THE CONRAD 2022–23
MARCH–APRIL 20
Alvin Ailey®American Dance Theatre
Home of La Jolla Music Society
OCTOBER
APOLLON MUSAGÈTE QUARTET
GARRICK OHLSSOHN, piano
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2022 · 7:30 PM
Revelle Chamber Music Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
JESS GILLAM, saxophone
THOMAS WEAVER*, piano
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2022 · 3 PM
Discovery Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
AN EVENING WITH THE WAR AND TREATY
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · 7:30 PM
Global Roots Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
JAZZREACH
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2022 · 3 PM
The ConRAD Kids Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
NOVEMBER
NAT GEO LIVE! EXPLORING MARS WITH KOBIE BOYKINS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2022 · 7 PM
Speaker Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
TIME FOR THREE
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2022 · 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM
Concerts @ The JAI
The JAI
DANIIL TRIFONOV
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2022 · 7:30 PM
Piano Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
EMMET COHEN TRIO
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2022 · 5 PM & 7 PM
Concerts @ The JAI
The JAI
DECEMBER
ISABEL LEONARD, voice & PABLO SÁINZ-VILLEGAS, guitar
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2022 · 7:30 PM
Recital Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
RANDALL GOOSBY, violin
ZHU WANG, piano
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2022 · 3 PM
Discovery Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
SPECIAL HOLIDAY EVENT: STORM LARGE
HOLIDAY ORDEAL (PLEASE NOTE: Must be 18+ to attend)
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2022 · 7:30 PM
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
PONCHO SANCHEZ
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2022 · 7:30 PM
Jazz Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
ALFREDO RODRIGUEZ TRIO
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2022 · 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM
Concerts @ The JAI
The JAI
JANUARY
DAVINA AND THE VAGABONDS
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2023 · 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM
Concerts @ The JAI
The JAI
CONNECT TO THE CONRAD
JOYCE DIDONATO
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2023 · 7:30 PM
ProtoStar Innovative Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
LEIF OVE ANDSNES
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Piano Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL ON TOUR
DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER, KURT ELLING, CHRISTIAN SANDS, LAKECIA BENJAMIN, CLARENCE PENN, YASUSHI NAKAMURA
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Jazz Series
Balboa Theatre
123 ANDRÉS
SATURDAY, JANUARY 28 · 10 AM & 11:30 AM
The ConRAD Kids Series
The JAI
JOHAN DALENE, violin
GIORGI GIGASHVILI, piano
SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2023 · 3 PM
Discovery Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
FEBRUARY
SPECIAL FAMILY EVENT: KODO
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Balboa Theatre
NAT GEO LIVE! LIFE ON THE VERTICAL WITH MARK SYNNOTT
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2023 · 7 PM
Nat Geo Live! Speaker Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
ARIS QUARTETT
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2023 · 3 PM
Discovery Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
QUARTETTO DI CREMONA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Revelle Chamber Music Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
2 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Piano Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
MARCH
MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA
SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2023 · 6 PM
Jazz Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
IGOR LEVIT
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Piano Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
ALISA WEILERSTEIN
TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2023 · 7:30 PM
ProtoStar Innovative Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
ZAKIR HUSSAIN
SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Global Roots Series
Balboa Theatre
SAMARA JOY
SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 2023
3 PM · The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
8 PM · The JAI
Concerts @ The JAI
The JAI
APRIL
CHUCHO VALDÉS QUARTET
SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Jazz Series
Balboa Theatre
ALVIN AILEY® AMERICAN DANCE THEATRE
TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 2023 · 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Dance Series
Civic Theatre
YO-YO MA & KATHRYN STOTT
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Recital Series
Civic Theatre
EMERSON STRING QUARTET
SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Revelle Chamber Music Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
MIDORI
THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Recital Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
YUNCHAN LIM
SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 2023 · 3 PM
Discovery Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
ALICE SARA OTT
FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Piano Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
MARIACHI REYNA DE LOS ANGELES AND VILLA-LOBOS BROTHERS
SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 2023 · 3 PM
Global Roots Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
MAY
BROOKLYN RIDER & MAGOS HERRERA
SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2023 · 7:30 PM
ProtoStar Innovative Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
PIANIMAL
SATURDAY MAY 6, 2023 · 10 A.M & 11:30 AM
The ConRAD Kids Series
The JAI
NEW CENTURY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
DANIEL HOPE, violin & music director
FRIDAY, MAY 12, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Revelle Chamber Music Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
CINEMA VERISMO* WITH MAK GRGI ´ C
SATURDAY, MAY 13, 2023 · 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM
Concerts @ The JAI
The JAI
COMPLEXIONS
SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Dance Series
Civic Theatre
NAT GEO LIVE! CORAL KINGDOMS AND EMPIRES OF ICE WITH DAVID DOUBILET AND JENNIFER HAYES
THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2023 · 7 PM
Nat Geo Live! Speaker Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
JUNE
BODYTRAFFIC
THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 2023 · 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Dance Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
JIMMIE HERROD
SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 2023 · 5 PM & 7 PM
Concerts @ The JAI
The JAI
SCOTT SILVEN
FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023 · 6 PM & 8:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023 · 5 PM & 8 PM
Concerts @ The JAI
The JAI
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 3
4 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON ARValentien.com | 858.777.6635 Breathtaking Views, Uniquely California Cuisine For Every Occasion LPT_LJMS_ARV_2018.indd 1 9/18/2018 2:20:21 PM
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BUSINESS BANC.
Proud Partner and the Official Bank of LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY
Every day, business owners, entrepreneurs, executives and community leaders are being empowered by Banc of California to reach their dreams and strengthen our economy. With more than $10 billion in assets and over 30 banking locations throughout the state, we are large enough to meet your banking needs, yet small enough to serve you well.
Learn more about how we’re empowering California through its diverse businesses, entrepreneurs and communities at bancofcal.com
TOGETHER WE WINTM
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© 2019 Banc of California, N.A. All rights reserved.
6 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON bright.com • 858.496.9700 Proud Supporter of the La Jolla Music Society Los Angeles • West Los Angeles • Santa Barbara • Orange County • San Diego Palm Springs • San Francisco • Sonoma • Saint Helena • Healdsburg • Phoenix Chairs to China Linens to Lighting Tables to Tents QUALITY SERVICE EXPERIENCE INNOVATION
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8 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON 2620 Truxtun Rd, San Diego CA, 92106 (619) 566- 0069 Liberty Station 7611 Fay Ave, La Jolla CA, 92037 (858) 777- 0069 La Jolla
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 9
Foundation
The ResMed Foundation
is pleased to support your excellent programs in musical arts education.
Board of Trustees
Edward A. Dennis, PhD Chairman
Mary F. Berglund, PhD Treasurer
Peter C. Farrell, PhD, DSc Secretary
Charles G. Cochrane, MD
Michael P. Coppola, MD
Anthony DeMaria, MD
Sir Neil Douglas, MD, DSc, FRCPE
Klaus Schindhelm, BE PhD
Jonathan Schwartz, MD
Kristi Burlingame Executive Director
10 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
7514 Girard Avenue, Suite 1-343 La Jolla, CA, USA, 92037 Tel 858-361-0755 ResMedFoundation.org
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 11
CALENDAR OF EVENTS 2 MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA 14 IGOR LEVIT 15 ALISA WEILERSTEIN 18 ZAKIR HUSSAIN’S MASTERS OF PERCUSSION 19 CHUCHO VALDÉS QUARTET 22 ALVIN AILEY ® AMERICAN DANCE THEATRE 23 YO-YO MA & KATHRYN STOTT 29 EMERSON STRING QUARTET 33 MIDORI 36 ARTISTS’ PROFILES 44 CONCERTS @ THE JAI 50 CONCERTS DOWNTOWN 51 ConRAD KIDS SERIES 51 BOARD & STAFF LISTING 54 THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT: DONOR LISTINGS 55
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Winter Season
THE CONRAD
Home of La Jolla Music Society
From classical, jazz, and dance to global music, National Geographic speakers, and family concerts, each season Artistic Director Leah Rosenthal brings the best artists in the world to the San Diego community. This season, our most exciting to date, features more than 50 artists, including favorites like Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, Emerson Quartet, Daniil Trifonov, Zakir Hussain, Kodo, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Monterey Jazz Festival, plus many inspiring new faces like Cliburn Gold Medal winner Yunchan Lim, rising-star saxophonist Jess Gillam, The War and Treaty, Time For Three, Maria Schneider, two-time 2023 GRAMMY® winner Samara Joy and illusionist Scott Silven.
SummerFest
La Jolla Music Society’s acclaimed chamber music festival, SummerFest, curated by award-winning pianist and festival Music Director Inon Barnatan, engages more than 80 of the world’s finest musicians to perform at The Conrad throughout the month of August. In addition to remarkable mainstage performances, SummerFest offers over 70 free and opento-the-public educational activities. To learn more, visit TheConrad.org/SummerFest.
The Conrad
The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center opened in 2019 and serves as a gathering place for cultural, arts education, and community activity. As the permanent home of La Jolla Music Society, The Conrad hosts world-class performances presented by LJMS and other local arts organizations in its four outstanding performance and activity spaces, The Baker-Baum Concert Hall, The JAI, The Atkinson Room, and the picturesque Wu Tsai QRT.yrd.
Learning and Engagement
La Jolla Music Society’s award-winning Learning and Engamement Programming provides unmatched access and learning opportunities to more than 11,000 students and community members throughout San Diego County annually. With learning and engagement at the heart of our mission, we work closely with each visiting artist and ensemble to create outreach activities that highlight their unique talents and expertise at both The Conrad and in the community. With our state-of the-art video and streaming capabilities at The Conrad, we are able to provide live streaming for events such as our annual SummerFest and education events for free in our Digital Concert Hall.
Land Acknowledgment
The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center acknowledges the ancestral, unceded territory of the Kumeyaay people, on which The Conrad was built. We hold great respect for the land and the original people of the area where our performing arts center is located. The Kumeyaay continue to maintain their political sovereignty and cultural traditions as vital members of the San Diego community.
12 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
Welcome to La Jolla Music Society’s 54 th Winter Season
Hi All,
The 2022–23 season is a watershed moment at La Jolla Music Society. For the first time since its opening in April 2019, The Conrad is experiencing a full year of robust programming and activities, and we couldn’t be happier with public response. Concert after concert is attracting new audiences and longtime friends, helping us work toward our goal of serving an ever-increasing portion of the San Diego community.
As background, consider this: Prior to building of The Conrad, our season included 30 Winter Season concerts and 15 SummerFest performances. This year we will produce, present, or host more than 200 concerts, lectures, and private events, including our own Winter Season, SummerFest, and a myriad of community partner events. These include the San Diego Film Festival opening weekend, Feeding San Diego, TEDx, The Bishop’s School’s prom, La Jolla High School’s homecoming, and concerts presented by Camarada, the San Diego Symphony, San Diego Ballet, and many others.
We believe that The Conrad can be a major community resource, not just for La Jolla but for all of San Diego, as we work to serve the audiences in our halls, students in our learning programs, the artists on our stages, and the art form itself. In order to deepen and expand our programs, your support is more critical than ever before. That support can come through regular attendance at concerts, joining our annual giving program, attending a fundraising event, and/or making a gift in your estate to support La Jolla Music Society and The Conrad.
In the coming months, we will share more about how we can reach our goals of serving our community together.
Warmly,
Todd Schultz President & CEO
La Jolla Music Society / The Conrad
Our Mission: The mission of La Jolla Music Society is to enhance cultural life and engagement by presenting and producing a wide range of programming of the highest artistic quality, and to make The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center a vibrant and inclusive hub.
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 13
PRELUDE 5 PM
Interview with Maria Schneider hosted by Robert John Hughes
THE MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA 30TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR
SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2023 · 6 PM THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
DATA LORDS AND BEYOND
Maria Schneider, composer and conductor
Steve Wilson, alto saxophone
Dave Pietro, alto saxophone
Rich Perry, tenor saxophone
Donny McCaslin, tenor saxophone
Scott Robinson, baritone saxophone
Greg Gisbert, trumpet
Michael Dudley, trumpet
Nadje Noordhuis, trumpet
Mike Rodriguez, trumpet
Keith O’Quinn, trombone
Ryan Keberle, trombone
Tim Albright, trombone
George Flynn, bass trombone
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
Julien Labro, accordion
Ben Monder, guitar
Gary Versace, piano
Jay Anderson, bass
Johnathan Blake, drums
Fred Vogler, sound engineer PROGRAM
Works will be announced from stage.
14 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
This
performance marks The Maria Schneider Orchestra’s La Jolla Music Society debut.
NO INTERMISSION
PRELUDE 6:30 PM
Lecture by Kristi Brown Montesano
IGOR LEVIT
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2023 · 7:30 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
BRAHMS Six Chorale Preludes, Opus 122 (arr. Busoni as BV 50) (1833–1897)
Herzlich thut mich erfreuen, Op. 122, No. 4
Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, Op. 122, No. 5
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, Op. 122, No. 8
Herzlich thut mich verlangen I, Op. 122, No. 9
Herzlich thut mich verlangen II, Op. 122, No. 10
O Welt, ich muss dich lassen, Op. 122, No. 11
FRED HERSH Variations on a Folksong (b.1955)
INTERMISSION
WAGNER Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, WWV90 (arr. Zoltán Kocsis) (1813–1883)
LISZT Piano Sonata in B Minor, S.178 (1811–1886)
Lento assai; Andante sostenuto; Allegro energico Igor Levit, piano
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
World management: CCM Classic Concerts Management GmbH
Exclusive Manager: Kristin Schuster www.igor-levit.com
Igor Levit last performed for La Jolla Music Society in the Piano Series on January 7, 2018.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
©Felix Broede for Sony Classical
Program notes by Eric
Bromberger
Six Chorale Preludes, Opus 122 (arr. Busoni as BV 50) JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897,Vienna
Composed: 1896
Approximate Duration: 18 minutes
Brahms did not live a long life—he died a month short of his 64th birthday—and his final years were consumed with thoughts of death. In those years he lost several of his closest friends, and in 1896 came the catastrophe: the one person who had been most important to him throughout his life—Clara Schumann—suffered a stroke in March and died on May 20. As her death approached, Brahms composed his Four Serious Songs, bleak meditations on mortality, and later confessed to a friend: “I didn’t exactly compose them on the occasion of her death, but the whole time I’ve been thinking about death, on which I have very, very often had opportunity to reflect!” That summer, Brahms went one last time to his favorite summer retreat—Bad Ischl, in the mountains east of Salzburg—and set to work on what would be his final composition, the Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ. That fall Brahms returned to Vienna, where he grew weak and began to lose weight. He died of liver cancer the following spring.
Brahms made no move to publish the Chorale Preludes, and in fact they did not appear (nor were they performed in public) until 1902, five years after his death. At that time, they were assigned the opus number of 122, his final opus number.
The chorale prelude is an old form—Bach had been one of its most distinguished practitioners. It is a variation form, usually for organ, based on the chorale tunes of the German Protestant tradition: a composer will state the theme in its original form, then extend that melody, either by varying it or treating it contrapuntally. Brahms’ biographer Malcolm MacDonald notes that for Bach such compositions were invariably affirmations of his faith, but for the agnostic Brahms the Eleven Chorale Preludes became instead meditations on mortality, and most of the eleven are based on chorales whose original texts were about death.
Music as beautiful and moving as the Eleven Chorale Preludes has attracted many musicians other than organists, and the Chorale Preludes have been performed in arrangements for orchestra, wind ensemble, chamber groups, four-hand piano, and others. The German-Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) transcribed many of Bach’s organ works for piano, and given Busoni’s admiration for both Bach and Brahms, perhaps it was only natural that he would turn to the Chorale Preludes, music by Brahms composed in the manner of Bach. Busoni arranged six of the preludes for solo piano. The last of these—on the chorale
“O Welt, ich muss dich lassen” (“O World, I Must Leave Thee”)—was the last music Brahms composed.
Variations on a Folksong FRED HERSCH
Born October 21, 1955, Cincinnati, OH
Composed: 2022
Approximate Duration: 5 minutes
Fred Hersch trained as a classical pianist, but he encountered jazz while in college and promptly dropped out of school to make a career as a jazz pianist, composer, and educator. It has been a most successful career: Hersh has performed with most of the leading jazz artists of the era, composed over seventy jazz works, been nominated numerous times for GRAMMY® awards, and in 2015 was named Downbeat magazine’s Pianist of the Year.
If Hersch has made his reputation primarily as a jazz artist, he has never lost his passion for “classical” music, and he has written a number of sets of variations for solo piano, most notably his 24 Variations on a Bach Chorale, written in response to the events of 9/11. Pianist Igor Levit, long an admirer of Hersch, commissioned Variations on a Folksong and gave the première in Carnegie Hall in January of last year. The folksong is the famous “O Shenandoah,” a song that appears to have originated among boatmen in the American West during the early nineteenth century, and Hersch takes that familiar tune through twenty different variations in a variety of styles. In its review of the première, the New York Times described the variations as “a musical vision of nearly unbroken serenity and benevolence.”
Prelude to Tristan und Isolde (arr. Zoltán Kocsis)
RICHARD WAGNER
Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig
Died February 13, 1883, Venice
Composed: 1859
Approximate Duration: 10 minutes
During the 1850s Wagner was at work on the operas that would make up The Ring of the Nibelungen. Partway through Act I of Siegfried, however, his plans took an unexpected detour when he became fascinated by the ancient Irish legend of Tristan and Iseult, lovers who find fulfillment only in death. Wagner laid aside his work on Siegfried and composed Tristan und Isolde between 1856 and 1859.
