All about excellence. An exquisite musical performance melds amazing talent, masterful precision and true dedication to deliver a transforming experience. The same applies in healthcare. That’s why everything we do is focused on your needs, to help you stay healthy – or recover quickly. So you can spend more time doing what you love. At Saint Alphonsus, we applaud the Boise Philharmonic and how its music touches so many in our community. Because an excellent performance, like great healthcare, is all about you.
SaintAlphonsus.org (208) 367-DOCS
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Contents
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Music Director’s Message
5
2015-2016 Season Calendar
9
Boise Philharmonic Foundation
10 Robert Franz Bio 11 The Orchestra 2015-2016 Roster 12 James Jirak Bio 13 Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale 14 Letter from the Executive Director & Board of Directors Chair 15 Board of Directors & Staff 20 Explore Music! 36 Sponsor A Chair 38 Classic Series 1 - Program Notes 44 Classic Series 2 - Program Notes 52 Classic Series 3 - Program Notes 58 Classic Series 4 - Program Notes 60 Classic Series 5 - Program Notes 68 Classic Series 6 - Program Notes 76 Classic Series 7 - Program Notes 82 Classic Series 8 - Program Notes 90 Chamber 360Âş Music Series 94 Boise Philharmonic Youth Orchestra 96 Silent Movies 98 Donors & Sponsors
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Music Director’s Message Dear Friends, Welcome to our 2015-16 season! This season continues an exploration of unusual solo instruments for us as we present works for Pipa (a type of Chinese lute) and a Native American Flute concerto by our very own Idaho composer, Jim Cockey. Both of these instruments celebrate cultures that were pivotal in the development of Boise. In addition, 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of the Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale. This group of dedicated volunteers has added so much to the breadth of the Boise Philharmonic. They will perform operatic choruses, Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, and help us celebrate the holidays with Holiday Pops. Finally, we welcome back soloists that have dazzled our audiences before. With pianist Spencer Myer, violinist Jennifer Frautschi and baritone Derrick Parker the orchestra continues to present artists of the highest caliber that inspire musicians and audiences alike.
PHOTO © J H FAIR
I look forward to many concerts of great music with you!
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2015 - 2016 Season Calendar September
17th
4th
8:00 pm Handel’s Messiah with BP Master Chorale Stefano Sarzani, conductor St. John’s Cathedral
5th
8:00 pm Handel’s Messiah with BP Master Chorale Stefano Sarzani, guest conductor St. John’s Cathedral
11th
7:00 pm Musically Speaking The Morrison Center
8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 4 with BP Master Chorale NNU Brandt Center
12th
8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 3 with Andrew Grams, guest conductor and featuring the BP Horn Section The Morrison Center
8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 4 with BP Master Chorale The Morrison Center
January
7:00 pm Musically Speaking The Morrison Center 8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 2 with Joseph FireCrow, Native American Flute The Morrison Center
November 25th
7:00 pm Musically Speaking NNU Brandt Center 8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 1 with BP Master Chorale NNU Brandt Center
26th
7:00 pm Musically Speaking The Morrison Center
14th
8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 1 with BP Master Chorale The Morrison Center
October
15th
16th
7:00 pm Musically Speaking NNU Brandt Center 8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 2 with Joseph FireCrow, Native American Flute NNU Brandt Center
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3:00 pm BPYO Fall Concert The Morrison Center
2:00 pm Musically Speaking NNU Brandt Center 3:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 3 with Andrew Grams, guest conductor and featuring the BP Horn Section NNU Brandt Center
December
22nd
7:00 pm Musically Speaking NNU Brandt Center 8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 5 with Spencer Myer, piano NNU Brandt Center
23rd
7:00 pm Musically Speaking The Morrison Center
26th
8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 5 with Spencer Myer, piano The Morrison Center
7:00 pm Musically Speaking NNU Brandt Center 8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 6 with Changlu Wu, pipa NNU Brandt Center
27th
April 9th
16th
3:00 pm BPYO Winter Concert The Morrison Center
5:30 pm Annual Gala “A Night in Paris” Riverside Hotel 3:00 pm BPYO Spring Concert The Morrison Center
7:00 pm Musically Speaking The Morrison Center
30th
11:00 am Chamber 360º Series 1 Langroise Trio St. Michael’s Cathedral
February
8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 6 Changlu Wu, pipa The Morrison Center
March 7:00 pm Musically Speaking The Morrison Center 8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 8 with Jennifer Frautschi, violin The Morrison Center
13th
17th 8:00 pm Silent Movies with Orchestra with Ben Model, organ Deann Tham, conductor The Egyptian Theater
11th
3:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 8 with Jennifer Frautschi, violin NNU Brandt Center
7:00 pm Musically Speaking NNU Brandt Center 8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 7 with BP Master Chorale NNU Brandt Center
12th 20th
11:00 am Chamber 360º Series 2 BP Woodwind Quintet St. Michael’s Cathedral
7:00 pm Musically Speaking The Morrison Center 8:00 pm Boise Phil Classic 7 with BP Master Chorale The Morrison Center
19th
2:00 pm Musically Speaking NNU Brandt Center
22nd
11:00 am Chamber 360º Series 4 BP String Quartet St. Michael’s Cathedral
11:00 am Chamber 360º Series 3 BP Brass Quintet St. Michael’s Cathedral
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Subscriber Benefits Reserved Seating Classic Series full season subscribers may renew their seats every year and enjoy advanced selection on new seats.
Symphony Savings Bring a guest or two and they will enjoy 10% off single tickets!
Flexibility Scheduling conflict? Switch between Nampa and Boise so you never miss a concert.
Preferred Parking Boise season subscribers receive preferred, surface lot parking at the Morrison Center.
Ticket Recycle If you cannot attend and notify us by 5:00 pm the day before the performance, we will provide you a charitable contribution receipt for the cost of your ticket. Contact the Boise Philharmonic: 516 S 9th St., Boise, ID 83702 (208) 344-7849 boisephil.org
Visit our website to purchase tickets and find concert information. Learn more about our education programs, the history of the Boise Philharmonic, and much more!
2016-2017 Season Subscription Renewals begin February 23rd AVAILABLE BY PHONE OR ONLINE Connect with Us... boisephil.org facebook.com/boisephilharmonic facebook.com/groups/boisephilharmonicmasterchorale facebook.com/bpyorch
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Take our survey... Scan this QR code and take our online survey and tell us about your experience with the Boise Philharmonic. Your feedback is valuable and allows us to improve the concert experience. You can find the survey on our website. HINT! We often provide incentives for your trouble.
The Boise Philharmonic Foundation Securing the Future of Artistic Excellence The Boise Philharmonic Foundation was created in 2001 as a vehicle to support the Boise Philharmonic’s mission and the Orchestra. Beginning with a single gift of $1 million, the value of the Foundation’s Endowment Fund, which is currently managed by the Idaho Community Foundation, stands at $1.7 million. During its existence, the Foundation has distributed a total of $580,000 in yearly gifts to the Association. The Foundation now has over $2 million in pledges and planned giving commitments from generous supporters who have designated the Philharmonic as beneficiaries of their wills or estates. To join this community effort by making a contribution or a pledge, please contact our office at (208) 344-7849 or email sandra@boisephilharmonic.org. The Board of Directors of the Association and the members of our Orchestra extend sincere appreciation to our contributors whose commitments serve as a lasting cultural legacy.
A Special Thank You to Our Endowment Contributors Mrs. Mary K. Abercrombie Richard & Darlene Adams Mr. Don Anderson Cecil Andrus Thomas & Marilyn Beck Thomas Bennett K.O. Blickenstaff Tony Boatman Walter & Alice Bodie Glenn & Glinda Bothwell Suzi Boyle & Michael Hummel The Estate of Nancy Brown Robert & Jacquelyn Burns Phil & Margaret Carroll Kevin Cole Jerry & Janet Conley Brian & Wendy Den-Herder Mr. & Mrs. Mark Dunkley The Very Rev. & Mrs. Martin Dwyer Wade Eller Constance Farmer Mr. & Mrs. Richard Fields Mr. Robert Franz Stephen & Barbara Garman
Mr. E.E. Gilbertson Julia Grass Mr. & Mrs. Richard Hackborn Richard & Loretta Halling George & Bev Harad Tom & Alice Hennessey Mr. & Mrs. Larry Hunter Kay Hardy & Gregory Kaslo Dr. & Mrs. Fred Helpenstell Robert & Laura Higley Danial Howard Charles & Calista Hummel Cynthia Jenkins Mr. & Mrs. George H. Juetten Mr. Jim Kelly Stephen & Mary Keto Mrs. Francis J. Kopp Jerry Lillge Don & Jane Marrs D & K Carringer Matthews Robyn Wells McDonnell Cecilia Merz RC & JB Moon Dorothy Morland Martha Mullins Patrick & Barbara Myhre
Genevieve & Ward Orsinger Dick & Susan Parrish Susan Parrish Gary & Ann Peterson Mr. & Mrs. Philip Peterson James M. Quinn, D.O. Richard & Daryl Sallaz The Saturday Fortnightly Club Barbara Scott J.R. Simplot Foundation (Esther Simplot) Joel A. Slagg Ken & Jeanie Smith William & Sharon Stack John & Linda Stedman Kent & Barbara Sullivan Hazel & John Thornburgh Steve & Carol Trott Kathy Troutner Judith Voth Norman Waugh Mr. & Mrs. Bill Weiler Wilbur & Ellen Wheaton Larry & Marianne Williams Nancy & David Zelnick
Boise Philharmonic Foundation Board Mary Abercrombie, President Gary Peterson, Vice President Steve Trott, Secretary/Treasurer
A.J. Balukoff Bill Drake Larry Hunter Renee Malewski
Amber Myrick John Stedman Ray Stark (Ex Officio) Sandra Culhane (Ex Officio)
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About the Conductor As Music Director of the Boise Philharmonic, Robert Franz is acclaimed as a first-rate conductor and enthusiastic award-winning educator by critics, composers, and audiences of all ages. Composer Bright Sheng praised Franz for his “extremely musical and passionate approach towards music making” and critics hail his “masterly pace, emphasis, and technical control” calling his conducting “viscerally thrilling.”
Since his appointment as Music Director in 2008, Franz has created a swell of optimism for the Orchestra. “I have the rare pleasure of loving what I do for a living as much as anything I can imagine,” says Franz. Since coming to the Boise Philharmonic, Franz has made great strides in reaching out to the community and increasing the size and diversity of audiences through expanded programming and partnerships with many of the leading arts organizations in Boise. During the summer of 2013, Franz was invited to speak at the League of American Orchestras conference in St. Louis on the topic of “New Music: Opportunities to Broaden Audiences.”
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Franz also serves as Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony, Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival Opera and Orchestra, and is in increasing demand as a guest conductor. Recent guest conducting highlights include his debuts with the Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and The Cleveland Orchestra in the U.S., and the Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina in Italy. Earlier guest conducting appearances include the Rochester Philharmonic, North Carolina Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Virginia Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Musiqa (Houston), South Bend Symphony, Asheville Lyric Opera, Portland Symphony (ME), and the Idaho Falls Symphony. With a wide and varying knowledge of symphonic and operatic works, Maestro Franz has worked with some of today’s finest classical soloists, including James Galway, Joshua Bell, and Rachel Barton Pine, as well as top pops artists such as Chris Botti, Idina Menzel, and Judy Collins. Franz received his Master of Music degree in conducting from the North Carolina School of the Arts in 1992 and his Bachelor of Music degree in oboe performance in 1990 from that same institution. When not on the podium, Franz is an avid runner and a proponent of the Alexander Technique.
