The Red Violin Program (Salmon Arm Performance) by Kamloops Symphony

THE RED VIOLIN The Nexus at First

Sunday February 11, 2024 • 3:00pm Salmon Arm Series

KamloopsSymphony.com 250.372.5000

Dear Friends of the KSO, We love to celebrate the power of music to inspire, transform, and connect us: even across time and space. This concert showcases the virtuosity of one of Canada’s greatest violinists—Lara St. John —who will perform Corigliano’s music from the film The Red Violin, which follows the travels of a mysterious, red-coloured instrument across the centuries and on different continents. How many people would have heard that instrument perform? How many people would share that unique experience? Tonight, we will share in this experience together as a community of music lovers. Alongside Corigliano’s work, we will also hear the brilliant Carmen Suite by Rodion Shchedrin, a modern reinterpretation of the music from the forever-loved opera by Bizet, featuring the passionate and tragic love story of Carmen and Don José that has inspired audiences and artists alike for generations. And finally, we will share in Serbian-born composer Milica Paranosic’s Roma Suite: a tribute to the rich and diverse culture of the Roma, who have contributed to the musical heritage of many countries especially through the Balkans. These moments remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. That we are connected to the legacies of those that have come before us, to those that will come after us, and to those that we walk alongside. This is why I am inspired today by the work of the musicians of the KSO on the Sagebrush stage, by the students of the KSO Music School at Kelson Hall, and by you, our dedicated audience. One cannot exist without the others, and concerts like these remind us why. We hope that this concert will fill your hearts with overwhelming passion and joy and remind you that the universal language of music transcends all boundaries and barriers. Thank you for joining us and enjoy the show! With heartfelt gratitude,

Christopher Young Executive Director KSO & KSO Music School

GOVERNMENT GRANTS

FOUNDATIONS BC Interior Community Foundation Kamloops Symphony Foundation Shuswap Community Foundation SOCAN Foundation

The Kamloops Symphony wishes to acknowledge that this concert is taking place on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory within the traditional lands of the Secwépemc Nation.

Kamloops Symphony Society BOARD OF DIRECTORS

John McDonald, ICD.D • President Steve Powrie • Vice President Tyler Klymchuk • Treasurer Lisa Fuller Christy Gauley Lucille Gnanasihamany Gabriele Klein Daleen Millard Sydney Takahashi Simon Walter

HONOURARY LIFE MEMBERS

ADMINISTRATION Executive Director

Christopher Young

Office Administrator

Sue Adams

Operations Coordinator

Sam Bregoliss

Marketing Coordinator

Ryan Noakes

Production Assistant

Adrien Fillion

Bonnie Jetsen Art Hooper

Proud Member of Orchestras Canada, the national association for Canadian orchestras

MUSIC DIRECTOR Music Director Dina Gilbert is a Canadian conductor passionate about communicating with audiences of all ages to broaden their appreciation of orchestral music through innovative collaborations. This commitment, along with her extensive knowledge of the orchestra repertoire, has brought her to conduct orchestras across Canada as well as in France, Spain, the United States, Colombia and Japan. She has received critical acclaim for her energetic presence on the podium, her versatility, and her audacious programming. In addition to conducting the Kamloops Symphony, highlights of the 20232024 season include return invitations with the Toronto Symphony, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, as well as debuts with the Walla Walla Symphony and the Kingston Symphony. As the Principal Conductor of the Orchestre des Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Dina will perform Prokofiev’s Cinderella, as well as works of Lili Boulanger, Clara Schumann, Louise Farrenc and Kaija Saariaho in the ballet premiere of La Dame aux Camélias by choreographer Peter Quanz. Her innate curiosity towards nonclassical musical genres and her willingness to democratize classical music has brought her to conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Orchestre national de Lyon in several Hip Hop Symphonic