The Prelude to that opera is one of the most remarkable works in the orchestral repertoire, so remarkable that many feel that modern music begins with the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde. The Prelude opens this tale of unfulfilled love with music that is itself the very embodiment of unfulfilled longing—a falling cello line intersects dissonantly with a rising oboe line, and that harmonic clash does not resolve.
16 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON IGOR LEVIT - PROGRAM NOTES
That same pattern repeats in a new key, again without resolution. It will never resolve. The music’s failure ever to find harmonic stasis mirrors the lovers’ failure to find fulfillment in life, and—despite the beauty of the music—its effect is intentionally unsettling. Berlioz confessed that he was “completely baffled” when he heard Wagner conduct the Prelude in Paris in 1859, and he was quite right to feel assaulted. This music annihilated the conception of a tonal center decades before those other two works that have seemed to launch modern music—Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring—were conceived.
At this concert Igor Levit plays a piano transcription of the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde made by the late Hungarian pianist Zoltán Kocsis.
Piano Sonata in B Minor, S.178 FRANZ LISZT
Born October 22, 1811, Raiding, Austria
Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth, Germany
Composed: 1853
Approximate Duration: 30 minutes
Liszt wrote his Sonata in B Minor in 1852 and 1853 and dedicated it to Robert Schumann. The first public performance took place four years later in Berlin in 1857, when it was played by Liszt’s son-in-law Hans von Bülow. The Sonata in B Minor is in all senses of the word a revolutionary work, for Liszt sets aside previous notions of sonata form and looks ahead to a new vision of what such a form might be. Schumann himself, then in serious mental decline, reportedly never heard the piece but could not have been especially comfortable with the dedication of a piece that flew so directly in the face of his own sense of what a sonata should be. Another figure in nineteenth-century music, however, reacted rapturously: Wagner wrote to Liszt to say, “The Sonata is beautiful beyond any conception, great, pleasing, profound and noble-it is sublime, just as you are yourself.”
The most immediately distinctive feature of the sonata is that it is in one continuous span rather than being divided into separate movements. Despite the single-span structure, Liszt achieves something of the effect of traditional threemovement sonata form by giving the work a general fastslow-fast shape. The entire sonata is built on just four themes, all introduced in the opening moments: the slowly descending scale heard at the very beginning, marked Lento assai; the jagged, leaping theme in octaves that follows immediately—this is marked Allegro energico; dovetailed into this is a propulsive figure of repeated eighth-notes, played first deep in the left hand; and a powerful hymnlike theme marked Grandioso and stamped out over
steady accompaniment. These themes undergo a gradual but extensive development—a process Liszt called “the transformation of themes”—and are often made to perform quite varied functions as they undergo these transformations. For example, the propulsive left-hand figure, which sounds so ominous on its first appearance, is later made to sing in unexpected ways, while the jagged Allegro energico theme becomes the subject for a fugue at the opening of the third “movement.” At the end, Liszt winds down all this energy, and the sonata concludes on a quiet recall of the slowly descending Lento assai from the very beginning. After so much energy, the sonata vanishes on a very quiet B deep in the pianist’s left hand.
The Sonata in B Minor was to some extent shaped by Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy of 1822, a work Liszt knew and greatly admired. In the “Wanderer” Fantasy Schubert built an extended work in several contrasted sections, all based on a theme from his song “Die Wanderer.” Liszt allows himself more themes, but his technique is exactly the same as Schubert’s: a single span of music evolves out of the ingenious transformation of just a few thematic ideas.
The Sonata in B Minor is extremely dramatic music, so dramatic that many guessed that it must have a program, as so much of Liszt’s music does. But Liszt insisted that this is not descriptive or programmatic music. He wanted his sonata accepted as a piece of “pure music,” to be heard and understood for itself.
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IGOR LEVIT - PROGRAM NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS
Support for this program generously provided by:
ProtoStar Foundation
Leadership support for FRAGMENTS is generously provided by Joan and Irwin Jacobs.
Patron support for FRAGMENTS is provided by Judy and Tony Evnin, Clara Wu Tsai, and Paul Sekhri.
FRAGMENTS has been made possible with commissioning support from Alphadyne Foundation, The San Diego Symphony, UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures, Carnegie Hall, Celebrity Series of Boston, and The Royal Conservatory of Music for the 21C Festival.
Special thanks to Martha Gilmer for her leadership and counsel, and to Celebrity Series of Boston and Aspen Music Festival and School for their in-kind contributions.
This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Richard Atkinson.
ALISA WEILERSTEIN FRAGMENTS
Co-Presented with the San Diego Symphony
TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2023 · 7:30 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
FRAGMENTS 1
This program is approximately 65 minutes with no intermission
Further information on the composers and their works will be provided at the conclusion of the performance.
Alisa Weilerstein, Project Creator, Performer
Elkhanah Pulitzer, Director
Seth Reiser, Scenic and Lighting Designer
Carlos J. Soto, Costume Designer
Hanako Yamaguchi, Artistic Producer and Advisor
Will Knapp, Production Manager
Seth Reiser, Lighting Supervisor
FEATURED FRAGMENTS COMPOSERS
Today's performance weaves together 18 short movements from works by Allison Loggins-Hull, Chen Yi, Gili Schwarzman, Joan Tower, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Reinaldo Moya.
With the exception of J.S. Bach, all the music in this program has been commissioned by Alisa Weilerstein for FRAGMENTS
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
Alisa Weilerstein last performed for La Jolla Music Society during SummerFest on August 15, 2021.
18 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
ZAKIR HUSSAIN’S MASTERS OF PERCUSSION
SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 2023 · 7:30 PM
BALBOA THEATRE
Zakir Hussain, tabla
Sabir Khan, sarangi
Tupac Mantilla, percussion
Melissa Hié, djembe
Navin Sharma, dholak
PROGRAM
Works will be announced from stage. There will be a 20-minute intermission.
ABOUT
Drumming crosses cultures and unites us in the dance of the heart. An international phenomenon, GRAMMY® Award-winning tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain is one of the foremost percussionists of the contemporary world whose brilliant and exciting performances have established him as a national treasure of India. Widely recognized as a chief architect of the world music movement, Hussain has participated in historic collaborations, including Shakti, Remember Shakti, Diga, Planet Drum, and his ever-changing musical feast, Masters of Percussion, a platform for rarely heard rhythm traditions from India. Over time, the Masters of Percussion ensemble has expanded to include great drummers and percussionists from many world traditions, including jazz, as well as the occasional stringed instrument.
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Zakir Hussain last performed for La Jolla Music Society in the Jazz Series on October 16, 2019.
Zakir Hussain appears by arrangement with IMG Artists, LLC, 7 W. 54th St., New York, NY 10019. 212-994-3500
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Support for this program generously provided by: Inamori Foundation
In recognition of this evening’s presenting sponsor, Inamori Foundation of Kyoto, Japan
Kazuo Inamori believed that a human being has no higher calling than to strive for the greater good of humanity and the world. With that tenet, he established the non-profit Inamori Foundation in 1984 with a personal endowment of 20 billion yen.
Since its inception, the Foundation’s Kyoto Prize, an international award named after Japan’s original thousand-year capital and cultural center, has been awarded to individuals and groups worldwide who have made extraordinary contributions in the fields of technology, the sciences, arts and philosophy.
“It is my sincere hope that the Kyoto Prize may serve to encourage the cultivation of both our scientific and spiritual sides. At the same time, nothing would be more gratifying than if it provided some small impetus for the construction of a new philosophical paradigm.”
Inamori believed that humankind’s future may be best assured through the proper balance of scientific advancement and deeper spiritual understanding. The Kyoto Prize is an extension of that belief, and is now recognized as one of the most prestigious international prizes of its kind.
20 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON ZAKIR HUSSAIN
Dr. Kazuo Inamori, 1932 – 2022 Founder of Kyocera Corporation, the global Kyocera Group, and the Kyoto Prize
“I am convinced that the future of humanity can be assured only through a balance of scientific progress and spiritual depth.”
Inamori Foundation
is pleased to serve as presenting sponsor of this evening’s performance by pre-eminent tabla virtuoso
Zakir Hussain
37th Annual Kyoto Prize Laureate in Arts and Philosophy
Zakir Hussain is a Grammy® award-winning tabla musician who has opened new possibilities beyond the framework of traditional Indian music in collaboration with artists of other diverse genres worldwide. Hussain’s performance innovations include a unique method of creating melodies on the tabla, originally regarded as a rhythmic instrument of accompaniment. In the process, he has expanded the tabla’s possibilities and established it as one of the most expressive percussion instruments in the world. With his superb technique, engaging performances, and rich creativity, he has made a tremendous impact on world music audiences and performers alike.
In receiving the Inamori Foundation’s 37th annual Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, he joins other distinguished Kyoto Prize laureates from the music world—including Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, Witold Lutoslawski, Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Pierre Boulez, Cecil Taylor and Richard Taruskin.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PRELUDE 6:30 PM
Interview with Chucho Valdés hosted by Robert John Hughes
Support for this program generously provided by:
Vail Memorial Fund
CHUCHO VALDÉS QUARTET
SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 2023 · 7:30 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
Chucho Valdés, piano
Dafnis Prieto, drum
Armando Gola, bass
Roberto Vizcaino Jr., congas
PROGRAM
Works will be announced from stage.
NO INTERMISSION
ABOUT
Winner of six GRAMMY® and three Latin GRAMMY® Awards, the Cuban pianist, composer and arranger Chucho Valdés is the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz. In a rich career spanning sixty years, Chucho has pushed boundaries in pursuit of new expressions in Afro-Cuban music. His influence in the genre is immeasurable, his work establishing the standard by which younger generations set out to create their own.
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
Chucho’s musical education includes formal studies and countless nights on the best stages in Cuba as the pianist with his father, Bebo Valdés, and his orchestra Sabor de Cuba, and with the seminal Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna. Chucho is perhaps best known as the founder, pianist, and main composer and arranger of Irakere, a landmark ensemble in Cuban music. Chucho led Irakere for more than 30 years, but since 2005 he has focused on his personal career, highlighting his work as a pianist and leading small ensembles, like the Afro-Cuban Messengers, Jazz Batá, and his acclaimed Quartet.
Having celebrated his 80th birthday in 2021, Chucho’s technique and creative output are as prodigious as ever. He is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, has been inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame, and received a DC Jazz Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, his name joining an illustrious list that includes Kenny Barron, James Moody, Ellis Marsalis, George Wein, and Dave Brubeck.
22 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
This performance marks Chucho Valdés’ La Jolla Music Society debut.
Support for this program generously provided by members of the Dance Society and presenting sponsors: Elaine Galinson and Herbert Solomon
ALVIN AILEY® AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 2023 · 7:30 PM CIVIC THEATRE
FOR FOUR PAUSE
UNFOLD
INTERMISSION
SURVIVORS
INTERMISSION
REVELATIONS
Alvin Ailey, Founder
Judith Jamison, Artistic Director Emerita
Robert Battle , Artistic Director
Matthew Rushing, Associate Artistic Director
COMPANY MEMBERS
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
Opus 3 Artists
Jeroboam Bozeman
Khalia Campbell
Patrick Coker
Sarah Daley-Perdomo
Caroline T. Dartey
Ghrai DeVore-Stokes
Solomon Dumas
Samantha Figgins
Jau’mair Garland
James Gilmer
Vernard J. Gilmore
Ashley Kaylynn Green
Jacquelin Harris
Michael Jackson, Jr.
Yazzmeen Laidler
Yannick Lebrun
Xavier Mack
Renaldo Maurice
Ashley Mayeux
Corrin Rachelle Mitchell
Chalvar Monteiro
Alisha Rena Peek
Belén Indhira Pereyra
Miranda Quinn
Ronni Favors, Rehearsal Director
Clifton Brown, Assistant Rehearsal Director
Bennett Rink, Executive Director
Hannah Alissa Richardson
Deidre Rogan
Kanji Segawa
Courtney Celeste Spears
Constance Stamatiou
Christopher Taylor
Jermaine Terry
Christopher R. Wilson
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater last performed for La Jolla Music Society in the Dance Series on March 27, 2019.
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All programs and artists subject to change.
Jacquelin Harris. ©Dario Calmese.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ailey North American Tour Sponsor
FOR FOUR (2021)
Choreography Robert Battle
Staged Elisa Clark
Music Wynton Marsalis
Costumes Corin Wright
Lighting Al Crawford
PLEASE SEE INSERT FOR CASTING
Leadership support for the world première of For Four was provided by Pamela D. Zilly & John H. Schaefer.
The world première of For Four was made possible with major support from Melinda & Paul Pressler, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn & Nicolas S. Rohatyn, The Ellen Jewett & Richard L. Kauffman New Works Endowment Fund, Elaine & Lawrence J. Rothenberg, Denise Littlefield Sobel, and the Red Moose Charitable Fund.
For Four is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Delfeayo’s Dilemma” composed and performed by Wynton Marsalis, from the album Black Codes (From the Underground). Used by permission with Wynton Marsalis Enterprises.
PAUSE UNFOLD (2007)
Choreography Robert Battle
Restaged Kanji Segawa
Music Leontyne Price
Costume design Jon Taylor
Lighting design Lynda Erbs
PLEASE SEE INSERT FOR CASTING
Support for the original production of Unfold was received from Elma Linz Kanefield.
Leadership support for this production of Unfold is provided by Pamela D. Zilly & John H. Schaefer.
This production of Unfold was made possible with generous support from Judith McDonough Kaminski & Joseph Kaminski.
“Dupuis Le Jour” from Act III of Louise composed by Gustave Charpentier, recorded by Leontyne Price.
INTERMISSION
SURVIVORS (1986)
Choreography Alvin Ailey and Mary Barnett
Restaged Masazumi Chaya
Music Max Roach & Peter Phillips
Costumes Toni-Leslie James
Original Décor Douglas Grekin
Lighting Design Tim Hunter
Especially for Nelson and Winnie Mandela whose determination inspires the survivor in us all.
PLEASE SEE INSERT FOR CASTING
Major support of this new production of Survivors is made possible by Judith McDonough Kaminski and Joseph Kaminski, and Daria L. & Eric J. Wallach.
Mr. Ailey wishes to express his gratitude to Ms. James, Mr. Grekin, and Mr. Hunter for the generous contributions of their talents and artistry to this work.
INTERMISSION
REVELATIONS (1960)
Choreography Alvin Ailey
Music Traditional
Décor and Costumes Ves Harper
Costumes for “Move, Members, Move” redesigned Barbara Forbes
Lighting Nicola Cernovitch
PLEASE SEE INSERT FOR CASTING
PILGRIM OF SORROW
I Been ’Buked
Music
Arranged by Hall Johnson*
Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel
Music
Fix Me, Jesus
Music
Arranged by James Miller+
Arranged by Hall Johnson*
24 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER - PROGRAM NOTES
“Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace” courtesy of Kobalt Music Publishing. “Survivors” used with permission from Peter Phillips.
TAKE ME TO THE WATER
Processional/Honor, Honor
Music Adapted and Arranged by Howard A. Roberts
Wade in the Water
Music
Adapted and Arranged by Howard A. Roberts
“Wade in the Water” sequence by Ella Jenkins
“A Man Went Down to the River” is an original composition by Ella Jenkins
I Wanna Be Ready
Music Arranged by James Miller+
MOVE, MEMBERS, MOVE
Sinner Man
Music Adapted and Arranged by Howard A. Roberts
The Day is Past and Gone
Music Arranged by Howard A. Roberts and Brother John Sellers
Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham
Music Adapted and Arranged by Howard A. Roberts
*Used by arrangement with G. Schirmer, Inc., publisher and copyright owner.
+Used by special arrangement with Galaxy Music Corporation, New York City.
All performances of Revelations are permanently endowed by a generous gift from Donald L. Jonas in celebration of the birthday of his wife, Barbara, and her deep commitment to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
The 2023 North American Tour is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Major funding of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is also provided by American Express, Bloomberg Philanthropies, BNY Mellon, Diageo North America, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, Ford Foundation, Fund II Foundation, Häagen-Dazs, The Hearst Foundations, Howard Gilman Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, NBA Foundation, New York City Center, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Prudential, Salesforce, The SHS Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and Verizon Communications.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Support for this program generously provided by members of the Dance Society and presenting sponsors: Elaine Galinson and Herbert Solomon
ALVIN AILEY® AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2023 · 7:30 PM CIVIC THEATRE
IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD INTERMISSION
ARE YOU IN YOUR FEELINGS?
INTERMISSION REVELATIONS
Alvin Ailey, Founder
Judith Jamison, Artistic Director Emerita
Robert Battle , Artistic Director
Matthew Rushing, Associate Artistic Director
COMPANY MEMBERS
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
Opus 3 Artists
Jeroboam Bozeman
Khalia Campbell
Patrick Coker
Sarah Daley-Perdomo
Caroline T. Dartey
Ghrai DeVore-Stokes
Solomon Dumas
Samantha Figgins
Jau’mair Garland
James Gilmer
Vernard J. Gilmore
Ashley Kaylynn Green
Jacquelin Harris
Michael Jackson, Jr.
Yazzmeen Laidler
Yannick Lebrun
Xavier Mack
Renaldo Maurice
Ashley Mayeux
Corrin Rachelle Mitchell
Chalvar Monteiro
Alisha Rena Peek
Belén Indhira Pereyra
Miranda Quinn
Ronni Favors, Rehearsal Director
Clifton Brown, Assistant Rehearsal Director
Bennett Rink, Executive Director
Hannah Alissa Richardson
Deidre Rogan
Kanji Segawa
Courtney Celeste Spears
Constance Stamatiou
Christopher Taylor
Jermaine Terry
Christopher R. Wilson
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater last performed for La Jolla Music Society in the Dance Series on April 4, 2023.
