48 minute read
Transformational Support
The DSO is grateful to the donors who have made extraordinary endowment investments through the DSO Impact Campaign or multi-year, comprehensive gifts to support general operations, capital improvements, or special programs.
FOUNDING FAMILIES
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BENEFACTORS
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS IN SOUTHWEST DETROIT
On February 9, the DSO held a free community concert at St. Hedwig Catholic Church in Southwest Detroit. It was an inspired performance by our world class orchestra in an exquisite venue, but that wasn’t the only thing that made the evening special. This event was a hallmark moment for an effort that has been ongoing since the development of the DSO’s Social Progress Initiative in 2017. The initiative affirms a commitment to continuous dialogue and action that leverages the power of music to improve the quality of life for the people of Detroit and beyond. This aspirational vision has since coalesced into specific actions—like the St. Hedwig concert—that comprise the DSO’s Detroit Neighborhood Initiative.
The Neighborhood Initiative’s core is a commitment to community partnership-building and listening. This work began in 2020 with community listening sessions in the neighborhoods of Chandler Park and Southwest and has since grown to involve more than 100 organizations. The goal of meeting residents, listening, and learning about each neighborhood’s vibrant culture is to build sustainable relationships and co-create celebratory musical experiences with the people who live, work, and grow in each neighborhood.
Each element of the St. Hedwig Musical Experience was responsive to the DSO’s growing understanding of and respect for the incredible community of Southwest Detroit, an area where more than half of residents identify as Hispanic or Latinx. The evening’s conductor, Nashville Symphony Principal Pops Conductor Enrico Lopez-Yañez, addressed the audience in both Spanish and English, offering insight into each piece with humor, grace, and wit. The program included sacred and popular favorites by Latin American composers Ernesto Lecuona, Zequinha Abreu, Vinicio Meza, and Ary Barroso, plus works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Georges Bizet. Pelea de gallos, a classic piece by Juan S. Garrido, came alive with audience participation and a traditional performance by dancers from Ballet Folklorico Moyocoyani Izel. At the end of the program, the DSO presented local music education partners with some of the first instruments collected from the fall instrument drive that was part of the orchestra’s Detroit Harmony program. The effort brought us one step closer to our goal of putting an instrument in the hand of every K-12 student in the city of Detroit who wants to learn to play.
Nearly 300 people attended the St. Hedwig event—more than one-third who saw a DSO concert for the first time. The DSO will continue to bring these musical experiences to communities across Detroit, with the next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative concert slated to take place at Greater Grace Temple in Northwest Detroit on April 30 at 7 p.m.
The Detroit Neighborhood Initiative is supported by General Motors and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The city of Detroit’s Office of Arts, Culture, and Entrepreneurship partnered with the DSO for the February 9 event and the performance was sponsored by General Motors.
A COMMUNITY-SU JADERPPORTED ORCHESTRA JADER BIGNAMINI, Music Director BIGNAMINI MUSIC DIRECTOR
Music Directorship endowed by the Kresge Foundation
JEFF TYZIK
Principal Pops Conductor TERENCE BLANCHARD
Fred A. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair LEONARD SLATKIN
Music Director Laureate NEEME JÄRVI
Music Director Emeritus
PVS CLASSICAL SERIES
Title Sponsor:
THIBAUDET: RAVEL’S PIANO CONCERTO IN G
Friday, May 20, 2022 at 10:45 a.m. Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 8 p.m. Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 3 p.m. at Orchestra Hall
JADER BIGNAMINI, conductor JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET, piano WEI YU, cello ERIC NOWLIN, viola
Carlos Simon Fate Now Conquers (b. 1990)
Maurice Ravel Concerto in G major for Piano and Orchestra (1875 - 1937) I. Allegramente II. Adagio assai III. Presto Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano
Intermission
Richard Strauss Don Quixote, Op. 35 (1864 - 1949) I. Introduction II. Theme and variations III. Finale Wei Yu, cello Eric Nowlin, viola
Saturday’s performance will be webcast via our exclusive Live From Orchestra Hall series, presented by Ford Motor Company Fund and made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Fate Now Conquers
Composed 2020 | Premiered 2020
CARLOS SIMON
B. 1986, Atlanta, Georgia Scored for flute, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. (Approx. 5 minutes)
Carlos Simon is a native of Atlanta, Georgia whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Simon is the Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is a recipient of the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence.
With his music being described as “perfectly engaging and propulsive” (The Philadelphia Enquirer), Simon’s latest album, My Ancestor’s Gift, was released on the Navona Records label in April 2018. Described as an “overall driving force” (Review Graveyard) and featured on Apple Music’s “Albums to Watch”, My Ancestor’s Gift incorporates spoken word and historic recordings to craft a multifaceted program of musical works that are inspired as much by the past as they are the present.
As a part of the Sundance Institute, Simon was named as a Sundance Composer Fellow in 2018, which was held at the historic Skywalker Ranch. His string quartet, Elegy, honoring the lives of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner was recently performed at the Kennedy Center for the Mason Bates JFK Jukebox Series. With support from the US Embassy in Tokyo and US/Japan Foundation, Simon traveled with the Asia/ America New Music Institute (AANMI) on a two-week tour of Japan in 2018 performing concerts in some of the most sacred temples and concert spaces in Japan including Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. He also earned degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. Additionally, he studied in Baden, Austria at the Hollywood Music Workshop with Conrad Pope and at New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop.
Of Fate Now Conquers, Simon wrote the following:
“This piece was inspired by a journal entry from Ludwig van Beethoven’s notebook written in 1815: ‘Iliad. The Twenty-Second Book: But Fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share In my renown; that life is left to every noble spirit, And that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.’ Using the beautifully fluid harmonic structure of the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, I have composed musical gestures that are representative of the unpredictable ways of fate. Jolting stabs, coupled with an agitated groove with every persona. Frenzied arpeggios in the strings that morph into an ambiguous cloud of free-flowing running passages depicts the uncertainty of life that hoovers over us.