programs featuring renowned Hip hop artists I AM, MC Solaar, Youssoupha and Bigflo & Oli. Dina is also renowned for her expertise in conducting multidisciplinary projects such as film concert performances (The Red Violin, The Artist, E.T. the Extraterrestrial). As the founder and artistic director of the Ensemble Arkea, a Montrealbased chamber orchestra, Dina has premiered over thirty works from emerging Canadian composers and has reached thousands of children with her interactive and participative Conducting 101 workshops. From 2013 to 2016, Dina Gilbert was the assistant conductor of the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal and Maestro Kent Nagano, also assisting notable guest conductors including Zubin Mehta and Sir Roger Norrington. In April 2016, she received great acclaim for stepping in to replace Maestro Alain Altinoglu with the OSM in a program showcasing Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Featured in the recent documentary “Femmes symphoniques”, Dina Gilbert earned her doctorate from the Université de Montréal and polished her skills in masterclasses with Kenneth Kiesler, Pinchas Zukerman, Neeme Järvi and the musicians from the Kritische Orchester in Berlin. Awarded the Opus Prize of “Découverte de l’année” in 2017, Dina Gilbert was also named as one of the “50 personnalités créant l’extraordinaire au Québec” in 2018 by the Urbania Magazine.

Dina Gilbert

Meet the Orchestra Music Director Dina Gilbert Music Director Emeritus Bruce Dunn FIRST VIOLIN

VIOLA

concertmaster* Geoff & Judith Benson Chair

June McClure Chair

Cvetozar Vutev Elyse Jacobson

assistant concertmaster* Rod Michell Chair

Llowyn Ball Molly MacKinnon Carol Hur Samantha Kung SECOND VIOLIN

Boris Ulanowicz* Gabriele Klein Chair

Susan Cottrell Annette Dominik Michelle Gao Haley Leach Sandra Wilmot

Caroline Bucher*

Caroline Olsen Fabiola Amorim Jennifer Ho Wennie Wei

PERCUSSION

CELLO

HARP

François-Xavier Leroy* Martin Fisk Greg Samek Naomi Cloutier+

Martin Krátký*

Anonymous Chair

Doug Gorkoff Lyla Lee Laure Matiakh BASS

Yefeng Yin++ Lukas Schmidt Principal

Acting Principal

KSO CHORUS—supported by the Kelson Group Chorus Master Tomas Bijok

Collaborative Pianist Daniela O’Fee

Chorus Administrator Marnie Smith

Orchestra Personnel Manager Olivia Martin Librarian Sally Arai

TIMPANI

Caroline Olsen++

Substitute Principal

THE RED VIOLIN P R O G R A M

Dina Gilbert; conductor Lara St. John; violin Georges Bizet........................... Carmen Suite arr. Rodion Shchedrin

I. Introduction: Andante assai II. Dance: Allegro III. First Intermezzo: Allegro moderato – Andante moderato IV. Changing of the Guard: Moderato V. Carmen's Entrance and Habanera: Allegro moderato – Quasi andante VI. Scene: Allegro moderato – Tempo precedente – Andante assai VII. Second Intermezzo: Larghetto VIII. Bolero: Allegro vivo IX. Torero: Moderato con stoltezza X. Torero and Carmen: Lento – Tempo I XII. Fortune-Telling: Andantino – Andante assai XIII. Finale: Allegro – Tempo precedente – Andante assai

Traditional Balkan Music........ Roma Suite arr. Milica Paranosic and Lara St. John

I. II.

Djelem Djelem Opa Cupa

INTERMISSION

John Corigliano........................ Red Violin Suite I. Main Title II. Anna’s Theme III. Death of Anna IV. Coitus Musicales V. Journey to China VI. Shanghai VII. Pope’s Betrayal VIII. Victoria’s Departure IX. The Auction X. Gypsy Cadenza XI. Anna’s Theme

GUEST ARTIST

Lara St. John Violin

Canadian-born violinist Lara St. John has been described as “something of a phenomenon” by The Strad and a “high-powered soloist” by The New York Times. She has performed as soloist with the orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Amsterdam, Queensland, Adelaide, Auckland, Tokyo, Kyoto, Shanghai, Hong Kong and São Paulo, as well as the Boston Pops, Royal Philharmonic, NDR Symphony, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, China Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, among many others. Recitals in major concert halls have included New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, Prague, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, Bogotá, Lima and the Forbidden City. Lara manages her own label, Ancalagon, which she founded in