Orchestra
BOISE PHILHARMONIC 2015-2016
Violin I
Geoffrey Trabichoff ^ (18) Concertmaster & College of Idaho Langroise Fellow Chia-Li Ho** (2) Associate Concertmaster Jill Rowley (30) † + Assistant Concertmaster
Laura Von der Heide (43) Marcia von Huene (22) Sponsor Ann Sutton
Cello Ned Johnson* (33) Sponsor A.J. & Susie Balukoff
Samuel Smith** (23) College of Idaho Langroise Sponsor Donald & Iris Hendrickson Fellow Katherine Jarvis † Melaney Johnson† (41) Acting Assistant Concertmaster Sponsor Hon. Stephen & Mrs. Carol Lauren Folkner Trott Kathy Stutzman (36) Lisa Cooper (11) Brookann Hessing (10) Kyla Davidson (8) Michaella Pape (2) Alec Duggan (1) ~ Phyllis Saunders (19) Doug Lawrence (31) Anna-Marie Vargas (8) Leslie Mandigo (20) Takuya Yamamoto (1) ~ Sponsor John & Linda Stedman
Violin II Geoffrey Hill* (4) Paula Stern** (31) Julia Rice† (40) Endowed by John & Linda Stedman
Olivia Baker (1) ~ Heather Calkins (19) Katherine Dickeson (14) Dawn Douthit (22) Debra Ellis (17) Anna Iyerusalimets (4) Janette Kurz (12) Molly McCallum (11) Sponsor Gary & Ann Peterson
Viola David Johnson* (23) College of Idaho Langroise Fellow Lindsay Bohl** (4) = John Cochrane (49) Keegan Donlon Jennifer Drake (15) Daemin Kim (1) ~ Linda Kline Lamar (5) Tom Tompkins (36) + Sponsor Donald & Iris Hendrickson
Aurora Torres (5) Sponsor John Matthew & Judy McKay
Stephen Mathie (12) Heidi Nagel (12) Julia Pope (13)
Bass Chris Ammiratti* Daniel Ball (4) Patric Pulliam (12) Roberta Jo Smith (34) Brenton Viertel (8)
Robert Franz (7) Music Director, College of Idaho Langroise Artistic Director & Conductor
Bass Clarinet Shandra Helman (4)
Bassoon Patty Katucki* (33) Janelle Oberbillig (33)
Contrabassoon Donovan Schatz (13)
Horn Brian Vance* (4) Sponsor Sondra & George Juetten
Lori Roy (1) Philip Kassel** (6) = Mark Givens (10) Tom C. Weber*** (4)
Trumpet Brad Peters* (23) Sponsor Mrs. Mary Abercrombie
James Smock** (1) Brendan Grzanic (4)
Trombone George Turner* (27) Kensey Chellis (4)
Bass Trombone Danial Howard (9) =
Tuba
Flute
Adam Snider*
Jeffrey Barker* (6) =
Timpani
Sponsor Julie Kilgrow & Alan Gardner
Jessica Polin (2) Karlin Coolidge (18)
Oboe Peter Stempe* (30) Sponsor Sus Helpenstell
Nicole Golay (4)
English Horn Lindsay Edwards (9) Sponsor Doug & Carole Heimforth
Bill Shaltis* (4) Sponsor Bill & Martha Weiler
Percussion John Baldwin* (43) Kelley Smith (27)
Piano Del Parkinson* (27)
Harp Matthew Tutsky* (5)
Clarinet Carmen Izzo* Christina Lee (5)
Key ^ Concertmaster + On Leave * Principal ** Associate Principal
† Assistant Principal *** Assistant ~ BSU Quartet (#) Years of Service = Orchestra Committee
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James Jirak
BOISE PHILHARMONIC MASTER CHORALE MUSIC DIRECTOR
James Jirak has been the Artistic Director/Conductor of the Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale since 1996. He is an Associate Professor of Music at Boise State University where he teaches courses in Choral Music Education and directs the award-winning BSU Vocal Jazz Ensemble. Jirak also co-directs the annual Hymns of Thanksgiving Chorus and Orchestra. Dr. Jirak holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, a Master of Music degree in Voice Performance from the University of Wyoming, and a Doctor of Arts degree in Choral Conducting and Jazz Studies from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. In addition to conducting, Jirak has performing experience ranging from studio and jazz singing to opera and musical theatre roles, as well as ballet and modern dance. He has performed as a vocal soloist on the BSU Faculty Artist Series and in January of 1997 he performed Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” in Carnegie Hall as a member of the Festival Chorus under the direction of Mr. Robert Shaw. An active clinician, guest conductor, and adjudicator, Dr. Jirak’s professional memberships include the Music Educator’s National Conference, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the Idaho and Boise Jazz Societies. He is also a Life Member of the American Choral Directors Association. A native of Nebraska, he began his teaching career in Teton County, Wyoming where he taught music to all grades (K-12, both vocal and instrumental) for eleven years.
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Master Chorale
BOISE PHILHARMONIC 2015-2016
Celebrating 40 Years!
Dr. James Jirak, BPMC Music Director
SOPRANO Penny Alevizon Kristen Allford Joanne Anderson Nancy Chambers Heidi Cook Nancy Cuoio Tammy Duthie Kerry Ellen Elliot Sharon Fuller-Bancroft Jenifer Gilliland Sue Claire Hebert Sharon Helppie Lisa Hettinger Erin Hoalst Daphne Huang Vicki Kreimeyer Beth Layton Yvonne McCoy Cathy McCrea Cady McGovern Megan Mueller Heidi Naylor Leta Neustaedter Julia Rundberg Lola Schiess Alana Seacord Connie Shepson
Stephanie Shepson Kathy Stockton Kristi Stom Armida Taylor Alicia Trakas Helen Watts Cheryl Zollman
ALTO Diane Campbell Lois Chattin Stacie Cheney Tamara Dizdarevic Judy Ellis Leigh Falconer Anne Hay Cindy Hayes Laural Hildebrand Rebecca Irwin Lohrea Johnson Lana Jutzy Bozena Kinalski Ida Larsen Vicke Lee Moira Lynch Kathryn Nicholas Brianne Nolte Deena Oppenheim Laura Penney
Sue Phillips Michele Rosario Colleen Scovill Nathalie Simpson Alison Steven Melissa Stonehocker Mary Jane Webb Paula Weitemier Natalie Whiting Amy Wickstrom Patsy Wolter
TENOR Don Anderson David Czerepinski Dale Donahue Paul Goldy Will Grubaugh Aaron Hansen Ron Johnson Tim Judy Harold Keech Otis Kenny Darrell Ludders Alex Lundquist Chris Machado Stephen March Steve Maughan Thomas Paul
Bob Pitts Hubert Schwarthoff
BASS Robert Andrews-Bryant Brian Bailey Chris Binion Don Boyer Leon Collins Duane Conitz Brian Dickson Alan Gardner Ken Grover Douglas Haines David Hayes Ted Judd Jon Krutz Ed Lonsdale Mike Lynott Bruce Moberly Bob Pownall Brian Shepson Marvin Stallcop Peter Steven Bob Wallace Scott Whipple Richard Wilson
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A note from the Board Chair & Executive Director
A
s we open the Boise Philharmonic’s 56th season and the 40th Anniversary of the Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale, we are appreciative of the support of our audience and the excellence that our musicians in the Orchestra and the Chorale provide in every performance. We are uniquely positioned to assume a leadership role in all things symphonic. We are the cornerstone of the music in our Valley which includes the Orchestra, Chorale and Youth Orchestra that performs for you at our Nampa and Boise concert halls, our schools, senior centers and veteran’s homes. You might not recognize us but you will hear our musicians individually as the orchestra pit musicians for Idaho Shakespeare, Opera Idaho, and Ballet Idaho performances, playing as well in the Morrison Center Broadway productions like “The Sound of Music” and in other ensembles around town, performing all genres of music. Where would our community be without the “Music?” Music is one of the cornerstones of our culture, bringing us joy, relevance and beauty to our lives. It is important for us who love this art form to ensure its continuity. We are continually seeking new ways to remain relevant to our Treasure Valley landscape. Look for us in coffee houses, listen to us on our Boise State and Spokane Public Radio broadcasts and please continue to let us know that we matter to you through your generous donations and attendance at our performances. We don’t take our placement as The Sound of our City for granted. The Board and staff appreciate the opportunity to be a partner with you to ensure that the legacy and viability of the Boise Philharmonic remains in this City for years to come. Musically yours,
Julie Kilgrow, Board of Directors’ Chair Sandra Culhane, Executive Director
“Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.” Sarah Dessen
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Board of Directors & Staff Staff
Board of Directors
Past Presidents
Robert Franz Music Director & College of Idaho Langroise Artistic Director & Conductor
2015-2016 Julie Kilgrow, Chair Dick Riley, Vice Chair Ray Stark, Secretary Renee Malewski, Treasurer
Ray Stark, 2014-2015 Bill Drake, 2012-2014 John Stedman, 2008-2012 Larry Hunter, 2007-2008 Jeanie Smith, 2005-2007 Don Hendrickson, 2004-2005 Dr. Fred Helpenstell, 2003-2004 The Honorable Stephen S. Trott, 1999-2003 Jeff Lebens, 1997-1999 Kaye Knight, 1996-1997 Richard Fields, 1994-1996 Richard Roller, 1991-1994 Virginia Vanderpool, 1990-1991 Tom Snediker, 1989-1990 Marilyn Beck, 1987-1989 Nancy K. Vannorsdel, 1984-1987 C Eugene Sullivan, 1982-1984 James F. Stull, 1981-1982 John L. Runft, 1979-1981 Edith Miller Klein, 1977-1979 Wilbur Elliot, 1976-1977 Alyce Rosenheim, 1973-1976 Terence O’Rouarke, 1972-1973 Charles Hummel, 1971-1972 John W. Frink, 1968-1971 George Sterk, 1967-1968 Clay Wilcox, 1965-1967 Clair Johnson, 1964-1965 Jerome Beeson, 1963-1964 Michael Thometz Jr., 1962-1963 Paul Ennis, 1960-1962
Sandra Culhane Executive Director Joanne Anderson BPMC Administrator Cameron Brizzee Patron Services Manager Roger Cole Marketing Manager Matthew Crane Orchestra Personnel Manager Garrett Holmes Stage Manager Gordon Hynes Director of Finance Jim Jirak BPMC Music Director Doug Lawrence Orchestra Librarian Nickie Shell Patron Services Admin Deanna Tham BPYO Music Director, Education Director Anna Ward Stage Crew Melissa Wilson Operations Manager, Marketing & Development Associate The Honorable Steve Trott Program Annotator
Lindsay Bohl + Joan Boren Dr. Glenn Bothwell Suzi Boyle Phil Carroll Shavonna Case Sandra Culhane Dr. Joseph (Pete) Daines Dr. Tom Donndelinger Bill Drake Becky Dwyer Patty Fery Raquel Guglielmetti Philip Kassel + Robert Franz Anne Hay Doug Heimforth Margaret Janzen Danial Howard + John Knochel Thomas Paul # Dr. Peggy Ann Rupp Andy Scoggin Terence Shotkowski Deborah Sloan Jeanie Smith David Wali Carol White + Orchestra Rep # Chorale Rep
Board Members Emeritus Mary Abercrombie Marilyn Beck Bernice Comstock Pam Lemley Nancy Rae Richard Roller Alyce Rosenheim Esther Simplot Carolyn Terteling The Honorable Stephen S. Trott
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www.uidaho.edu/music
|
208-885-6231
LioneL Hampton ScHooL of muSic
Degree OptiOns Bachelor of Music
Music Education » Performance » Composition » Music Business
Bachelor of Arts in Music Applied Music » Music Theory » Music History and Literature
Master of Arts Music History
Music Minor
(may be added to any undergraduate degree)
Bachelor of Science in Music
Musical Theatre Minor
Master of Music
Jazz Studies Minor
Applied Music » Music Theory » Music History and Literature
Music Education » Performance » Composition » Choral Conducting » Piano Pedagogy and Performance Studies » Collaborative Piano
(may be added to any undergraduate degree)
(may be added to any undergraduate degree)
Out-Of-state tuitiOn assistance is available
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Boise Philharmonic
Music education for young people has been integral to the Boise Philharmonic’s mission since its founding. The Philharmonic music education programs strive to inspire students by helping them develop high-level active listening skills and enhancing their knowledge of great music. Education programs are offered free of charge or funded through grants and donations.
