for Bernstein to try a new piece in a form that he had not previously broached — musical comedy. Soon after Fancy Free had been launched, he enlisted lyricists Adolph Green and Betty Comden to write the book and words for the show, which they titled On the Town. The collaborators devised a story, perfectly suited to those war years, about three sailors in New York who are determined to see everything in the city during their 24-hour leave. On the subway, one of the sailors falls in love with the poster picture of Miss Turnstiles, and the boys set out to find her. Their efforts take them all over the city until they finally discover Miss Turnstiles in Coney Island, where they learn that she is not the glamorous girl they expected from the poster, but a belly dancer. On the Town had a two-week tryout in Boston before opening at New York’s Adelphi Theater on December 28, 1944, with Comden and Green in leading roles. It was a hit, running for 463 performances on Broadway; Arthur Freed made it into a superb movie starring Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Jules Munshin five years later. The show has been revived several times for Broadway, most recently in a Tonynominated production in 2014. During their adventures in the big city, Chip, one of the sailors, meets up with an aggressively love-starved cab driver named Brunhilde Esterhazy — Hildy, for short — and his buddy Ozzie with Claire de Loone, a budding anthropologist at the Museum of Natural History who thinks he resembles a prehistoric man she’s been studying. Hildy talks Chip into coming back to her place and catalogs her domestic virtues for him in the hot swing number, I Can Cook, Too. Gabey, the third sailor, tracks down Miss Turnstiles — Ivy Smith — taking ballet lessons at
SOUNDINGS 2016-2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES Carnegie Hall, and together they dance a wistful Pas de Deux based on Gabey’s song Lonely Town: A town’s a lonely town, When you pass through And there is no one waiting there for you. When the boys have to head back to their ship at the end of their shore leave and their day with Hildy, Claire, and Ivy is ending, they express their regret in the bittersweet Some Other Time. The torch song Ain’t Got No Tears Left, for which Bernstein wrote the lyrics, was intended for the singer in the swanky nightclub scene in Act II but was cut before the show opened. The Three Dance Episodes from On the Town include The Great Lover, which captures the vibrant intensity of the bustling metropolis and the high spirits of the young sailors, Lonely Town (Pas de Deux), based on the expressive song of its title, and Times Square — 1944, a joyous fantasia on New York, New York, the show’s hit tune. Mass, subtitled “A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,” was composed at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and premiered there on September 8, 1971. Bernstein’s Mass, like Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem of 1961, uses a traditional Roman Catholic service as its framework but interpolates into the ancient structure additional texts that comment upon the liturgical words; Bernstein wrote his own verses with the help of 23-year-old Stephen Schwartz, composer and lyricist of the hit Broadway rock musical Godspell. Composed at the height of the national furor over the Vietnam War, Mass took a strongly anti-authoritarian position against both church and government, and excited much heated commentary. About the impact of the work as a piece of theater, however, there was no doubt. As could perhaps no other composer of his generation, Bernstein juxtaposed a wildly eclectic mixture of opera, jazz, blues, pop, folk, rock, sacred, and Broadway styles in a manner that made Mass a virtual microcosm of the musical crosscurrents of its time. Mass opens in darkness with an elaborate and increasingly frantic setting of the Kyrie for six solo voices and percussion played through speakers placed at the four corners of the stage. The Celebrant, the main dramatic figure of the work, steps before the curtain in street clothes, silences the increasing din with a chord from his guitar, and sings the quiet and lyrical Simple Song. In 1950, directors John Burrell and Wendy Toye asked Bernstein to supply the songs, lyrics and incidental music for an adaptation of James M. Barrie’s 1904 play about “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” — Peter Pan. (Disney’s animated version of the story was released in 1953, and the well-known musical directed by Jerome Robbins, starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard, was first seen on Broadway and on television sets in homes across America the following year; its music was by Mark Charlap and Jule Styne, with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, Betty Comden and Adolph Green.) Bernstein composed seven songs and numerous instrumental cues for Peter Pan, but two of the numbers (Captain Hook Soliloquy and Dream With Me) had to be cut because of the vocal limitations of the cast, which included Hollywood stars Jean Arthur in the title role and Boris Karloff as Captain Hook/Mr. Darling; Marcia Henderson, in her Broadway debut, played Wendy. Columbia made a recording of the original cast, Marcia Henderson won a Theatre World Award for her portrayal of Wendy, and the show ran for 321 performances, but Peter Pan was driven into virtual theatrical oblivion by Bernstein’s long-running Wonderful Town of 1953, and
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MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES his epochal West Side Story four years later. The tender Dream With Me, originally sketched for On The Town and reworked for Peter Pan, is Wendy’s farewell to Peter before she leaves Neverland to return to her family. Build My House embodies Wendy’s wish for the home that she would like Peter’s Lost Boys to build for her after she arrives in Neverland and agrees to become their “mother.” Wonderful Town is the story of two sisters from Columbus, Ohio, who move to New York City to further their careers as a writer (Ruth) and an actress (Eileen), and find there a series of humorous misadventures and broken love affairs. The characters originated in Ruth McKenney’s series of essays for The New Yorker, which she and writers Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov turned into a successful play and movie under the title My Sister Eileen. Rosalind Russell won an Oscar in 1942 for her portrayal of Ruth in the Columbia film, and when the play was turned into a musical in 1953 (with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green), she was enlisted to recreate the role on Broadway. Wonderful Town opened at the Winter Garden to excellent reviews on February 25, 1953 (George Abbott directed), and ran for 559 performances; the show won a Tony as Best Musical. Conquering New York is a jazzy dancepantomime during which Ruth and Eileen try to land jobs in the hectic, unfamiliar city but get nothing more than leering passes from potential employers. At the end, the girls slump dejected onto each other’s shoulder while the chorus gives them some unwelcome advice: “Maybe you’d better go home!!” Lillian Hellman conceived a theater piece based on Voltaire’s Candide as early as 1950, but it was not until 1956 that the project materialized. She originally intended the work to be a play with incidental music, which she asked Leonard Bernstein to compose, but his enthusiasm for the subject was so great after re-reading Voltaire’s novel that the venture swelled into a fullblown comic operetta; Tyrone Guthrie was enlisted as director and Richard Wilbur wrote most of the song lyrics. Candide was first seen in a pre-Broadway tryout at Boston’s Colonial Theatre on October 29, 1956 (just days after Bernstein’s appointment as co-music director of the New York Philharmonic had been announced for the following season), and opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York on December 1. In It Must Be So, Candide has been brutally expelled from his homeland but continues to sing of the message of optimism taught by his mentor, Dr. Pangloss, as he wanders the countryside. ©2016 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
SOUNDINGS 2016-2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 7
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