1999. Her Mozart recording won a Juno Award in 2011. In 2014, her Schubert album was chosen as one of “the best CDs of spring” by Der Tagsesspiegel. Her 2016 album of reimagined folk music earned a five-star review from All About Jazz. In 2022, she/her/hers, an album of solo violin works written by women, earned praise from The Wall Street Journal. Lara has been featured in People, US News and World Report, NPR’s All Things Considered, CNN, the CBC, the BBC, a Bravo! special and twice on the cover of Strings magazine. In 2021 she was invested with the Order of Canada, for service to society and innovations that “ignite our imaginations.” Lara began playing the violin when she was two, first appeared as soloist with orchestra at age four, and made her European debut at 10. She entered the Curtis Institute at 13. Lara owns and performs on the 1779 “ex-Salubue” Guadagnini.

PROGRAM NOTES

Milica Paranosic Milica Paranosic is a SerbianAmerican composer, multimedia artist, and stylist based in Harlem, NYC. As a child, she trained initially as a visual artist before switching to music as her primary discipline. From an early age, however, Milica showed a strong tendency towards collaborative projects and interdisciplinary arts, often engaging in multiple fields simultaneously. Later in life, she has merged her passion for visual arts and multimedia. Milica completed a bachelor’s degree in composition in her native Belgrade before migrating to New York City for her master's degree at the Juilliard School. There, she was immediately hired to manage the newly formed Music Technology Center and to teach courses in music technology, film scoring, mixing, and digital audio. With this experience, she spent a significant amount of time in Africa and China, spearheading music technology programs in underserved community schools.

Her work and travels as an artist and as an educator have connected her with a wide network of musicians, dancers, storytellers, poets, and visual artists, a significantly broad artistic community, which ultimately led her to leave Juilliard and create her own nonprofit enterprise, Paracadamia Center, Inc, with a specific focus on supporting immigrant women. Her work is regularly performed on concert podiums worldwide, as well as in galleries, theatres, and at multimedia events. She has been acknowledged by organizations such as ASCAP, New Music USA, New York Film Academy, NYSCA, and many others. At present, she balances her time between overseeing her nonprofit venture, producing several award-winning annual series, composing and performing, running a stylish accessory line for performing artists, building miniature art scenes from discarded electronics, and maintaining a daily Ashtanga yoga practice. Milica is one busy artist!

Roma Suite Milica Paranosic recounts that when she was growing up in Serbia, musicians were discouraged from drawing on their culture’s long national musical heritage. It was considered a form of artistic cheating for a composer to resort to inspiration from sources that were merely inherited or instinctive. That sort of natural, organic music was the kind one might produce for performance

at a party. Milica acknowledges that, as a young, respectful music student in Serbia she adhered to this directive. Some years later however, in New York, Milica met violinist Lara St. John (our soloist for this concert) and discovered that they shared a passion for Roma and Balkan folklore and music, especially for matriarchal songs. To join in a musical collaboration was an

PROGRAM NOTES

entirely natural next move for them both. Since then their partnership has produced several works inspired from traditional sources, first Čoček, then BubaMara and now the Roma Suite, in which Lara is performer, improviser and co-composer. Milica describes the Suite as “our largest project to

date…”. For now, we are immensely excited about writing, launching, and premiering this growing and modular multi-set piece. It can be performed in its entirety or as individual movements. The section “Djelem Djelem” is known as the “Gypsy Anthem” and “Opa Cupa” is a traditional call to dance.