Musicians in the Schools
Boise Philharmonic Youth Orchestra
Master Classes for College Students
The Treasure Valley’s premiere youth performance program, led by Music Director Deanna Tham, pulls its membership from the most talented local young musicians. Members are accepted through auditions, maintain a rigorous rehearsal schedule, and perform a three concert season being mentored by the principal chairs of the Philharmonic. Some BPYO members have gone on to establish separate chamber ensembles and have even performed overseas.
Guest artists scheduled to perform with the Boise Philharmonic will share their talents and experiences with the Boise Philharmonic musicians and college and university students from around the region through these free classes offered.
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Under this program our fourteen principal players visit every second grade classroom throughout the Treasure Valley. Each classroom “adopts” its own musician, who leads the students in an interactive program that teaches them active listening skills timed to coincide with the development of their cognitive abilities.
Verde Percussion The Percussion Ensemble of the Boise Philharmonic performs six concerts in Boise and the Treasure Valley for approximately 2,900 students in grades K-8.
Free Children’s Concerts A series of free concerts for approximately 14,000 students in grades 3-6 from schools in the Treasure Valley. Conceived and conducted by Music Director Robert Franz, this season’s theme is Musical Tour of America. The concerts are performed at the Morrison Center in Boise and at the Brandt Center in Nampa. The Philharmonic sends lesson plans, biographical information on composers, instrument and music terminology, and an assortment of musical games and quizzes to be used in classrooms by teachers to prepare their students for the Children’s Concert. Ensembles in the Schools An educational outreach program that takes the Philharmonic’s String Quartet, Woodwind Quintet, and Brass Quintet into schools free of charge in Boise, the
Treasure Valley, and central/southern Idaho for performances and interactive music education from October - April. Conductor in the Schools Boise Philharmonic Music Director, Robert Franz, visits high school orchestras, bands, and chorus’ in Boise and the Treasure Valley to provide master classes for young musicians. The Maestro then invites them to be his guest at a subscription concert that same week, inspiring their talent and ambitions.
The Explore Music! Programs are generously sponsored by: Albertsons Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation Boise Dept. of Arts and History Gladys E Langroise Trust Idaho Commission on the Arts Idaho Community Foundation Jeker Family Trust John William Jackson Fund Micron Foundation Morrison Center Endowment Foundation Northwest Nazarene University Saint Alphonsus Troxell Fund University of Idaho
Senior Series Members of the Boise Philharmonic Orchestra and Master Chorale travel to retirement homes, assisted living facilities, veteran’s homes, and low-income meal sites to perform for seniors who (due to physical constraints, lack of transportation or price barriers) otherwise would not be able to experience the joy of symphonic music.
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Boise Philharmonic
Beginning one hour before every Classical Series concert in Nampa and Boise, a special pre-concert conversation will give you insights into the music and music-makers you will hear on the program as well as the stories behind the composers and time period. Discussions are led by Boise Philharmonic Associate Principal horn, Philip Kassel and clarinetist, Holly Kassel.
FREE to ticket holders Concert Fridays* 7:00 p.m. NNU Brandt Center *Our November and April concerts will be held on Sunday at 3:00 pm with Musically Speaking beginning at 2:00 pm No Musically Speaking for December concerts
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Concert Saturdays 7:00 p.m. The Morrison Center
Sponsored by Albertsons
Season Runs June – September
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ONLINE SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE!
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Season Media Partners 94.9 FM the River The Idaho Statesman KTVB–Idaho’s News Channel 7
www. idahoshakespeare.org or call 336-9221 Laura Welsh Berg*. *Member Actors’ Equity. DKM Photography.
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Aurora Torres
Geoffrey Hill
Viola
Principal Violin II
125 Years of Excellence Since 1891, The College of Idaho has offered students outstanding academics, affordable access and creative freedom—all on our historic liberal arts campus in Caldwell. Students like Boise Philharmonic Orchestra performers Geoffrey Hill ’12 and Aurora Torres ’12 have gone on to great success as leaders, thinkers, performers and professionals. Begin your own C of I journey today at collegeofidaho.edu/apply
David Johnson
Samuel Smith
Geoffrey Trabichoff
Langroise Trio The College of Idaho
2015-16 CONCERT SEASON
Oct. 2 | 7:30 p.m. | Boise E. Simplot Perf. Arts Academy
Oct. 7 | 7:30 p.m. | Caldwell College of Idaho (Jewett)
Mar. 4 | 7:30 p.m. | Boise E. Simplot Perf. Arts Academy
Oct. 3 | 7:30 p.m. | Caldwell College of Idaho (Langroise)
Jan. 30 | 11 a.m. | Boise St. Michael’s Cathedral
Mar. 5 | 7:30 p.m. | Caldwell College of Idaho (Langroise)
Ticket info: (208) 459-5275
collegeofidaho.edu/langroisetrio
Teahouse Bringing the World to Your Cup
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All-Orchestral Handel : Concerto Grosso Op. 3, #6 Wiren : Serenade Haydn : Symphony No, 92, in G Major
November 20 & 22, 2015
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Sue Patchell, soprano Arias by Purcell, Mozart and Beethoven Music of Corelli, Boccherini and Mozart
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February 5 & 7, 2016
Benjamin Thacher, violinist Jeffrey Barker, flutist Barton Moreau, harpsichordist
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Bach : Brandenburg Concerto #5 Bartok : Rumanian Dances Bach : Violin Concerto in A minor Warlock : Capriol Suite
March 18 & 20, 2016 Brian Vance, french horn Fasch : Sinfonia in D Major Strauss : Concerto for Horn & Orchestra Mozart: Symphony No. 39, in E-flat
April 22 & 23, 2016 The Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale and guest soloists Handel : Judas Maccabaeus
Purchase tickets online at www.boisebaroque.org, by calling 208-297-3182, or purchase at the door.
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Ron Curtis 1994 Alumnus Vallivue High School choir director and IMEA President-Elect
PASSION BECOMES PROFESSION FOR NNU ALUMNUS RON CURTIS, A MUSIC EDUCATION DEGREE WAS JUST THE BEGINNING. “Northwest Nazarene University has been instrumental in the success of my teaching career. My professors helped me get my first job, loaned materials to assist my school in establishing a music program, and today they visit my classroom to work with my choirs and suggest new ways to challenge my students. In fact, this is my 22nd year of teaching and NNU continues to be my partner in music education—that is quite the investment!” nnu.edu/music
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Mainstage productions: Mozart’s The Magic Flute October 30 & November 1, 2015 The Egyptian Theatre, Boise Verdi’s La traviata January 29 & 31, 2016 The Egyptian Theatre, Boise Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players April 1, 2016 The Morrison Center
2015-2016 Season
Productions à la Carte: Menotti’s Amahl & the Night Visitors December 27, 28 & 29, 2015 The Egyptian Theatre, Boise Cipullo’s Glory Denied April 28, 29 & 30, 2016, Location TBA
Come experience the gamut of human emotion with a season full of magic, love, laughter, deceit, compassion and heartache. After an incredible performance as Gilda in last season’s production of Rigoletto, Cecilia Violetta López returns to Idaho in the role of the courtesan Violetta for our 2016 production of La traviata. For single tickets and more information visit www.operaidaho.org.
T H E
H A W L E Y
Additional performances: Mozart’s The Magic Flute November 6, 2015 L.E. and Thelma E. Stephens Performing Arts Center, Pocatello Verdi's La traviata January 23, 2016 Presbyterian Church of the Big Wood, Ketchum
T R O X E L L
W A Y
Hawley Troxell is proud to support the Boise Philharmonic When your business requires sophisticated legal advice, look to Idaho’s premier, full service law firm. Our customized approach, The Hawley Troxell Way, uses a team of attorneys or one-to-one counsel to meet your specific legal needs. And, best of all, our nationally renowned legal services come with a local address.
