Victor Wooten | Program Notes

MASTERWORKS • 2014/15 THE BASS WHISPERER FEATURING VICTOR WOOTEN COLORADO SYMPHONY SCOTT O’NEIL, resident conductor TERRANCE CARROLL, narrator VICTOR WOOTEN, electric bass WONDERBOUND

Saturday’s concert is gratefully dedicated to Shapiro Family Chiropractic

Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 7:30 pm Sunday, May 10, 2015 at 1:00 pm Boettcher Concert Hall

PAT METHENY & The First Circle LYLE MAYS/arr. O’Neil

PAT METHENY & Minuano (Six Eight) LYLE MAYS/arr. O’Neil JOSEPH SCHWANTNER

New Morning for the World, “Daybreak of Freedom” for Narrator and Orchestra — INTERMISSION —

CONNI ELLISOR & The Bass Whisperer, Concerto for Electric Bass VICTOR WOOTEN and Orchestra

Misterioso — Agitato Andante Andante

SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1

MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES SCOTT O’NEIL, resident conductor This is Scott O’Neil’s ninth season with the Colorado Symphony, and his fourth full season as resident conductor. O’Neil maintains a strong commitment to making music of the highest quality accessible to young audiences. He served as associate conductor for the Utah Symphony, which he joined in August 2000. O’Neil studied piano performance at the Oberlin College Conservatory, served as the assistant conductor of the Eastman School Symphony and Philharmonia Orchestras at the Eastman School of Music, and earned a master’s degree in orchestral conducting at Rice University, where he was the director of the Campanile Orchestra, a community/university orchestra. In the spring of 2003, O’Neil was selected by the League of American Orchestras to conduct an orchestra comprised of members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and advanced students from the University of Southern California in Synergy, a program created to promote young, contemporary composers. O’Neil is prominently featured with the Colorado Symphony as conductor and creator of the Inside the Score series, in addition to appearances on each of the Masterworks, Family, Pops, and Holiday Series.

TERRANCE D. CARROLL, narrator Terrance D. Carroll was the 54th Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives. He is the first African-American to have served as Speaker of the Colorado House. Carroll served in the legislature from 2003 until being term-limited in 2011. Currently, he is Associate General Counsel at SCL Health, headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Carroll has been listed by 5280 Magazine as one of the “50 Most Influential People in Denver,” Carroll’s entry noted his reputation as a skillful dealmaker, stating that he is a “critical and respected negotiator.” He also serves on the board of trustees for the Metropolitan State University of Denver and on the board of directors for the National Western Stock Show. Additionally, he is a member of the Executive Board of Denver Area Council, Boy Scouts of America. Carroll is the co-chair of the National Western’s Community Advisory Committee. He is an avid horseman and is a member of the American Quarter Horse Association. Carroll is a graduate of the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.

PROGRAM 2 SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES VICTOR WOOTEN, electric bass Victor Wooten is a five-time Grammy® Award winning musician who first hit the worldwide scene in 1990 as the bassist and founding member of the super-group Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Taking the music scene by storm with his unique approach, Wooten has won every major award given to a bass guitarist and is listed by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the top-ten bassists of all time. In 2008 he added “published author” to his credit by writing the novel The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. This book, a captivating tale of a teacher and student, has been translated into five languages and is currently being used in curriculum by schools and universities around the world. Continuing to blaze a musical trail with his own band, Victor Wooten is also a loving husband and father of four, a skilled naturalist and teacher, a magician, juggler, and an acrobat. Each year, hundreds of students, young and old, travel to Victor Wooten’s Center for Music and Nature, a non-profit where Wooten teaches near Nashville, Tennessee. His unique concepts and teaching style are currently featured in the prestigious TED-Ed on-line film Music as a Language, which offers an inspiring message worth sharing about music as a powerful communication tool. 2012 brought about Wooten’s simultaneously released records – Words and Tones and Sword and Stone. Released on his own label VIX RECORDS, both records made it into the top ten on iTunes jazz chart at the same time — a feat to be proud of (and maybe a first.) Wooten’s latest achievement is the completion of a new concerto aptly called The Bass Whisperer – A Concerto for Electric Bass and Orchestra, which he co-wrote with violinist/composer Conni Ellisor. Having already made his mark in Jazz, Funk, Fusion, R&B, and Bluegrass, Victor Wooten is bringing new energy, as well as a new instrument, to the world of classical music. People, get ready!

