THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF MUSIC Presents THE UNIVERSITY
SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Guilherme Rodrigues, Graduate Associate Conductor
featuring
Eric Ohlsson, English Horn
Christopher Moore, Trumpet
Saturday, October 7, 2023
Seven-thirty in the Evening
Ruby Diamond Concert Hall
Live: wfsu.org/fsumusic
Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy-Overture
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Guilherme Rodrigues, graduate associate conductor
Quiet City Aaron Copland (1900–1990)
Eric Ohlsson, English horn Christopher Moore, trumpet
INTERMISSION
Scheherazade, Op. 35 Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov
I. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship (1844–1908)
II. The Story of the Kalendar Prince
III. The Young Prince and the Young Princess
IV. Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman
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.
Alexander Jiménez is Professor of Conducting, Director of Orchestral Activities, and String Area Coordinator at the Florida State University College of Music. He has recorded on labels such as Naxos, Navona, Neos, Canadian Broadcasting Ovation, and Mark. Jiménez has a strong dedication to contemporary composers and has collaborated with renowned composers like Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Ladisalv Kubík, Anthony Iannaccone, Krzysztof Penderecki, Martin Bresnick, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Harold Schiffman, Louis Andriessen, and Georg Friedrich Haas. As a guest conductor, he has led performances in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, including appearances with prestigious orchestras like the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Brno Philharmonic, and the Israel Netanya Chamber Orchestra. He is equally comfortable conducting professional and educational orchestras, including regional and state honor orchestras in various states, as well as the NAfME AllEastern Honor Orchestra in 2009. Jiménez has also worked with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.
Under Jimenez’s leadership, the orchestral studies program at FSU has grown and gained recognition as one of the top programs in the country. The University Symphony Orchestra has been featured at conferences such as the College Orchestra Directors National Conference and the American String Teachers Association National Conference. The University Philharmonia has performed at the Southeast Conference of the Music Educators National Conference and the College Orchestra Directors Association National Conference in 2023. The national PBS broadcast of Zwilich’s Peanuts Gallery® featuring the University Symphony Orchestra was recognized as an outstanding performance in 2007. In 2023, the University Symphony Orchestra embarked on a tour, delivering acclaimed performances at the Steinmetz Concert Hall of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando, as well as in Santiago and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
Jimenez’s former students can be found worldwide, conducting in academic institutions, youth orchestras, and professional orchestras, including notable organizations such as the National Tour of Les Miserables, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Opera, the Merola Opera Program of the San Francisco Opera, The Yerevan State Opera, Appalachian State University, Indiana University, the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, Ithaca College, Whitman College, and Carthage College.
In addition to his conducting work, Jiménez is also a busy adjudicator. He serves as an international ambassador for the European Festival of Music for Young People in Belgium and frequently adjudicates and provides clinics for Festival Disney. At FSU, he has received University Teaching Awards in 2006 & 2018, The Transformation Through Teaching Award, and the Guardian of the Flame Award, recognizing outstanding mentorship. At the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan, Jiménez is a principal conductor of the Festival Orchestra, Blue Lake Camerata, and serves as artistic director. Jiménez also serves as conductor of the Tallahassee Ballet, has appeared on numerous occasions with the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, and was the music director of the Tallahassee Youth Orchestras from 2000-2017.
Grammy Award-winner Christopher Moore has taught trumpet at FSU since 2003. Prior to his appointment at FSU, Moore was Associate Professor of Trumpet at the University of Kansas, where for seven years he directed the trumpet studio, conducted the trumpet ensemble and performed as a member of the Kansas Brass Quintet. Moore also served as Assistant Professor of Music at Morningside College from 1989 to 1993, and from 1994 to 1996 was a full-time member of the Philadelphia professional brass quintet, The Chestnut Brass Company, recording 4 CDs with that group and winning the Grammy Award in their field in 2000 with Hornsmoke, a CD that featured the brass chamber music of Peter Schickele.