BOISE / COEUR D’ALENE / IDAHO FALLS / POCATELLO / RENO Call 208.344.6000 or visit HawleyTroxell.com
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SPONSOR A CHAIR TODAY! As a Boise Philharmonic Chair Sponsor, you show your support and recognize the efforts of the musicians who provide your community with live classical music. You are also ensuring the artistic excellence of your orchestra by providing reliable and ongoing funding. Many chair sponsors have developed close relationships with the musicians they underwrite. Chairs may be sponsored for one or more years or in perpetuity and may recognize the donor or honor a family member or friend. Each sponsor will be honored with a listing in the season program, special VIP invitations, and on the Boise Philharmonic website.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Geoffrey Trabichoff (18) ^ L Chia-Li Ho (2) * Katherine Jarvis ** Lauren Folkner Kathy Stutzman (35) Brookann Hessing (9) Michaella Pape (2) Phyllis Saunders (19) Anna-Marie Vargas (8) Takuya Yamamoto (1) ~ Jill Rowley (30) **+ by Donald & Iris Hendrickson
14 Geoffrey Hill* (3) 15 Paula Stern** (30) 16 Julia Rice† (39) by John & Linda Stedman 17 Olivia Baker (1) 18 Heather Calkins (19) 19 Katherine Dickeson (14) 20 Dawn Douthit (22) 21 Debra Ellis (17) 22 Anna Iyerusalimets (4) 23 Janette Kurz (12) 24 Molly McCallum (11) by Gary & Ann Peterson
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
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David Johnson* (23) L Lindsay Bohl** (4) John Cochrane (49) Keegan Donlon Jennifer Drake (15) Daemin Kim (1) Linda Kline Lamar (5) Aurora Torres (5) by John Matthew & Judy McKay
33 Laura Von der Heide (43) 34 Marcia von Huene (22) by Ann Sutton Tom Tompkins (36) + by Donald & Iris Hendrickson
36 Ned Johnson* (33) by A.J. & Susie Balukoff 37 Samuel Smith** (23) 38 Melaney Johnson† (41) by Hon. Stephen & Mrs. Carol Trott 39 Lisa Cooper (11) 40 Kyla Davidson (8) 41 Alec Duggan (1) ~ 42 Doug Lawrence (31) 43 Leslie Mandigo (20) by John & Linda Stedman 44 Stephen Mathie (12) 45 Heidi Nagel (12) 46 Julia Pope (13)
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Chris Ammiratti* Daniel Ball (4) Patric Pulliam (12) Roberta Jo Smith (34) Brenton Viertel (8)
55 Jeffrey Barker* (6) by Julie Kilgrow & Alan Gardner 54 Jessica Polin (2) 53 Karlin Coolidge (18)
56 Peter Stempe* (30) by Sus Helpenstell 57 Nicole Golay (4) 58 Lindsay Edwards (9) Doug & Carole Heimforth
61 Carmen Izzo* 60 Christina Lee (5) 59 Shandra Helman (4)
62 Patty Katucki* (33) 63 Janelle Oberbillig (33) 64 Donovan Schatz (13)
68 Brian Vance* (4) by Sondra & George Juetten 69 Lori Roy (1) 70 Philip Kassel** (4) = 71 Mark Givens (10) 72 Tom Weber† (2)
67 Brad Peters* (23) by Mrs. Mary Abercrombie
Chair Sponsorships & Endowments Music Director $10,000 Principal Chair $2,000
Concertmaster $5,000 Section Chairs $1,500
66 James Smock** (1) 65 Brendan Grzanic (4)
76 Bill Shaltis* (4) by Bill & Martha Weiler 52 Matthew Tutsky* (4)
72 George Turner* (27) 73 Kensey Chellis (4) 74 Danial Howard (9) =
77 John Baldwin* (43) 78 Kelley Smith (27) 75 Adam Snider*
80 Del Parkinson* (27) Key ^ Concertmaster * Principal ** Associate Principal L Langroise Fellow
†Assistant Principal ~ BSU Quartet (#) Years of Service + On Leave
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Classic Series 1 Opening Night
Featuring the
Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale
September’s concert generously sponsored by
Bob and Anne Hay Hotel Sponsor
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Radio Sponsor
September 25 | 26, 2015 Robert Franz, conductor Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale Dr. Jim Jirak, BPMC Music Director Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) Aida: Act II, Triumphal March and Chorus “Gloria all’egitto” Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90 “Italian” I. Allegro vivace II. Andante con moto III. Con moto moderato IV. Saltarello. Presto Intermission Guiseppe Verdi Nabucco: Overture Nabucco: “Va pensiero” Chorus of Hebrew Slaves Il Trovatore: Act II, Anvil Chorus Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) Prince Igor: Polovtsian Dances
Scan the QR Code to see more information about tonight’s concert, answer concert trivia, and leave feedback about tonight’s performance. Prizes given!
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the composers
Giuseppe Verdi October 10, 1813 – January 27, 1901 Aida Triumphal March and Chorus Nabucco Overture II Trovatore Anvil Chorus Nabucco “Va, Pensiero” Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves Although Verdi showed considerable promise as a youngster, the Milan Conservatory rejected him when he applied for admission. Why? No formal training, too old (19), and “lacking in musical talent.” He went on to compose twenty-six operas, establishing himself as one of the most popular and successful composers of the genre of all time. Let’s hear it for the Conservatory’s admissions committee. Tonight, our Orchestra and the Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale will treat us to selections from three of them. The program opens with the Triumphal March and Chorus, from Aida. The Triumphal March involves the return of Radamés, the leader of the Egyptian Army after a glorious victory over the advancing Ethiopian Army. The Ethiopians had attacked Egypt in an attempt to rescue Aida, the daughter of their King, who was being held as a slave by the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Not knowing who Aida’s father is, Radamés has fallen in love with her, but the Pharaoh’s daughter, Amneris, is in love with Radamés. As this plot suggests, Radamés and Aida die in each other’s arms as the curtain comes down. Is there anyone Shakespeare did not influence? II Trovatore, or the Troubadour, is a tragedy in which a Spanish gypsy woman is burned alive in the belief that she is a witch who has done harm to a Count’s child. The woman’s daughter, Azucena, vows revenge against her mother’s executioner by burning his child alive, but in her disturbed state, she mistakenly throws her own child into the flames. She proceeds to raise the Count’s kidnaped child as her own. The Anvil Chorus opens Act II. A group of gypsies sing in their camp at dawn. They forge tools on their anvils, which they pound as they sing, giving this familiar tune its name. The Verdi selections include the Overture and later “Va, pensiero” from Nabucco, his first successful opera. Hebrew slaves held captive in Babilonia by King Nebuchadnezzar sing this lament in despair of ever seeing their homeland again as they await their fate at the hand of tyrants. “Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate” means “Fly, thoughts, on wings of gold.” This song is so popular in Italy that in 2009, a formal (unsuccessful) attempt was made to replace Italy’s national anthem with it. It remains in the hearts of Italians as their most beloved song. Verdi was a dramatist of enormous vitality with a gift for melody and musical characterization. His music mirrors and accentuates the action of the plot developing on stage. He fully understood and brilliantly exploited music’s expressive power to propel the spectacle towards its conclusion. Knowing the plots of each opera enables us to appreciate how he uses music to enhance the story, a technique now used in the cinema.
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the composers
Felix Mendelssohn February 03, 1809 – November 04, 1847 Symphony No. 4 Italian Felix Mendelssohn is a rarity among famous composers. He was not afflicted by progressive hearing loss (Beethoven); he did not lapse into insanity (Robert Schumann); he was not exploited by his father (Mozart); he did tremble at the thought of persecution (Tchaikovsky); he did not die of alcoholism (Mussorgsky); and he did not live in fear of death (Mahler). No, Felix was the well-educated and cultured handsome son of one of the wealthiest bankers in Europe, Abraham Mendelssohn, who counted the Czar of Russia as one of his clients. Name an advantage, and Felix had it (almost) -- including the kind of musical talent that caused his contemporaries to compare him to Mozart. Mendelssohn was a virtuoso pianist and organist as well as an excellent conductor -- the first to use a baton -- who revived the long forgotten works of J.S. Bach. He excelled at writing, dancing, gymnastics, and painting. And, as you might guess, he wrote music for the love of the art, not to scratch out a living. The “almost” is that he was born Jewish in a Europe that was socially and legally antiSemitic. His father tacked “Bartholdy” onto his family’s last name to try to escape the stigma of the times, and Felix and his sister were baptized as Lutherans. As an adult, Felix proudly dropped the “Bartholdy” tag in honor of his famous Jewish grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn. Years after his death, racist Nazi thugs tore down and destroyed his commemorative statue in Leipzig and banned his music. Mendelssohn’s wealth enabled him to travel at will. During two of these trips, he was so inspired by what he saw and heard that he wrote a symphony for each location visited. Although he resisted all attempts to categorize these symphonic works as “programmatic,” he called one the Scottish Symphony and the other the Italian, completed in 1833. The first movement captures Mendelssohn’s excited reaction to Italy. As he wrote in a letter to his parents, “Oh! If I could but send you one quarter of an hour of all this pleasure or tell you how life actually flies.” Everything about sunny Italy compared favorably to his austere hometown, Berlin. We can hear Felix’s effervescent attitude from the first note of the music. The second movement presents a stark contrast with the first, featuring in minor key the somber voices of the bassoons, violas, and oboes. The conventional wisdom -- never confirmed by the composer -- is that the inspiration for this movement came from a religious procession he observed in Naples. Close your eyes, can you hear it, can you see the faithful as they slowly pass by? The third movement defies our symphonic expectations by emphasizing relaxed melodies instead of the usual dance. Mendelssohn saves the obligatory symphonic dance for the final movement. Here, he uses energetic Italian dance rhythms, first the Saltarello, and then the Tarantella. By the end of the composition, we have returned to the joyful character of the symphony’s beginning. Viva Italia!
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the composers
Alexander Borodin November 11, 1833 – February 27, 1887 Prince Igor Polovtsian Dances Alexander Borodin was one of the “Mighty Five,” Russians who in the middle of the 19th Century rejected the German/Austrian compositional traditions in favor of creating a new national musical art true to the Russian culture. Among his collaborating peers were Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Modest Mussorgsky. Not bad company. What the Five had in common was a complete lack of formal musical education and training, but they boiled over with raw energy, drive, and talent. By pooling what knowledge they did have, they taught each other how to compose. By training and education, Borodin was a distinguished chemist, a doctor, and a professor of both disciplines. He saw himself as a scientist who wrote music on the side. “Science is my work, music is my fun,” he said, “I am a Sunday composer who prefers to remain obscure.” The Polovtsian Dances is a section extracted from the Second Act of Borodin’s folk opera Prince Igor set in 12th Century Russia. The Prince and his son set out to conquer the Polovtsians, a warrior tribe of Tartars in the Steppes of Central Asia. They fail and are captured, but instead of being executed, the ruler of the band – the Kahn -- entertains his prisoners with a series of dances performed by slaves. His intention is to showoff his culture and to attempt to convince the Prince to join forces with him in a non-aggression pact. (By now, of course, the Prince’s son has fallen madly in love with the Khan’s daughter, but that is beside the point.) After an introduction led by the flute, we hear the seductive Dance of the Maidens. (Is it familiar?) Next, we hear wild dances of the men and boys in simulated war games. The music is exotic and brimming over with pagan vitality. Borodin then gives us a grand “oriental dance” and ends with an over-the-top salute to the Khan which brings back the highlights of the dances. Although the dances are usually presented in instrumental form, tonight we will hear them with chorus, as Borodin intended. As an aside, Borodin did not fully orchestra his opera. That was done by his friend Rimsky-Korsakov. I asked if you might find this music familiar. No doubt you will. In 1933, Robert Wright and George Forrest hijacked most of Borodin’s tuneful and exciting music for Kismet, their Broadway Play from which the hit Stranger in Paradise emerged. In 2014, the music was featured during the opening session of the Sochi Olympics in Russia. Great art always survives its creator, but I doubt Borodin would have anticipated these venues.
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Classic Series 2
Guest Artist
Joseph FireCrow Native American Flute
Hotel Sponsor
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Radio Sponsor
October 16 | 17, 2015 Robert Franz, conductor Joseph FireCrow, Native American flute
David Biedenbender (1984- ) Dance the Dream Awake Jim Cockey (1947- )* The Gift of the Elk Joseph FireCrow, Native American flute Intermission Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 I. Allegro con brio II. Adagio III. Allegretto grazioso–Molto Vivace IV. Allegro ma non troppo
* The composer would like to thank the Northern Cheyenne elders for permission to use the story of “The Gift of the Elk.” This legend comes from and will always remain with the Northern Cheyenne people. The Welcome Song is a traditional Bringing Home Song, and is used with permission. Special thank you to Eliah Senta for the use of the ceremonial drum. Photography by Glenn Oakley and image choreography by Jung-Ho Pak. Scan the QR Code to see more information about tonight’s concert, answer concert trivia, and leave feedback about tonight’s performance. Prizes given!