For more information about Victor Wooten visit: www.victorwooten.com

A Weekend of Star Wars

MAY 29-30 FRI-SAT 7:30

COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG | 303-623-7876 BOX OFFICE MON-FRI 10 AM - 6 PM  SAT 12 PM - 6 PM

SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 3

MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES WONDERBOUND Wonderbound uses dance to deepen humankind’s common bond through uncommon endeavors of discovery and creation. The philosophy of Wonderbound centers around three fundamental values — community, collaboration, creation. Under the artistic direction of Garrett Ammon and Dawn Fay, a radiant energy has grown around the ten exemplary dancers that make up Wonderbound. Each dancer is valued for the unique personal perspective they bring to the studio process; building a whole greater than its parts. Free to “unzip their souls,” these artists are continually evolving as they explore their humanity through movement. From creating new works with Ammon to utilizing the talents of various musicians, poets and visual artists, Wonderbound’s dancers bring their considerable classical prowess to the table while simultaneously tapping into a vulnerability that strips away pretense. The Wonderbound Studio at Junction Box, located at 1075 Park Avenue West in Denver, Colorado is unique in that it is free and open to the public during the Hare Rehearsal Hours. This open door policy created by Wonderbound Artistic Director Garrett Ammon means that there is a standing invitation for guests of all ages to come on by, grab a seat on one of our comfy couches, and soak up some of the creative juices always flowing through the studio. Please call 303-292-4700 before coming, to confirm rehearsal times. Wonderbound regularly posts behind the scenes peeks, advanced ticket sales, fun give- aways and exclusive performance information through social media and on our website. wonderbound.com | facebook.com/wonderbound | instagram.com/wonderboundco twitter.com/wonderbound_

Bronfman Plays Beethoven

MAY 22-24 T

FRI-SAT 7:30 SUN 1:00

COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG | 303.623.7876 Yefim Bronfman

BOX OFFICE MON-FRI 10 AM - 6 PM T SAT 12 PM - 6 PM

PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES PAT METHENY (b. 1954) LYLE MAYS (b. 1953) Arranged by SCOTT O’NEIL The First Circle (1984) Minuano (Six Eight) (1987) Pat Metheny was born on August 12, 1954 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Lyle Mays was born on November 27, 1953 in Wausaukee, Wisconsin. They collaborated as co-composers and performers on The First Circle and Minuano, which were released on recordings in, respectively, 1984 and 1987. These arrangements by Scott O’Neil, Resident Conductor of the Colorado Symphony, call for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, guitar, electric bass, and strings. Duration for the two pieces is approximately 16 minutes. This is the first performance by the Colorado Symphony.

Pat Metheny — recipient of 35 Grammy® nominations in twelve different categories and twenty Grammy® Awards (including an unprecedented seven in a row for seven consecutive recordings), three Gold Records, induction into the DownBeat Hall of Fame, performer and composer on 42 recordings that have sold more than twenty million copies worldwide — is one of today’s most innovative, influential and widely recognized jazz guitarists and composers. Metheny was born in 1954 in the Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, began playing trumpet at age eight (his older brother, Mike, is a trumpeter) and switched to guitar four years later. At fifteen, he won a DownBeat scholarship to a one-week jazz camp, during which he met Hungarian-born jazz guitarist Attilla Zoller, who invited him to visit New York to meet guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Ron Carter and other leading jazz artists. When Metheny went home, he played with some of Kansas City’s best jazz musicians until his high school graduation in 1972, when he enrolled at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He taught briefly at Miami before accepting a position as teaching assistant to vibraphonist Gary Burton at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Metheny played in Burton’s band for the next three years and made his recording debut in 1974 with pianist Paul Bley, electric bassist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses. The album, which not only showed his immersion in traditional jazz, blues and swing but also previewed some of his many pioneering ideas about guitar style and technique, instrument development, use of electronics, and fusion of different styles, brought him international recognition. By the late 1970s, he had established the Pat Metheny Group and began a fruitful collaboration with pianist Lyle Mays as performer and creative collaborator, and within a short period he was the top artist on the ECM label and regularly selling out stadiums. Metheny’s remarkable success has continued, with many acclaimed recordings, constant worldwide touring, path-breaking innovations in musical technology, and an unflagging sense of creative adventure.