26 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
All programs and artists subject to change.
Jacquelin Harris. ©Dario Calmese.
Ailey North American Tour Sponsor
IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD (2022)
Choreography Jamar Roberts
Music Duke Ellington and Rafiq Bhatia Costumes & Décor Jamar Roberts
Lighting Brandon Stirling Baker
“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”
—James Baldwin
PLEASE SEE INSERT FOR CASTING
The world première of In a Sentimental Mood is made possible with support from Maury & Joseph Bohan, Peter S. Croncota, The Ellen Jewett & Richard L. Kauffman New Works Endownment Fund, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and the Red Moose Charitable Fund.
Jamar Roberts (Miami, FL) was the Resident Choreographer of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 2019 to 2022. Roberts made five works on the Company, all to critical acclaim: Members Don’t Get Weary (2016), Ode (2019), A Jam Session for Troubling Times (2020), Holding Space (2021), and In a Sentimental Mood (2022). He also set Gemeos on Ailey II. Roberts is a graduate of the New World School of the Arts and The Ailey School and has danced for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, and Complexions. Roberts won the 2016 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer and has performed as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet in London. Commissions include Vail Dance Festival, Fall for Dance, The Juilliard School, BalletX, MoveNYC, New York City Ballet, and Works and Process at the Guggenheim where he created the film Cooped. The March on Washington Film Festival invited Roberts to create a tribute to John Lewis and he has also made a film for the LA Opera entitled The First Bluebird in the Morning. Roberts was a Director’s Fellow at NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts and was recently featured on the cover of Dance Magazine, previously having been on the cover in June 2013 and been named one of “25 to Watch” in 2007. He first joined the Company in 2002 and retired from dancing in 2021.
“There’s Something About an Old Love” by Lupin Fein, Will Hudson, Irving Mills, Used by Permission of Sony/ATV Harmony; “In a Sentimental Mood” by Duke Ellington, Used by Permission of Sony/ATV Harmony; “First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” by Ewan MacColl, Used by Permission of The Royalty Network, Inc.; “Lonely Woman” by Ornette Coleman, Used by Permission of Kobalt Music Publishing”; “Single Petal of a Rose” by Duke Ellington, Used by Permission of G. Schirmer Inc.
INTERMISSION
ARE YOU IN YOUR FEELINGS? (2022)
Choreography Kyle Abraham
Music Various Artists
Rehearsal Associate Stephanie Teraski
Costumes Karen Young
Lighting Dan Scully
PLEASE SEE INSERT FOR CASTING
The creation of Are You in Your Feelings? is supported by commissioning funds from New York City Center.
The world première of Are You in Your Feelings? is made possible with major support from Michele & Timothy Barakett, Melinda & Paul Pressler, Jeanne Greenberg
Rohatyn & Nicolas S. Rohatyn New Works Endowment Fund, and The Pamela D. Zilly & John H. Schaefer Endowment Fund.
Additional support was provided by an Anonymous supporter, The Fred Eychaner New Works Endowment Fund, and The Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey—Sara and Bill Morgan New Works Endowment Fund.
Kyle Abraham and his choreography have been featured in Document Journal, Ebony, Kinfolk, O Magazine, Vogue, and Vogue UK, amongst other publications. Abraham is the proud recipient of a Princess Grace Statue Award (2018), Doris Duke Award (2016), and MacArthur Fellowship (2013). He currently serves as the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professor in Dance at The University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. Abraham also sits on the advisory board for Dance Magazine and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the inaugural Black Genius Brain Trust, and the inaugural cohort of the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab, a partnership between the Prada Group, Theaster Gates Studio, Dorchester Industries, and Rebuild Foundation. His company, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, is widely considered “one of the most consistently excellent troupes working today” (The New York Times). Led by Abraham’s innovative vision, the work of A.I.M is galvanized by Black culture and history and grounded in a conglomeration of unique perspectives. Abraham has been commissioned by dance companies including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The National Ballet of Cuba, New York City Ballet, and The Royal Ballet. Abraham has also choreographed for many of the leading dancers of our time, including Misty Copeland, Calvin Royal III, and Wendy Whelan. For more information, visit aimbykyleabraham.org.
“I Love You” is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. “I Only Have Eyes for You” performed by The Flamingos, courtesy of Warner Chappell. “A Breaux’s Tale” and “Roster” performed by Jazmine
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ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER - PROGRAM NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sullivan, courtesy of Warner Chappell and Kobalt Music Publishing.
“Forgive Them Father” performed by Lauryn Hill, courtesy of Sony Music Publishing. “That’s How You Feel” performed by Drake, courtesy of Sony Music Publishing. “I’ll Call U Back” Performed by Erykah Badu, courtesy of Sony Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing. “Woman to Woman” performed by Shirley Brown, courtesy of Universal Music Publishing. “Session 32” performed by Summer Walker, courtesy of Warner Chappell. “LOVE. ft. Zacari.” performed by Kendrick Lamar, courtesy of Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, Kobalt Music Publishing, and Universal Music Publishing. “While We’re Young” performed by Jhené Aiko, courtesy of Universal Music Publishing. “Symptom Unknown” performed by Maxwell, courtesy of Sony Music Publishing.
INTERMISSION
REVELATIONS (1960)
Choreography Alvin Ailey
Music Traditional
Décor and Costumes Ves Harper
Costumes for “Move, Members, Move”
redesigned Barbara Forbes
Lighting Nicola Cernovitch
PLEASE SEE PAGES 24 & 25 FOR FULL CREDITS
28 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER - PROGRAM NOTES
PRELUDE 6:30 PM
Lecture by Michael Gerdesl
Support for this program generously provided by presenting sponsor
Dorothea Laub
YO-YO MA & KATHRYN STOTT
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 2023 · 7:30 PM
CIVIC THEATRE
The pieces grouped together are to be performed without pause. Please hold your applause for these breaks.
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
Opus 3 Artists
MENDELSSOHN
Song without Words in D Major, Opus 109 (1809–1847)
TRADITIONAL Scarborough Fair (arr. Stephen Hough)
TRADITIONAL Shenandoah (arr. Caroline Shaw)
SIBELIUS
Was It a Dream? Opus 37, No. 4 (1865–1957)
BLOCH
From Jewish Life (1880–1959)
Prayer
Supplication
Jewish Song
Four Romantic Pieces, Opus 75 (1841–1904)
DVORˇÁK
Allegro moderato
Allegro maestoso
Allegro appassionato
Larghetto
INTERMISSION
ERROLLYN WALLEN Dervish (b.1958)
CESAR CAMARGO MARIANO Cristal (arr. Jorge Calandrelli) (b.1943)
PARRA Gracias a la vida (arr. Jorge Calandrelli) (1917–1967)
PIAZZOLLA Libertango (arr. Kathryn Stott) (1921–1992)
Soledad
Le Grand Tango
Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Kathryn Stott, piano
Kathryn Stott last performed for La Jolla Music Society in the Recital Series on March 12, 2014.
Yo-Yo Ma last performed for La Jolla Music Society in a special event on March 3, 2018.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Program notes by Eric Bromberger
Song without Words in D Major, Opus 109 FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg
Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig
Composed: 1845
Approximate Duration: 5 minutes
Between 1830 and 1845 Mendelssohn composed a number of short pieces for piano that he called “Lieder ohne Worte”: “Songs without Words.” That title makes clear that the impulse in this music is fundamentally lyric: a singing melody, usually in the right hand, is supported by a relatively straightforward accompaniment in the left, and many of these pieces are easy enough to suggest that Mendelssohn intended them for the growing number of amateur pianists in the first part of the nineteenth century. But many of them are frankly virtuosic, so difficult that they remain beyond the reach of all but the most talented amateur pianists. All these pieces, though, show Mendelssohn’s virtues—appealing melodies, a nice sense of form, rhythmic vitality, and polished writing for the piano—and they became vastly popular in the nineteenth century.
The Lieder ohne Worte have appeared in arrangements for many instruments, but the Song without Words in D Major, Opus 109 was conceived by Mendelssohn himself for cello and piano. He appears to have composed it in the fall of 1845, shortly after the première of his Violin Concerto, but he had not published it at the time of his death sixteen months later— it was published after his death and assigned the opus number 109 at that time. This brief piece is in the three-part form that Mendelssohn favored in his Lieder: the opening section is indeed song-like in its appealing lyricism, where the middle section is impetuous. Mendelssohn makes a particularly beautiful return to the opening material, and the music draws to a quiet close.
Scarborough Fair
TRADITIONAL (arr. Stephen Hough)
Approximate Duration: 3 minutes
Most American audiences know “Scarborough Fair” in the version sung by Simon and Garfinkel and used in the film The Graduate. In its earliest form, the song was a ballad of lost love that originated in England or Scotland, and it has been sung in many different versions. The present arrangement for cello and piano was made by the English pianist and composer Stephen Hough.
Shenandoah TRADITIONAL (arr. Caroline Shaw)
Approximate Duration: 5 minutes
“Shenandoah” appears to have originated early in the nineteenth century among the boatmen of the American West. It has been set to a number of different texts, but in whatever form the song takes, its haunting main melody has become one of the best-loved of American folk tunes. American composer Caroline Shaw, who in 2012 became the youngestever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, has arranged this traditional melody for a variety of ensembles, and it is heard at this concert in a version for cello and piano.
Was It a Dream? (Var det en dröm?), Opus 37, No. 4 JEAN SIBELIUS
Born December 8, 1865, Tavastahus, Finland
Died September 20, 1957, Jarvenpaa, Finland
Composed: 1902
Approximate Duration: 3 minutes
Sibelius composed about one hundred songs for voice and piano, but this significant body of work has been slow to find an audience: most of these songs are in Swedish (Sibelius grew up speaking Swedish, and only five of his songs are in Finnish), and the piano parts are not distinguished— Sibelius was an indifferent pianist, and his accompaniments lack the musical subtlety and psychological insight that characterize the best German lieder. Yet the songs have many virtues: their texts come largely from Scandinavian writers and are not over-familiar, and at their best the songs show some of the compression and expressive power of Sibelius’ symphonies. Sibelius wrote his Five Songs, Opus 37 between the years 1898 and 1902, a period during which he moved from virtual anonymity to an international success with his Second Symphony. Though brief, “Var det en dröm?” (“Was That a Dream?”) is a big, dramatic song about the pain of love. Setting a text by the poet Josef Wecksell, it features an extremely active piano accompaniment, long phrases (the meter is 6/4), and an impassioned vocal line that drives to a sudden ending.
From Jewish Life ERNEST BLOCH
Born July 24, 1880, Geneva
Died July 15, 1959, Portland, Oregon
Composed: 1924
Approximate Duration: 10 minutes
Bloch settled in the United States during World War I, and that move came during a period of intense identification with his Jewish heritage. Bloch noted that it was “the Hebrew spirit that interests me—the complex, ardent, agitated soul
30 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
YO-YO MA & KATHRYN STOTT - PROGRAM NOTES
that vibrates for me in the Bible,” and over the next few years came a number of works inspired by that spirit: Trois poèmes juifs (1913), Psalm 22 (1914), the Israel Symphony (1916), and Baal Shem (1923). It was in music for the cello, though, that Bloch’s love for his Jewish heritage seems to have found most passionate expression: the greatest of the works from what he called his “Jewish cycle” is Schelomo, A Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra (1916), and he returned to the cello—and to Jewish subjects—in From Jewish Life and Meditation hebraïque, both composed in 1924.
The three pieces that make up From Jewish Life are quite brief (Bloch referred to them as “sketches”) and wellsuited to the rich and expressive sonority of the cello. The noble “Prayer” opens lyrically, but soon gives way to a more animated second section, full of rhythmic point. Over rippling piano accompaniment, the cello presents the powerful main idea of “Supplication,” and this piece remains passionate throughout. The concluding “Jewish Song”—shortest of the three—maintains the intensity of the first two pieces: prayer and song are never far apart in this music.
Four Romantic Pieces, Opus 75 ANTONIN DVOŔÁK
Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia Died May 1, 1904, Prague
Composed: 1887
Approximate Duration: 15 minutes
In January 1887, Dvořák set out to write a piece for his young friend Josef Kruis, a chemistry student in Prague and an amateur violinist. It was an unusual piece: the Terzetto, Opus 74 consisted of four brief movements (Dvořák characterized them as “miniatures” or “bagatelles”), scored for two violins and violas. But these pieces turned out to be too difficult for Kruis, and so the following week Dvořák wrote another—somewhat easier—set for the same forces. But he quickly recast this second work as a set of pieces for violin and piano and published them later that year under the name Four Romantic Pieces; the music is heard at this concert in an arrangement for cello and piano.
These brief pieces are pleasing to play and pleasing to hear. Though not terribly difficult, they are full of Dvořák’s wonderful lyricism and an unusual harmonic freedom that has the music slipping effortlessly between shade and sunlight. The violin line sings easily, but beneath it the piano accompaniment is quite active, and while the piano is never obtrusive, much of the charm in this music lies in the piano’s busy accompaniments. All four pieces are sectional, and many of the sections are repeated.
Dvořák originally gave each of the movements a name, but then withdrew the names before publication. Those titles, though, do offer a key to the character of each movement.
The first movement was originally called Cavatina: the haunting melodic part flows easily, and beneath it the piano accompanies with a constant dactylic rhythm. The second movement (originally Capriccio) swaggers along on great rolled chords; later the instruments reverse roles and the cello accompanies the piano. The third movement (Romance) returns somewhat to the manner of the first, though this is more animated music: Dvořák marks the part Allegro appassionato, and the piano’s triplet rhythms propel the music constantly forward. The dark concluding movement (originally called Elegy) is built on a grieving, halting main idea; the movement falls away and fades into silence on a chord marked triple piano.
Dervish ERROLLYN WALLEN
Born April 10, 1958, Belize Composed: 2001
Approximate Duration: 7 minutes
Born in Belize, Errollyn Wallen grew up in New York City and London. She studied music and dance as a child and originally intended to make a career as a ballerina but finally decided to become a composer. She completed her MPhil at King’s College, Cambridge and is currently Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2020.
Wallen composed Dervish in 2001, and the première was given by cellist Matthew Sharp and pianist Dominic Harlan at Wigmore Hall on June 29, 2001. That title might seem to suggest an orgiastic piece that concludes in a blaze of rhythmic frenzy, like Ravel’s La valse, but exactly the reverse is true—Wallen has stated that she was aiming for a state of “rapt and still devotion” in this music. Dervish begins in a state of what seems like suspended animation, with its harmonics, glissandos, and knuckles knocked on the wood of both instruments. From out of this static activity come a number of short motifs that are treated in different ways. Gradually Dervish begins to move and suddenly erupts into an outburst of blistering activity. Here, it seems, is the wild activity suggested by the title. But it is not to be: the music breaks off, the opening thematic fragments return, and Dervish comes to a sudden and enigmatic conclusion.
Cristal
CESAR CAMARGO MARIANO
Born September 19, 1943, São Paulo, Brazil
Composed: 1985
Approximate Duration: 3 minutes
Cesar Camargo Mariano grew up in São Paulo as part of a musical family that encouraged his talents, but the boy was almost entirely self-taught as a composer. He was attracted
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YO-YO MA & KATHRYN STOTT - PROGRAM NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS
early to jazz and bossa nova, and as a young man he formed and played in a number of ensembles. Mariano made his reputation in Brazil as a pianist, composer, arranger, and producer; since 1994 he has been based in the United States.
The lively Cristal is one of Mariano’s most famous compositions (a tremendous video of the composer performing the solo piano version of Cristal can be found on the internet). This is music of nonstop energy, and it drives ahead furiously on the strength of the pianist’s left-hand ostinatos (Mariano is famous for the agility of his left hand). Over this energetic impulse, the right hand swirls through a kaleidoscope of moods. Cristal is heard at this concert in an arrangement for cello and piano by the Argentinian composer and arranger Jorge Calandrelli.
Libertango (arr. Kathryn Stott)
Soledad
Le Grand Tango
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA
Born March 11, 1921, Mar de Plata, Argentina
Died July 4, 1992, Buenos Aires
Composed: 1974
Approximate Duration: 20 minutes
As a young man, Astor Piazzolla learned to play the bandoneon, the Argentinian accordion-like instrument that uses buttons rather than a keyboard, and he became a virtuoso on it. But his musical path was not at first clear: he gave concerts, made a film soundtrack, and created his own bands before a desire for wider expression drove him to the study of classical music. He received a grant to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and it was that great teacher who advised him to follow his passion for the Argentinian tango as the source for his own music.
Piazzolla returned to Argentina and gradually evolved his own style, one that combines the tango, jazz, and classical music. In his hands, the tango—which had deteriorated into a soft, popular form—was revitalized. Piazzolla transformed this old Argentinian dance into music capable of a variety of expression and fusing sharply contrasted moods: his tangos are by turn fiery, melancholy, passionate, tense, violent, lyric, and always driven by an endless supply of rhythmic energy.
After returning from his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Piazzolla had great success in Argentina, but after two decades there (and a heart attack in 1973), he decided to return to Europe. Libertango, composed in Italy in 1974, quickly became a hit in Europe, and it remains today one of Piazzolla’s most popular works. The title of this brief tango is somewhat fanciful (Piazzolla himself described it as “a sort of song of liberty”), and listeners will be taken more by its pulsing rhythm, which functions as an ostinato throughout,
and Piazzolla’s sinuous, sensual, and dark main theme.