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Joseph FireCrow, Native American Flute When prominent Cheyenne musician Joseph FireCrow starts playing his traditional flute he closes his eyes and expresses a mix of emotions—powerful emotions, which he says are difficult to explain.” The natural beauty of the flute evokes very powerful emotions. The traditional flute is social, not ceremonial, in nature, and should always be treated with that in mind and spirit.”
FireCrow, who now resides in Connecticut, recorded his first album, The Mist, in 1992. Since then, his work has received widespread acclaim, including multiple Grammy and NAMMY (Native American Music Awards) nominations and awards. This year, he’s again being recognized by the NAMMYs, with his album, Night Walk, up for best flute recording. FireCrow is also up for the NAMMY Artist of the Year title. The musician’s gift is so appreciated that he is regularly asked to perform at pow wows, where his flute playing inspires and entertains. He’ll be appearing at the Norwich University Powwow in Northfield, Vermont, on April 6. FireCrow’s humility, though, has kept him well grounded and guided in his life’s pursuits. “My musical journey began when I was young. Drums were a regular part of our lives. In the summer were the war dances, now called pow wows. As kids, we would imitate the drummers on my mother’s galvanized washtub,” he says. “The very first time I heard the flute, I was a young boy living on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation located in southeastern Montana. Grover Wolfvoice was the flute man playing this wonderful music. The music was beautiful to my ears, yet it scared me. There was much poverty and depression at that time. The sound of the flute touched my heart, where there was much pain and uncertainty. Through all of the hardships of reservation life, the beauty and wonder of our homeland beckoned to me.”
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the composers
David Biedenbender 1984Dance the Dream Awake Wayne Shorter, the jazz saxophonist, composed an instrumental piece called Night Dreamer. Subsequently, the jazz singer Kurt Elling wrote words, or lyrics, to go note-fornote with Shorter’s dazzling instrumental melodies and improvisational passages. Elling named his vocal transcription of Shorter’s work Night Dream. Elling sings his powerful and rhythmic lyrics to Night Dream in an acrobatic and elegant jazz style called “vocalese.” In vocalese, a singer vocalizes an instrumental melody with inventive words tailored to fit the notes. To call this process “difficult” is to understate the challenge. Vocalese differs from “scat singing” which involves singing nonsense syllables to the notes of a song. Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Tormé were masters of that technique. David Biedenbender uses Elling’s lyrics from Night Dream as a point of departure for Dance the Dream Awake, an instrumental homage to the numerous jazz artists and to the film noir that inspire him as a composer. These are some of Elling’s creative lyrics. ….Suddenly the chamber was flooded with light, hurling me skyward like a meteorite. When I fell to earth, I saw everything in a blur. I saw that time was accelerating in a curve. And the palace in which I had stood it was flowing, like, lava, on acres of woodland like a pompei-an mountain volcano, making archipelago, and destroying the planet at fortissimo. Bulldozing everything down, to make room for what was a byzantine, a labyrinthine, knotty mess of manifolding passageways, a tangle of confusion, where the walls made, an asylum of baroque. Like a joke, words were spoken to provoke me, and to toss me nude and empty to the sea. But I would have none of it. I simply turned my back walked out of the dreamscape, into landscape, like a bedroom, where I heard that, Lonely the roses of solitaire, sing as though somebody still may care. They live only for the dream of living, so come follow where, they will take you there. Stay awake – no mistake – dance the dream awake – and awake. Biedenbender uses these lyrics as a launching point in two ways. First, the colorful language, vivid imagery, depth, and veiled meaning of the lyrics intrigued him. Contrary to many jazz lyrics, he found much of Elling’s work to be contemplative, philosophical, and spiritual -- it seems that Night Dream is all of these things, wrapped up in a sort of lucid reverie, where thoughts, ideas, and images weave masterfully into a vibrant and puzzling stream of [un]consciousness. Dance the Dream Awake is not specifically programmatic, but Night Dream was the source of Biedenbender’s musical inspiration. Also, he found Elling’s lyrics and his performance of Night Dream influential in that it pays homage to the work of some great musicians. The astonishing creative and energetic spirit of artists like Elling, Shorter, and so many other jazz artists has provided the seeds for not only this work, but also for much of Biedenbender’s music.
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the composers
Jim Cockey 1947 The Gift of the Elk
Jung-Ho Pak, conductor of the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra, conceived and initiated the creation of “The Gift of The Elk.” It was his suggestion that the work be centered around a story. Joseph FireCrow, an award winning Northern Cheyenne singer, drummer, flute maker and player, suggested that the story be of how the Native American flute came to the Northern Cheyenne people. This story has been and will always be a part of the Northern Cheyenne people. The Northern Cheyenne elders graciously granted permission for the use of the story, and they also blessed the project. Joseph FireCrow and composer Jim Cockey spent a week together shaping the overall structure of the work. Jung-Ho contributed feedback and ideas via email and phone. The concept of including a Welcome Song emerged from Jung-Ho’s desire to make the performance hall more comfortable for indigenous attendees. The song itself was taught to Joe by his mother. The words of welcome are traditional. After writing the first draft of the work, Jim and Joe met again and reviewed the score. Revisions were incorporated and the final version was then submitted to Jung-Ho Pak. Jung-Ho suggested that the short closing movement not be an exact replica of the opening movement. Jim agreed that more was needed and expanded the length and orchestration of the closing movement. Obtaining the ceremonial drum for performance was problematic, since they are sacred and invaluable. Though a substitute drum could have been used, Jim was able to procure a ceremonial drum in his home state of Idaho and have it shipped to Cape Cod. It was a twoheaded drum, one side made of buffalo and the other made of elk. The opening sixteenth notes heard in the composition are of the ceremonial drum. With the addition of photography the composition became a multi-media event. Photographer Glenn Oakley and Jim selected the photographs and Jung-Ho Pak choreographed the images. There were many edits and phone calls during this process, true to the collaborative nature of the entire project. The immediate and enthusiastic audience response, the many emotional one-on-one personal testimonies of the audience members, and the number of compact disks sold after the concert all confirmed that “The Gift of the Elk” was a popular and cross-cultural success.
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the composers
Antonin Dvorak September 8, 1841 – May 1, 1904 Symphony No. 8 in G Major Dvorak was born in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. He was the son of a butcher and was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. Fortunately, Dvorak’s uncle spotted the boy’s talent, and after a battle with Dvorak’s stubborn father, Antonin was allowed to leave the butcher block behind to go to Prague to study music. A few years later, he was discovered -- impoverished and laboring in obscurity -- by Johannes Brahms, who took Dvorak under his wing and became his mentor. Oddly enough, we might never have heard of him had it not been for a rancorous fight Brahms was engaged in with Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, an aesthetic tiff about the proper essence of music. Liszt believed that music must incorporate the other arts -literature, poetry, etc. -- in order achieve its full potential. This new music championed by Liszt was called “program music” because it imported into compositions actual programs or themes, and stories and ideas that were non-musical in nature. Brahms, a staunch musical conservative, disliked Liszt and the “music of the future,” calling it “self-serving gobbledygook.” He believed that adding anything external to music polluted it, and that music needs to stand on its own without any crutches to prop it up. This debate became nasty. Insults flew back and forth for half a century. Brahms found a musical ally in Dvorak, who shared Brahms’s musical philosophy. After Brahms convinced his publisher Simrock to take him on as a client, Dvorak’s financial drought ended. Dvorak’s music was influenced by the beloved folk music of his homeland. He believed that great art music must grow from the healthy soil of mature folk music. He became the champion of Czech music, fluently and effortlessly melding the folk sounds of his people into updated 18th Century classical forms. He was quickly identified as a “nationalist composer,” a style much in vogue in Europe between 1850-1900. In the 1880s, a handful of wealthy American patrons of serious music believed that we should stop imitating the Germans and develop instead music that reflected our own national character. So, in 1888 Jeanette Thurber, the wife of a wealthy grocer, founded the “National Conservatory of Music” and set out to find someone who could lead her Conservatory in a search for a distinctive American style of serious music. Who better than a composer who knew how to write music of a national character and was not stuck in the German tradition? Antonin Dvorak, for sure. With an offer of a huge salary, Mrs. Thurber convinced Dvorak to come to New York. While here, he composed the New World Symphony. When Dvorak composed his Eighth Symphony, he was the master of his craft. In it, he cleverly marries the classical model with the characteristic expressive depth of the late 19th Century romantics. He was so skilled that the piece flows effortlessly from start to finish, tunefully exploring virtually every mood, color, and rhythm of which music is capable. The music almost sounds easy.
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Notice how fluidly he moves between minor and major modes throughout the piece, starting with the autumnal chorale he uses as an introduction. The chorale is in G minor, but the mood of the piece quickly shifts when the flute enters in G major and leads the orchestra to a contrasting joyful celebration. He uses this technique repeatedly, alternating chameleon-like between major and minor. On many occasions, when the piece becomes dark or menacing, it is rescued by the flute. To Dvorak, the flute and the woodwinds represent the voice of birds, which he called the true masters of song. Dvorak loved birds, and their voices appear everywhere in this composition. Notice also his exuberant use of the timpani. Dvorak was a nationalist composer, but his music is far more than the presentation of folk song and folk dance rhythms in orchestral form. Dvorak’s music is to the Bohemia folk idiom what a butterfly is to a caterpillar larva. He refines the essence of the Bohemian sound and makes it his own, which explains why it does not sound parochial. The final movement is a stirring theme and variations which starts with a rousing trumpet fanfare. The great Czech conductor Rafael Kubelik said, “In Bohemia, the trumpets never call to battle -- they call to the dance.” So, let’s dance!
a special thank you to
The Honorable Steve Trott
We would like to extend a special thank you to the Honorable Steve Trott for graciously donating his time and expertise to writing all of the program notes for the 2015-2016 Season. This valuable information gives us much knowledge and insight into the composers and the history of the music. Please join us in thanking him for his generous contributions to the Boise Philharmonic!
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Classic Series 3
Andrew Grams guest conductor Brian Vance, horn Philip Kassel, horn Lori Roy, horn Mark Givens, horn
Hotel Sponsor
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Radio Sponsor
November 14 | 15, 2015 Andrew Grams, guest conductor Brian Vance, horn • Philip Kassel, horn Lori Roy, horn • Mark Givens, horn Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Konzertstucke for 4 horns I. Lebhaft. Sehr lebhaft II. Romance: Ziemlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend. Sehr lebhaft III. Mit grossen Ausdruck Intermission Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Symphony No. 3 in D major, Op. 29 “Polish” I. Introduzione e Allegro. Moderato assai. Tempo di Marcia funebre–Allegro brillante II. Alla tedesca. Allegro moderato e semplice III. Andante. Andante elegiaco IV. Scherzo. Allegro vivo V. Finale. Allegro con fuoco. Tempo di Polacca
Scan the QR Code to see more information about tonight’s concert, answer concert trivia, and leave feedback about tonight’s performance. Prizes given!
