20221008_University Symphony Orchestra

THE

STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MUSIC

Presents THE UNIVERSITY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor

Sebastian Jiménez, Assistant Conductor

featuring Justin Benavidez, Tuba

Saturday, October 8, 2022

Seven-thirty in the Evening Ruby Diamond Concert Hall

Supporting the

Strum for String Orchestra Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)

Sebastian Jiménez, conductor

Concerto for Bass Tuba Ralph Vaughan Williams

Prelude: Allegro moderato (1872–1958)

Romanza: Andante sostenuto

Finale - Rondo alla tedesca: Allegro

Justin Benavidez, tuba

INTERMISSION

Symphony No. 1 Jean Sibelius

Andante, ma non troppo – Allegro energico (1865–1957) Andante (ma non troppo lento)

Scherzo: Allegro

Finale (Quasi una fantasia)

Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting while performers are playing. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Please turn off cell phones and all other electronic devices. Please refrain from putting feet on seats and seat backs. Children who become disruptive should be taken out of the performance hall so they do not disturb the musicians and other audience members. Health Reminder: The Florida Board of Governors and Florida State University expect masks to be worn by all individuals in all FSU facilities. Thank you for your cooperation.

MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR

Alexander Jiménez serves as Professor of Conducting, Director of Orchestral Activities, and String Area Coordinator at the Florida State University College of Music. Prior to his appointment at FSU in 2000, Jiménez served on the faculties of San Francisco State University and Palm Beach Atlantic University. Under his direction, the FSU orchestral studies program has expanded and been recognized as one of the leading orchestral studies programs in the country. Dr. Jiménez has recorded on the Naxos, Neos, Canadian Broadcasting Ovation, and Mark labels. Deeply committed to music by living composers, Dr. Jiménez has had fruitful and long-term collaborations with such eminent composers as Ellen Taafe Zwilich and the late Ladisalv Kubík, as well as working with Anthony Iannaccone, Krzysztof Penderecki, Martin Bresnick, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Harold Schiffman, Louis Andriessen, and Georg Friedrich Haas. The University Symphony Orchestra has appeared as a featured orchestra for the College Orchestra Directors National Conference and the American String Teachers Association National Conference, and the University Philharmonia has performed at the Southeast Conference of the Music Educators National Conference (now the National Association for Music Education). The national PBS broadcast of Zwilich’s Peanuts’ Gallery® featuring the University Symphony Orchestra was named outstanding performance of 2007 by the National Educational Television Association.

Active as a guest conductor and clinician, Jiménez has conducted extensively in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, including with the Brno Philharmonic (Czech Republic) and the Israel Netanya Chamber Orchestra. In 2022, Dr. Jiménez led the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in a recording of works by Anthony Iannaccone. Deeply devoted to music education, he serves as international ambassador for the European Festival of Music for Young People in Belgium and serves as Festival Orchestra Director and Artistic Consultant for the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. Dr. Jiménez has been the recipient of University Teaching Awards in 2006 and 2018, The Transformation Through Teaching Award, and the Guardian of the Flame Award which is given to an outstanding faculty mentor. Dr. Jiménez is a past president of the College Orchestra Directors Association and served as music director of the Tallahassee Youth Orchestras from 20002017.

FEATURED SOLOIST

Justin Benavidez is the professor of tuba and euphonium at the Florida State University College of Music and performs as principal tuba of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. In the summer, he is on faculty at the Round Top Music Festival in Texas.

With his playing noted for its “tremendous virtuosity and stylistic versatility,” Benavidez has performed in venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He has been featured numerous times on APM’s Performance Today radio program. His debut solo album, Emblems, won Silver Medals in the Classical Album and Instrumental Solo Album categories of the Global Music Awards. The International Tuba Euphonium Association Journal described it as “an impressive and highly entertaining record” on which Benavidez “shreds with enthusiasm, exuberance, and precision.”

As an orchestral musician, Benavidez has appeared as guest principal with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. He was previously the principal tuba of the Syracuse Symphoria Orchestra and the Syracuse Opera.

Benavidez has been a prizewinner of multiple international solo competitions. He is the only tubist to have been awarded both the New Horizons Fellowship and the Orchestral Fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival where he was a student for six summers, held the principal tuba chair in the festival orchestra, and was the winner of the prestigious Aspen Music Festival concerto competition. Benavidez was the distinguished recipient of the Horace H. Rackham Merit Fellowship for doctoral studies at the University of Michigan and was presented with the UM School of Music, Theatre & Dance Paul Boylan Alumni Award for outstanding accomplishments and significant contributions in the field of music.