We know that Beethoven strived to overcome many obstacles in his life and documented his aspirations to prevail, despite his ailments. Whatever the specific reason for including this particularly profound passage from the Iliad, in the end, it seems that Beethoven relinquished to fate. Fate now conquers.”
This performance marks the DSO premiere of Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers.
Concerto in G major for Piano and Orchestra
Composed 1929-1931 | Premiered 1932
MAURICE RAVEL
B. March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France D. December 28, 1937, Paris, France Scored for solo piano, flute, piccolo, oboe, English horn, clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. (Approx. 21 minutes)
The years-long physical decline of Maurice Ravel was one of the most tragic in the annals of music history. The composer suffered from a brain disease that left him lucid yet helpless, unable to write, speak, or play an instrument: full of ideas, yet no way to communicate them. But in 1929, Ravel was healthy, quite popular (particularly for his ballet Boléro), and financially stable following an American concert tour. In good spirits, he set out to create a long-postponed piano concerto—or two, rather, as the G major and D major (left hand) concertos were composed concurrently.
The G major concerto, which he intended to perform himself, would be a showcase of both his pianistic and compositional talents. Some of the material came from works abandoned over the previous decade or so, and other parts were strongly influenced by an American export to Europe: Le Jaz Hot, the frantic swing of New Orleans. Overall, it is a superbly constructed juxtaposition of American jazz, Iberian exoticism, and the modern piano sound of the 1920s. Though he sometimes struggled to blend the traditional with the popular, Ravel considered his piano concerto to be both his best and most characteristic work.
But the dreadful illness that would eventually kill him had already set into Ravel as the composition was nearing completion. By 1931, when the piece was finished and ready for its debut, Ravel was no longer able to play the piano. He settled for conducting the premiere, with his friend Marguerite Long as the soloist.
The DSO most recently performed Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major in February 2018, conducted by Leonard Slatkin and featuring pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. The DSO first performed the piece in January 1933, conducted by Victor Kolar and featuring pianist Edward Bredshall.
Don Quixote, Op. 35
Composed 1897 | Premiered 1898
RICHARD STRAUSS
B. June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany D. September 8, 1949, GarmischPartenkirchen, Germany Scored for solo cello, solo viola, 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets (1 doubling on E-flat clarinet), bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. (Approx. 40 minutes)
Richard Strauss is not the only composer to take inspiration from the seriously comic story of Don Quixote, but there can be little question that the “Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character,” as his orchestral treatment of the tale is subtitled, is the most elaborate and richly detailed attempt to portray in music the adventures of Miguel de Cervantes’s romantically deranged hero.
Strauss wrote Don Quixote in 1897, which places it in the same period as his other famous tone poems: Till Eulenspiegel, Death and Transfiguration, Don Juan, and Ein Heldenleben. However, Don Quixote is formally quite unlike those works. Indeed, it is unlike any other composition one might think of. In rendering into music the outline and details of a literary subject, it is a tone poem. Its considerable length, variety of themes, and industrious development of them point to a symphonic conception, but the composition is structured not as a symphony. Instead of the usual three or four movements, it is a set of variations on a group of several melodies. It also features a solo part for cello, as in a concerto, and the conspicuous roles for several other instruments—notably viola, violin, and bass clarinet—point to the concerto grosso form, in which several players from the orchestra form a featured ensemble.
A prologue, marked “Introduction,” presents several themes associated with the major characters in Cervantes’s tale. We meet Don Quixote, filled with dreams of knightly glory, in the opening measures. His theme, an ascending flourish followed by a slow descent (how symbolically appropriate!), appears principally in the solo cello during the course of the work. Dulcinea, the fair lady of Don Quixote’s heart, is represented by a romantic melody for the oboe. Then comes Sancho Panza, the Don’s simple companion, portrayed by the bass clarinet and tuba. These three themes are ingeniously transformed and combined in the variations that follow, which can be heard as a succession of musical tableaux depicting episodes from the story.
Briefly to outline the sequence of events: After the Introduction, Don Quixote sets out with Sancho Panza as a knight-errant. Inspired by thoughts of Dulcinea, he charges into battle against fierce giants who are, in fact, windmills. Next, the Don attacks an “army” of sheep, whose bleating is sounded by the orchestral brass. An interlude follows, during which the knight contemplates the ideals of chivalry and Sancho Panza voices more practical concerns.
Following a misadventure in which Don Quixote attacks a band of pilgrims (their chant is heard in the muted brass), he is inspired by a vision of Dulcinea. Sancho Panza tries to mock the lady, provoking the wrath of his master. The most graphic episode of the piece then depicts the Don as he imagines himself flying through the air on a magic horse. An ill-fated boat ride leads to combat with a pair of monks (portrayed by two bassoons), whom the Don imagines to be magicians. Finally, Don Quixote is brought to his senses, and in an epilogue gains a brief moment of lucidity before dying in peace. — Paul Schiavo
The DSO most recently performed Strauss’s Don Quixote in October 2009, conducted by Leonard Slatkin and featuring Robert deMaine (cello) and Alexander Mishnaevski (viola). The DSO first performed the piece in January 1932, conducted by Victor Kolar and featuring Georges Miquelle (cello) and Valbert P. Coffey (viola).
PROFILES
For Jader Bignamini bio, see page 6
JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET
For more than three decades, Jean-Yves Thibaudet has performed worldwide, recorded more than 50 albums, and built a reputation as one of today’s finest pianists.
Thibaudet has a lifelong passion for education and fostering young musical talent. He is the first-ever Artist-in-Residence at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, where he makes his home. In 2017, the school announced the JeanYves Thibaudet Scholarships, funded by members of Colburn’s donor community, to provide aid for Music Academy students, whom Thibaudet will select for the merit-based awards, regardless of their instrument choice.