John Corigliano John Corigliano was born in into a musical family in New York in 1938. His mother was an accomplished pianist and teacher and his father was the concert master of the New York Philharmonic for over twenty years. Over his career he has become widely praised and respected, and the recipient of important prizes such as the Pulitzer, Grammy Awards, an Academy Award). He has had works performed by many of the most important musical institutions in the world (The Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic) and is the recipient of honorary degrees and numerous other distinctions. His output includes opera (The Ghosts of Versailles), orchestral music (three

symphonies and six concertos, among other works), chamber music (a violin sonata, a string quartet), film scores (Altered States, The Red Violin), vocal music (The Cloisters, Mr. Tambourine Man), and solo works (Etude Fantasy for piano and Fancy on a Bach Air for cello). Any attempt to label Corigliano’s musical world is impossible and probably pointless. With his classical roots he might appear as “neo-romantic”, but with his experimental inclinations and modernist interests “avant-gardist” might at times seem more suitable. In short, he demonstrates both versatility and profundity across a broad musical range.

“The Red Violin” Suite (1997) The Suite from the Film ‘The Red Violin’, which Corigliano arranged from his score for the AcademyAward-winning film by François Girard, relates to the film’s complete soundtrack as the film itself does to the ravages of time: it makes a quick

tour, tracing out a shared theme. In the case of the film, it is a violin that is the moving object taking the audience from Renaissance Italy through late-Eighteenth Century Vienna, to Victorian England (in the hands of an eccentric, Paganini-like virtuoso),

PROGRAM NOTES

to the Chinese Cultural Revolution and up through to Montreal of our own times. The suite is a short, but gratifying, miniature concerto for solo violin with timpani, percussion, harp and strings, cast in a single movement. It condenses the musical narrative of the film—a theme pursued through several centuries—into a single, shorter statement. The violin, itself a central ‘character’ or object in the film, becomes, on the concert platform, in essence the narrator given voice by a performer who is not just a virtuoso soloist but also instrumental storyteller. Listeners who are familiar with the sequence of the Red Violin’s episodes

and with the film music associated with each one, will recognize Corigliano has rearranged that sequence somewhat. In musical adaptations of this kind the structure and integrity of the music is more important to the composer than fidelity to the narrative. The cinematic experience of a single instrument passing through the vicissitudes of historical time is remarkably compelling, but a soloist functioning as the connecting element—sometimes as combatant, sometimes appeaser—guiding us through the conflicts of a short span of tautly structured musical time, is what makes the suite so compelling in its own right.

Rodion Shchedrin (1932) For many music lovers, Rodion Shchedrin is the most successful Soviet Russian composer they have never heard of. You know Rachmaninov? Of course. Stravinsky?—recall The Soldier’s Tale. Prokofiev? Remember last November’s Romeo and Juliet. But Shchedrin? Who’s he? And a Carmen Suite? Isn’t something wrong here— surely that’s the French composer, Bizet? You’re right! But this will help sort things out. Born in Moscow in 1932, Shchedrin emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as the major Soviet composer who had the approval of

Soviet “authorities.” Not surprisingly his earlier style was populist, much of it founded on folk music or on folk music blended with classical forms and imitations. But since the 1980s his work has taken new directions— greater freedom in Russia, it seems, permitting discovery of a more personal musical voice. As we will hear tonight, ballet has been a major influence on his music, with his own ballets being created for his wife Maya Plisetskaya, long-time prima ballerina of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre.

PROGRAM NOTES

Carmen Suite (1967) Shchedrin composed his Carmen Suite in 1967, and, worldwide, it remains his most popular and most often-played work. Based on material from Bizet’s famous opera, it was written for his wife who had already asked composers Shostakovich and Khachaturian to write a Carmen ballet especially for her, but in vain. Finally, her husband did agree to do so. Shchedrin, it seems, initially had scruples about working on a full-length ballet based on such a renowned work. He confessed: “This material has simply become inseparable from the music of Bizet.” His original plan was for a ballet based on motifs from the original story by Prosper Mérimée’ with a libretto from the Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso. However, Shchedrin’s respect for Bizet’s operatic material led him to adopt a different approach, one, he said, “Not paying obsequious homage to the genius of Bizet but instead attempting to tackle it in a creative way.” In the end, Shchedrin used music not only from Bizet’s Carmen but also from his L’Arlésienne Suite No. 2 as well as another of Bizet’s operas, La jolie fille de Perth. A new and rhythmically sharper format emerged, scored for large string orchestra, five timpani, and four percussion groups containing every conceivable percussive instrument from marimba, vibraphone, bongos, maracas, castanets, crotales and cowbells. The juxtaposition of these two powerful instrumental groups, a radical departure from Bizet’s original scoring, is quite remarkable.