Moore holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music, a Master of Music in Performance from the University of New Mexico, and a Bachelor of Music in Performance from Florida State University. He has won numerous solo competitions, including top prize at the ITG competition and at state and regional MTNA competitions. Moore has also been a finalist at the Ellsworth Smith International Trumpet Competition as well as the MTNA National Finals.
Moore has presented clinics at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, the National Association of Wind and Percussion Instructors (NACWPI) National Convention, and has performed at the National MENC and International Trumpet Guild Conferences. He is past president of NACWPI and is currently on the Executive Board of the National Trumpet Competition. Moore is a Selmer Artist and can be heard on his first solo CD, Trumpeting the Stone, on the Mark Masters label as well as in the most recent edition of Sigmund Hering’s Progressive Etudes by Carl Fischer Publications. Most recently, Carl Fischer Publications released Student’s Essential Studies for Trumpet, A Sequential Collection of 42 Standard Etudes for the Advancing Student, compiled and edited by Moore.
Eric Ohlsson is the Charles O. DeLaney Professor of Oboe in the College of Music at Florida State University, a post he has held since 1986.
Ohlsson performs regularly as principal oboist of the Tallahassee Symphony, the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra, and in the summer months, with the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, where he has been a member of the Artist Faculty since 1994. He was formerly principal oboe of the Naples Philharmonic (1986-96), the Columbus Symphony (1975-80), the Augusta Symphony (198286), and the South Carolina Philharmonic (1980-86). Additionally, he has played in the same capacity as a guest performer with groups such as the Charlotte Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, and the Jacksonville Symphony.
Ohlsson has many engagements to his credit as a recitalist and chamber musician the US, Canada, Europe, and South America, and has given solo and chamber recitals at venues such as Weill Recital Hall (NYC), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), the Brevard Music Festival (NC), with the CityMusic Chamber Orchestra (Cleveland, OH), at the Casa Rui Barbosa (Rio), at the Philharmonic Center for the Arts (Naples, FL), and at the Grand Castle of Vianden (Luxembourg), to name a few. Ohlsson has been a featured soloist with the Naples Philharmonic, Tallahassee Symphony, Augusta Symphony, Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra, City Music Cleveland, Brevard Music Center Festival Orchestra and Brevard Sinfonia, South Carolina Philharmonic, South Carolina Chamber Orchestra, Florida State Chamber Orchestra, and the University Orchestras of Florida State University and The Ohio State University.
As a pedagogue, Ohlsson has taught hundreds of students at FSU, Brevard Music Festival, and at the Vianden International Music Festival. Many of these students now hold important positions as university professors, symphonic performers, and educators across the country. He has also taught at the University of South Carolina, the South Carolina Governors School of the Arts, Otterbein College, and Denison University.
His degrees are from The Ohio State University (DMA and MM) and James Madison University (BME). His most influential teachers are John Mack, William Baker, James Caldwell, Ben Wright and Travis Cox.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet: Fantasy Overture
Even a cursory review of the lives of most of the significant composers of the nineteenth century–from Berlioz to Verdi–shows them to have been fascinated with the timeless art of Shakespeare. In fact, it is a major trait of Romanticism as an intellectual movement to have plumbed the depths of his work for archetypes of the human condition. And it is telling that generations of young composers took personal initiative to school themselves so. Tchaikovsky is representative, and his concert overture, Romeo and Juliet, is typical of the many compositions of the times that drew inspiration from the playwright.
Composed just as Tchaikovsky turned twenty-nine years old, it’s a relatively early work. The composer had composed his first programmatic work, Fatom (fate)—he soon tore up the original score—only the year before, and the first version of his first symphony three years previous. So, almost all of the orchestral music that has established his durable popularity was yet to come. In fact, his beloved fifth and sixth symphonies, as well as The Nutcracker, lay roughly two decades in the future. Yet, this work has taken its place with the masterpieces of his maturity. That being said, Romeo and Juliet did not take that place without a somewhat checkered history.