Thibaudet records exclusively for Decca; his extensive catalogue has received two Grammy nominations, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the Diapason d’Or, the Choc du Monde de la Musique, the Edison Prize, and Gramophone awards. His most recent album, 2021’s Carte Blanche, features a collection of deeply personal solo piano pieces never before recorded by the pianist. Other highlights from Thibaudet’s catalogue include a 2017 recording of Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop, with whom he previously recorded Gershwin, featuring big band jazz orchestrations of Rhapsody in Blue, the Concerto in F, and the original version of Variations on I Got Rhythm. In 2016, on
the 150th anniversary of Erik Satie’s birth, Decca released a box set of Satie’s complete solo piano music performed by Thibaudet—one of the foremost champions of the composer’s works. On his Grammy-nominated recording of SaintSaëns, Piano Concerti Nos. 2 & 5, released in 2007, he is joined by Charles Dutoit and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Thibaudet’s Aria–Opera Without Words, which was released the same year, features aria transcriptions, some of which are Thibaudet’s own. His other recordings include the jazz albums Reflections on Duke: Jean-Yves Thibaudet Plays the Music of Duke Ellington and Conversations With Bill Evans.
WEI YU
Wei Yu was appointed Principal Cello of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2014. He made his subscription debut performing Dvorak’s Cello Concerto and has frequently appeared as soloist with the DSO since. Before joining the DSO, Yu was a member of the New York Philharmonic for seven seasons.
Yu is a prizewinner at the Hudson Valley Philharmonic String, Holland American Music Society Cello, Music Teacher National Association (MTNA National Collegiate Strings), Canada’s National Music Festival, Calgary’s Kiwanis Festival, and China’s National Cello competitions.
A successful instructor, Yu serves on faculty of Northwestern University Bienen School of Music. He has given cello masterclasses at universities and festivals in the United States, Canada, Poland, and China. During the summer, Yu teaches at the Morningside Music Bridge International Music Festival in Calgary, Canada; Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra, and the Center Stage Strings Summer Institute at the University of Michigan.
Born in Shanghai, China, Yu began studying the cello at age 4 and made his concerto debut at age 11, performing Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. He received his B.M. from North Park University in Chicago and M.M. from the Juilliard School. His principal teachers include Mei-Juan Liu, John Kadz, Hans Jørgen Jensen, and David Soyer.
ERIC NOWLIN
Violist Eric Nowlin has performed extensively throughout the United States and abroad. Past accomplishments include receiving second prize in the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Competition, first prize in the Irving Klein International String Competition, first prize in the Hellam Young Artists Competition, grand prize in the Naftzger Young Artists Competition, and being named winner of the Juilliard Viola Concerto Competition. Nowlin was previously the Associate Principal viola in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and has served as guest principal viola with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Metropolis Ensemble, and Cleveland’s Citymusic, as well as substitute viola with the New York Philharmonic.
Nowlin is Assistant Professor of Viola at Michigan State University and has previously been Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto, as well as Instructor of Viola at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, as a scholarship student of Samuel Rhodes. Nowlin plays on a 1757 J.B. Guadagnini viola on generous loan from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, as well as a viola from 1910 made by Giovanni Pistucci, and a viola made by Sam Zygmuntowicz in 2019.
A COMMUNITY-SUP JADERPORTED ORCHESTRAJADER BIGNAMINI, Music Director BIGNAMINI MUSIC DIRECTOR
Music Directorship endowed by the Kresge Foundation
JEFF TYZIK
Principal Pops Conductor TERENCE BLANCHARD
Fred A. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair LEONARD SLATKIN
Music Director Laureate NEEME JÄRVI
Music Director Emeritus
PVS CLASSICAL SERIES
Title Sponsor:
SAINT-GEORGES & MOZART 39 Thursday, May 26, 2022 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, May 27, 2022 at 10:45 a.m. Saturday, May 28, 2022 at 8 p.m. at Orchestra Hall
XIAN ZHANG, conductor KAREN GOMYO, violin
Elizabeth Ogonek In Silence (b. 1989) Karen Gomyo, violin
Joseph Boulogne, Violin Concerto No.1 in C major, Op.5 Chevalier de Saint-Georges Allegro Andante moderato Rondeau Karen Gomyo, violin
Intermission
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K. 543 (1756 - 1791) I. Adagio - Allegro II. Andante con moto III. Menuetto: Allegretto IV. Allegro
Saturday’s performance will be webcast via our exclusive Live From Orchestra Hall series, presented by Ford Motor Company Fund and made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
In Silence
Composed 2016-2017 | Premiered 2017
ELIZABETH OGONEK
B. 1989, New York, NY Scored for solo violin, percussion, keyboard, and strings. (Approx. 25 minutes)
Elizabeth Ogonek, whose music has been described as “shimmering,” “dramatic,” and “painstakingly crafted” by the Chicago Tribune, is an American composer living and working in New York. Upcoming projects for the 2021-22 season include a new chamber work for the 75th anniversary season of the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East, and a new orchestral work that has been co-commissioned by the BBC Proms and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Ogonek has worked closely with the London Symphony Orchestra, for whom she has written two orchestral works. Ogonek’s work has been recognized by the ASCAP Foundation, the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Ohio Arts Council, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A former Beinecke and Marshall Scholar, she holds degrees from Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music (BM, 2009), the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music (MM, 2012), and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (DMus, 2017). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition at Oberlin Conservatory where she has taught since 2015.
In 2015, Ogonek was appointed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as the Mead Composer-in-Residence, a position which she held alongside Samuel Adams until 2018. During her tenure with the CSO, she was commissioned to write three new works, including In Silence (after Biber), a chamber violin concerto featuring violinist Benjamin Beilman, which was premiered under the direction of Elim Chan. This piece draws influence from musical elements found in sonatas by Bohemian-Austrian Baroque composer Heinrich Biber, believed to be written around 1676 but left unpublished until 1905. These sonatas are often known as The Mystery Sonatas, inspired by the mysteries surrounding the Rosary devotion in the Catholic Church. These works are strikingly inventive and far beyond their time in harmonies and unorthodox tunings. There are 15 sonatas in total in this set, concluding with a final passacaglia for solo violin serving as the 16th movement.