The middle movement of Piazzolla’s suite Silfio y Ondina, Soledad is most often performed as an individual work. This melancholy meditation on solitude, said to have been written after the composer’s wife left him, has been arranged for a variety of instruments.
Le Grand Tango, which Piazzolla wrote specifically for cello and piano, is one of his few chamber works and one of his few pieces of “classical” music, though it too is driven by the varying moods and vitality of the tango. This is a big piece, and it has become a great favorite of cellists—there are a number of recordings available. Le Grand Tango is episodic in structure: moments of lilting languor alternate with impassioned sequences full of energy, and finally this Tango rushes to its fiery close on a great upward glissando.
32 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON YO-YO MA & KATHRYN STOTT - PROGRAM NOTES
PRELUDE 6:30 PM
EMERSON STRING QUARTET FAREWELL SEASON
SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 2023 · 7:30 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 12 (1809–1847)
Adagio non troppo; Allegro non tardante
Canzonetta: Allegretto
Andante espressivo
Molto allegro e vivace
BRAHMS String Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 67 (1833–1897) Vivace
Andante
Agitato (Allegretto non troppo)
Poco Allegretto con Variazioni
INTERMISSION
DVORˇÁK String Quartet in A-flat Major, Opus 105 (1841–1904)
Adagio, ma non troppo; Allegro appassionato
Molto vivace
Lento e molto cantabile
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
The
Allegro, non tanto
Emerson String Quartet
Eugene Drucker, Philip Setzer, violins; Lawrence Dutton, viola; Paul Watkins, cello
Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer alternate in the first violin position.
String
by arrangement with IMG Artists, LLC, 7 W, 54th St., New York, NY 10019. 212-994-3500
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The Emerson String Quartet last performed for La Jolla Music Society in the Chamber Music Series on April 22, 2017.
Lecture by Michael Gerdes
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Emerson
Quartet appears
Program notes by Eric Bromberger
String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 12 FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg
Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig
Composed: 1829
Approximate Duration: 23 minutes
One can hardly say that the year 1829 was uneventful for Mendelssohn. In April he led the first performances of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in a century, performances credited with helping launch the Bach revival in the early nineteenth century. He immediately left Berlin for an extended visit to London, where he played his own music, astonished audiences by performing Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto from memory, and was hailed as a “player of almost transcendent talent.” In July and August he made a walking tour of Scotland that inspired his Hebrides Overture and Scottish Symphony. He returned to London in September and was thrown from a carriage in an accident, injuring his knee. The injury forced him to miss the wedding of his sister Fanny in Germany. Mendelssohn used the time to complete an operetta he was writing for the celebration of his parents’ silver anniversary that fall. Returning to Berlin in December, the composer set to work on his “Reformation” Symphony. Taken all around, it was a pretty spectacular year for a twenty-year-old.
Mendelssohn must have been planning the String Quartet in E-flat Major while walking across the wilds of Scotland, for he completed it on September 14, 1829, just a few days after his return to London. Melodic, well-crafted, and agreeable, it is one of those pieces that charm on first acquaintance. Some critics have detected the influence of Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet on the first movement, and it is true that Mendelssohn writes in the same key (E-flat major) and uses the same motto that opened Beethoven’s quartet (though Mendelssohn inverts it). The relation with Beethoven appears to end there, however—while some of the material may seem derived from Beethoven, this music is pure Mendelssohn.
The slow introduction quickly gives way to the Allegro non tardante (“Fast, without delay”), based on a flowing, comfortable main idea. The second theme arrives in much the same spirit: this sonata-form movement will not be built on conflict in the Beethovenian manner but on an appealing lyricism. It sings all the way through, even in some darker subsidiary material along the way. The two middle movements are relatively brief. The Canzonetta is in ABA form, with a perky outer section that features unison writing and a bustling center full of quicksilvery motion. The Andante espressivo is aptly named: songful and heartfelt, it grows impassioned (it has a particularly impressive part for
the first violin) before subsiding to the quiet close.
The finale is the most unusual movement in the quartet. It explodes to life on two sharp cracks of sound and plunges energetically into its first theme, which rushes along on a restless 12/8 meter. There is a somewhat conventional second idea, chorale-like in its square phrases, and one expects Mendelssohn to make do with these (entirely serviceable) ideas. But suddenly the music comes to what seems a sudden climax, and out of the quiet Mendelssohn brings back fragments of the earlier movements: the “darker” material from the opening movement, lyric ideas from the third, the bustling theme from the middle section of the Canzonetta, the “Beethoven” motto from the beginning, and others. Gone now is the restless spirit of the opening of the finale, and on these reminiscences Mendelssohn brings the quartet to a very quiet close, a conclusion that manages to be both very pleasing and very enigmatic.
String Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 67 JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna
Composed: 1875
Approximate Duration: 32 minutes
Brahms’ final string quartet is his most original essay in that form. He completed this quartet and several other works during the summer of 1875, which he spent happily at Ziegelhausen, near Heidelberg. Throughout that relaxed summer, though, Brahms continued to work on his First Symphony, a project that had occupied (some would say obsessed) him for over twenty years. He could at least escape into the other works he wrote that summer, and typically he deprecated them as “useless trifles, to avoid facing the serious countenance of a symphony.” The Quartet in B-flat Major— hardly a useless trifle—had its first performance on October 30, 1876, five days before the long-awaited première of the First Symphony.
Brahms’s first two string quartets had been tightly argued affairs, but the Third shows a sense of play absent from his two earlier efforts, and this music flows and shimmers. Its bright surface, though, conceals many original touches, and the genial finale in particular is a compositional tour de force. Brahms gives the opening movement the unusual marking Vivace, more typical of a scherzo than a sonata-form first movement. It is built on two contrasted theme-groups, but in fact the real contrast in this movement is between two quite different meters. The opening—inevitably compared to hunting horn calls—is in 6/8, while the second theme is in 2/4: its slightly square rhythms have reminded some of a polka. Brahms builds the movement around subtle contrasts between these different meters, jumping back and forth between them and at several points experimenting with some
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EMMERSON STRING QUARTET - PROGRAM NOTES
modest polyrhythmic overlapping. The movement concludes with a cadence derived from the “hunting-horn” opening.
The ternary-form second movement opens with a long violin melody reminiscent of the music of Schumann. Brahms marks the violin part cantabile, but it must cut through a thick accompaniment, which is often double-stopped. The middle section, full of fierce declarations and rhythmic swirls, gradually gives way to the opening material and quiet close. The third movement is marked Agitato, but that is more an indication of mood than tempo, and Brahms puts the real tempo direction—Allegretto non troppo—in parentheses. Particularly remarkable here is the sound: Brahms mutes all instruments except the viola, which dominates this movement. Its husky, surging opening idea contrasts with the silky, rustling sound of the muted accompanying voices. The trio section likewise emphasizes the sound of the viola, followed by a da capo repeat and coda.
The finale, Poco Allegretto con Variazioni, is the most remarkable of the four movements, and Brahms’s biographer Karl Geiringer called it “the nucleus of the whole work.” As Brahms’ marking suggests, it is a set of variations, based on a folk-like tune announced immediately. There follow six variations, all fairly closely derived from the opening tune, and then some remarkable things begin to happen. Into the seventh variation suddenly pops the hunting-horn tune from the quartet’s very beginning, the eighth variation is based on a transition passage from the first movement, and in the closing moments Brahms puts on a real show of compositional mastery: he combines the hunting-horn tune from the very beginning with the variation melody of the finale and presents them simultaneously.
Such a description makes this music sound terribly learned, and that might in fact be the case, were it not so much fun. We greet these themes as old friends when they appear to take up their place in the dance, and Brahms rounds off the quartet with this bright union of his opening and closing movements.
The Quartet in B-flat Major was Brahms’s favorite among his quartets, but with it he appears to have exhausted his interest in the form. He would live another twenty-four years and publish more than fifty more works, but he never wrote another string quartet.
String Quartet in A-flat Major, Opus 105 ANTONIN DVOŘÁK
Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia
Died May 1, 1904, Prague
Composed: 1895
Approximate Duration: 32 minutes
In 1895 the 54-year-old Dvořák left New York after three years of teaching at the National Conservatory of Music and returned to Czechoslovakia. In America, he had written music showing the influence of that strange new country—the
“New World” Symphony, the “American” Quartet, and the Viola Quintet, with its Indian drumbeats. In March 1895, just before he left America, Dvořák began a new string quartet and wrote about half of the first movement; he finished the quartet quickly in Prague the following December.
The striking thing about this quartet, which contains the last music Dvořák composed in America, is that it shows absolutely no American influences. Instead, saturated with Czech musical forms and the spirit of Czech music, it reflects Dvořák’s relief at being home. As he was completing the quartet, Dvořák wrote to a friend: “We are, praise be to God, all well and rejoice at being spared after three years to spend this dear and happy Christmas festival in Bohemia. How different did we feel last year in America, where we were so far away in a foreign country and separated from all our children and friends. But the Lord God has vouchsafed us this happy moment and that is why we feel so inexpressibly content!” This happy spirit runs through the Quartet in A-flat Major. There are of course moments of shade, but the general mood of this music is one of celebration.
The first movement opens with a slow introduction built on terraced entrances; the shape of these entrances leaps ahead at the Allegro appassionato to become the movement’s main theme. Dvořák derives much of the first movement from this theme, though there is an attractive second idea built on triplets and dotted rhythms; the movement drives to a vigorous close.
The scherzo is in ABA form, with the outer sections based on the Czech furiant; the violin parts intermesh beautifully, even at a blistering tempo. By contrast, the middle section is calm and melodic; Dvořák derives one of the themes here from the aria “The smile of a child” from his opera The Jacobin. The marking for the third movement, Lento e molto cantabile, makes clear its character. It too is in ABA form, with a lyric opening and a somewhat gruff chromatic middle section; this rises to a climax marked molto appassionato before the return of the opening material, now subtly varied.
Dvořák rounds off the quartet with a finale built on three separate themes. There are some striking features here: tremolos used as accompaniment, fugal entrances, and a distinctly Czech third theme, marked molto cantabile. The development of this movement is extended, and Dvořák drives the quartet to its close with a quick-paced coda.
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EMMERSON STRING QUARTET - PROGRAM NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS
PRELUDE 6:30 PM
MIDORI 40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION EDUCATION AMBASSADOR-IN-RESIDENCE
THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2023 · 7:30 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
North American representation: Kirshbaum Associates Inc. www.kirshbaumassociates.com
367 Seventh Ave. Ste. 506, New York, NY 10001
Midori’s recording are available on Warner Classics, Sony Classical, Sony Japan, Onyx Classics, and Accentus Music.
J.S. BACH
Sonata No. 2 in A Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV1003 (1685–1750) Grave
Fuga
Andante
Allegro
THIERRY ESCAICH Nun Komm (b.1965)
J.S. BACH
Sonata No. 3 in C Major for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1005
Adagio
Fuga
Largo
Allegro assai
INTERMISSION
ANNIE GOSFIELD Long Waves and Random Pulses (acoustic version) (b.1960)
J.S. BACH
Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV1004
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Gigue
Chaconne
Midori, violin
Midori last performed for La Jolla Music Society in the Recital Series on April 12, 2019.
36 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
Lecture by Michael Gerdes
Program notes by Eric Bromberger
Sonata No. 2 in A Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV1003 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born March 31, 1685, Eisenach, Germany
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig
Composed: 1720
Approximate Duration: 24 minutes
Bach’s six works for unaccompanied violin—three sonatas and three partitas—form one of the pinnacles of the violin literature. Bach, then in his mid-thirties, was Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen when he composed them about 1720. These six works are supremely difficult for the violinist and—in some senses—supremely difficult for the listener: they were not published until 1817–1828, a century after they were composed.
The three partitas are essentially suites of dance movements, but the three sonatas are in a more prescribed form. These are not sonatas in the classical sense of that term, with contrasts of themes and tonalities within movements, but they do conform to a specific sequence: the first movement is slow and solemn, somewhat in the manner of a prelude; the second is a fast fugue; the third, usually more lyric, is the one movement in a contrasted key; and the last is a fast movement in binary form, somewhat like the dance movements of the partitas.
The first movement of the Sonata No. 2 in A Minor has much the same improvisational atmosphere of the opening movement of the First Sonata. Bach’s marking is Grave, which in music means “slow and solemn,” though the Italian and French translations of that term include “deep” and “serious,” and Bach was certainly aware of those meanings. The ornate melodic line has a dignified, almost ceremonial character, and that line is often broken with multiple-stops and trills before the movement makes its way to a quiet close on octave E’s. The fugue is built on a concise subject—only two measures long and of narrow thematic compass—that proceeds at a very brisk pace and is interrupted several times by interludes of running sixteenths. At the climax, Bach combines the fugue subject with its inversion and drives the movement to a florid close.
The Andante, which moves to the relative major (C major), offers a gorgeous melodic line which the violinist must accompany with pulsing eighth-notes on a lower string—that steady pulse is the heartbeat that runs throughout this movement. This is wonderful writing for the violin, demanding effortless bow control: a listener should hear two quite different sounds produced simultaneously by the same bow-stroke. After this dignified, expressive music, the finale, marked Allegro, really rips. Like the third movement, it is in binary form, but without the multiple-stopping that
gave the Andante its distinct character. The fundamental pulse here is the rush of racing sixteenth-notes, though this is constantly enlivened with bursts of thirty-second-notes. At the opening of this movement Bach makes one of the few dynamic indications in all his music for unaccompanied violin, carefully contrasting repeated phrases that he wants played first forte and then piano. The movement drives to a blistering close in which the racing line leaps across all four strings even as Bach stacks up the rhythmic complexities, and the solitary A at the very end is a most emphatic conclusion.
Nun Komm
THIERRY ESCAICH
Born May 8, 1965, Nogent-sur-Marne, France
Composed: 2001
Approximate Duration: 4 minutes
Thierry Escaich began improvising as a child, and he went on to study composition and organ at the Paris Conservatory. He has taught improvisation and organ at that Conservatory since 1992, and he currently serves as organist as the Church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris. Escaich has composed in many different forms, including opera, ballet, orchestral and chamber works, as well as a large number of compositions for organ. He has also been ready to compose for instruments somewhat off the normal track of classical music, such as accordion, saxophone, and others.
While many of his works are on a grand scale, Escaich has been particularly drawn to composing for solo instruments, which must create their own harmonies and sound-world. His Nun Komm was composed in 2001 and premièred on August 18 of that year in Manège, Reims, by violinist David Grimal. This four-minute piece is a challenge for even the most accomplished of violinists, and in a sense it may be thought of as a test-piece because it presents so many different technical hurtles for the performer. Nun Komm is multi-layered music. It begins with the barest of textures, a repeated open G played pizzicato by the left hand. Over that ostinato-like pulse, Escaich begins to layer other elements— flares of rhythmic energy, bits of theme—and quickly the music develops a polyphonic complexity, with thematic fragments emerging from the various layers of busy textures. Along the way, the violinist must master such challenges as multi-stopped artificial harmonics, complex string-crossings, and playing in very high positions. From its beginning in almost skeletal simplicity, Nun Komm gradually expands to a full-throated polyphonic climax driven along pounding rhythms. These textures simplify and thin out, and the music whispers its way into silence.
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MIDORI - PROGRAM NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sonata No. 3 in C Major for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1005 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Composed: 1720
Approximate Duration: 24 minutes
Bach was famed in his own day as a virtuoso organist, and—like virtually all composers of his era—he also played the violin. Very probably he played in the orchestra at Cöthen, but it is known that he preferred to play viola in chamber music, and in fact we know nothing about Bach’s skill as a violinist: his biographer Phillipp Spitta has noted that in all of the writings about Bach by family and contemporaries there is not one mention of his ability as a violinist. What is indisputable, however, is that his understanding of the instrument was profound.
Unlike the opening movements of the other two unaccompanied sonatas, which were conceived to suggest an improvisatory character, the Sonata in C Major begins with a long Adagio built entirely on the steady rhythm of the dotted eighth. The figure is very simple at its first appearance; gradually it grows more complicated, and the melodic line is elaborately embellished. The second movement is the expected fugue, in this instance one of the most difficult fugues Bach wrote for the violin; its subject is based on the old chorale tune “Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott.” The simple opening evolves into music of unbelievable complexity, but the fugue subject remains clear throughout, despite Bach’s complicated evolutions, which include its appearance in inversion. The Largo is a lyric slow movement; once again, the main idea is stated simply and then developed contrapuntally. This movement is in F major, the only one in the sonata not in C major. The binary-form Allegro assai is linear music, built on a steady flow of sixteenth-notes. This is the sort of dance-like movement one expects to find in the partitas, and here it makes a brilliant conclusion to the sonata.
Long Waves and Random Pulses (acoustic version)
ANNIE GOSFIELD
Born September 11, 1960, Philadelphia
Composed: 2012
Approximate Duration: 12 minutes
Annie Gosfield studied piano as a child and composition at North Texas State University and the University of Southern California, and she has gone on to develop a reputation as a composer willing to experiment with the sound, form, content, and even the definition of music. Gosfield has performed at festivals in Switzerland, Poland, Israel, Czech Republic, Germany, France, Slovenia, Canada, and throughout the United States. She has written many different kinds of music: improvisational, collaborative, music for specific spaces, music for electronics, and many others: her Brooklyn, October 5, 1941—composed to observe the
centenary of the unification of the boroughs of New York—is scored for piano and baseballs. She has collaborated with such ensembles as Bang on a Can, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, New York’s Crosstown Ensemble, the American Composers Forum, and many others.