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Andrew Grams, guest conductor Newly appointed Music Director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra of Illinois and one of America’s most promising and talented young conductors, Andrew Grams has already appeared with many of the great orchestras of the world including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Sydney Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony, the New Zealand Symphony, the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia Rome, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, the Hamburg Symphony, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Bergen Philharmonic, and the Malmo Symphony among many others. Maestro Grams was a protege of Franz Welser-Moest and served as Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra from 2004 to 2007. He has since led several concert programs with the Cleveland Orchestra and will return to conduct that orchestra in the summer of 2014 at the Blossom Music Festival.
Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington D.C., and the orchestras of Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, New Jersey and others in the United States. On the international arena, he has conducted the Toronto Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Orchestra of the Beethovenhalle Bonn, the BBC Symphony Orchestra London, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the
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This season Mr. Grams will open the Phoenix Symphony concert season in celebratory performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. He also begins his tenure with the Elgin Symphony and leads two full weeks of concerts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in addition to debut appearances with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Oregon Symphony. He returns to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra as well as the Luzern Symphony and in the U.S. he makes welcome second visits to the orchestras of Grand Rapids, North Carolina, and Alabama. In 2002, Grams was appointed the assistant conductor of the Reading Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania and returned to conduct that orchestra again in 2005. He was selected to spend the summer of 2003 studying with David Zinman, Murry Sidlin and Michael Stern at the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival, and returned to that program again in 2004. A Maryland native raised in Severn, Andrew Grams began conducting at the age of 17, when he directed the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at Interlochen Arts
Camp in Michigan. In 1999 he received a bachelor of music degree in violin performance from the Juilliard School, and in 2003 he received a conducting degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he worked with Otto-Werner Mueller. Also an accomplished violinist, Mr. Grams was a member of the New York City Ballet
Orchestra at Lincoln Center from 1998 to 2004, serving as acting associate principal second violin in 2002 and 2004. In addition, he has performed with ensembles including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the New Jersey Symphony.
the composers
Ralph Vaughn Williams October 12, 1872 – August 26, 1958 Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis Shhh…. Pretend that we are about to enter the magnificent Gloucester Cathedral on September 6, 1910 to hear the first performance of Vaughn William’s Fantasia for double string orchestra for which he borrowed a choral theme written in 1567 by Thomas Tallis. Tallis’s theme comes from his setting of part of the Book of Psalms in vernacular poetry meant to be sung in church as hymns. As a young composer, Vaughn Williams chose English musical arts and traditions as the wellspring of his compositional inspiration, starting with his country’s rich tradition of folk music. Harold Schoenberg describes him as having “seen too many British composers dragged on a rope behind the chariot of German theoreticians,” a trap Vaughn William vowed to avoid. Eventually, he was drawn to the fertile music of the Elizabethan Age, known as the apogee of the English Renaissance. So what did Vaughn Williams have in mind when he wrote this Fantasia? In Tallis’s time, a fantasia was instrumental music that opened with a germinal musical theme which was then developed into new but related musical ideas, all without regard for structural conventions or restrictions. Vaughn Williams applied this approach to Tallis’s choral theme, adding his own creative interpretation and idiosyncratic mysticism. Not only did Vaughn Williams avoid the structural forms that dominated the 17th and 18th Centuries, but he used the modal style of composing prevalent in Tudor times, which means that you will not hear a sense of a single tonal key or center dominating the piece, as was the case in the later classical and romantic eras. The Fantasia opens with five haunting chords which leave no doubt that we are in an English cathedral of old. Then, Tallis’s theme appears, twice, quietly in pizzicato in the bases. The rest of the orchestra picks up the theme. The result is sublime and simply gorgeous. In effect, Vaughn Williams has deftly updated and fused in a unique and personal fashion his nation’s musical heritage with the early 20th Century romantic world. Although an ardent nationalist, Vaugh Williams’s music transcends parochial limitations. He often said, “The man who serves humanity best is he who, rooted in his own nation, develops his spiritual and moral endowments to their highest capacity, so that growing beyond the limits of his own nation he is able to give something of the whole to humanity.” In this Fantasia, he certainly lived up to his muse.
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the composers
Robert Alexander Schumann June 08, 1810 – July 29, 1856 Konzertstück for Four Horns Schumann’s father, August, was a bookseller and an author specializing in florid romantic literature, to which he introduced his receptive son at an early age. The term “romantic,” by the 18th Century referred to an exciting imaginary world beyond what we see in everyday life. Romantic literature revels in the occult, the fantastic, the incredible, the strange, the over-the-top, the emotional -- love, passion, death, longing, grief, joy, etc. Long before the romantic movement was adopted by 19th Century composers, it was purely a literary genre exemplified by such English writers as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, and a slew of German authors such as Goethe and Schiller. “Romantic” thus came to mean liberation from the strictly controlled Classical tradition in favor of individual creative imagination. This context is critical to understanding Schumann because it was this superheated literature Schumann read as a child and which ignited and fueled a large part of his personality and thinking. We know him as a consummate passionate romantic, because he was. We owe the literary Schumann to his father, but we owe the musical Schumann to his mother, Johanna. Johanna was a singer. Her friends and neighbors and townsfolk referred to her as The Living Book of Arias, and she introduced her son to music and to song. It was Johanna who saw to it that Robert began piano lessons when he was 8 years old. Thus, Schumann voraciously read romantic literature at a very young age, founded a book club among his friends, learned to play the piano, organized a small orchestra, and, began at the age of 10 to write poetry, followed by songs when he was a young teenager. With such a start, it is not surprising that he became one of his century’s greats. But now, to tonight’s offering, the Konzertstück. The term “French horn” is a misnomer. Even the French call it just the “cor” (horn). The original metallic horn was a simple piece of brass tubing roughly 20 feet long wrapped in a coil with a flared bell, known as a natural horn and used for hunting, only rarely for the stage. It was limited in the notes it could produce until the early 18th Century when “crooks,” or sections of additional tubing, were introduced. Switching crooks allowed hornists easily to change key. Then, in the early 19th Century, the Germans invented values which enabled the instrument to produce all the chromatic notes in three octaves; and the horn became the wonderful concert and solo instrument we know today. In 1849, Schumann wrote his Concerto for Four Horns in three movements, a showpiece which has become the pinnacle of the genre. The four horns announce their presence with a robust flourish and then relax while the orchestra plays the opening festive upbeat theme. When the hornists join in, Schumann taxes their skill and endurance with music that exploits every possibility of the instrument. The eight high Cs are the equivalent for the horn of running a mile in four minutes. Schumann designated the second movement Romanze, and it reminds us that his forté was writing songs -- this time for instruments. Enjoy the exceptional harmonies in this serene episode.
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Suddenly, the trumpets interrupt the tranquil mood with a call to the hunt; and the spirited festivities begin. Driven by a rhythmic pattern emulating hoof beats, the music once again asks for everything the horns have -- including near-impossible high D’s. Schumann calls for this finale to be “sehr lebhaft,” or very lively, and it certainly is. This piece is 19th Century exuberant romanticism at its best. Let’s hear it for our four stars!
the composers
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893 Symphony No. 3 “The Polish” What tragic irony that the torment and misery of a gifted but vulnerable young man are responsible for giving us so much pleasure. Of all the great composers, he may have been dealt one of the worst hands of all, living most of his life in fear and on the edge of a nervous breakdown. As a child, Tchaikovsky was so emotionally fragile that his governess described him as a “porcelain child.” At the tender age of 10, when he was unable to fend for himself, his disintegrating family sent him 800 miles from his home to attend the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Moscow where, in a strict boarding school, he trained against his character to become a clerk in the Russian Ministry of Justice. While separated from his beloved mother, she died, a crushing blow from which he never recovered. He became neurotically self-absorbed, misanthropic, and a hypochondriac -- all exacerbated by his fear of being discovered as gay in a society that regarded such to be criminal. As an example of his tenuous hold on sanity, while conducting in his later years, he kept time with a baton in his right hand while holding his chin with his left for fear that his head would fall off. His salvation, of course, was his uncanny capacity to compose captivating music that flowered from his seemingly inexhaustible ability to write compelling melodies, many of which are the most memorable ever to flow from the pen of a composer. His melodies however, are not warm and fuzzy, but introspective, haunting, and sometimes as emotional as an anguished cry from an upstairs window on a stormy night. Also, he has no peer when it comes to dance rhythms. Can anyone top Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker? Tchaikovsky’s Third Symphony in five movements is the only one he ever composed in a major key, giving us a clue as to his frame of mind when he wrote it in 1875, two years before his disastrous sham marriage drove him to a failed attempt at suicide, and before he became intensely fearful about his sexuality. The First Movement is confident, emotionally uncomplicated, and unashamedly cheerful. This mood, enhanced by dance rhythms in the remaining movements reappears throughout the work, especially in the Fifth. Why is this symphony called The Polish? Tchaikovsky designated the final movement “Allegro con fuoco (Tempo di Polacca),” suggesting the energy and vigor of a Polonaise dance. Six years after Tchaikovsky’s death, a British conductor, Sir August Manns, referred to it as the Polish Symphony because of the Polish dance rhythms in the final movement. Unfortunately, the ill-suited nickname stuck.
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Classic Series 4 Holiday Pops
Featuring the
Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale
December’s concert generously sponsored by
Howard and Dottie Goldman Hotel Sponsor
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Radio Sponsor
December 11 | 12, 2015 Robert Franz, conductor Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale Dr. Jim Jirak, BPMC Music Director Randol Alan Bass
Fanfare: Joy to the World
Arthur Harris
Angels We Have Heard On High
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on Greensleeves
Arthur Harris
We Three Kings
arr. Chad Marvin
Christmas on the Moon (Jen Drake, viola and Chad Marvin, tenor)
Nikolai Rimksy-Korsakov
Polonaise from Christmas Eve Suite
Craig Courtney
Carols of the Night
Randol Alan Bass
Gloria Intermission
arr. Jerry Herman
We Need a Little Christmas
Robert Wendel
An Evergreen Christmas
arr. Bisbano
“Believe”, from Polar Express Suite (Brandon Atkins, baritone)
Leroy Anderson
Bugler’s Holiday
Victor Herbert Leroy Anderson arr. Victor Vanacore Robert Wendel
“March of the Toys” from Babes in Toyland
Sleigh Ride Feliz Navidad Merry Christmas Sing Along Scan the QR Code to see more information about tonight’s concert, answer concert trivia, and leave feedback about tonight’s performance. Prizes given!