In Silence explores sonorities and experimentation with tuning modeled after Biber’s innovative compositional style and techniques, involving different ways of thinking about resonance, chords, and adjacent pitches. This work for solo violin and eight players embodies Ogonek’s fascination with using existing musical material as “found object” and a point of creative departure to build upon, in this case being the works of Heinrich Biber. Each of Biber’s 15 sonatas and 16th movement are written in a different tuning, a technique that Ogonek utilizes and expands upon.
There is an intelligence and compelling concentration present within this piece. Influenced by the silence she experienced as a child through attending multiple services and repeated homilies on weekends when her mother was a church musician, the title In Silence represents the flights of the imagination that came from this silence, with the material existing in this piece serving to transform the flight of imagination. Ogonek would attend numerous church masses each weekend where she would sit “in silence” with the choir, giving her brilliant mind an opportunity to run wild. Of the piece, Lawrence A. Johnson of Chicago Classical Review wrote, “This piece is strikingly individual and uniquely compelling. It manages to be both comfortingly traditional yet edgy and disquieting. In Silence is a violin concerto for our time–soloistic, expressive and often lyrical, yet tense, restless and unsettled in a way that feels very modern.”
This performance marks the DSO premiere of Elizabeth Ogonek’s In Silence.
Violin Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 5
JOSEPH BOLOGNE, CHEVALIER DE SAINTGEORGES
B. December 25, 1745, Baillif, Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe D. June 10, 1799, Paris, France Scored for solo violin, 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings. (Approx. 22 minutes)
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de SaintGeorges, was a highly accomplished composer and violinist known for his virtuosic solo repertoire, symphonic masterpieces, and leading many renowned orchestras in Paris throughout the mid-18th century. Bologne possessed outstanding talent and excelled at every activity he pursued from a very young age. Although he was incredibly well-accomplished, having commissioned and premiered six symphonies by Joseph Haydn and possessing an extensive list of musical accomplishments, he is seldom mentioned in music history.
He was the son of Anne (known as Nanon), an enslaved woman of Senegalese origin, and Georges de Bologne Saint-Georges, a wealthy plantation owner and Nanon’s enslaver. Despite Nanon being the enslaved servant to his wife Elisabeth, Georges de Bologne acknowledged paternity of Joseph and gave him his surname, part of which—“de Saint-Georges”—was named after his plantations in Guadeloupe.
Bologne graduated from the Royal Academy in 1766 and was named an officer in the court of King Louis XV shortly after, bestowing him the title of “Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges.” This title came with an abundance of connections, which Bologne used to pursue his musical career and begin playing violin in the Concert des Amateurs in 1769, a renowned orchestra consisting of the finest musicians from Paris and beyond. He eventually became the director of this ensemble and organized concerts featuring himself as the soloist. Bologne was a sought-after teacher and counted Marie Antoinette among his former students.
Bologne’s musical career continued to flourish, and he went on to compose several string quartets, concertos, symphonies, and operas. His name was considered to be the obvious choice to take over as the next director of the Paris Opéra by aristocrats in 1776, but Bologne withdrew his application upon learning about a petition made by several leading ladies in the opera, who claimed that they could not submit to his orders because of his race.
The rise of the French Revolution posed moral challenges to Joseph Bologne, since the majority of his life consisted of being a member of the aristocracy. However, Bologne ultimately decided to side with the Revolution and serve as a military leader for a legion of soldiers of color, later known as the “Légion Saint-Georges.” Bologne fought alongside General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the father of renowned Black novelist Alexandre Dumas. He came out of the Revolution as heroic, but was soon denounced and imprisoned due to rising paranoia from the war. The majority of his music was lost during the Revolution, and what had survived was soon forgotten. Fortunately, within the last few decades, the world has begun to once again remember, appreciate, and celebrate his work.
Chevalier de Saint-Georges’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 5 was composed in 1775 in four movements. This piece was written for performance with the Concert des Amateurs, a renowned orchestra consisting of the region’s best noble and professional orchestral musicians, and for whom Bologne served as the musical director beginning in 1773. As a virtuosic and accomplished violinist, Bologne premiered all his violin concertos with the Concert des Amateurs featuring himself as the soloist. Between the years of 1773 and 1785, Bologne composed around 12 violin concertos, all incredibly virtuosic in nature and highly underperformed. Many of these works were
historically forgotten until the late 20th century, when they were republished. The original manuscript of Bologne’s Violin Concerto No. 1 is preserved in the library of the Paris Conservatoire.
This performance marks the DSO premiere of Chevalier de Saint-Georges’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in C major.
Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K. 543
Composed 1788 | Premiered 1788
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
B. January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria D. December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria Scored for flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. (Approx. 25 minutes)
When Mozart began writing symphonies at the age of eight, the form was in its infancy and was not at all the exalted musical expression it later became. He was not necessarily an innovator, but over the years his genius turned the once humble form into one of great subtlety, variety, and expressive power, and the symphony rose from an insignificant concert opener to become the focal point of orchestral programs.
Music history contains many stories of composers who could not find an audience and who perished virtually penniless, and Mozart is unfortunately included among these. The summer of 1788 was particularly difficult. The composer was earning a small stipend in the employ of Emperor Joseph II, but was seriously in arrears financially, and had to write a heartbreakingly desperate letter to his close friend Michael Puchberg, begging for assistance. Puchberg did what he could, but it was not enough, and for the rest of his tragically short life Mozart would never again know financial stability. Mozart used the summer months to make some practical attempts at earning money, such as writing educational works and easy pieces that might be more likely to sell. But in the midst of this depressing time, Mozart achieved one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of music: composing three major symphonies in the space of just six weeks. The speed at which he composed these masterpieces is amazing enough, but just as incredible is the variety between the three, each one with a character and mood distinctly its own.