Three versions of it evolved, as the composer labored to create the successful, final iteration. The première (1870) of his first take was not successful at all, owing to numerous technical and conceptual problems, and Tchaikovsky made extensive changes, most of which are
in the final version. Finally, about ten years later, the composer made a few more changes, and that is the version we all hear today. Throughout the initial composition of Romeo and Juliet Tchaikovsky was guided in great detail by Mily Balakirev, the informal leader of the famed group of Russian nationalistic composers known as the “mighty handful,” the others being Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Balakirev and Tchaikovsky (by then, living in Moscow) had established an informal relationship earlier, and Romeo and Juliet was the result of a kind of collaboration between the two men. Balakirev had suggested the subject matter, and even the rough sonata form, which associated the introduction with Friar Laurence, the first theme with the conflict between the Capulets and the Montagues, and the second theme with the lovers. Balakirev made significant suggestions for revisions to the composition, and evidently Tchaikovsky took several of them to heart–even dedicating the work to him. On the other hand, most scholars seem to agree that the result is still totally Tchaikovsky’s composition, and that Balakirev cannot legitimately be considered the younger man’s mentor.
The “Friar Laurence” introduction is a solemn evocation of the church through skillful writing for low woodwinds that masterfully imitates a small reed organ. Little by little Tchaikovsky draws the ominous mood out, teasing us with intimations of the conflict to come, in the manner with which so much of the drama in his later ballets is spun out. Eventually, the main theme explodes as the Capulets and the Montagues battle, and, after a bit of teasing, the familiar “love theme” is heard, colored poignantly by the English horn. Now that all three protagonists have been introduced, Tchaikovsky builds the conflict with a vengeful return to the battle, replete with palpable swordplay from the percussion section. You’ll find the same pictorial talent displayed years later in the attack of the mice in The Nutcracker. But love triumphs—if only for a bit—and the theme of the lovers soars out in the quintessential orchestration so familiar from a thousand cultural uses: lush strings and “heart-throbbing” horns. Conflict resumes, this time with sinister bits of Friar Laurence’s theme, and finally the death of the star-crossed lovers is clear. The timpani taps out a dirge as an epilogue, with an intimation of the pair’s transfiguration in the rest of the orchestra. Dramatic orchestral hammer-strokes seal their fate and conclude the tragedy.
— © 2015 William E. RunyanCopland: Quiet City
This lovely work by Copland began life as incidental music for a play of the same name by Irwin Shaw in 1940. Sadly, the play lasted all of two performances, but Copland later rearranged the music into this ten-minute work for trumpet, English horn, and strings. This version premiered on 28 January, 1941 in New York City.
Copland himself describes the work as “an attempt to mirror the troubled main character of Irwin Shaw’s play.” The play relates the story of a man who abandons his Jewish ancestry and poetic aspirations to pursue material success. He changes his name, marries a socialite, and becomes the CEO of a department store. With all this success, he cannot break with his past, which is continually recalled into his mind by the sound of his brother playing the trumpet. The English horn, according to Copland, was added to provide color to the texture and to give
the trumpet player opportunities to rest. About the play’s demise, Copland said, “Quiet City seems to have become a musical entity, superseding the original reason for its composition.”
–Alexander JiménezRimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35
Nicolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s career stood in the very center of Russian musical life of the second half of the nineteenth century. His first career was in the Russian navy, but he soon garnered success in music. Known primarily for his fifteen operas, he was instrumental in the rising importance of that genre in Russia. In addition to his fame and influence as a composer, he was also head of the conservatory in St. Petersburg – his statue dominates the little park directly across the street from the conservatory and the famed Mariinsky Theatre. In the West, of course, we know him primarily for his symphonic overtures and the tone poem, Scheherazade. His ability as an orchestrator and teacher of orchestration is one of his many legacies – Igor Stravinsky was one of his students. In fact, much of the marvelous musical atmosphere that audiences adore in Stravinsky’s early ballets, the Rite of Spring, Firebird, and Petrouchka, lead directly back to Rimsky-Korsakov and the orchestral style of his operas. And it is of no small interest that there are sections in Debussy’s La Mer and Ravel’s Daphnis et Cloé that seem lifted right out of Scheherazade. A fascination with the exotic, with non-Western subject matter was a prime characteristic of Romanticism, and Russian music of the late nineteenth century is exemplary of this predilection.