The dance element is everywhere in Shchedrin’s colourful ballet music. Unlike the opera the ballet story is told in flashbacks. It begins with the execution of Don José, and then the audience learns the reason for it: Don José has murdered his hot-blooded lover, Carmen. As he awaits execution, he reviews the fateful moments that led up to this. During Don José’s guard duty, Carmen, a cigarette factory worker, appears; at first, she tries in vain to attract his attention. She then gets into a row with other women workers, whereupon the guards arrest her. Thanks to her powers of seduction, Carmen succeeds in captivating José, and he releases her. He has fallen for Carmen completely. When she later falls in love with the celebrated bullfighter Escamillo and wants to leave Don José, the latter stabs her in a fit of jealous rage. At its premiere in 1967, at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, the Carmen Suite caused an all-out scandal. Shchedrin’s Carmen was too impulsive for the seemingly prudish Soviet audience of the time, especially when it came to the clearly erotic performance by the scantily clad, bare-legged prima ballerina. “Your Carmen will die!” the hardline Soviet Minister of Culture seethed after the premiere. The ballet also attracted fierce criticism from other directors of socialist culture. Shchedrin himself recalled, “The second performance was banned, the reasons being the insult to Bizet’s masterpiece and the sexual treatment of the Carmen figure; and it was

PROGRAM NOTES

only through the intervention of Dmitri Shostakovich, who supported me at the Ministry of Culture, that the ballet gradually entered the theatre repertoires.” Prima ballerina Plisetskaya remained quite unfazed by all this: “Carmen dies when I die!” she is said to have retorted. She went on to give around 350 performances of her husband’s Carmen and was still dancing the role in 1990 at the age of 65. For his one-act ballet adaptation, Shchedrin chose the best-known numbers in the opera. In the Introduction the Habanera sets the tone, as fragments of the song appear and disappear. This is followed by a Dance from Act IV of the opera, and includes the famous “Fate” theme. A First Intermezzo and the Changing of the Guard that follows both feature striking innovations in instrumentation and rhythm. Now comes Carmen's entrance, which of course features the Habanera and the Fate theme. A Scene with music from Act II starts cheerfully and is followed by Carmen's seductive Tralalalala from Act I and a Second Intermezzo the Farandole is Bizet’s though not from Carmen, but instead, from the end of the Second L’Arlésienne Suite, and Shchedrin develops it into the Boléro. This is followed by two Torero numbers and bullfighting music.

In the first of these two Shchedrin’s imaginative orchestration is especially on display— his introduction using the Toreador's Song appears to our ears to be “repeated” twice more, but in fact is not. Shchedrin's skillful manipulation of rhythm and countermelody seduces us into hearing the familiar, but “absent”, tune. Then, as a reward, the piece ends with Escamillo's familiar melody given by the strings in full force, and the percussion sounding out with every instrument available. The second of these two Toreros uses music from Bizet’s opera La Jolie Fille de Perth, a gentle duet uniting Carmen and Escamillo. In the Fortune Telling, Fate dominates as Carmen turns up her Death card and the strings sing her lament “one cannot escape one's fate.” The Carmen Suite concludes with an Allegro Finale, one of the longest numbers. In this electrifying conclusion, Shchedrin’s musical mastery is once again on display, cleverly combining melodies—duet of Carmen and Don José, the Fate theme, fragments of Carmen's entrance music, and more—and assigning them to exotic percussion instruments. In the coda, after a grandiose crescendo, he finally entrusts the Habanera theme to the bells, which enter rapturously from afar, accompanied by delicate pizzicato from the strings.

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