Although it is not performed as often as Nos. 40 and 41, the Symphony No. 39 has become one of Mozart’s best-loved symphonies, receiving high praise from scholars and musicians alike for more than 200 years. Certainly, the symphony breathes a spirit of joy and positive spirits, and the scoring of the symphony is a departure from Mozart’s norm. The key here is E-flat major, which for Mozart implied warmth, solidity, and even solemnity. The dramatic opening gradually gives way to a very lyrical and graceful first movement, whose two main themes are set apart by their contrasting character and their instrumentation: the first featuring the strings, the second highlighting the rich texture of the newly used clarinets. Very often, the third movement in a Classical symphony is the least striking, used sometimes to just make a bridge between the more imposing music of the slow movement and finale—but not here. In some respects, this may be the most interesting of the four movements, as it is a rather boisterous minuet with the trio section containing an endearing, lilting dance tune. The symphony then concludes with a brilliant, lighthearted, and even humorous finale, built on a single theme, as many of Haydn’s finales were. Once again, this is not typical of Mozart’s last movements, which are often full of melodic ideas.
The DSO most recently performed Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in January 2017, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. The DSO first performed the work in March 1915, conducted by Weston Gales.
XIAN ZHANG
Xian Zhang is currently in her sixth season as Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. She also holds the positions of Principal Guest Conductor of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Conductor Emeritus of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi following a hugely successful period from 2009-2016 as their Music Director. European engagements this season and the next include Philharmonia Orchestra (Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde), La Verdi in Milan, Spanish National Orchestra, the orchestra of Komische Oper in Berlin, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. In recent seasons, she has conducted the Orchestre National de Lyon at the Paris Philharmonie (Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique), and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France as part of La Folle Journée festival in Nantes. Upcoming US engagements include returns to San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Detroit, Minnesota, Montreal, NAC Ottawa, and Toronto symphony orchestras. Zhang will make her debut with The Metropolitan Opera in 2024. She has recently conducted Tosca for Cincinnati Opera. Previous opera engagements have included Nabucco with Welsh National Opera, Otello with Savonlinna Festival, La Traviata for Den Norske Opera (Oslo), La bohème for English National Opera, and La forza del destino with Washington National Opera. Zhang has previously served as Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales and was the first female conductor to hold a titled role with a BBC orchestra. In 2002, she won first prize in the Maazel-Vilar Conductor’s Competition. She was appointed New York Philharmonic’s Assistant Conductor in 2002, subsequently becoming their Associate Conductor and the first holder of the Arturo Toscanini Chair.
KAREN GOMYO
Violinist Karen Gomyo has captivated audiences in North America, Europe, and Australasia with her musical integrity, technical assurance, and compelling interpretations.
Gomyo has worked with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, and the Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Houston, Vancouver, Indianapolis, and Oregon symphonies, among others. Recent and upcoming appearances in North America include a tour with the Toronto Symphony to Montreal and Ottawa, and re-engagements with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and the St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, Toronto, Milwaukee and New Jersey symphonies.
Strongly committed to contemporary works, in May 2018, Gomyo performed the world premiere of Samuel Adams’s Chamber Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen to great critical acclaim. The work was written for her and commissioned by the CSO to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its MusicNow series. In April 2022, she premiered a double concerto written for her and trumpet player Tine Thing Helsmeth by composer Xi Wang with the Dallas Symphony.
Gomyo is deeply interested in the Nuevo Tango music of Astor Piazzolla, and collaborates with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist and tango legend Pablo Ziegler. She also performs regularly with the Finnish guitarist Ismo Eskelinen.
Born in Tokyo, Gomyo studied in Montreal and in New York at The Juilliard School with famed violin pedagogue Dorothy DeLay. She plays on the “Aurora, exFoulis” Stradivarius violin of 1703 that was bought for her exclusive use by a private sponsor.
A COMMUNITY-SUP JADERPORTED ORCHESTRAJADER BIGNAMINI, Music Director BIGNAMINI MUSIC DIRECTOR
Music Directorship endowed by the Kresge Foundation
JEFF TYZIK
Principal Pops Conductor TERENCE BLANCHARD
Fred A. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair LEONARD SLATKIN
Music Director Laureate NEEME JÄRVI
Music Director Emeritus
TITLE SPONSOR:
THE DOO WOP PROJECT
ENRICO LOPEZ-YAÑEZ, conductor
Vocalists: DOMINIC NOLFI CHARL BROWN DWAYNE COOPER RUSSELL FISCHER JOHN MICHAEL DIAS
Drums: JOE BERGAMINI
Music Director/ Piano: BRENT FREDERICK
Program to be announced from the stage.
ENRICO LOPEZ-YAÑEZ
Enrico Lopez-Yañez is the Principal Pops Conductor of the Nashville Symphony where he leads the Symphony’s pops series and family series. Lopez-Yañez is quickly establishing himself as one of the nation’s leading conductors of popular music and becoming known for his unique style of audience engagement. Since working with the Nashville Symphony, Lopez-Yañez has conducted concerts with a broad spectrum of artists including Patti LaBelle, Kenny Loggins, Richard Marx, Toby Keith, Trisha Yearwood, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Hanson, and more.
This season, Lopez-Yañez will collaborate with artists including Itzhak Perlman, Nas, Leslie Odom Jr., Stewart Copeland of The Police, Ben Folds, Kenny G, and Jennifer Nettles. Lopez-Yañez will appear with the Cinncinatti Pops, Dallas Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Pacific Symphony San Diego Symphony, and will make return appearances with the Florida Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, and Sarasota Symphony, among others.
As Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Symphonica Productions, LLC, LopezYañez curates and leads programs designed to cultivate new audiences. An enthusiastic proponent of innovating the concert experience, his exciting education, classical, and pops concerts are performed by orchestras across the United States.
THE DOO WOP PROJECT
The Doo Wop Project (DWP) begins at the beginning, tracing the inception of group singing developed by inner city African Americans performing tight harmonies on a street corner, to the biggest hits on the radio today. In their epic shows DWP takes audiences on a journey from foundational tunes of groups like The Crests, The Belmonts, and The Flamingos through their influences on the sounds of Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, and The Four Seasons all the way to DooWopified versions of modern musicians like Michael Jackson, Jason Mraz, and Maroon 5. Featuring stars of Broadway’s smash hits Jersey Boys and Motown: The Musical, the Doo Wop Project brings unparalleled authenticity of sound and vocal excellence to recreate—and in some cases entirely reimagine—some of the greatest music in American pop and rock history!