Scheherazade, completed in 1888, is a musical depiction of the well-known story, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. The eponymous heroine must entertain her bridegroom, the murderous sultan, with continuous intriguing tales in order to forestall the arrival of the executioner who had beheaded a thousand previous wives the morning after their successive marriages. While Rimsky-Korsakov more or less disclaimed his well-known reputation for his evocative musical orientalism, his abilities therein certainly created a triumph of exotic atmosphere in Scheherazade. The four movements – following their titles, which RimskyKorsakov later withdrew – depict specific stories of Scheherazade, the Sultana. We can follow loosely the narrative, for Scheherazade is represented by the elaborate, highly figured violin solo that constantly weaves in and out of the texture as the stories unfold. The composer makes ample use of other solo instruments throughout the suite, combined with a rich, colorful orchestral texture that carries it all. The last movement ties all the tales and stories together by juxtaposing the principal themes from the preceding movements in a smashing climax.
— © 2015 William E. RunyanUniversity Symphony Orchestra Personnel
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Guilherme Rodrigues, Graduate Associate Conductor
Violin I
Masayoshi Arakawa‡
MaryKatherine Whiteley‡‡
Catherine Yara
Barbara Santiago
Nicole Vega
Jean-Luc Cataquet
Stacey Sharpe
Angel Andres
Keat Zhen Cheong
Rosalee Walsh
Maria Mendez
Darrian Lee
Tommaso Bruno
Thomas Roggio
Violin II
Gabriela da Silva Fogo*
Gabriel Salinas-Guzman
Anna Kirkland
Harshul Mulpuru
Madelyne Garnot
Michael Mesa
Maya Johnson
Hope Welsh
Callan Downing
Alyssa Donall
Joan Prokopowicz
Ana Uribe
Viola
Jeremy Hill*
Hunter Sanchez
Marina Akamatsu
Ahdi Horton
Keara Henre
Luiz Barrionuevo
Margot Elder
Joshua Singletary
Abigail Felde
Caroline Bruns
Cello
Thu Vo*
Marina Burguete-Diago
Mitchell George
Emma Hoster
Angelese Pepper
Clare Bevensee
Liam Sabo
Luke Ponko
Katie Jo Gelasco
Bass
Maximilian Levesque*
Christian Maldonado
Lucas Kornegay
Kent Rivera
Alex Lunday
Alejandro Bermudez
Megan Hipp
Harp
Isabelle Scott*
Flute
Brenna Wiinanen*
Rachael Lawson*
Steven Fireman
Lindsey Kovach
Piccolo
Emma Cranford
Oboe
Luis Gallo*
Nic Kanipe*
Elijah Barrios
Andrew Swift
Clarinet
Travis Irizarry*
Anne Glerum*
Trey Burke
Bassoon
Robert Alexander*
Carson Long
Horn
Brianna Nay*
Tarre Nelson*
Leslie Bell
Jordan Perkins
Tommy Langston
Trumpet
Benjamin Dubbert*
Jeremy Perkins*
Trombone
Connor Altagen*
Justin Hamann
Bass Trombone
Grant Keel
Tuba
Chris Bloom*
Timpani and Percussion
Landon Holladay*
Kylan Bigby
Jackson Kowalczyk
Ryan Boehme
Miranda Hughes
Darci Wright
Orchestra Manager
Heather Simpson
Orchestra Stage Manager
Alejandro Bermudez
Orchestra Librarians
Will Whitehead
Guilherme Rodrigues
Administrative Assistant
Marina Akamatsu
‡ Concertmaster
‡‡ Associate Concertmaster
* Principal
2023–2024 CONCERT SEASON