While working at the American Academy in Berlin in 2012, Gosfield became interested in the radio waves used by different governments during World War II to jam foreign radio transmissions. She composed Long Waves and Random Pulses using recordings of jamming sounds employed by Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union and combining these with a part for solo violin that along the way makes reference to the great Chaconne from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in B Minor, BWV 1004.
The composer has described Long Waves and Random Pulses as “a duet for violin and jammed radio signals.” This music exists in two versions. The electronic version uses actual recordings of those jamming signals and extends them through electronic means. The acoustic version, which is the version performed at this concert, is for violin alone and asks violinists to simulate the sounds of the electronic jamming in their playing. Gosfield has noted: “I considered how a listener might perceive these unpredictable shifting sounds when he or she turned on the radio and was confronted with the odd results of two very different signals competing for the same wavelength, as well as the constant transformation and the dynamic tension between music, noise, and the interference of pure signal. As for the title, Long Waves refers to the long wave radio frequencies that many of these interrupted signals were broadcast on. Random Pulses represents a method of radio jamming that uses a random pulse noise to override the program broadcast on the target radio frequency.”
Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1004 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Composed: 1720
Approximate Duration: 29 minutes
Bach’s sonatas for unaccompanied violin employ a slowfast-slow-fast sequence of movements, but the structure of the three partitas is more varied. The term partita—which suggests a collection of parts—refers to a suite of dances, and Bach wrote his three partitas as sets of dance movements. While each of the sonatas has four movements, the partitas have more movements (five to seven) and are somewhat freer in form, as Bach adapted a number of old dance forms to the capabilities of the solo violin.
The Partita No. 2 in D Minor has become the most famous of Bach’s six works for unaccompanied violin, for it concludes with the Chaconne, one of the pinnacles of the violin literature. Before this overpowering conclusion, Bach offers the four basic movements of partita form, all in binary
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MIDORI - PROGRAM NOTES
form. The opening Allemande is marked by a steady flow of sixteenth-notes occasionally broken by dotted rhythms, triplets, and the sudden inclusion of thirty-second notes. The Courante alternates a steady flow of triplets within dotted duple meters. The Sarabande proceeds along double and triple stops and a florid embellishment of the melodic line, while the Gigue races along cascades of sixteenth-notes in 12/8 time; the theme of the second part is a variation of the opening section.
While the first four movements present the expected partita sequence, Bach then springs a surprise by closing with a chaconne longer that the first four movements combined. The Chaconne offers some of the most intense music Bach ever wrote, and it has worked its spell on musicians everywhere for the last two and a half centuries: beyond the countless recordings for violin, it is currently available in performances by guitar, cello, lute, and viola, as well as in piano transcriptions by Brahms, Busoni, and Raff. Brahms, who arranged it for left hand only, was almost beside himself with admiration for this music; to Clara Schumann he wrote: “If I could picture myself writing, or even conceiving such a piece, I am certain that the extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad.”
A chaconne is one of the most disciplined forms in music: it is built on a ground bass in triple meter over which a melodic line is repeated and varied. A chaconne demands great skill from a performer under any circumstances, but it becomes unbelievably complex on the unaccompanied violin, which must simultaneously suggest the ground bass and project the melodic variations above it. Even with the flatter bridge and more flexible bow of Bach’s day, some of this music borders on the unplayable, and it is more difficult still on the modern violin, with its more rounded bridge and concave bow.
This makes Bach’s Chaconne sound like supremely cerebral music-and it is-but the wonder is that this music manages to be so expressive at the same time. The four-bar ground bass repeats 64 times during the quarter-hour span of the Chaconne, and over it Bach spins out gloriously varied music, all the while keeping these variations firmly anchored on the ground bass. At the center section, Bach moves into D major, and here the music relaxes a little, content to sing happily for awhile; after the calm nobility of this interlude, the quiet return to D minor sounds almost disconsolate. Bach drives the Chaconne to a great climax and a restatement of the ground melody at the close.
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MIDORI - PROGRAM NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS
PRELUDE 6:30 PM
Lecture by Michael Gerdes
MIDORI 40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
EDUCATION AMBASSADOR-IN-RESIDENCE
FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2023 · 7:30 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
North American representation: Kirshbaum Associates Inc.
www.kirshbaumassociates.com
367 Seventh Ave. Ste. 506, New York, NY 10001
Midori’s recording are available on Warner Classics, Sony Classical, Sony Japan, Onyx Classics, and Accentus Music.
J.S. BACH
Sonata No. 1 in G Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, (1685–1750)
BWV 1001
Adagio
Fuga: Allegro Siciliano
Presto
JESSIE MONTGOMERY Rhapsody No. 1 (b.1981)
J.S. BACH
Partita No. 1 in B Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV1002
Allemande
Double: Presto
Corrente
Double Sarabande
Double
Bourrée
Double
INTERMISSION
JOHN ZORN Passagen (b.1953)
J.S. BACH
Partita No. 3 in E Major for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV1006
Preludio
Loure
Gavotte en Rondeau
Menuet I and II
Bourrée
Gigue
Midori, violin
Midori last performed for La Jolla Music Society in the Recital Series on April 12, 2019.
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Program notes by Eric Bromberger
Sonata No. 1 in G Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1001 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born March 31, 1685, Eisenach, Germany
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig
Composed: 1720
Approximate Duration: 15 minutes
Bach’s three sonatas for unaccompanied violin are not sonatas in the classical sense of that term, with contrasts of themes and tonalities within movements, but they do conform to a specific sequence: the first movement is slow and solemn, somewhat in the manner of a prelude; the second is a fast fugue; the third, usually more lyric, is the one movement in a contrasted key; and the last is a fast movement in binary form, somewhat like the dance movements of the partitas.
The Sonata in G Minor opens with a somber Adagio While fully written out, this noble music gives the impression that the music is being improvised as it proceeds, and Bach decorates the slow melodic line with florid embellishments (including, at several points, 128th-notes). The heavy chording and rich sonorities of this movement have led some to believe that Bach was attempting to duplicate the sound of the organ here. After the stately gravity of the opening movement, the fugue bristles with nonstop energy. The fugue itself is in three voices, and Bach eases the polyphonic complexity with interludes of sixteenth-note passagework and arpeggiated figurations. One of Bach’s finest fugues, this has always been a great favorite of violinists-Henryk Szeryng often performed it as an encore. A Siciliano, as its name suggests, probably had its origin in Sicily. Bach understood it to be a slow dance in compound time; he preserves the swaying effect of the original in the dotted rhythm of the very opening, and this dotted figure returns throughout, though it is sometimes buried within the harmonic texture. For this movement, Bach moves into B-flat major, the relative major of the home key. The concluding Presto is a blistering rush of steady sixteenth-notes. Such an unvaried progression might, in other hands, quickly become dull, but Bach’s often surprising subdivisions of phrasing and bowing give this movement unexpected variety. There is a brief flash of D major at the beginning of this second part, which proceeds with unremitting energy to the massive final chords.
Rhapsody No. 1
JESSIE MONTGOMERY
Born December 8, 1981, New York City
Composed: 2014
Approximate Duration: 7 minutes
Jessie Montgomery had all her early training in New York City. The daughter of theater and musical artists, she learned to play the violin as a child and earned her bachelors
degree in violin performance from Juilliard and her masters in composition from New York University. She is currently a Graduate Fellow in composition at Princeton as well as a Professor of Violin and Composition at The New School in New York City. In 2021 Montgomery began her tenure as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Her Rhapsody No. 1, composed in 2014, is scored for solo violin, and in a note in the score she explains her purpose in writing a series of rhapsodies:
This work for solo violin is the first rhapsody in a series that will be written for six different instruments. The collection of six solo works pays homage to the tradition of J.S. Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas, his suites for solo cello, and the six solo violin sonatas of Eugène Ysaÿe. In paying tribute to this archetypal tradition, I have chosen to elaborate by writing for a variety of solo voices across instrument families-violin, viola, flute, bassoon, and double bass—so that the final rhapsody in the cycle is a five-part chamber work for all of the instruments in the collection. This piece represents my excitement for collaboration, as each solo work is written in collaboration with the première performer, and my love for chamber music as a staple in my current output. (Jessie
Montgomery)
Montgomery is quite right to cite the example of the solo violin music of J.S. Bach. Her Rhapsody presents many of the challenges of Bach’s sonatas and partitas (double-stopping, string-crossings, arpeggiated chords) and also many of the virtues: a carefully achieved sense of improvisation, melodic lines emerging from complex textures, and a full use of the many sounds possible on the violin. Her Rhapsody No. 1 is beautifully written for the violin: despite its complexities, this music sits very gracefully under the hand. It also has some of Bach’s seemingly effortless expressiveness. Beginning quietly, as if it is being improvised on the spot, the Rhapsody grows in complexity and intensity as it proceeds, and along the way Montgomery employs such string techniques as bariolage, in which the same note is played alternately on open and closed strings to produce different colors on that same note. She also notes with extraordinary precision how she wants passages fingered and interpreted. The Rhapsody rises to an animated climax, then loosens its tensions. The final section, which is muted throughout, leads to an understated conclusion.
Partita No. 1 in B Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV1002
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Composed: 1720
Approximate Duration: 25 minutes
Bach’s evolution of partita form takes a particularly unusual turn in his Partita No. 1 in B Minor. He offers an
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
allemande, a corrente, and a sarabande but drops the gigue and replaces it with a bourrée, then follows each of these four movements with a Double, a variation on the preceding movement. These are melodic variations, so in each Double one still hears the shape of the principal theme of the previous movement, but all of the Doubles are at a faster tempo. All movements—both the original movements and their Doubles—are in binary form.
An allemande is a dance in common time and at a moderate tempo; as the name suggests, it is of German origin. The Allemande that opens Bach’s First Partita is powerful music, proceeding solemnly along grand chords and dotted rhythms, while its Double, in cut-time, runs nimbly along a steady progression of eighth-notes. Corrente is Italian for the French Courante: both mean “running,” and it is no surprise that both the Corrente of this partita and its Double move along swiftly—the steady eighths of the Corrente become sixteenths in the Double, which flies.
A sarabande was an old (sixteenth-century) dance, originally brought to Europe from Latin America; King Philip II of Spain had it banned from the court in 1583 for “exciting bad emotions.” It evolved into a somewhat slower dance in triple time, and it is in this form that Bach came to know it. His Sarabande is a grave, somewhat formal dance, with the violin’s complex multiple-stopping providing a rich harmonic accompaniment. The Double transforms the 3/4 of the Sarabande into a flowing 9/8 meter and relaxes its gravity by dancing lightly along the triple meter. A bourrée is a vigorous dance in quadruple meter, usually beginning on the upbeat, and this noble, energetic Bourrée features massive chords within the texture of the quick dance; the Double brings a steady rush of eighth-notes, broken by some brief doublestopping at the start of the second half.
Passagen JOHN ZORN
Born September 2, 1953, Queens, New York
Composed: 2011
Approximate Duration: 12 minutes
John Zorn has been an almost Promethean force in music over the last forty years. A saxophone player and composer, he is also a record and music producer who has helped create hundreds of recordings of new music, and he has been a champion of new music in its many forms. The range of his passions is intimidating: he has been the saxophonist in the bands Naked City and Masada, he has made much of his career as a performer in Japan, and recently he has explored his Jewish heritage with the klezmer-influenced Masada. Zorn’s music—which can partake of rock, punk, jazz, film music, and many other genres—has been described as aggressive and assaultive, yet it has also earned the respect of
the musical establishment: Zorn has been named a MacArthur Fellow and was also recipient of Columbia University’s prestigious William Schuman Award, given for lifetime achievement in music.
In his Passagen, composed in 2011, Zorn set himself a very specific task: he wanted to write an extended work for unaccompanied violin that would offer what he called “a brief history of solo violin music.” That history—which includes works by Telemann, Bach, Paganini, Reger, Ysaÿe, Prokofiev, Bartók, and others—is as rich as it is intimidating. Music for solo violin poses all kinds of challenges for a composer. The violin is essentially a linear instrument, and while it is easy enough to write lyric music for that instrument, creating a harmonic context for that music is much more difficult, for the composer (and performer) must make use of chording and other forms of multiple-stopping to create a harmonic foundation.
Zorn set a further task for himself in this piece: he wished to pay homage to Bach, and so he built much of this piece on the musical equivalents of the letters of his last name: in German musical notation B-A-C-H becomes the sequence Bb-A-C-B. Alert listeners to Passagen will make out that sequence, which over the last centuries has haunted composers as different as Beethoven, Schoenberg, Vaughan Williams, Schnittke, and many others.
But rather than listening just for that motif, audiences should take Passagen as the dazzling work that it is. This is a phenomenally difficult work for a violinist, who must master all the solo violin techniques from the last several centuries (as well as a few new ones). Zorn also makes fleeting quotations of great works from the solo violin repertory, and listeners will recognize fragments from the Bach solo sonatas, Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin, and others. Overflowing with energy, Passagen does not just give us a tour of the literature for the unaccompanied violin—it becomes part of that literature.
Zorn composed Passagen as a gift to American composer Elliott Carter on his 103rd birthday, which took place on December 11 of that year. Carter, whose Risconoscenza of 1984 is written for solo violin, also received the dedication. The première of Passagen had taken place two days earlier, on December 9, 2011, when Jennifer Koh performed it at Miller Theatre at Columbia University.
Partita No. 3 in E Major for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1006 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Composed: 1720
Approximate Duration: 17 minutes
In his final partita for unaccompanied violin, Bach virtually dispenses with the standard allemande-courante-
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sarabande-gigue sequence of the partita and instead creates an entirely original structure consisting of a stunning opening movement, a varied series of dances, and a concluding gigue (the only survivor from the traditional sequence).
The title Preludio suggests music that is merely an introduction to something else, but this Preludio is a magnificent work in its own right, in some ways the most striking of the seven movements of this partita. Built on the jagged, athletic opening theme, this movement is a brilliant flurry of steady sixteenth-notes, featuring complicated string-crossings and racing along its blistering course to an exciting conclusion. Among the many pleasures of this music is Bach’s use of a technique known as bariolage, the rapid alternation between the same note played on stopped and open strings, which gives this music some of it characteristic glinting brilliance. It is no surprise that this Preludio is among the most popular pieces Bach ever wrote, and those purists ready to sneer at Leopold Stokowski’s arrangement for full orchestra should know that Bach beat him to it: in 1731, ten years after writing the violin partita, Bach arranged this Preludio as the opening orchestral movement of his Cantata No. 29, “Wir danken dir, Gott.”
Bach follows this striking beginning with a sequence of varied dances. The term Loure originally referred to a form of French bagpipe music and later came to mean a type of slow dance accompanied by the bagpipe. Bach dispenses with the bagpipe accompaniment, and in this elegant movement the violin dances gracefully by itself. Bach was scrupulously accurate in his titles, and the Gavotte en Rondeau (gavotte in the form of a rondo) conforms to both these forms: a gavotte is an old French dance in common time that begins on the third beat, while rondo form asks that one section recur throughout. This vigorous and poised movement features some wonderful writing for the violin as the original dance theme repeats in many guises. The two minuet movements are sharply contrasted: Menuet I takes its character from the powerful chordal beginning, while Menuet II, dancing gracefully, is more subdued. The Bourrée drives along its lively course, energized by a powerful upbeat, and the Gigue (an old English dance related to the jig) brings the work to a lively close.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARTISTS
PROFILES
Alvin Ailey® American Dance Theater
When Alvin Ailey and a small group of African-American dancers took the stage on March 30, 1958, at New York City’s 92nd Street Y, the engagement was for one night only, but it turned out to be the start of a new era in the arts. Ailey envisioned a company dedicated to enriching the American modern dance heritage and preserving the uniqueness of the African-American cultural experience. He became one of the trailblazers of modern dance, and the work of his Company grew to encompass education, community outreach, and cultural diplomacy. To date, the Company has gone on to perform for an estimated 25 million people at theaters in 48 states and 71 countries on six continents—as well as millions more through television, film, and online. More than 270 works by over 100 choreographers have been part of the Ailey repertory. In 2008, a U.S. Congressional resolution designated the Company as “a vital American cultural ambassador to the world.” Before his untimely death in 1989, Ailey named Judith Jamison as his successor, and over the next 21 years, she brought the Company to unprecedented success. Jamison, in turn, personally selected Robert Battle to succeed her in 2011, and The New York Times declared he “has injected the company with new life.”
Robert Battle, Artistic Director
Robert Battle became Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater in July 2011 after being personally selected by Judith Jamison, making him only the third person to head the Company since it was founded in 1958. A frequent choreographer and artist-in-residence at Ailey since 1999, he has set many of his works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II, and at The Ailey School. The Company’s current repertory includes his ballets Ella, For Four, In/Side, Love Stories finale, Mass, and Unfold. In addition to expanding the Ailey repertory with works by artists as diverse as Ronald K. Brown, Rennie Harris, Jessica Lang, and Wayne McGregor, Battle has also instituted the New Directions Choreography Lab to help develop the next generation of choreographers. Battle studied at Miami’s New World School of the Arts and the dance program at The Juilliard School. He danced with The Parsons Dance Company from 1994 to 2001, then founded his own Battleworks Dance Company, which made its debut in 2002 and went on to perform extensively at venues including the Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, American Dance Festival, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Battle was honored as one of the “Masters of African-American Choreography” by the Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts in 2005, and he received the prestigious Statue Award from the Princess Grace Foundation USA in 2007.
Emerson String Quartet
Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violins ; Lawrence Dutton, viola ; Paul Watkins, cello
The Emerson String Quartet has maintained its status as one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles for more than four decades.
“With musicians like this,” wrote a reviewer for The Times (London), “there must be some hope for humanity.”
The Quartet has made more than 30 acclaimed recordings, and has been honored with nine GRAMMY®s (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year” award. The group has partnered in performance with such stellar soloists as Renée Fleming, Barbara Hannigan, Evgeny Kissin, Emanuel Ax, and Yefim Bronfman, to name a few. The Quartet collaborates with some of today’s most esteemed composers to premiere new works, keeping the string quartet form alive and relevant.
Michael Gerdes, lecturer
Michael Gerdes is Director of Orchestras at San Diego State University, where he conducts the San Diego State Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, and Opera Orchestra. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education and Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Selected by the San Diego Union-Tribune as one of three “Faces to Watch in Classical Music” during his first year as Director of Orchestras, Gerdes is focused on creating a thriving orchestral community at San Diego State University.
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’
Melissa Hié, djembe
Melissa Hié grew up in a musical family and was a member of the family band from a very young age. Her father taught her how to play several instruments: balafon, barra and djembe. This enabled her to acquire a strong knowledge of African traditional rhythms and develop her own soft and melodic touch. At nine years old, she chose djembe as her main instrument. She then began playing in various formations and bands as a percussionist. In order to reinforce her skills, she continued to discover other instruments such as the conga. She further developed her artistic skills (singing, dance, computer music) through several collaborations, including major projects with artists such as Damon Albarn and Fatoumata Diawara. Today, she enjoys experimenting with music in unexpected ways and explores various genres ranging from jazz to electronic music.
Robert John Hughes, interviewer
Journalist, broadcaster, musician, author, record producer. Hughes has interviewed hundreds of musical artists in classical, jazz, pop, rock, R&B, and blues, including Sting, Wynton Marsalis, Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, B.B. King, Adele, and Peter Gabriel. As a record producer and member of the GRAMMY ® Academy, Hughes has released five albums of live performances by artists heard on San Diego FM station 102.1 KPRi. Hughes has hosted La Jolla Music Society Preludes since 2018.
Zakir Hussain, tabla
The preeminent classical tabla virtuoso of our time, Zakir Hussain is appreciated as one of the world’s most esteemed and influential musicians. A child prodigy who began his international touring career by the age of eighteen, Hussain has been at the helm of many genredefying collaborations including Shakti, Remember Shakti, Masters of Percussion, Planet Drum, Tabla Beat Science, and Sangam. As a composer, he has scored music for numerous feature films, and has composed three concertos, including the first-ever for tabla and orchestra. He is the
recipient of countless awards, including 2 GRAMMY®s, Officer in France’s Order of Arts and Letters, and several honorary doctorates. Voted “Best Percussionist” by both the Downbeat Critics’ Poll and Modern Drummer’s Readers’ Poll over several years, Hussain was honored with SFJazz’s Lifetime Achievement Award at their 2017 Gala. In 2022, he was named the Kyoto Prize Laureate in Arts and Philosophy. He is the founder and president of Moment Records, an independent record label presenting rare live concert recordings of Indian classical music and world music.
Sabir Khan, sarangi
Sabir Sultan Khan is an Indian sarangi player and the son of legendary sarangi player and vocalist Padma Bhushan Ustad Sultan Khan. He belongs to the Sikar gharana (school) of music, which has given several stalwarts to Indian classical music, and is the tenth generation of his family to take up sarangi. His greatgrandfather Ustad Azim Khan Sahab was a court musician at Sikar, Rajasthan. Khan has performed with his father in concert and also solo. In addition to Hussain, he has performed alongside artists such as Pandit Birju Maharaj, Ustad Rashid Khan, Gazal maestro Ustad Gulam Ali, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, and more. He has performed in feature films like Laal Singh Chadda, Dangal, Badlapur, Rog, Dor, Sanwariya, Jodha Akbar, and many more, and was featured in A.R. Rehman and Shreya Ghosal's episode of MTV Unplugged. Khan has also composed songs for movies like The Dark Side of Life, Mumbai City, Direct Ishq, and Ghustakiyan.
Igor Levit, piano
The New York Times describes Igor Levit as one of the “most important artists of his generation.” He was Musical America’s Recording Artist of the Year 2020 and the 2018 Gilmore Artist. In November 2020 he was nominated for a GRAMMY® for “Best Classical Instrumental Solo.” As a recitalist Levit regularly performs at the world’s most renowned concert halls and festivals, and with the world’s leading orchestras, such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic. Levit’s upcoming schedule includes concerts in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Vienna and Tokyo. In 2021 the
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Lucerne Festival announced a multi-year collaboration for a new piano festival curated by Levit starting in 2023, and in 2022 he premiered a new piano concerto written for him by William Bolcom. For his political commitment Levit was awarded the fifth International Beethoven Prize in 2019 and the award of the “Statue B” of the International Auschwitz Committee in January 2020. In 2020 he was recognized with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and in December 2022 he received the Carl von Ossietzky Prize for Contemporary History and Politics.
Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s life and career are testament to his enduring belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works from the cello repertoire, collaborating with communities and institutions to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity. Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris, where he began studying the cello with his father at age four. When he was seven, he moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at The Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard. Yo-Yo has recorded more than 100 albums, is the winner of 19 GRAMMY® Awards, and has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration. He has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of the Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Kennedy Center Honors. He has been a UN Messenger of Peace since 2006, and was recognized as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Yo-Yo’s latest album is “Beethoven for Three: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5,” recorded with pianist Emanual Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
Tupac Mantilla, percussion
Tupac Mantilla was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and graduated with a Master of Music Honors Degree from the New England Conservatory. He has performed with Bobby McFerrin, Esperanza Spalding, Danilo Perez, and Julian Lage in what might loosely be called the world of jazz, but he was also the First Prize winner at the
2002 Bogota Philharmonic Orchestra’s Classical Soloist Competition. Mantilla has been associated with Stanford University’s Jazz Workshop and the Berklee College Global Jazz Institute, and lectures and administers percussion programs worldwide through his PERCUATION’s Global Rhythm Institute. He has appeared at venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican, Tanglewood, Montreux, and the Newport Jazz Festival, among many others. Much of his current performing focuses on his “Solo Percussion” project, which has led him to develop RITMO (Rhythmic Immersion Training for Multidimensional Openness), a holistic learning methodology that studies life and rhythm and the use of the body as a musical and evolutionary tool.
Midori, violin
A visionary artist, activist and educator, Midori transfixes audiences around the world. She has performed with, among others, the London, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. She has collaborated with such outstanding musicians as Claudio Abbado, Emanuel Ax, Leonard Bernstein, Jonathan Biss, Christoph Eschenbach, Paavo Järvi, Mariss Jansons, Yo-Yo Ma, Zubin Mehta, Donald Runnicles, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Midori’s latest recording, with the Festival Strings Lucerne of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and two Romances, was released in 2020 by Warner Classics. Her diverse discography includes recordings of Bloch, Janáček, and Shostakovich and a GRAMMY® Award-winning recording of Hindemith’s Violin Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach conducting the NDR Symphony Orchestra. Nonprofit organizations she founded include Midori & Friends, which provides music programs for New York City youth and communities, and MUSIC SHARING, a Japanbased foundation bringing both Western classical and Japanese music traditions into young lives throughout Asia. She is a United Nations Messenger of Peace and the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. Midori is Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music and a Distinguished Visiting Artist at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She plays the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesù ‘ex-Huberman.’
46 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON ARTISTS ’ PROFILES
Kristi Brown Montesano, lecturer
Chair of the Music History Department at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, Kristi Brown Montesano is an enthusiastic “public musicologist.” She is an active lecturer for the LA Philharmonic, the Opera League of Los Angeles, the Salon de Musiques series, and Mason House Concerts. Her book, The Women of Mozart’s Operas (UC Press, 2007), offers a detailed study of these fascinating roles; more recent scholarly interests include classical music in film, women in classical music, and opera for children.
Molly Puryear, interviewer
Molly Puryear brings passion for dance and nonprofit administration to her position as Executive Director of Malashock Dance. Puryear has worked with Malashock Dance since 2006, and previously served in the role of Education Director. She strategically aligns artistic and educational efforts to create a dynamic relationship between programs, the communities they serve, and the organization’s valuable funders. Puryear is committed to serving the San Diego community through the development and administration of vibrant dance programs. She believes that dance is an avenue for personal expression that engages people from all walks of life.
Maria Schneider, composer and conductor
Maria Schneider’s music has been hailed by critics as “evocative, majestic, magical, heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and beyond categorization.” She and her orchestra became widely known starting in 1994 when they released their first recording, Evanescence. The Maria Schneider Orchestra has performed at festivals and concert halls worldwide. Schneider herself has received numerous commissions and guest-conducting invitations, working with more than 90 groups in over 30 countries. Schneider’s music blurs the lines between genres, making her long list of commissioners quite varied, from Jazz at
Lincoln Center to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra to collaborating with David Bowie. She is among a very few to have received GRAMMY®s in multiple genres—both jazz and classical categories, as well as for her work with David Bowie. Schneider and her orchestra have received fourteen GRAMMY® nominations and seven GRAMMY® awards. She’s been awarded many honors by the Jazz Journalists Association and Downbeat and JazzTimes Critics’ and Readers’ Polls. In 2019, the National Endowment for the Arts bestowed on Schneider the nation’s highest honor in jazz, naming her an NEA Jazz Master. Schneider and her orchestra’s latest album, Data Lords, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and garnered two GRAMMY® awards in 2021 for Best Instrumental Composition (“Sputnik”) and Best Large Ensemble album.
Navin Sharma, dholak
Navin Sharma is the great young master of the dholak (a doubleheaded hand drum), part of Indian folk tradition. He studied dholak with his first teacher, his father, Shri Shyam Rughuram Sharma. Having taught him much, Shri Shyam then sent Navin to the great Ustad Allarakha (playing partner of Pandit Ravi Shankar; together they were essential in introducing Indian music to the U.S.) to study the tabla. Life being the great circle it is, Sharma now finds himself playing with Allarakhha’s son Zakir, having already played with Zakir’s brothers Shri Fazal Quereshi and Shri Taufiq Quereshi, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, Shri Ranjeet Barot, Shri Selvaganesh, Shri Shivamani, and the maestro of the ghatam, the clay pot drum, “Vikku” Vinayakram. Sharma has also worked extensively in Bollywood.
Kathryn Stott, piano
At the age of five, Kathryn Stott made friends with the upright piano in her family’s living room, and by the age of eight, she found herself at a boarding school for young musicians, the Yehudi Menuhin School. During her studies there she was heavily influenced by two occasional visitors to the school: Nadia Boulanger and Vlado Perlmuter. From them, her great passion for French music was ignited and Fauré in particular has remained the musical love of her life. Further studies at the Royal College of Music in London then led her very abruptly into the life of a professional musician via the Leeds International Piano Competition.
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 47
ARTISTS ’ PROFILES TABLE OF CONTENTS
When, quite by chance, she met Yo-Yo Ma in 1978, it turned out to be one of the most fortuitous moments of her life. Since 1985, they have enjoyed a collaboration which has taken them to many fascinating parts of the world and led to musical adventures with musicians who shared so much from their own traditions. Presently, Stott enjoys the challenge of creativity in a different way by bringing many musicians together once a year in her role as Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Working with young musicians is something she feels passionate about, and she presently teaches at the Academy of Music in Oslo. She has also had some truly exciting music written for her and enjoyed a particularly close collaboration with composer Graham Fitkin.
Chucho Valdés, piano
In a career spanning more than 60 years, both as a solo artist and bandleader, Cuban pianist and composer Chucho Valdés has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, rock, and more, into a deeply personal style. Winner of seven
GRAMMY® and four Latin GRAMMY® Awards, Valdés received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Science last year and was also inducted in the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame. As comfortable offering solo performances as leading small and large ensembles, Valdés is also the co-author with pianist, composer and educator Rebeca Mauleón of Decoding AfroCuban Jazz: The Music of Chucho Valdés & Irakere. Valdés recently completed a two-year tour with Trance, a two-piano duo project, highlighted by a live recording, Tribute to Irakere: Live at Marciac, which won a GRAMMY® for the Best Latin Jazz Album. In 1998, having won his second GRAMMY® the previous year for Habana, Valdés launched a parallel career as a solo player and small-group leader, releasing albums such as Solo Piano, Solo: Live in New York, and New Conceptions, as well as quartet recordings such as Bele Bele en La Habana, Briyumba Palo Congo, and Live at the Village Vanguard, which won a GRAMMY® for Best Latin Jazz Album. Valdés has also won GRAMMY®s for Juntos Para Siempre, the duet recording with his father, Bebo; and for Chucho’s Steps, which introduced his new group, the Afro-Cuban Messengers.
Alisa Weilerstein, project creator, cello, FRAGMENTS
One of the foremost cellists of our time, Alisa Weilerstein is in high demand as a solo recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist with leading orchestras worldwide. She was recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship in 2011. An authority on Bach’s music for unaccompanied cello, Weilerstein recently released a bestselling recording of his solo suites on the Pentatone label, streamed them in her innovative #36DaysOfBach project, and deconstructed his beloved G-major prelude in a Vox.com video, viewed almost 1.5 million times. Her discography also includes charttopping albums and the winner of BBC Music’s Recording of the Year award. She has premiered and championed important new works by composers including Pascal Dusapin, Osvaldo Golijov, and Matthias Pintscher. Other career milestones include a performance at the White House for President and Mrs. Obama. Weilerstein has appeared with all the major orchestras of the US, Europe and Asia, collaborating with conductors including Marin Alsop, Daniel Barenboim, Jiří Bělohlávek, Semyon Bychkov, Sir Andrew Davis, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Mark Elder, Alan Gilbert, Bernard Haitink, Paavo Järvi, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Ludovic Morlot, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Rafael Payare, Donald Runnicles, Yuri Temirkanov, Michael Tilson Thomas, Osmo Vänskä, and Joshua Weilerstein. Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age nine, Weilerstein is a staunch advocate for the T1D community.
Elkhanah Pulitzer, director, FRAGMENTS
Elkhanah Pulitzer is an esteemed director of opera, theater, and other staged works. In 2022, she directed a new production of John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra—a project four years in the making which premiered at San Francisco Opera. Recent projects include David Lang’s prisoner of state with the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican; the live tour of Esperanza Spalding’s album 12 Little Spells; and DIORAMA, an art installation at the I.O.U. in San Francisco. She has directed projects at the LA Philharmonic including John Adams’ Nixon and China and Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, the latter of which was also staged at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. She
48 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
’ PROFILES
ARTISTS
has also directed John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary at the San Francisco Symphony, and Lucia di Lammermoor and Judas Maccabaeus at Los Angeles Opera. Past work includes collaborations on next-generation projects with Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Omaha, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, and the Canadian Opera Company. Theater directing credits include work with Impact Theater, Cutting Ball, Riverside Theater, and Ensemble Theater Company.
Seth Reiser, set and lighting designer, FRAGMENTS
Seth Reiser is a New Yorkbased designer who works in theatre, opera, dance, and music. Reiser’s work has been seen throughout the United States and internationally. Recent work in music includes Handel’s Aci Galatea é Polifemo with the Philharmonia Baroque Opera in San Francisco directed by Christopher Alden; Henze’s El Cimarrón at Festival Impulso in Mexico City directed by Robert Castro; the set and lighting design for Bernstein’s MASS at the LA Philharmonic and NY Philharmonic, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer; J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (Berlin Philharmonic) at the Park Avenue Armory directed by Peter Sellars; Claude Vivier’s Kopernicus at Theatre Cardin in Paris, directed by Peter Sellars; John Adam’s Gospel According to the Other Mary at the San Francisco Symphony directed by Elkhannah Pulitzer; Sufjan Stevens’ Round Up at BAM; Messiaen’s Des Canyon Aux Etoiles with the St. Louis Symphony, directed by Deb O’Grady, which was seen throughout the United States, at the Sydney Opera House, and the Barbican; and The Indian Queen in Concert with MusicAeterna, directed by Robert Castro which toured Germany. Reisder also regularly designs lighting for SF Symphony’s Sound Box concerts.
Carlos Soto, costume designer, FRAGMENTS
Carlos Soto is a designer and creative director based in New York City. With the director Zack Winokur he has designed Tristan und Isolde (Santa Fe Opera); Only an Octave Apart with Justin Vivian
Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo (St. Ann’s Warehouse, Wilton’s Music Hall); The No One’s Rose with composer Matthew Aucoin and choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith (Stanford Live); and The Black Clown with Davóne Tines (ART, Lincoln Center, 2018–19). Soto worked with Solange Knowles and Wu Tsang on Passage (International Woolmark Prize 2021); Solange’s In Past Pupils and Smiles (Venice Biennale, 2019); Witness! (Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg/Sydney Opera House, 2019–20); When I Get Home (film and concert tour 2019). He has also designed costumes and/or scenography for Wagner’s The Valkyries by Yuval Sharon (Detroit Opera); Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) by Bryce Dessner, director Kaneza Schaal; Roomful of Teeth (BAM, Holland Festival, Kennedy Center, UMS, 2019); and The Mile-Long Opera by Anne Carson, Claudia Rankine, and David Lang, 2018. Soto has collaborated closely with Robert Wilson since 1997, most recently on Bach 6 Solo, Der Messias, and I was sitting on my patio this guy appeared I thought I was hallucinating
Hanako Yamaguchi, artistic producer/advisor, FRAGMENTS
Artistic producer and consultant Hanako Yamaguchi believes in the transformative power of the arts. In addition to producing FRAGMENTS, she has also recently served as artistic advisor to the Celebrity Series of Boston, WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Little Island (NYC). Over her thirty-year tenure at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Yamaguchi emerged as a key leader in Lincoln Center’s evolution from classical music presenter to commissioner and producer of multidisciplinary presentations, involving music, dance, theater, film, and the spoken word. As Director of Music Programming, she was a co-creator of the White Light Festival, a force behind the revitalization of the Mostly Mozart Festival, and curator/ producer of the long-standing Great Performers concert series. Throughout her cultivation and advocacy of a wide range of artists, her desire for new collaborations, and her commitment to making the performances unforgettable have been her signature. Yamaguchi is currently a board member of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA), a global association of arts management leaders, who come together with the shared goal of strengthening and developing the arts internationally.
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 49 ARTISTS ’ PROFILES
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MAK GRGIC´ CINEMA VERISMO
SATURDAY, MAY 13, 2023
6:30 PM & 8:30 PM
SAMARA JOY
SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 2023
3 PM · THE JAI
8 PM · THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
Weʼ ve expanded our Discovery Series to showcase the rising stars from the next generation of jazz musicians! Our first ever Discovery Series jazz artist, Samara Joy, won the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and two 2023 GRAMMY®s. With a voice as smooth as velvet, Samara has already performed in many of the great jazz venues including Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, The Blue Note, and Mezzrow, in addition to working with jazz greats such as Christian McBride, Pasquale Grasso, Kirk Lightsey, Cyrus Chestnut, and NEA Jazz Master Dr. Barry Harris.
JIMMIE HERROD
SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 2023
5 PM & 7 PM
Described by The Seattle Times as “a voice like a beacon of hope,” Jimmie Herrod has been bringing audiences to their feet with his miraculous, transporting voice (and dazzling smile) since he started touring with Pink Martini. Hear Jimmie Herrod, Golden Buzzer winner during the 2021 season of Americaʼs Got Talent, in an intimate and mesmerizing evening of music.
2023 GRAMMY® nominee Mak Grgic´ , proclaimed “imaginative, gifted and expressive” by the New York Times and a “guitarist to keep an eye on” by The Washington Post, is an innovative player who programs music as far-reaching as works from the avant-garde to the great classics of guitar repertoire and early works. This program takes listeners down memory lane by offering originals and adaptations of music featured in films such as The Deerhunter, Raging Bull, The Godfather, Chariots of Fire, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and many others.
SCOTT SILVEN
WONDERS
FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023
6 PM & 8:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023
5 PM & 8 PM
An unforgettable performance of awe-inspiring intrigue. As a child, Scott Silven reveled in mystery. This innate fascination with the enigmatic and unexplainable guided him to the craft of illusion at a young age, and evoked a sense of wonder that he knew he had to share with others. Wonders is a show for these extraordinary times; a shared experience that explores the power of connection through unforgettable illusions. Silven is a modern-day marvel like no other, at the top of his profession.
50 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
CONCERTS @ THE JAI
COMPLEXIONS
CONTEMPORARY BALLET
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
STAR DUST: FROM BACH TO BOWIE
SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2023 · 7:30 PM CIVIC THEATRE
Founders Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, armed with a rich Alvin Ailey lineage and a cadre of 18 spectacular dancers, have re-envisioned ballet through technical precision, athletic prowess, and sheer passion. Their blockbuster hit, STAR DUST: From Bach to Bowie, honoring two musical icons, has rocked the dance world and will make your spirits soar!
THE ConRAD KIDS series
PIANIMAL
SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2023 · 10 AM & 11:30 AM
The JAI
Recommended for ages 5–10
Founded in 2011 by director Elizabeth Schumann and her sister, Sonya Schumann, Piano Theatre began as a collaboration to create a concert tour integrating literature, music, art, and multimedia for children. This project presents piano pieces, theatre, and artwork inspired by animals, with integrated live video projections and artwork to promote arts education. Pianimal includes the music of Dvorˇák, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Scriabin, Dutilleux, Mussorgsky, and Saint-Saëns.
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Live from The Conrad
Our series of select performances and interviews from SummerFest 2022 is now available to watch online for free!
theconrad.org/digital-concert-hall/
Find this and much more at the Digital Concert Hall our home for high-quality, exciting arts and culture content.
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 53 Inon Barnatan, SummerFest Music Director Visit TheConrad.org for more information SummerFest 2023 July 28–August 26 Save the dates! SummerFest artist hosting is a wonderful tradition that pairs local hosts with SummerFest artists. Artists Make Great House Guests! Hosts are needed for as little as three days and for as long as the four-week festival. Hosting is an opportunity to get to know some of the best classical artists performing today. Artists and Hosts often become friends and continue relationships year after year. Have an extra bedroom in your home? Want a chance to build a personal relationship with an artist? We are interested in hearing from you! Contact Grace Smith for more information: GSmith@LJMS.org · 858-526-3433 TABLE OF CONTENTS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS · 2022–23
H. Peter Wagener – Chair
Vivian Lim – Vice Chair
Bert Cornelison - Treasurer
Sharon Cohen - Secretary
Steve Baum
Mary Ann Beyster
Eleanor Y. Charlton
Ric Charlton
Mary Ellen Clark
Ellise Coit
Ann Parode Dynes
Jennifer Eve
Debby Fishburn
Stephen Gamp
John Hesselink
Susan Hoehn
Sue Major
Richard A. Norling
Arman Oruc
Peggy Preuss
Tom Rasmussen
Sylvia Ré
Sheryl Scarano
Marge Schmale
Jeanette Stevens
Stephanie Stone
Debra Turner
Lise Wilson
Bebe L. Zigman
HONORARY DIRECTORS
Brenda Baker
Stephen Baum
Joy Frieman, Ph.D.
Irwin M. Jacobs
Joan K. Jacobs
Lois Kohn (1924-2010)
Helene K. Kruger (1916-2019)
Conrad Prebys (1933-2016)
Ellen Revelle (1910-2009)
Leigh P. Ryan, Esq.
Dolly Woo
LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY STAFF
Todd R. Schultz – President & CEO
Leah Rosenthal – Artistic Director
Inon Barnatan – SummerFest Music Director
ADMINISTRATION
Karin Burns – Director of Finance
Brady Stender – Finance & Administration Manager
PROGRAMMING
Grace Smith – Artistic Programming Manager
Carly Cummings – Artistic Programming Coordinator
John Tessmer – Artist Liaison
Eric Bromberger – Program Annotator
LEARNING & ENGAGEMENT
Allison Boles – Director of Learning and Engagement
Carly D ’ Amato – Learning and Engagement Coordinator
Serafin Paredes – Community Music Center Director
Xiomara Pastenes – Community Music Center Administrative Assistant
Community Music Center Instructors:
Noila Carrazana, Marcus Cortez, Ian Lawrence, Michelle Maynard, Eduardo Ruiz, Juan Sanchez, Rebeca Tamez
DEVELOPMENT
Ferdinand Gasang – Director of Development
Camille McPherson – Individual Giving and Grants Officer
Anne Delleman – Development Coordinator
VENUE SALES & EVENTS
Nicole Slavik – Venue Sales & Events Director
Juliet Zimmer – Venue Sales Manager
Calvin Caldua – Event Manager
MARKETING & TICKET SERVICES
Dawn Petrick – Director of Marketing and Communications
Stephanie Thompson – Communications & Public Relations Manager
David Silva – Marketing Manager
Cristal Salow – Data & Marketing Analysis Manager
Angelina Franco – Senior Graphic Designer
Mariel Pillado – Graphic Designer
Shannon Bobritchi – Box Office & Guest Services Manager
Patrick Mayuyu – Box Office & Guest Services Assistant Manager
Kaitlin Barron – Box Office & Guest Services Lead Associate
Sam Gilbert – Box Office & Guest Services Associate
Mitch Cook – Box Office & Guest Services Associate
Shaun Davis – House Manager
OPERATIONS & PRODUCTION
Tom Jones – Director of Production & Technology
Verdon Davis – Technical Director
Jamie Coyne – Production Manager
Tom Mehan – Facilities Manager
Ryn Shroeder – Production Coordinator
Colin Dickson – Facilities Coordinator
Yoni Hirshfield – Technical Coordinator
Kim Chevallier – Security Supervisor
Jonnel Domilos – Piano Technician
54 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
7600
Admin: 858.459.3724
The
Conrad Home of La Jolla Music Society
Fay Avenue, La Jolla, California 92037
THANK YOU!
The wonderful array of musical activity that La Jolla Music Society offers would not be possible without support from its family of donors. Your contributions to La Jolla Music Society help bridge the gap between income from ticket sales and the total cost to present the finest musicians and the best chamber music repertoire in San Diego. Your generosity also supports our programs in the local schools and throughout the community.
On the following pages La Jolla Music Society pays tribute to you, the leading players who make it possible to share the magic of the performing arts with our community.
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 55
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ANNUAL SUPPORT
La Jolla Music Society depends on contributed income for more than 60% of its annual budget. We are grateful to all of our contributors who share our enthusiams and passion for the arts. Every donor is a valued partner and they make it possible for one of San Diego’s premier music organizations to present year-round.
It is our honor to recognize the following donors.
FOUNDER
($250,000 and above)
Brenda Baker and Stephen Baum
The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture
Joan and Irwin Jacobs
The Conrad Prebys Foundation
ANGEL ($100,000 - $249,999)
BENEFACTOR
($50,000-$99,999)
Raffaella and John Belanich
Mary Ellen Clark
Dorothea Laub
Debra Turner
Clara Wu Tsai and Joseph Tsai
Mary Ann Beyster
Ric and Eleanor Charlton
Julie and Bert Cornelison
Silvija and Brian Devine
Elaine Galinson and Herbert Solomon
Susan and Bill Hoehn
Vivian Lim and Joseph Wong
Peggy and Peter Preuss
Marge and Neal Schmale
Haeyoung Kong Tang
Anna and Edward Yeung
Bebe and Marvin Zigman
56 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
GUARANTOR ($25,000 - $49,999)
Anonymous
Banc of California | Stephen Gamp
Jim Beyster
Ginny and Bob Black
Katherine and Dane Chapin
Peter Cooper and Erik Matwijkow
Ann Parode Dynes and Robert Dynes
Lyndie and Sam Ersan
Jennifer and Kurt Eve
Pam Farr and Buford Alexander
First Republic Bank
Ingrid and Ted Friedmann
Goldman Sachs
Jeanne Herberger
John Hesselink
Inamori Foundation
Sue and John Major
Arlene and Lou Navias
Steven and Sylvia Ré
Sheryl and Bob Scarano
Maureen and Thomas Shiftan
Mao and Doctor Bob Shillman
Jeanette Stevens
Vail Memorial Fund
Sue and Peter Wagener
SUSTAINER ($15,000 - $24,999)
Anonymous (2)
Judith Bachner and Dr. Eric L. Lasley
Ellise and Michael Coit
Cafe Coyote and Rancho Coyote Wines
Sharon L. Cohen
Jendy Dennis Endowment Fund
Nina and Robert Doede
The Hon. Diana Lady Dougan
Monica Fimbres
Debby and Wain Fishburn
Sarah and Jay Flatley
Pam and Hal Fuson
Lehn and Richard Goetz
Brenda and Michael Goldbaum
Teresa and Harry Hixson
Helene and Keith Kim
Las Patronas
Monarch Cottage
Robin and Hank Nordhoff
Jeanne and Rick Norling
Arman Oruc and Dagmar Smek
ProtoStar Foundation
Thomas Rasmussen and Clayton Lewis
Patty Rome
Stacy and Don Rosenberg
Leigh P. Ryan
Susan Shirk and Samuel Popkin
Stephanie and Nick Stone
Lise Wilson and Steve Strauss
Dolly and Victor Woo
SUPPORTER ($10,000 - $14,999)
Anonymous
Jeffrey Barnouw
Scott Benson
Bjorn Bjerede and Jo Kiernan
Gordon Brodfuehrer
Una Davis and Jack McGrory
Martha and Ed Dennis
Barbara Enberg
Sue and Chris Fan
Joy Frieman
Sarah and Mike Garrison
Margaret Stevens Grossman and Michael Grossman
Angelina and Fredrick Kleinbub
ResMed Foundation
Bob and Nancy Selander
Dr. Seuss Foundation
Elizabeth Taft
Abby and Ray Weiss
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 57 ANNUAL SUPPORT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AMBASSADOR ($5,000 - $9,999)
Anonymous (3)
Ingrid de Alba de Salazar and Hector Salazar-Reyes
Carolyn Bertussi
Karen and Jim Brailean
Boys and Girls Foundation
Lisa and David Casey
Li-Rong Lilly Cheng
Grace and David Cherashore
George and Tallie Dennis
Debbe Deverill
Jill Esterbrooks and James Robbins
Peter Farrell
Diane and Elliot Feuerstein
Beverly Frederick and Alan Springer
Buzz and Peg Gitelson
Lisa Braun Glazer and Jeff Glazer
Richard Harris and Sonya Celeste-Harris
Norma Hidalgo-Del Rio
Barbara and Paul Hirshman
Elisa and Rick Jaime
Theresa Jarvis
Barbara Kjos
Kathleen and Ken Lundgren
Marilyn and Stephen Miles
Cynthia and George Mitchell
Elaine and Doug Muchmore
Virginia Oliver
Linda Platt
Mary and Scott Pringle
Eva and Doug Richman
Catherine Rivier
Kathleen Roche-Tansey and David Tansey
Clifford Schireson and John Venekamp
Todd R. Schultz
Reesey and David Shaw
Gerald and Susan Slavet
Gloria and Rod Stone
Joyce and Ted Strauss
Susan and Richard Ulevitch
Ayse Underhill
Lynne and David Weinberg
Jo and Howard Weiner
Shara Williams and Benjamin Brand
Mary and Joseph Witztum
AFICIONADO ($2,500 - $4,999)
Emily and Barry Berkov
Susan and Ken Bien
Jerry and Bernice Blake
Janice and Nelson Byrne
Charles Schwab | Derek Anthony
Eric Cohen and Bill Coltellaro
Naomi Fekini
Carrie Greenstein
Cheryl Hintzen-Gaines and Ira Gaines
David Hsieh
Margaret Jackson
Jerri-Ann and Gary Jacobs
Susan and David Kabakoff
Ruth and Ronald Leonardi
Jaime and Sylvia Liwerant
Diana and Eli Lombrozo
Sarah Long and Simon Fang
Maggie and Paul Meyer
Gail and Edward Miller
Daphne Nan Muchnic
Robert and Allison Price
Carol Randolph and Robert Caplan
Jean Sullivan and David Nassif
Ronald Wakefield
Western States Arts Federation
Lisa Widmier
Al and Armi Williams
ASSOCIATE ($1,000
Anonymous
K Andrew Achterkirchen
Judith Adler
Dede and Mike Alpert
Ted Ebel and Jee Shin
Beverly Fremont
Ted Hoehn
Linda Howard
Brett Johnson
Dwight Kellogg
Edward Koczak
Michael Krco
Viviana and Enrique Lombrozo
Eileen A. Mason
Michael Masser
Ted McKinney
Susan and Doug McLeod
William Miller and Ida Houby
Sandra Miner
Norman Needel
Michael O'Brien
Marty and David Pendarvis
Ursula Pfeffer
Sandra Redman
Jean-Luc and Jaqueline Robert
Cassidy Robins
Marilies Schoepflin
Doreen and Myron Schonbrun
Anne and Ronald Simon
William Smith and Carol Harter
Norma Jo Thomas
Yvonne Vaucher
Cynthia Weiler
Howard and Christy Zatkin
- $2,499)
Xiaomei Zhang
FRIEND ($500 - $999)
Anonymous (2)
Arleene Antin and Leonard Ozerkis
Kenny Baca
Joan Jordan Bernstein
Alicia Booth
Isabel and Stuart Brown
Raymond Chinn
June Chocheles
Anthony Chong and Annette Nguyen Chong
Ann Craig
Peggy Cravens
Lu Dai
Carolyn DeMar
John Bailey
Terence Balagia
Christopher Beach and Wesley Fata
James W. Burns
Joseph Calvino
Dr. Kathleen Charla
Elizabeth Clarquist
Bob Dawson
Caroline DeMar
Renée and James Dunford
James Emerson
Lindsey and Steve Gamp
Martha and David Gilmer
58 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON ANNUAL
SUPPORT
Lynn Gorguze and Scott Peters
Jeff and Patt Hall
Nabil Hanna
Kara Hanning
Paul and George Hauer
Nancy Hong and Ardem Patapoutian
Joanne Hutchinson
Dwight Kellogg
Nancy Kossan
Jane and Steven Lahre
Lewis Leicher
Elizabeth Lucas
Linda and Michael Mann
Lynn and Charles McPherson
Virginia Meyer
Andrea Oster
Sigrid Pate and Glenn Butler
William Purves and Don Schmidt
Jennifer Reilly
Denise Selati
Annemarie and Leland Sprinkle
Robin Stark
Victor A. van Lint
Paul Viani
Suhaila White
Symphorosa Williams
Marty and Olivia Winkler
Susan and Gavin Zau
ENTHUSIAST
Anonymous
Alison Alpert
Bruce H. Athon
Robin Allgren
Hiroko Baba
($250 - $499)
Harris Cohen
Candy Coleman
Courtney Coyle and Steven McDonald
Jeane Erley
Robert C. Fahey
Stephen Feldman
Clare Friedman
Ferdinand Marcus Gasang
Morris and Phyllis Gold
Margie and Paul Grossman
Andrea Harris
Phyllis and Gordon Harris
Rodger Heglar
Matthew Herman
Laura and Geoffrey Hueter
Linda and Ed Janon
David K. Jordan
Michael Kalichman
Zoe and Eric Kleinbub
Melvin Knyper
Patricia M. Lending
Vonnie Madigan
Robert L. Mazalewski
Christopher Moore
Kylie Murphy
Joani Nelson
Renee Packer
Carol Plantamura
Gary P. Poon
Ellen M. Quandahl
Ester Rodriguez
Barbara Rosen
Cynthia Rosenthal
Jon M. Rosenthal
Leah Rosenthal and Matthew Geaman
Joyce Williams
Ian A. Wilson
Carol Young
Sandra Zarcades
Bill Ziebron
Bart Ziegler
CONTRIBUTOR ($150 - $249)
Harold G Brittain
Linda Brown
Adam Byrnes
James and Carol Carlisle
Marjorie Coburn
Jennifer Cuthrell
Martha Davis
Kathy Fackler
Allison Gardenswartz
Renita Greenberg
Susan Halliday
David Halter
John Higbee
George and Julia Katz
Mee Ryoung Kim
John Krasno
Marti Kutnik
Joni LeSage
Elaine Litton
Eduardo Macagno
Jasmine Majid
Carol Manifold
Patricia Manners
Roderick Graham Mclennan
Elinor Merl
Michael Pendarvis
Lynn Reineman
Teri and Eduardo Rodriguez
Mary Lonsdale Baker
Inon Barnatan and Jason Feldman
Laura Birns
Marc Brown
Roanna Canete
Michael Casey
Jugo Cassirer
Kimberly Chevallier
Linda Christensen and Gonzalo Ballon-Landa
Anne Rudolph
Hannah Schlachet
Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz
Bob Stefanko
Lee Talner
Anne Turhollow
N.B. Varlotta
Monica Valdez
Colleen Vasquez
Jian Wang
Susan F. Sharin
Katie M. Smith
Junko Vajda
Nathan Vandergift
Margaretha Walk
Donna Weston
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 59
This list is current as of January 31, 2022. We regret any errors. Please contact Anne Delleman at ADelleman@LJMS.org 858.526.3445 to make a correction. ANNUAL SUPPORT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MEDALLION SOCIETY
CROWN JEWEL
Brenda Baker and Steve Baum
Joan and Irwin Jacobs
DIAMOND
Raffaella and John Belanich
Mary Ellen Clark
Dorothea Laub
RUBY
Silvija and Brian Devine
Elaine Galinson and Herbert Solomon
EMERALD
Arlene and Louis Navias
GARNET
Julie and Bert Cornelison
Peggy and Peter Preuss
SAPPHIRE
John Hesselink
Keith and Helen Kim
Bebe and Marvin Zigman
DANCE SOCIETY
TOPAZ
Anonymous
Joan Jordan Bernstein
Mary Ann Beyster
Virginia and Robert Black
Dr. James C. and Karen A. Brailean
Barbara Enberg
Pam and Hal Fuson
Buzz and Peg Gitelson
Drs. Lisa Braun-Glazer and Jeff Glazer
Margaret Stevens Grossman and Michael Grossman
Theresa Jarvis
Angelina and Fred Kleinbub
Vivian Lim and Joseph Wong
Kathleen and Ken Lundgren
Elaine and Doug Muchmore
Don and Stacy Rosenberg
Leigh P. Ryan
Sheryl and Bob Scarano
Neal and Marge Schmale
Jeanette Stevens
Gloria and Rodney Stone
Susan and Richard Ulevitch
Sue and Peter Wagener
Dolly and Victor Woo
GRAND JETÉ
Elaine Galinson and Herbert Solomon
Marvin and Bebe Zigman
ARABESQUE
Ellise and Michael Coit
Jeanette Stevens
PIROUETTE
Carolyn Bertussi
Bill Coltellaro and Eric Cohen
DEMI POINTE
Joseph Calvino
Stephanie and Nick Stone
PLIÉ
Mary Ann Beyster
Laura Birns
Amber Bliss
Anaelvia Sanchez and Harold Brittain
Gordon Brodfuehrer
Eleanor and Ric Charlton
Mary Ellen Clark
Courtney Coyle
Jennifer and Vernon Cuthrell
Joy Frieman
Wendy Frieman
Allison and Daniel Gardenswartz
Renita Greenberg
Susan and Bill Hoehn
Joanne Martin
Laura McWilliams
Cynthia Rosenthal
Katie Smith
Sue and Peter Wagener
Samatha Zauscher
We are honored to have this extraordinary group of friends who have made multi-year commitments to La Jolla Music Society, ensuring that the artistic quality and vision we bring to the community continues to grow.
We are grateful for each patron for their passion and support of our dance programs.
60 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
PLANNED GIVING
LEGACY SOCIETY
Anonymous (2)
Brenda Baker and Steve Baum
June L. Bengston*
Joan Jordan Bernstein
Bjorn Bjerede and Jo Kiernan
Dr. James C. and Karen A. Brailean
Gordon Brodfuehrer
Wendy Brody*
Barbara Buskin*
Trevor Callan
Geoff and Shem Clow
Anne and Robert Conn
George and Cari Damoose*
Teresa and Merle Fischlowitz
Lynda Fox
Ted and Ingrid Friedmann
Joy and Ed* Frieman
Sally Fuller
Maxwell H. and Muriel S. Gluck*
Dr. Trude Hollander*
Eric Lasley
Theodora Lewis
Joani Nelson
Maria and Dr. Philippe Prokocimer
Bill Purves
Darren and Bree Reinig
Jay W. Richen*
Leigh P. Ryan
Jack* and Joan Salb
Johanna Schiavoni
Pat Shank
Drs. Joseph and Gloria Shurman
Karen and Christopher Sickels
Todd R. Schultz
Jeanette Stevens
Joyce and Ted* Strauss
Elizabeth and Joseph* Taft
Norma Jo Thomas
Dr. Yvonne E. Vaucher
Lucy and Ruprecht von Buttlar
Ronald Wakefield
John B. and Cathy Weil
Carolyn Yorston-Wellcome* and H. Barden Wellcome*
Karl and Joan Zeisler
Josephine Zolin
REMEMBERING LJMS IN YOUR WILL
It is easy to make a bequest to La Jolla Music Society, and any amount makes a difference.
Here is a sample of language that can be incorporated into your will:
“I hereby give ___% of my estate (or specific assets) to La Jolla Music Society, Tax ID 27-3147181, 7600 Fay Avenue, La Jolla, CA 92037, for its artistic programs (or education, general operating, or where needed most).
The Legacy Society recognizes those generous individuals who have chosen to provide for La Jolla Music Society’s future. Members have remembered La Jolla Music Society in their estate plans in many ways—through their wills, retirement gifts, life income plans, and many other creative planned giving arrangements. We thank them for their vision and hope you will join this very special group of friends. If you have included LJMS in your estate plans, please let us know so we may recognize you.
*In memoriam
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FOUNDATIONS
The Blachford-Cooper Foundation
Boys and Girls Foundation
The Catalyst Foundation:
The Hon. Diana Lady Dougan
Enberg Family Charitable Foundation
The Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund:
The Carroll Family Fund
Drs. Edward & Martha Dennis Fund
Sue & Chris Fan
Don & Stacy Rosenberg
Shillman Charitable Trust
Inamori Foundation
The Jewish Community Foundation:
Jendy Dennis Endowment Fund
Diane & Elliot Feuerstein Fund
Galinson Family Fund
Lawrence & Bryna Haber Fund
Joan & Irwin Jacobs Fund
Warren & Karen Kessler Fund
Theodora F. Lewis Fund
Liwerant Family Fund
The Allison & Robert Price Family Foundation Fund
John & Cathy Weil Fund
Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation
Muchnic Foundation
The Conrad Prebys Foundation
ProtoStar Foundation
ResMed Foundation
Rancho Santa Fe Foundation:
The Fenley Family Fund
The Susan & John Major Fund
The Oliphant Fund
The San Diego Foundation:
The Beyster Family Foundation Fund
The M.A. Beyster Fund II
The Karen A. & James C. Brailean Fund
The Hom Family Fund
The Scarano Family Fund
The Shiftan Family Fund
Dr. Seuss Foundation
Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving:
Ted McKinney & Frank Palmerino Fund
The Shillman Foundation
The Haeyoung Kong Tang Foundation
Vail Memorial Fund
Thomas and Nell Waltz Family Foundation
The John H. Warner Jr. and Helga M. Warner Foundation
GIFTS IN HONOR/MEMORY
In Memory of George Damoose, from:
Ferdinand Gasang
Margie and Paul Grossman
Mary Manak
in Honor of Joy Frieman, from: Ferdinand Gasang
Sylvia Geffen
Susan & Richard Ulevitch
In Honor of OJ Heestand, from: Scott Benson
In Honor of Susan and Bill Hoehn's 50th Anniversary, from: Martha & Ed Dennis
In Memory of George Katz, from: Barbara and Paul Hirshman
In Memory of Kenneth Rind, husband of Linda Chester, from: Susan & Richard Ulevitch
In Honor of Jeanette Stevens: Derek Floyd
SERVING OUR COMMUNITY
La Jolla Music Society reaches over 11,000 students and community members annually. LJMS works with students from more than 60 schools and universities, providing concert tickets, performance demonstrations, and master classes. Thanks to the generous support of our patrons and donors, all of our outreach activities are free to the people we serve.
62 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
VAIL MEMORIAL FUND
CORPORATE PARTNERS
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FOUNDATION SPONSORS
CORPORATE &
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PUBLIC SUPPORT
La Jolla Music Society thanks all of our generous patrons and supporters—including government funding—who support our artistic, education and community engagement programs.
Support of our 2022-23 Season is provided by:
Thank you to The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture for promoting, encouraging and increasing support for the region’s artistic and cultural assets, integrating arts and culture into community life and showcasing San Diego as an international tourist destination.
artist, I. Levit © Felix Broede; Pg. 46-47: Y. Ma © Jason Bell, T. Mantilla © Eduardo Solis, Midori courtesy of artist, K. Brown Montesano courtesy of artist, M. Puryear courtesy of artist, M. Schneider © Briene Lermitte, N. Sharma courtesy of artist, K. Stott © Jaqui Ferry; P. 48-49: C. Valdés courtesy of artist, A. Weilerstein © Paul Stuart, E. Pulitzer © Kristen Loken, S. Reiser courtesy of artist, C. Soto © Maria Baranova-Suzuki, H. Yamaguchi © Picasa
64 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
PHOTO CREDITS: Cover: Complexions Contemporary Ballet © Rachel Neville, Penguins on ice floe © David Doubilet; Pg. 11: The Baker-Baum Concert Hall courtesy of The Conrad; Pg.12: The Baker-Baum Concert Hall © Steve Uzzell; Pg.13: T. Schultz © Darin Fong; Pg.14: M. Schneider © Briene Lermitte; Pg.15: I. Levit © Felix Broede; Pg.19: Z. Hussain © Jim Bennett; Pg.20: K. Inamori © Kyocera Corporation Inamori Library; Pg.21: Z. Hussain courtesy of artist; Pg.22: C. Valdés courtesy of artist; Pg.23: Alvin Ailey ® American Dance Theater’s Jacquelin Harris © Dario Calmese; Pg.29: Y. Ma, K. Stott © Mark Mann; Pg.33: Emerson String Quartet © Jürgen Frank; Pg.36: Midori © Timothy Greenfield Sanders; Pg.40:Midori ©Timothy Greenfield Sanders; Pg.44-45: R. Battle courtesy of artist, M. Gerdes courtesy of artist, M. Hié courtesy of artist, R. John Hughes courtesy of artist, Z. Hussain © Paul Joseph, S. Khan courtesy of
JOIN OUR FAMILY
For more than 50 years, La Jolla Music Society has nurtured a love of music by keeping one vision in mind: To present diverse programs of great music performed by the best musicians in the world. Today, that vision has reached beyond the intimate beauty of the chamber music ensemble and into new and diverse offerings such as orchestras, jazz ensembles, dance companies, renowned speakers, and robust education programs.
This impressive growth has been carefully conducted by an active and highly committed volunteer board of directors and dedicated staff. But most importantly, La Jolla Music Society’s progress has been sustained by the generosity of the community and ticket buyers.
...WITH A GIFT TODAY!
TheConrad.org/donate
To make a donation by phone or if you are interested in sponsoring an artistic or education program, please contact
Ferdinand Gasang, Director of Development, at 858.526.3426 or FGasang@LJMS.org.
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66 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON Protect arts programming. Ensure a future filled with live performances. Donate Today TheConrad.org or call 858.459.3728 Resilience Fund THE CONRAD
Home of La Jolla Music Society
BOOK YOUR EVENT AT THE CONRAD
THE CONRAD PREBYS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Recitals · Chamber Music · Amplified Concerts · Dance · Film · Theater Conferences · Lectures ·
Receptions · Fundraisers · Weddings and more...
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL: A intimate 513 seat performance space with superb acoustics ideally suited for chamber music and classical recitals. Its design incorporates state-of-the-art technology and adjustable acoustics, making it a world-class space for amplified concerts, film, dance, theater, lectures, and more.
THE JAI: A 2,000 square foot performance space with a contemporary look. Because of its flexible lighting, audio, and video system capabilities, this space can be configured for many types of events.
THE ATKINSON ROOM: An ideal room for meetings or lectures with audiovisual capabilities. The space can be rented in conjunction with The Baker-Baum Concert Hall and The JAI.
For more information please email VenueServices@LJMS.org
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68 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON S t a y a n d P l a y o n Fa y - A P r e f e r r e d P a r t n e r o f T H E C O N R A D E X P E R I E N C E E X C E P T I O N A L S E R V I C E C o n n n e n t a l B r e a k f a s t - P i a n o S p a S u i t e - F i n e I t a l i a n C u i s i n e
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 69 Located along the shores of La Jolla, the elegance and sophistication of your dining experience is matched only by the power and drama of the ocean just inches away. At The Marine Room, every meal is a special occasion. 858.459.7222 MarineRoom.com some traditions just keep getting richer. Steel seahorse, Jennifer Lannes, diner since 1978
70 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY H A P P Y H O U R D I N N E R P R I V A T E R O O M S R E T A I L W I N E C A T E R I N G 5 1 4 V I A D E L A V A L L E S T E . 1 0 0 S O L A N A B E A C H , C A 9 2 0 7 5 P G R I L L E . C O M 8 5 8 . 7 9 2 . 9 0 9 0 I N F O @ P G R I L L E . C O M PROUD PARTNER OF THE CONRAD & LONG TIME SUPPORTER OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY mousse Grille
TheConrad.org · 858.459.3728 71 FLOWERCHILDSANDIEGO.COM
72 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
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74 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON “Candor is La Jolla Hidden Gem!” Brian L. - Tripadvisor COME AND DINE WITH US! Steps away from The Conrad, Chef Giuseppe Ciuffa's restaurant Candor is a European inspired restaurant with fresh Seasonal California Cuisine. Focused on honest and straightforward cooking, Candor sources as much as possible from local farmers and fishermen. Join Candor for an afternoon aperitif pre-concert at the wine bar or dinner following a night out. WWW.DINECANDOR.COM 1030 Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037 | 858.246.7818 Reservations are recommended. LUNCH | DINNER | COCKTAILS | OUTDOOR DINING
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COMING UP...
APRIL
CHUCHO VALDÉS QUARTET
SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Jazz Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
ALVIN AILEY® AMERICAN
DANCE THEATRE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2023 · 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2023· 7:30 PM
Dance Series
Civic Theatre
YO-YO MA & KATHRYN STOTT
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Recital Series
Civic Theatre
EMERSON STRING QUARTET
FAREWELL SEASON
SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Revelle Chamber Music Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
MIDORI
40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
Education Ambassador-in-Residence
THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Recital Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
YUNCHAN LIM
VAN CLIBURN PIANO COMPETITION
GOLD MEDAL WINNER
SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 2023 · 3 PM
Discovery Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
ALICE SARA OTT
ECHOES OF LIFE (U.S. PREMIERE)
FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Piano Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
MARIACHI REYNA DE LOS ANGELES AND VILLA-LOBOS BROTHERS
SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 2023 · 3 PM
Global Roots Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
MAY
BROOKLYN RIDER & MAGOS HERRERA
DREAMERS
SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2023 · 7:30 PM
ProtoStar Innovative Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
PIANIMAL
SATURDAY MAY 6, 2023 · 10 AM & 11:30 AM
ConRAD Kids Series
The JAI
NEW CENTURY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
DANIEL HOPE, violin & music director
FRIDAY, MAY 12, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Revelle Chamber Music Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
CINEMA VERISMO
WITH MAK GRGIĆ
SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2023 · 3 PM
The JAI
COMPLEXIONS
STAR DUST FROM BACH TO BOWIE
Artist-in-Residence
SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Dance Series
Civic Theatre
NAT GEO LIVE!
CORAL KINGDOMS AND EMPIRES OF ICE
WITH DAVID DOUBILET AND JENNIFER HAYES
THURSDAY, May 25, 2023 · 7 PM
Nat Geo Live! Speaker Series
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall
JUNE
BODYTRAFFIC
THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 2022 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 2023 · 7:30 PM
Dance Series
The JAI
JIMMIE HERROD
SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 2023 · 5 PM & 7 PM
The JAI
SCOTT SILVEN WONDERS
FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023 · 6 PM & 8:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023 · 5 PM & 8 PM
The JAI
76 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
TheConrad.org 858.459.3728