DOMINIC NOLFI
Dominic Nolfi has recently performed on Broadway in Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale - The Musical, directed by Robert DeNiro and Jerry Zaks. As an Original Cast member of A Bronx Tale — The Musical, Motown: The Musical (Grammy Award-nominated) and Jersey Boys (Grammy Award for Best Cast Album, Tony Award for Best Musical), he can be heard on all three soundtracks. Nolfi also performed in the world premiere productions of A Bronx Tale and Jersey Boys at the Paper Mill Playhouse and the La Jolla Playhouse. Dom was born and raised in San Francisco where he studied youth acting at the acclaimed American Conservatory Theatre. He studied Voice at the San Francisco Conservatory and attended the Boston Conservatory on scholarship where he graduated with a BFA in Theater.
CHARL BROWN
Charl Brown was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Smokey Robinson in Motown: The Musical on Broadway and he reprised this role opening London’s West End production in 2016. He is also featured on the Grammy Award-nominated Original Broadway Cast recording.
Credits include Jersey Boys Broadway & Las Vegas, Sister Act Broadway, “The Who’s Tommy,” Denver Center, Kennedy Center “Ever After,” Johnny Baseball, Dreamgirls, Ragtime Performance Riverside, Six Degrees of Separation at Long Beach Playhouse, Jesus Christ Superstar at Westwood Theater, A Chorus Line at Starlight Theater, and Star Wars Trilogy in 30 Minutes at Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Television appearances include Evil, Madam Secretary, and America’s Got
Talent, Macy’s 85th and 87th Thanksgiving Day Parade, The 63rd Annual Tony Awards, and A Capitol 4th 2013. Brown is a proud graduate of the University of Southern California School of Dramatic Arts where he currently sits on the advisory board for the inaugural BFA in Musical Theater Class.
DWAYNE COOPER
Dwayne (The Bass) Cooper is from Florence, SC and currently lives in New York City. He first began singing with a Christian A capella group called, “The Cunningham Singers” where he learned how to sing in tight harmonies. Often referred to as a modern-day Sammy Davis Jr. meets Barry White, he is what the industry calls a “triple threat” and has performed in the Broadway Casts of Motown: The Musical and Hairspray and the NY Revival/Off-Broadway production of Smokey Joe’s Cafe, and has done several national tours. As a songwriter, he has charted on Billboard’s Top Ten Dance Chart and as a sketch comedy writer, his YouTube videos have been seen by over 1 million people. Cooper’s television and film credits include Law and Order, Difficult People, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and RuPaul’s Drag Race.
RUSSELL FISCHER
Russell Fischer was cast in the Broadway company of Jersey Boys on his 22nd birthday, marking his Broadway debut. Fischer starred in the second national tour of Big: The Musical. His latest NYC credit was in Baby Fat, Act 1: A Rock Opera at LaMama Experimental Theater Club. Regional credits include Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Music Man at Chautauqua Opera, the American premiere of Children of Eden at Papermill Playhouse, and most recently, the Atlanta Musical Theatre Festival premiere of The Collins Boy. Fischer was a featured vocalist on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and in the HBO documentary, The Bronx, USA. He has appeared on the live broadcasts of the 2015 Belmont Stakes, the 2009 Tony Awards, and several spots for TV Land’s 60 Second Sitcoms.
JOHN MICHAEL DIAS
John Michael Dias recently appeared on Broadway as Neil Sedaka in the Tony and Grammy Award-winning hit Beautiful: The Carol King Musical. He originated the same role for the Beautiful First National Tour. Originally from Tiverton, RI, Dias earned a BFA in musical theatre from Boston Conservatory. Dias gained a nationwide following starring as Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons in the smash hit Jersey Boys, playing the role on Broadway, as well as in the First National Tour, Vegas, and Chicago companies. Concert appearances include Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Neil Sedaka’s Greatest Hits! and Get Happy (a celebration of songs made famous by Judy Garland) With friend and collaborator Jacqueline Carnahan. Dias’s solo album, Write This Way, which features intimate takes on Broadway and pop favorites like “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” and “New York State of Mind” is available on iTunes.
JOE BERGAMINI
Joe Bergamini maintains a diverse career as a drumming performer and educator. Enjoying various styles of playing, he is well-known for his progressive rock drumming in the bands Happy the Man and 4Front. Currently, Bergamini tours internationally as the drummer for The Doo-Wop Project, and he has worked extensively on Broadway. In 2018, he held the drum chair for the Broadway production of Gettin’ the Band Back Together, and has also performed in School of Rock: The Musical; Beautiful: The Carole King Musical; Hamilton; Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812; Movin’ Out; Jersey Boys; Rock of Ages; In the Heights; SpiderMan: Turn Off the Dark; Jesus Christ Superstar (2012 revival); Bring It On; Million Dollar Quartet; Pippin (2013 revival), and The Lion King. He has also appeared on the first national tours of Movin’ Out, Jersey Boys, and Beautiful, and with the Philly Pops and the Detroit, Jacksonville, Seattle, Indianapolis, and Vancouver symphony orchestras.
A COMMUNITY-SUP JADERPORTED ORCHESTRAJADER BIGNAMINI, Music Director BIGNAMINI MUSIC DIRECTOR
Music Directorship endowed by the Kresge Foundation
JEFF TYZIK
Principal Pops Conductor TERENCE BLANCHARD
Fred A. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair LEONARD SLATKIN
Music Director Laureate NEEME JÄRVI
Music Director Emeritus
TITLE SPONSOR:
SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS Friday, June 3, 2022 at 10:45 a.m. & 8 p.m.