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Classic Series 5
Guest Artist
Spencer Myer piano
January’s concert generously sponsored by
Mike & Joan Boren Andrew & Elizabeth Scoggin Hotel Sponsor
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Radio Sponsor
January 22 | 23, 2016 Robert Franz, conductor Spencer Myer, piano
Jessie Montgomery (1981-) Strum Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 I. Allegro moderato II. Andante con moto III. Rondo. Vivace Spencer Myer, piano Intermission Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 I. Adagio molto – Allegro con brio II. Larghetto (A major) III. Scherzo. Allegro – Trio IV. Allegro molto
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Spencer Myer, piano One of the most important American artists of his generation, Spencer Myer has garnered stellar audience and critical acclaim from around the globe, rapidly establishing a significant and continuously expanding career. Spencer Myer includes in his current
season returns to the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and New York City’s Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, as well as debuts with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, Michigan’s Holland Symphony Orchestra, Ohio’s Springfield Symphony Orchestra and the Boise Philharmonic. Solo recitals and chamber music collaborations throughout the United States include a solo recital in Chicago as the 2014 MTNA National Convention Artist and a return to London’s Wigmore Hall. In 2012, he teamed up with the awardwinning cellist Adrian Daurov to form the Daurov/Myer Duo. Spencer Myer’s orchestral, recital and chamber music performances have been
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heard throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa and Asia. He has been soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra, Louisiana, Cape Town and Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the Baton Rouge, Indianapolis, Knoxville, New Haven, Phoenix, Santa Fe and Tucson Symphony Orchestras, Mexico’s Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco and Beijing’s China National Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with, among others, conductors Leslie B. Dunner, Bernhard Gueller, Jacques Lacombe, Jahja Ling, Timothy Muffitt, Maurice Peress, Kevin Rhodes, Matthew Savery, Klauspeter Seibel, Steven Smith, Arjan Tien and Victor Yampolsky. In May 2005, his recital/orchestral tour of South Africa included a performance of the five piano concerti of Beethoven with the Chamber Orchestra of South Africa, followed by return orchestra and recital tours in 2010 and 2012. Spencer Myer’s recital appearances have been presented in New York City’s Weill Recital Hall, 92nd Street Y and Steinway Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and London’s Wigmore Hall, while many of his performances have been broadcast on WQXR (New York City), WHYY (Philadelphia), WCLV (Cleveland) and WFMT (Chicago). An avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with cellists Lynn Harrell and Ralph Kirshbaum, clarinetist David Shifrin, 2005 Cardiff Singer of the World winner Nicole Cabell, 2007 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition winner Martha Guth, and with the Blair, Jupiter, Manhattan, Miami and Pacifica String Quartets. In 2004, Spencer Myer captured First Prize in the 10th UNISA International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa, as well as special prizes for the best performances of Bach, the commissioned work, the semifinal round recital and both concerto prizes in the final round. He is also the Gold Medalist of the 2008 New
Orleans International Piano Competition, and a laureate in the 2007 William Kapell, 2005 Cleveland, 2005 Busoni and 2004 Montréal International Piano Competitions. Winner of the 2006 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship from the American Pianists Association, Mr. Myer also received both of the competition’s special prizes in Chamber Music and Lieder Accompanying. He is also the winner of the 2000 Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition, and subsequently enjoys a growing reputation as a vocal collaborator. Mr. Myer was a member of Astral Artists’ performance roster from 2003 to 2010. An enthusiastic supporter of the education of young musicians, Spencer Myer has been a frequent guest artist at workshops for students and teachers, and has served on the faculties of the Baldwin-Wallace College and Oberlin College Conservatories of Music. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Julian Martin. Other teachers include Peter Takács, Joseph Schwartz and Christina Dahl. During the
course of his undergraduate studies at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, he was the recipient of numerous awards from that institution, while, in 2000, he was named a recipient of a four-year Jacob K. Javits Memorial Fellowship from the United States Department of Education. His Doctor of Musical Arts degree was conferred by Stony Brook University in 2005. Spencer Myer can be heard on the Dimension Records label, performing music of the late Cleveland composer Frederick Koch and on a composerconducted Naxos CD in performances of three concerti from Huang Ruo’s Chamber Concerto Cycle. His debut CD for harmonia mundi usa - solo music of Busoni, Copland, Debussy and Kohs - was released in the fall of 2007. Mr. Myer’s most recent recorded performance is Ravel’s Chansons madécasses, included on “Intimate Masterpieces,” a 2013 CD issued by Oberlin Music featuring faculty and alumni of the Oberlin Conservatory.
the composers
Jessie Montgomery December 8, 1981 – Present Strum Ms. Montgomery originally wrote this music for a cello quintet. She then reworked it in 2008 for a string quartet. Eventually it blossomed into the passionate piece for a string orchestra we will hear tonight. Strum draws its essence from American folk idioms and the spirit of movement and dance. The composition begins with a touch of fleeting nostalgia suggesting a narrative which soon erupts into an ecstatic celebration punctuated by reflective interludes. The strumming pizzicato establishes a distinctive texture for the music and serves as its driving rhythmic underpinning, hence the title Strum. Additional layers of repeated rhythms and harmonies add to the texture which together form an energized bed of sound through which various melodies weave in and out. As Strum rushes to a close, the voices unite to declare a moment of triumph!
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the composers
Ludwig Van Beethoven December 16, 1770 – March 26, 1827 Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany in 1770, just as the forces of political revolution and social change were sweeping away the vestiges of feudal Europe and monarchy. The aristocratic age of emperors and counts, of dukes and princes was beginning to disintegrate. The Enlightenment was in full flower. The world was beginning to value individuals based on their accomplishments, not just their ancestors. Beethoven was six years old in 1776 at the time of the American Revolution, eighteen when we adopted our Constitution in 1788, and not yet twenty in 1789 when George Washington became our first president and the French citizenry stormed the Bastille. The French Revolution produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, written by the Marquis de Lafayette with the help of Thomas Jefferson. Article 1 of the French Declaration proclaims that “men are born free and equal in rights.” Beethoven was without a doubt both a child and an agent of this dramatic change, of the new day of personal dignity, of social equality, and of the quest for life, liberty, equal rights, and the pursuit of individual happiness. He was so thrilled by the ideals of the French Revolution that he considered moving from Vienna to Paris. He changed his mind when Napoleon declared himself Emperor in 1804, effectively repudiating the democratic beliefs embraced by the young composer. A contemporary of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Lafayette, Beethoven brought about the same kinds of revolutionary changes in his sphere -- music -- that the politicians and political thinkers brought about in theirs. Beginning in 1804 with his Third Symphony, the Eroica, Beethoven stepped out of the old role of musician as entertainer and into the realm of musician as orator with a message to convey. Jan Swafford says that the depth of despair brought on by his malevolent deafness was “answered by the opposite forces of his will, his courage, and his defiance of fate.” Robert Greenberg calls the First Movement of the Eroica, “a brilliant combination of narrative storytelling, abstract musical structure, and autobiographical confession.” Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, written in 1806, is his musical restatement of the French Revolution’s idea that men are born free and equal in rights. In the concerto, Beethoven the soloist plays the part of the free man, equal in rights to the political and social collective, represented by the orchestra. Previously, a concerto always began with the orchestra presenting the main themes in an exposition, while the soloist silently and respectfully awaited his turn. This order was mandatory, a ritual, a rule. But in the Fourth the soloist -- or the free and equal man -- opens the music with the first theme. Then, the collective gets its turn, following the leader. Today, the implications of this new order escapes our attention, but in Beethoven’s day, this unconventional opening was revolutionary. The Second Movement continues this theme in dialogue with the strings. Now, the collective is angry, but they are gradually calmed down by the soloist and finally accept him as a worthy equal. Franz Liszt described this movement as Orpheus taming and
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enlightening the wild beasts. Now that the piano and the orchestra -- or the individual and the collective -- are equals, the Third Movement proceeds as a musical collaboration. Listen to and watch the soloist and the orchestra as they work together in an energetic and exchange of brilliant ideas in what has become a symphonic concerto. At its public premiere on December 22, 1808, Beethoven played the piano. Sadly, because of his increasing deafness this performance was his last as a soloist in a concerto. But, because first and foremost it is great music, it will live forever. Symphony No. 2 in D Major Beethoven did not abandon the well-established classical forms and conventions that were his musical inheritance, but he cleverly altered them to suit his own expressive purposes, making them sometimes shocking to the musically sophisticated ears of his era. His aristocratic listeners knew what to expect from Haydn and Mozart, but an arrogant Beethoven defied their expectations and shook them up at every turn. Let me draw analogy. Suppose Beethoven produced baseball games, but one day when the first batter hit a single, the batter unexpectedly ran to third base, instead of first. As a knowledgeable spectator, you might turn to your neighbor and ask, “What was that?” The stands are in an uproar. Some fans would call this heresy, demand that it stop; others might find it new, dramatic, and exciting -- which is exactly the mixed reaction the audiences had to Beethoven’s music. The conservative voices of his time called Beethoven a “mad man who writes crazy music punctuated by occasional lucid interludes of bad taste.” One denounced his Second Symphony as “bizarre, confused, and incomprehensible,” a composition full of “doves and crocodiles.” Some said he did not write music, he abused it. Beethoven came up with dozens of clever ways to honor old conventions. The macro structure of the game was basically the same, but how differently it was being played. In addition to the familiar, now, it was full of fireworks, surprises, and the unexpected. And Beethoven’s innovations were more than just superficial and gimmicky, they were marvelous, compelling, inspired, and sublime -- which is why we still love his music today. Beethoven’s musical iconoclasm comes from an overlooked side of his personality. We think of Beethoven the Titan as a steely genius, fighting a fierce losing battle with his fate of increasing deafness and isolation, and always in love with an unattainable woman. This image is accurate, but it’s only part of the picture. Beethoven also was a jester, a comic who in the spoken word delighted in puns and verbal word play. Unlike the stern image we always see of him illustrated in books, he was quick to laugh out loud, and he derived great enjoyment from the happenings of everyday life. He had a term for this state of things, “aufgeknöpft,” which in German means “unbuttoned.” His robust humor and his love of jokes spilled over into his music, but because of the heroic myth, frequently we don’t recognize the unbuttoned whimsy and “gotcha” fun when we hear it. He delights in setting and springing harmonic and rhythmic booby traps for the listener. Beethoven can hardly get through a piece without trashing the musical templates of Haydn and Mozart. One writer likened Beethoven to Haydn gone mad. But as far out as he went, he never completely abandoned the Classical traditions, and it is only in contrast to the established rules that his musical humor is recognizable.
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Nowhere do we find a better example of Beethoven’s boisterous humor than in his cheerful and energetic Second Symphony. Jan Swafford describes the tone of the Second Symphony as that of an “operatic comedy.” The irony is that he wrote it during the time that he was coming to grips with his progressive loss of hearing. This exuberant symphony can be taken as a musical expression of a statement he made to his friend about his devastating affliction: “I shall as far as possible defy my fate,” and defy it he did. The Fourth Movement is a doozy. One clueless contemporary critic described it as “a gross monster, a wounded dragon which will not die, and even while losing its blood, it deals vain but furious blows with its tail until the last agony.” In fact, the strange effect of which this critic complains isn’t a dragon, it is a series of pesky hiccups. Yes, Beethoven had chronic stomach trouble causing bouts of hiccups. This movement is a comical depiction of this affliction as it periodically interrupts Beethoven’s musical life, doing so as the recurring rondo theme in this movement. Listen to it in that vein, with a picture in your mind of Beethoven sporting a wry smile. And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, you know the rest of the story.