As one of today’s leading educators, Benavidez is frequently invited to present master classes and perform as a guest recitalist at preeminent universities, workshops, and conferences. Notable invitations have included the Eastman School of Music, Indiana University, the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, the Bern University of the Arts, the Lyon Conservatory of Music, the Paris Conservatory of Music, the United States Army Band Tuba Euphonium Workshop, and multiple International Tuba Euphonium Conferences.

Benavidez’s students have distinguished themselves through numerous accomplishments and awards, including prizes at international competitions, fellowships to summer music festivals, assistantships for graduate study, performances with professional ensembles, and teaching positions at secondary and collegiate institutions.

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM

Montgomery – Strum for String Orchestra

Strum is the culminating result of several versions of a string quintet I wrote in 2006. It was originally written for the Providence String Quartet and guests of Community MusicWorks Players, then arranged for string quartet in 2008 with several small revisions. In 2012 the piece underwent its final revisions with a rewrite of both the introduction and the ending for the Catalyst Quartet in a performance celebrating the 15th annual Sphinx Competition.

Originally conceived for the formation of a cello quintet, the voicing is often spread wide over the ensemble, giving the music an expansive quality of sound. Within Strum I utilized texture motives, layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinati that string together to form a bed of sound for melodies to weave in and out. The strumming pizzicato serves as a texture motive and the primary driving rhythmic underpinning of the piece. Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement, the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration.

– Jessie Montgomery Vaughan Williams – Tuba Concerto in F minor

Note: The University Orchestras are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the eminent British composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Born October 12, 1872, in the Cotswold village of Down Ampney, Ralph Vaughan Williams was arguably the most significant English composer of the first half of the twentieth century and one of the great symphonists of the 20th century. Deeply influential in the artistic movement known as the New English Renaissance, Vaughan Williams was the guiding light for a generation of English composers by leading the resurgence of English art music on the international stage.

The Tuba Concerto in F Minor was written in 1954 for the principal tubist of the London Symphony Orchestra, Philip Catelinet, for the LSO Jubilee Concert conducted by Sir John Barbirolli on June 13, 1954. The concerto was ground-breaking for an instrument not typically associated with solo concertos. According to Mr. Catelinet:

“As a musician, I really couldn’t appreciate the idea of the tuba being the center of attention as soloist on a concerto at an orchestra concert. The tuba was too often connected by the public with what was humorous and ludicrous to be considered seriously a possibility on a concert platform.”

The first concerto written for the tuba, it is now a staple of the tuba repertoire. The fact that such an important musical icon such as Vaughan Williams composed the work gave it immediate legitimacy and a lasting legacy. The concerto shows off the instrument’s virtuosic and lyrical abilities, makes demands of both its extreme high and low registers, and it is in no way “humorous and ludicrous.”

The concerto is scored for solo tuba, two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, percussion, and strings. The first movement, titled “Prelude” and marked Allegro moderato, begins with a jaunty rhythmic off-beat march reminiscent of earlier Vaughan Williams works for band. The cadenza at the end of the movement exploits the extreme registers of the tuba that then concludes together with the orchestra in repose. The second movement, “Romanza,” demonstrates the tuba’s capacity for tender, lyrical music. The opening melody is very much in Vaughan Williams’s folk-song style. The Finale is a rondo “all tedesca” (in the German style). The liner notes of the first recording describes the movement saying that “the tuba romps amid the dancing strings, like Falstaff among the fairies in Windsor forest.” The movement ends in a virtuosic cadenza followed by an exuberant ending with the orchestra.

– Alexander Jiménez

Sibelius – Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39

In 1899 the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius completed his first symphony. Although he was heading for ‘national treasure’ status, Sibelius was still struggling to find his voice in the shadow of Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky and Anton Bruckner, who died in 1893 and 1896, respectively. At that time, Finland was under the heel of Russia, with free speech and the right of assembly suppressed. Before composing this symphony, Sibelius had immersed himself in the Kalevala and other Finnish epics with patriotic zeal. It was the beginning of a journey that led to his becoming the undisputed musical poet of his country and a figurehead for its emerging national identity.