Saturday, June 4, 2022 at 8 p.m. Sunday, June 5, 2022 at 3 p.m. at Orchestra Hall
DAMON GUPTON, conductor
Richard A. Whiting Hooray for Hollywood
arr. John WIlliams
John Williams Suite from Jaws Theme from Jaws
Howard Hanson Symphony No. 2, Op. 30, “Romantic” I. Adagio Hans Zimmer Music from Gladiator
arr. John Wasson
Alan Silvestri End Title from Predator
ed. Victor Pesavento
Alan Silvestri Forrest Gump Suite
arr. Calvin Custer
Alan Menken Aladdin Orchestral Suite
arr. Danny Troob
Intermission
Elmer Bernstein The Magnificent Seven
ed. Patrick Russ
Michael Giacchino “Married Life” from Up
James Horner Music from Apollo 13
arr. John Moss
Lalo Schifrin Theme from Mission Impossible
arr. Calvin Custer
Klaus Badelt Selections from Pirates of the Caribbean: arr. Ted Ricketts The Curse of the Black Pearl The Medallion Calls Blood Ritual Walk the Plank The Black Pearl
John Williams Star Wars Suite for Orchestra Main Title
Saturday’s performance will be webcast via our exclusive Live From Orchestra Hall series, presented by Ford Motor Company Fund and made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
DAMON GUPTON
Damon Gupton is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Cincinnati Pops. A native of Detroit, he served as American Conducting Fellow of the Houston Symphony and held the post of assistant conductor of the Kansas City Symphony. His conducting appearances include the San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Toledo Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Florida Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, NHK Orchestra of Tokyo, Orquesta Filarmonica de UNAM, Michigan Youth Arts Festival Honors Orchestra, and Sphinx Symphony as part of the 12th annual Sphinx Competition. He led the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra on two national tours with performances at Carnegie Hall, and has served as conductor of the Van Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition. Musical collaborations include work with Marcus Miller, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Common, Leslie Odom Jr., Byron Stripling, Tony DeSare, Capathia Jenkins, The Midtown Men, Kenn Hicks, and Jamie Cullum.
He has been featured as narrator in many venues including the Cincinnati Pops, Colorado Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Grand Teton Music Festival, Grant Park Music Festival, Houston Symphony, Memphis Symphony, and on the the Videmus recording Fare Ye Well. He also narrated a concert version of Beethoven’s Fidelio with David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Gupton received his Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Michigan, where he delivered the commencement address to the School of Music, Theatre & Dance in 2015. He studied conducting with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin at the Aspen Music Festival and with Leonard Slatkin at the National Conducting Institute in Washington, D.C. Awards include the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize and The Aspen Conducting Prize. He is the inaugural recipient of the Emerging Artist Award from the University of Michigan School of Music and Alumni Society and is a winner of the Third International Eduardo Mata Conducting Competition.
An accomplished actor, Gupton is a graduate of the Juilliard School Drama Division. He has had roles in television, film, and on stage, most recently starring with Samuel L. Jackson in the Apple TV limited series The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Other series regular roles include Super Pumped, Black Lightning, Criminal Minds, The Player, The Divide, Prime Suspect, and Deadline as well as guest or recurring appearances on The Comey Rule, Dirty John, Goliath, Bates Motel, The Newsroom, Suits, Empire, Rake starring Greg Kinnear, Law & Order, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Conviction, The Unusuals, Third Watch, Hack, and Drift. He appeared in Damien Chazelle’s Academy Award-winning films Whiplash and LaLa Land, as well as This is Forty, The Last Airbender, Helen at Risk, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, Unfaithful, and The Loretta Claiborne Story.
Stage roles include the Broadway production of Bruce Norris’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning Clybourne Park, the Ovation and LA Drama Critic’s Circle award winning Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom directed by Phylicia Rashad (Mark Taper Forum), Superior Donuts (The Geffen), Christina Anderson’s Inked Baby (Playwrights Horizons), Othello (Heart of America Shakespeare Festival), The Story (Public Theater), Meg’s New Friend (The Production Company), Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter (Arena Stage), True History and Real Adventures (The Vineyard Theatre), and Treason (Perry Street Theatre), as well as the title role of Academy Award-winner Eric Simonson’s Carter’s Way at Kansas City Repertory Theater. He received an AUDELCO nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Clybourne Park.
A COMMUNITY-SUPPORTED ORCHESTRA
JADER BIGNAMINI MUSIC DIRECTOR JADER BIGNAMINI, Music Director
Music Directorship endowed by the Kresge Foundation
JEFF TYZIK
Principal Pops Conductor TERENCE BLANCHARD
Fred A. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair LEONARD SLATKIN
Music Director Laureate NEEME JÄRVI
Music Director Emeritus
PVS CLASSICAL SERIES
Title Sponsor:
GIL SHAHAM RETURNS
Sunday, June 12, 2022 at 3 p.m. at Orchestra Hall
JADER BIGNAMINI, conductor GIL SHAHAM, violin
Samuel Barber Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 14 (1910 - 1981) I. Allegro II. Andante III. Presto in moto perpetuo Gil Shaham, violin
Intermission
Wynton Marsalis Blues Symphony (b. 1961) Born in Hope Swimming in Sorrow Reconstruction Rag Southwestern Shakedown Big City Breaks Danzon y Mambo, Choro y Samba Dialog in Democracy
Saturday’s performance will be webcast via our exclusive Live From Orchestra Hall series, presented by Ford Motor Company Fund and made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!
Composed 2022 | Premiered 2022 DSO co-commission
WYNTON MARSALIS
B. October 18, 1961, New Orleans, Louisiana Scored for 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, and percussion. (Approx. 2 minutes)
Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed musician, composer, bandleader, and educator, and a leading advocate of American culture. He has recorded more than 70 jazz and classical albums that have garnered him nine Grammy Awards. In 1983, Marsalis became the first and only artist to win both classical and jazz Grammy Awards in the same year; he repeated this feat in 1984. In 1997, he became the first jazz artist to be awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in Music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields, which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has created and performed an expansive range of music from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras, and tap dance to ballet, expanding the vocabulary for jazz and classical music with a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers. Always swinging, Marsalis blows his trumpet with a clear tone, a depth of emotion, and a unique, virtuosic style derived from an encyclopedic range of trumpet techniques. When you hear Marsalis play, you’re hearing life being played out through music. Marsalis’s core beliefs and foundation for living are based on the principals of jazz. He promotes individual creativity (improvisation), collective cooperation (swing), gratitude and good manners (sophistication), and faces adversity with persistent optimism (the blues). With his evolved humanity and through his selfless work, Marsalis has elevated the quality of human engagement for individuals, social networks, and cultural institutions throughout the world.