The First Circle, created in collaboration with Lyle Mays, is the title track from Metheny’s 1984 recording, his last for ECM, which won the 1985 Grammy® Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance.

With its fragmented, riff-like melodies driven by infectious (if complex) rhythms, The First Circle is a modern take on traditional big band swing.

The “minuano” is a cold wind from the southern polar regions that blows across Brazil and Uruguay during periods of high atmospheric pressure, usually following the rains caused by the colliding weather fronts. Metheny, who made three albums with Brazilian vocalist and SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES percussionist Naná Vasconelos in the early 1980s and lived in Brazil for a time several years later, borrowed the term for the title of Minuano, written with Lyle Mays and first recorded in the Pat Metheny Group’s 1987 album Still Life (Talking) on the Geffen label, which won that year’s Grammy® Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance.

o JOSEPH SCHWANTNER (b. 1943) New Morning for the World, “Daybreak of Freedom” for Narrator and Orchestra Joseph Schwantner was born on March 22, 1943 in Chicago. New Morning for the World was composed in 1982 and premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on January 15, 1983 by the Eastman Philharmonia and conductor David Effron, with Willie Stargell, then the star first baseman of the Pittsburgh Pirates, as narrator.

The score calls for four flutes (3rd and 4th doubling on piccolo), two oboes, English horn, three clarinets (3rd doubling bass clarinet), three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, amplified piano, amplified celesta, harp and strings.

Duration is about 28 minutes. Last performance by the Orchestra was on January 22 & 23, 1999, with Marin Alsop conducting.

Joseph Schwantner, one of today’s most frequently performed American composers, was born in Chicago on March 22, 1943. While in high school, he learned to play tuba and guitar, studied music theory and history, and composed several pieces for the student jazz ensemble, one of which, Offbeat, won the National Band Camp Award in 1959. Two years later, he enrolled as a composition student at the American Conservatory in Chicago, where he studied with Bernard Dieter. After graduating from the Conservatory in 1964, Schwantner undertook postgraduate work at Northwestern University with Anthony Donato and Alan Stout, receiving his master’s and doctoral degrees from that institution in 1966 and 1968. Following brief tenures teaching at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington and Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, he joined the faculty of the Eastman School of Music in 1970; from 1999 to 2002, he served as Professor of Composition at Yale. Among his many honors and awards are the first Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Pulitzer Prize (1979, for Aftertones of Infinity), First Prize in the Kennedy Center Friedheim Competition, a Guggenheim Fellowship, election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an honorary doctorate from Baldwin-Wallace College.

Schwantner received the 2012 Grammy® Award for “Best Classical Instrumental Solo Performance” for the Naxos recording of his Percussion Concerto, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in honor of its 150th anniversary, by soloist Christopher Lamb and the Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Joseph Schwantner has been the subject of a documentary produced by WGBH, Boston, which was broadcast nationally on public television.

New Morning for the World, “Daybreak of Freedom” for Narrator and Orchestra was commissioned in 1982 by the Eastman School of Music, and made possible by a grant from PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Schwantner’s composition, in the manner of Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, enfolds passages taken from some of the most stirring published writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Stride Toward Freedom (1958), Behind the Selma March (1965), Letter from Birmingham Jail (1953) and I Have a Dream (1963). The score is dedicated to Dr. King.

o CONNI ELLISOR (b. 1953) VICTOR WOOTEN (b. 1964) The Bass Whisperer, Concerto for Electric Bass and Orchestra Conni Ellisor was born on September 25, 1953 in Wichita, Kansas. Victor Wooten was born on September 11, 1964 in Mountain Home, Idaho. They collaborated on The Bass Whisperer in 2014 on a co-commission from the Colorado Symphony and the Nashville Symphony.

The work was premiered on September 18, 2014 by the Nashville Symphony conducted

by Giancarlo Guerrero; Victor Wooten was the soloist. The score calls for piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Duration is about 30 minutes. This is the first performance by the Colorado Symphony.