The first movement’s haunting introductory clarinet solo sets a mood rather than provide material for later development. More significant is the quietly sustained accompanying drum roll. This is the first of many long-held notes that permeate the symphony. When the main Allegro energico gets under way, these pedal-points provide a sense of stability underpinning an often-agitated surface. The Allegro energico offers two broad and vigorous melodies. Conventionally, one might expect them to play a commanding role later in the movement. Such expectation is thrown off-course by a short dancing phrase on two flutes. Listen out for this because it forms the basis of the meat of the movement, one might say. As in the first movement of his Second Symphony, Sibelius offers his audience apparently loosely related musical fragments. It is only when it has drawn to a close that listeners grasp the function of these disparate components. Such awareness, probably subconscious rather than analytical, creates a lasting sense of completion and aesthetic satisfaction.

A broad melody opens the slow movement. Once aired, a second theme is entrusted to the bassoons, soon adopted by other woodwind. Further melodies appear, interspersed with those heard already. These lead to a climax and a stormy return of the opening material. As in the first movement, listeners may strive to pin down a recognizable structure. If an overall musical plan is elusive, the movement as a whole, and the wistful ending in particular, reveal unmistakable fingerprints of the mature Sibelius. A note of sad defiance lingers while the music fades to nothing. No wonder the first Finnish audiences connected these moving sonorities to their longing for national expression.

Others have pointed out that the third movement combines the power of Ludwig van Beethoven with the harmonic fingerprints of Anton Bruckner. Like his two predecessors, Sibelius stretched the conventions of scherzo form to their limits while retaining and exploiting two contrasting ideas in a masterly manner. For those familiar with his Second Symphony, this scherzo, like the first two movements, might appear as a test-bed for the later work. In both symphonies, a sense of frantic scampering in the scherzo section lies alongside almost static ruminations of a mysterious and evocative trio section.

The last movement begins with a restatement of the introductory clarinet melody from the first, leading to a new lyrical and impassioned theme. The ‘trade-mark’ orchestral textures, richly layered and dense yet never turgid or labored, signal a unique voice that has been associated with its creator and with Finland itself ever since. A fugato section follows, over which the woodwind and brass fling out splinters of the Allegro molto. These dominate the final chapter of the symphony, eventually emerging as an anthem-like peroration, creating a moving sense of Finnish patriotism coupled to religious devotion. Finally, three terse chords from brass and woodwind give place to two quiet pizzicato chords on the strings: an abrupt and mysterious conclusion – a question mark rather than a full stop, perhaps?

– ©William Salaman

Violin I

MaryKatherine Brown† Erika Sciascia

Gabriela Fogo Masayoshi Arakawa Thomas Roggio Angel Andres Darrian Lee Maria Mendez

Alyssa Orantes Stacey Sharpe Barbara Santiago

Violin II

Tomasso Bruno* Rosalee Walsh Miranda Rojas Alessando Capitano Tyler Tran Michael Mesa Mackenzie Nies Rebecca Masalles

Viola

Jeremy Hill* Luiz Barrionuevo Caroline Bruns

Ahdiayah Horton Francesca Tavano Hunter Sanchez Marina Akamatsu Jacob Grice Joshua Singletary Anna Laldin Margot Elder

University Symphony Orchestra Personnel

Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor Sebastian Jiménez, Associate Conductor

Cello

Mitchelll George* Marina Buruete-Diego Jenna Bachmann Arabella Schwerin Samantha Schroeder Angelese Pepper Katie Jo Gelasco Grace Lege Bass Nicholas Smentkowski* Megan Baker Chase Rowe Gene Waldron III Alejandro Bermudez Payton Liebe Alexander Gay Harp Isabelle Scott Flute

Crisha Joyner* Freddie Powell* Pamela Bereuter Rachael Lawson Oboe

Noel Prokop-Seaton* Luis Gallo Nic Kanipe*

Clarinet Trey Burke* Connor Croasmun* Maggie Watts Alex Vaquerizo

Bassoon

Robert Alexander* Josie Whiteis Ethan Lippert* Horn

Leslie Bell Brianna Nay* Tarre Nelson*

JP Collins Cory Kirby

Trumpet

Vito Bell Angela King* Jeremy Perkins*

Trombone Hunter McGuary* Will Roberts Justin Hamann (bass)

Tuba Chris Bloom Percussion

Zach Harris Jackson Kowalczyk Darci Wright

Equipment Manager Alejandro Bermudez

Orchestra Manager

Madeline Hoth Administrative Assistant Amanda Frampton

Librarians Nathan Haines Sebastian Jiménez

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