Marsalis’s Herald, Holler and Hallelujah! is a fanfare for brass and percussion. This piece was co-commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the symphony orchestras of New Jersey, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Milwaukee, and Germany’s WDR Symphonieorchester.
This performance marks the DSO’s premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 14
Composed 1939 | Premiered 1941
SAMUEL BARBER
B. March 9, 1910, West Chester, PA D. Jan 23, 1981, New York, NY Scored for solo violin, 2 flutes (1 doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, percussion, keyboard, and strings. (Approx. 25 minutes)
Samuel Barber began writing his sole violin concerto while traveling in Switzerland in 1939 and completed it in the Pocono Mountains of his native Pennsylvania after leaving Europe with the approach of World War II. The piece was commissioned by industrialist Samuel Simeon Fels with the intention that it would be premiered by Fels’s ward, a young violinist named Iso Briselli. But when Briselli excitedly showed the piece to his teacher Albert Meiff—a close friend of Fels’s—Meiff was unimpressed, and wrote to Fels, imploring him to ask Barber if Meiff could rewrite parts of the concerto. Barber did not budge, but ultimately Briselli backed away from the piece, and it was instead premiered by Albert Spalding. The lengthy four-way correspondence involving Barber, Fels, Briselli, and Meiff is a juicy bit of music-world drama, but the concerto it concerns is ultimately conservative and fastidiously orchestrated, like
much of Barber’s best work.
The first movement is in a standard sonata form, opening with a transparent, long-spun solo violin theme. When this has run its course, the clarinet takes up a puckish second theme, then the violin returns with a rhythmically active theme, marked by numerous bounding-bow passages. The first two themes are rigorously developed before the first theme returns in a major orchestral climax, signaling the recapitulation.
A smoothly rising oboe melody at the beginning of the slow movement imparts a pastoral mood, and as this gradually fades away it is joined by a horn theme. Meanwhile, the solo violin dominates the freely designed central section of the movement. The soloist then takes up the oboe theme and the horn theme, bringing the movement to a close.
The perpetual-motion finale is not only a tour de force for the solo violin, but for the orchestra as well. It is a fleet, lightfooted movement cast in a rondo form, challenging for all the players onstage. —Carl R. Cunningham
The DSO most recently performed Barber’s Violin Concerto in February 2019, conducted by Leonard Slatkin and featuring violinist and current DSO Acting Concertmaster Kimberly Kaloyanides Kennedy. The DSO first performed the piece in January 1965, conducted by Sixten Ehrling and featuring violinist Jaime Laredo.
Blues Symphony
Composed 2009 | Premiered 2009
WYNTON MARSALIS
B. October 18, 1961, New Orleans, Louisiana Scored for 3 flutes (2 doubling on piccolo), 3 oboes (1 doubling on English horn), 3 clarinets (1 doubling on E-flat clarinet, 1 doubling on bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (1 doubling on contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. (Approx. 62 minutes)
Now regarded as one of Wynton Marsalis’s most innovative and colossal works, the Blues Symphony, his second symphonic work, was many years in the making. Marsalis conceptualized the piece in 2008 and worked with music supervisor Jonathan Kelly for more than a decade on its development, culminating in May 2021 with the release of a recording by The Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Cristian Maˇcelaru.
Blues Symphony is a triumphant ode to the power of the blues and the scope of America’s musical heritage. With a blend of influences from ragtime to habanera, the piece takes listeners on a sonic journey through America’s revolutionary era, the early beginnings of jazz in New Orleans, and a big city soundscape that serves as a nod to the Great Migration.
Of Blues Symphony, Wynton Marsalis wrote the following:
“The Blues Symphony is a sevenmovement work that gives a symphonic identity to the form and feeling of the blues. It utilizes regional and stylistic particulars of the idiom’s language and form to convey the basic point of view of the blues as music: “Life hands you hard times.”
When you cry, holler, and shout to release those hard times; when you tease, cajole, and play to diminish them; and when you dance and find a common community through groove, better times will be found. The more profound the pain, the deeper the groove.
This piece is intended to further the legacy of Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, James P. Johnson, Leonard Bernstein, John Lewis, Gunther Schuller, and others who were determined to add the innovations of jazz to the vocabulary of the symphonic orchestra. I believe there is an organic and real connection between all Western traditions regardless of instrumentation, and that the symphonic orchestra can and will swing, play the blues, feature melodic improvisation, and execute the more virtuosic aspects of jazz and American vernacular music with absolute authenticity.”
This performance marks the DSO premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s Blues Symphony.
For Jader Bignamini bio, see page 6
GIL SHAHAM
Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award-winner, also named Musical America’s “Instrumentalist of the Year,” is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.
Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J.S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin. In the coming seasons, in addition to championing these solo works, he will join his long-time duo partner, pianist Akira Eguchi, in recitals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.
He appears regularly with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and San Francisco Symphony, as well as multi-year residencies with the Orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart, and Singapore. With orchestra, Shaham continues his exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s,” including the works of Barber, Bartok, Berg, Korngold, Prokofiev, and others.
Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammy Awards, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. His CDs include 1930s Violin Concertos, Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar’s Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies, The Butterfly Lovers, and more. His most recent recording in the series 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2, including Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto and Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2, was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Shaham was born in ChampaignUrbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of seven, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic, and the following year, took the first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition. He then became a scholarship student at Juilliard and studied at Columbia University.
Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America. He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius, and lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.