Conni Ellisor — composer, arranger and violinist across a gamut of styles from pop and country to film and classical — was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1953 and studied at Juilliard. After completing her formal training, Ellisor was concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic, performed as a substitute musician with the Denver Symphony, and was first violin of the Athena Quartet (now the Colorado Quartet) before becoming the founding concertmaster of the Nashville Chamber Orchestra in 1990, an ensemble she has also served as resident composer; the NCO has premiered eleven of her compositions. Ellisor has since established herself among the selfproclaimed Music City’s leading figures as a composer, arranger, classical violinist and first-call session musician for concerts and recordings by such top artists as Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Barbara Mandrell, Glen Campbell, Chet Atkins, Mel Tillis, Waylon Jennings, Trisha Yearwood, Allison Krauss and Charlie Daniels. She has also become known as a contemporary jazz artist, and recently released her fourth solo album. Ellisor has written original works and arrangements for the London Symphony, Hamburg Radio Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Tucson Symphony, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, John Berry, Emmylou Harris and many others.

Her concert compositions often embrace folk or popular influences: Whiskey Before Breakfast is written for bluegrass band and chamber orchestra; No Place To Get To features English horn and bluegrass guitar as its solo instruments; The Bell Witch, written for Nashville Ballet (and advertised as the first ballet production to use 3-D effects), is based on a humorous tale about a supernatural visitation in Tennessee in the early 1800s.

The Bass Whisperer, a co-commission of the Colorado Symphony and Nashville Symphony, is the first concerto ever written for electric bass. The work is a collaboration of two brilliant American musicians whose talents range from classical to country, from bluegrass to jazz — composer and violinist Conni Ellisor and electric bassist Victor Wooten — who said that their intention was “to SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 7

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES bridge the classical tradition with the pop/jazz electric bass guitar tradition by creating a piece that is true to both. We wanted to stretch the ears and imaginations of these two worlds by putting the electric bass in an arena people don’t usually associate with the instrument.” To begin their partnership, Wooten sent Ellisor what she said were “assorted examples of his phenomenal groove playing, which was good because I could never imagine any of that was even possible!”

She studied existing concertos for string bass or tuba to see how earlier composers had integrated a low solo voice with orchestra, and then, she recalled, “We traded ideas a lot by sending files back and forth, by working together in the same room, and even by Skype when Vic was on tour.”

Wooten suggested the title The Bass Whisperer to echo the idea of the “horse whisperer,” a person who has a special rapport with animals, a term and concept given wide exposure in the 1998 film starring Robert Redford and Scarlett Johansson based on Nicholas Evans’ novel. The affinity that Wooten found in the idea of the “whisperer” offers a succinct summation of his own philosophy of music as he express it through his instrument: “When someone looks deeper into a particular subject or animal and relates to it in a unique way — that is usually enlightening and spiritual.” The Bass Whisperer is therefore something of a self-portrait for Wooten, though he added that “with Conni, I also get the help of someone else to paint that picture and give me another point of view.”

Ellisor said that The Bass Whisperer “borrows from the infrastructure of the classical concerto, including the use of cadenzas, interplay between the soloist and the orchestra, and both lyrical and virtuosic components. As in most contemporary concertos, we took liberties with the traditional form,” and then added that the work also has “a sense of humor — serious music with a playful edge.” The Bass Whisperer opens with a short, slow orchestral introduction and the first entry of the soloist. The basses of the orchestra introduce an important motive and, Ellisor continued, “the strings respond with a variation of what will be the movement’s main melody. This culminates in a full orchestra tutti that sets up Vic’s virtuosic groove. This is a technique I thought particularly suited to an electric bassist of Vic’s prowess, and since a piece marrying these two worlds of music has never been attempted before, we couldn’t resist.” An improvised solo cadenza and the recall of the earlier themes round out the movement.

The electric bass introduces the principal theme of the three-part Andante above a gentle string and percussion background. Expressive and formal balance is provided by a quick, scherzolike episode before the movement closes with a brief cadenza and the return to the mood and music of the opening.

The finale, both a summary and a brilliant close for The Bass Whisperer, opens slowly, with a long melody for soloist and clarinet. Motives from the earlier movements recur throughout and lead to an accompanied cadenza. The slow opening melody returns in an energized form and takes on a playful, motoric quality, after which a recapitulation gathers together themes from all three movements before solo bass and full orchestra join to bring the work to a dynamic close. ©2015 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

PROGRAM 8 SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG