Field Trip for Students:
October 4, 2023, 9:30am I Dolly Hand Cultural Arts Center
October 4, 2023, 11:15am I Dolly Hand Cultural Arts Center
October 6, 2023, 10:30am I Kravis Center for the Performing Arts
Family Concert:
October 7, 2023, 3:00pm I Eissey Campus Theatre
Internationally recognized for his moving performances, innovative programming and extensive catalogue of recordings, American conductor Gerard Schwarz serves as Music Director of the All-Star Orchestra, Eastern Music Festival, Palm Beach Symphony and Mozart Orchestra of New York, and is Conductor Laureate of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Conductor Emeritus of the Mostly Mozart Festival. He is a Distinguished Professor of Music in Conducting and Orchestral Studies at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music where he serves as Music Director of the Frost Symphony Orchestra. His considerable discography of over 350 albums showcases his collaborations with some of the world’s greatest orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra,
Orchestre National de France, Tokyo Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony and Seattle Symphony Orchestra among others. In 2017 The Gerard Schwarz Collection, a 30-CD box set of previously unreleased or limited release works spanning his entire recording career was released by Naxos. Schwarz began his professional career as co-principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic and held Music Director positions with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and New York Chamber Symphony. As a guest conductor, he has worked with many of the world’s finest orchestras and has led the opera companies of San Francisco, Washington National, and Seattle on many occassions. He is also a gifted composer and arranger with an extensive catalogue of works that have been premiered by
ensembles across the United States, Europe and Korea.
Schwarz is a renowned interpreter of 19th century German, Austrian and Russian repertoire in addition to his noted work with contemporary American composers. He completed his final season as Music Director of the Seattle Symphony in 2011 after an acclaimed 26 years - a period of dramatic artistic growth for the ensemble.
In his nearly five decades as a respected classical musician and conductor, Schwarz has received
hundreds of honors and accolades including Emmy Awards, GRAMMY nominations, ASCAP Awards and the Ditson Conductor’s Award. He was the first American named Conductor of the Year by Musical America and has received numerous honorary doctorates. The City of Seattle named the street alongside the Benaroya Hall “Gerard Schwarz Place” in his honor. His book, Behind the Baton, was released by Amadeus Press in March 2017. He has been married to his wife Jody for 37 years, has four children and lives in Florida.
Forrest Galante was born in California, but within the first few months of his life moved to Harare, Zimbabwe. He grew up on a productive farm that cultivated luxury alstroemeria flowers, various fruits and was home to a myriad of livestock and wild African animals. As a child, Galante’s favorite pastimes included
catching snakes, fishing in the dam, breeding guinea pigs and playing rugby. When he wasn’t enjoying life on the farm, his mother would take him and his sister on safari in the African bush. As one of Africa’s first female safari guides and bush pilots, Galante’s mother took her children to explore some of the most remote parts of Africa, collecting
artifacts and observing wildlife. Galante was enthralled by all wildlife and knew he would one day pursue a career with animals. At age 14, Galante was the youngest person to ever lead an international canoe safari down the Zambezi River.
In 2001, Galante’s world was turned upside down when terrible political turmoil in Zimbabwe caused their farm to be seized. They were forcefully evicted from their home in the middle of the night and fled the country of Zimbabwe. With only a suitcase each and a couple hundred dollars, Galante and his family returned to California to the small town of Cayucos, and later Santa Barbara.
Galante turned to free diving and spearfishing as a way to adjust to his new life in California. Over time and as his skills developed, Galante made a name for himself in the underwater community. He traveled to various countries to participate in spearfishing events and today holds six pole spear world records. Along the way, Galante also got certified as a SCUBA dive master, a 100-ton ship captain, and an EMT. In 2009, he graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in biology; special emphasis in marine biology and herpetology.
The year after his college graduation, Galante took a year to travel the world. He visited 46 of the most remote places on earth to work with and photograph rare wildlife. Along his journey, he caught crocodiles, dove with white
sharks, photographed venomous snakes, outsmarted a startled hippo, dodged a cyclone, and had countless other adventures—but also was hospitalized multiple times.
Upon returning to California, Galante pursued a career in high-risk wildlife biology fieldwork, always focusing on animals on the brink of extinction. In 2014, he participated in Discovery’s hit show, Naked and Afraid and scored one of the highest PSR’s (primate survival rating) ever on the show. Galante’s hands-on approach to wildlife, passion for nature and extraordinary background eventually led to the development of his own television show, Extinct or Alive, on Animal Planet. The show followed Galante as he travels the globe searching for animals he believes have wrongfully been deemed extinct. Since 2018, Galante has captured evidence of the existence of eight animals once believed to be extinct.
Galante continues to conduct field expeditions and surveys, working not just with believed extinct animals but also with a wide range of other wildlife. His mission is to inspire and educate people about animals and adventure through the media, including hosting programs on Animal Planet, on-camera expert interviews, and production of his own wildlife and natural history shows. He also communicates his mission through his active social media presence with frequent posts to a large following.
Composed by Camille Saint-Saëns
Arranged and Conducted by Gerard Schwarz
Narrated by Forrest Galante
Movements
I. Introduction
Alligators (Gators and Crocs)
II. Turkeys (Wild Turkey)
III. Deer (White-Tailed Deer)
IV. Tortoises (Gopher Tortoise)
V. Black Bears (Florida Black Bear)
VI. Foxes (Red Fox and Gray Fox)
VII. Puma (Florida Panther/Mountain Lion/Cougar)
VIII. Cranes (Sandhill Crane)
IX. Owls (Great Horned Owl and Barred Owl)
X. Sky, Water, and Land Birds (Blue Jay, Mottled Duck, Cattle Egret)
XI. Pelicans (White Pelican and Brown Pelican)
XII. Otters (River Otter)
XIII. Manatees
XIV. Finale
In partnership with Busch Wildlife Sanctuary and Friends of Manatee Lagoon
Gerard Schwarz, Music Director
David McClymont, Chief Executive Officer
Julia Atkins, PhD, Marketing and Communications Manager
Jason Barroncini, Production Coordinator
Kyle Elgarten, Music Librarian
Renee LaBonte, Community Advancement Coordinator
Sage Lehman, Patron Relations Concierge
Madison Mirra, Marketing and Development Assistant
Felix Rivera, Patron Advancement Coordinator
Hulya Selcuk, Director of Special Events
Bryce Seliger, DMA, Education and Programming Associate
Olga Vazquez, PhD, Director of Artistic Operations
VIOLIN I
Evija Ozolins, concertmaster
Marina Lenau, assistant concertmaster
Glenn Basham
Monica Cheveresan
Alfredo Oliva Claudia Cagnassone
VIOLIN II
Valentin Mansurov, principal
Marcia Littley
Orlando Forte
Yuhao Zhou Adreinne Williams
Morena Kalziqi
VIOLA
Chauncey Patterson, principal
Hillary Gamble
Ethan Durell
Taylor Shea
CELLO
Brent Charran, principal
German Marcano
Aziz Sapaev Tadeo Hermida
BASS
Juan Carlos Peña, principal Benjamin Joella
FLUTE
Joseph Monticello, principal
OBOE
James Riggs, principal
CLARINET
Ashley Leigh, principal
BASSOON
Melanie Ferrabone, principal
FRENCH HORN
Richard Todd, principal
TRUMPET
Craig Morris, principal Terri Rauschenbach
TROMBONE
Salvador Saez, principal
TUBA
Kevin Ildefonso, principal
TIMPANI / PERCUSSION
Lucas Sánchez, principal
HARP
Laura Sherman, principal
PIANO
Valeria Polunina
ORCHESTRA CONTRACTOR
Alfredo Oliva, Miami Symphonic
Born October 9, 1835 in Paris, France
Died December 16, 1921 in Algiers, Algeria
Music Arranged by Gerard Schwarz
Camille Saint-Saëns was already a famous piano prodigy when he enrolled at the Paris Conservatory at the age of 13. By the time he left five years later to take a job as a church organist, his true ambition was to be respected as a composer, but for a long time his success as a performer overshadowed his own original music. He was finally realizing his dream in his fifties, when he was working on a symphony for the same elite group in England that had requested symphonies in the past from Beethoven and Mendelssohn. He most certainly did not want to be typecast as the creator of The Carnival of the Animals, a sweet and silly collection of short pieces that he dashed off during a few days of vacation in 1886 while taking a break from that symphony. Saint-Saëns treated his friends to a few private performances, and he allowed just one movement, The Swan, to be published on its own, but the whole composition only reached the public after he died in 1921.
The original version by Saint-Saëns featured a miniature orchestra (or really a huge chamber music ensemble) with two pianos in central roles. It became a tradition to have words spoken between the movements, and many poets along the way have filled in the imagined stories behind the music with their own fanciful verses. This version transforms the music into a true orchestral suite, in a new arrangement for 35 players by Maestro Gerard Schwarz. For the words, the conservationist and television personality Forrest Galante takes listeners on a tour of Florida’s abundant native animal life.
These are different animals from what Saint-Saëns pictured for each movement, but he surely would have loved how this version stretches the sense of imagination— and anyway, it’s not like he was doing serious zoological research when he included “animal” portraits of Pianists (reimagined here as pelicans) and Personages with Long Ears (now cranes).
One animal that does stay the same is the tortoise, which dances the slowest “CanCan” ever in Saint-Saëns’ parody of the Infernal Galop by Jacques Offenbach. Other quotations of Saint-Saëns’ own Danse macabre and the French folk song we know as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” appear in the movement that originally depicted Fossils—now a study of river otters, those nocturnal swimmers described in the narration as “stealthy” and “playful.”
When we picture a creature gliding elegantly through the water in the second-tolast movement, it is no longer a dainty swan but rather a manatee, the “gentle giant” that is designated as Florida’s State Marine Mammal. The finale reworks music from the introduction to bring this tour of Florida’s celebrated wildlife full circle.
© 2023 Aaron Grad.