COMPOSE
your
LEGACY
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THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE BOISE PHILHARMONIC! 66
The Boise Philharmonic “The Sound of Our City”
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Classic Series 6
Guest Artist
Changlu Wu pipa
February’s concert generously sponsored by
Chris Davidson & Sharon Christoph Hotel Sponsor
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Radio Sponsor
February 26 | 27, 2016 Robert Franz, conductor Changlu Wu, pipa Liu Tieshan-Mao Yuan (1926- ) Dance of the Yao People Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Mother Goose Suite I. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant. Lent II. Petit Poucet. Très modéré III. Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes. Mouvement de marche IV. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête. Mouvement de valse modéré V. Le jardin féerique. Lent et grave Lan-Kui Han (1959- ) Qilian Rhapsody for Pipa and Orchestra Changlu Wu, pipa Intermission Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 43 I. Allegretto II. Tempo andante, ma rubato III. Vivacissimo IV. Finale: Allegro moderato
Scan the QR Code to see more information about tonight’s concert, answer concert trivia, and leave feedback about tonight’s performance. Prizes given!
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Changlu Wu, pipa The Pipa is a traditional Chinese instrument which was introduced to China in the Han dynasty (around 2000 years ago) from central Asia. The pipa is a four-string instrument in the shape of pear. In a traditional Chinese orchestra, the pipa group is the leader of the
age of 6, and entered the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at the age of 9, majoring in Pipa playing. During her time at Shanghai she won numerous awards. In 1990, she came to the U.S. to study in piano at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston. After graduation from Moore School of Music in University of Houston, she established her own music school, the Changlu Wu School of Music. In addition, she teaches pipa, zheng, and piano at the Chinese Culture Center. Ms. Wu’s motto is “There is no boundary for music.” Ms. Changlu Wu won numerous awards in China. She has represented our country in many diplomatic occasions to perform for foreign leaders visiting China. Those who have enjoyed her beautiful music include former president of the United States, Jimmy Carter. She also played in Isaac Stern’s film From Mao to Mozart. After she started her study in the U.S., she has been invited to perform in many cities, including Florida, San Antonio, Oklahoma, and Houston. Her performance was broadcast live by Houston Public Television.
plucked string section. The pipa is used to accompany singing and dancing in chamber ensembles and is also a popular solo instrument. Ms. Changlu Wu’s masterly skills and knowledge in the music of the West and East dazzle her audiences worldwide. She has performed all over the United States and Europe. She has represented China in many diplomatic occasions and performed for foreign leaders. In 1995, she won the championship in the George Foreman International Musical Talent Showcase and became the first musician in history to win this international music competition with a Chinese musical instrument. Ms. Wu started her Pipa training at the
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Ms. Changlu Wu loves to teach American young audiences the beautiful Chinese music. She performs in the Young Audience Program in Houston. She teaches Pipa, Zheng, and Piano. She also teaches at Chinese Culture Center. She is a very active musician in Houston. She was the President of Houston Chinese Orchestra.
the composers
Liu Tieshan & Mao Yuan Dance of the Yao People (Arr. Shan-Yuan) If you venture into China’s Hunan and other southwestern provinces, you will encounter the Yao people, one of that area’s largest ethnic minorities. They inhabit a remote mountainous region of China’s vast territory, and for the most part, they are uncomplicated souls -- mostly Buddhists and Taoists -- who live off the land. Their culture and customs reflect their agricultural and pastoral way of life, and they enjoy their own style of unpretentious folk music played on traditional Chinese instruments. Punk rock is not one of their curses. True to their folk origins, the melodies in their music are direct, easy to digest, and memorable. In 1952, Liu Tieshan and Mao Yuan wrote this wonderful piece. The source of their inspiration was the Yao’s traditional festival music, specifically their Long Drum Dance. But contrary to what you might expect, Tieshan and Yuan wrote it for Western orchestral instruments, not for their own. Go Figure. To see and hear a fascinating arrangement of this compelling and charming work performed on traditional Chinese instruments, go to youtube and enter Dance of the Yao People. Look for the 6.05 minute version uploaded on Nov. 9, 2009, by kwwkwwkww, played by the China Broadcasting Traditional Orchestra. You will find your visit well worth the time it takes to experience it in this fashion. The Dance begins in soft pizzicato played by the violas, the cellos, and the basses. Although it sounds like the beginning of Bolero, the intent of the music is to suggest nightfall and the beginning of the evening festival dance, lit by moonlight. The first sensuous melody depicts the seductive dance of the young girls, represented by the violins. Then, after a brief pause, the bassoons, followed by the oboes, pick up the melody in a fast and vital tempo. The boys have joined the girls, and for a moment, the music assumes a vigorous masculine tenor. As we near the end of the festive celebration, the coda treats us to a dynamic and animated climax. The opening theme of this piece showed up years later -- without proper attribution -- in a blockbuster performance by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey of a song entitled When You Believe. While you are on youtube, check this out also. Both pop stars are in their prime, and it’s a whale of a performance. Wow to Yao! Thank you, Robert, for introducing us to this delightful gem.
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the composers
Lan-Kui Han
Qilian Rhapsody for Pipa and Orchestra If you wish to explore a remote and unspoiled corner of our planet, try the rugged Qilian Mountains, a 500 mile long wonder in west-central China. Because of its location, high altitude, and challenging climate, the Qilian range remains largely unsullied by civilization, smartphones, and flat screen TVs. Its landscape consists of majestic snow-capped peaks, vast virgin forests, and lush expansive valleys. Glaciers cover more than 760 square miles of the territory, providing an enormous reservoir of water. Numerous rivers and streams dissect the terrain. The Qilian range marks the southern border of the legendary 2000 year old Silk Road, the 4000 mile trade route extending from China to the Roman Empire. Sections of the Ming Dynasty’s Great Wall protected that two-way artery of commerce and culture between East and West. The atmosphere is wild and the environment primitive but gorgeous. Pause, absorb this context into your awareness, and now you’re ready for the Qilian Rhapsody for Pipa and Orchestra. As its name denotes, the music reveals aspects of the Arcadian world of the resilient Qilian people. A rhapsody is typically a work that moves organically from one section to another, which this composition accomplishes with ease and finesse. The music opens with daybreak, an awakening, followed immediately by the main theme. This theme exudes exuberant confidence, as does Qilian life itself in the Spring, the celebratory season of rebirth and recovery. A second lyrical episode suggests singing, conversation, and passionate love. Then we hear sounds of the colorful life of the people, including a lament. The climax rejoices in their lot, ending in a burst of optimism. This evocative concerto deftly combines the mystery of Eastern sound with Western instruments and musical architecture. It has its roots in Qilian folk music, but it is not just an indigenous tune dressed up for the concert stage. Incidentally, if the occasionally Coplandesque style sounds to you like music written for an Eastern Western featuring the plectrum banjo, you’re not alone. The traditional pipa is the perfect instrument for the solo voice of this picturesque Asian fantasy. The pipa is the Chinese pear-shaped equivalent of the medieval lute with origins stretching back 2000 years. It is 31 inches long made of wood with a fretted fingerboard. Three of the frets represent heaven, earth, and man. Five stand for the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Four strings means four seasons. Nowadays, the strings are made of nylon or steel, but originally they were silk or beef tendon. How did the pipa acquire its curious name? In ancient times, the back and forth plucking of the strings sounded to imaginative ears like “pi” and “pa.” Jeopardy for $500. How blessed we are to have the pipa virtuoso Changlu Wu come to Idaho to dazzle us with her astonishing technique. Ms. Wu’s motto is that “there is no boundary to music,” as Robert’s eclectic East meets West showcase masterfully demonstrates. Something old and something Wu. (Sorry).
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the composers
Maurice Ravel March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937 Mother Goose Suite: Ma Mère l’Oye Ravel composed Mother Goose as a set of five whimsical piano duets for children. The first pianists to play it in public were six and ten years old respectively. Ravel cleverly designed each duet to capture the essence of a well-known children’s story. The unusual name of the set comes from Charles Perrault’s late 17th Century anthology of “tales of olden times, with morals” which supposedly were recounted to children by the fictitious Mother Goose, the archetype of a kindly peasant woman. Because of the pieces’ intrinsic musical value, Ravel transformed them a year later into a ballet from which he subsequently extracted this delightful orchestral suite. To help us enjoy this excursion into the imaginative world of childhood, Ravel gave each section a descriptive title and a few words to illuminate our path. The title of the first section is Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty. The slow and tender music suggests the poisoned slumber of a beautiful princess awaiting to be awakened by the kiss of a handsome prince. Next up is Tom Thumb. Ravel gives us a clue to this episode with a quotation from Perrault’s original fairy tale about the perilous adventures of his miniature hero: “Tom believed he would easily find his way home by means of his bread crumbs, which he had scattered as he passed along; but to his surprise he could not find a single crumb, for the birds had come and eaten them all.” The wandering solo oboe over sensuous muted strings conveys Tom’s trip on a winding path in the forest. Listen for the birds as they enjoy their feast. In the third segment, we meet Laideronette, the Empress of the Pagodas. Laideronette is the heroine of Marie d’Aulnoy’s story about a disconsolate princess turned ugly by a wicked witch. During one of her lonely meanderings she meets a fearsome green dragon who used to be the handsome King of the Pagodas until he crossed paths with the same witch. The Pagodas are diminutive living creatures with bodies of jewels, crystal, and porcelain. Ravel introduces this exotic miniature with a quotation from d’Aulnoy’s story: “Laderonette undressed and entered the bath. Immediately the Pagodas, male and female, began to sing and play on their various instruments. Some had lutes made of walnut shells, others violas made of almond shells proportionate to their sizes.” Eventually, the spell is broken, King and Princess are restored to their original selves, and they marry. Conversations of Beauty and the Beast. In this conversation, first the solo clarinet and later the solo flute combined with the solo oboe play the part of Beauty. Can you guess which instrument is the voice of the Beast? Of course, the contrabassoon! After the spell is broken by Beauty’s promise to marry the Beast, marked by a clash of the cymbals followed by a harp glissando, Beauty becomes the violin and the Beast the cello. Mother Goose ends with The Fairy Garden. Here, Sleeping Beauty slowly wakes up after a kiss from Prince Charming. The celeste represents her awakening. A joyous and excited fanfare announces the gathering of other fairy tale characters around the happy couple as the Good Fairy (at last) gives them her blessing. After hearing this piece, we can understand why Ravel has been called “the Poet of Music.” Enjoy!
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the composers
Jean Sibelius December 8, 1865 – September 20, 1957 Second Symphony When pressed about whether he intended to convey anything in his symphonies beyond just providing his audiences with a unique and satisfying musical experience, Sibelius emphatically answered “no.” However, many persons very close to him have dismissed his categorical answer. For example, the conductor Georg Schnéevoigt, Sibelius’s close friend and colleague who championed his music, believed that the Second Symphony expresses the phases of the patriotic Finnish revolt against the crushing occupation of the Czarist Russian Empire. Schnéevoigt called the first movement a bucolic depiction of the calm but vigorous pastoral life of the Finns, people free and strong and resilient in character -- the good old days. However, a sense of foreboding punctuates the atmosphere. The mysterious second movement introduces the underground stirrings of nationalistic fervor, but the Russian’s menacing brutal rule over the people has rendered them fearful and timid. Sibelius’s use of the bassoon and timpani is magical. The third movement represents the excited awakening of ardent rebellious feelings and the Finn’s fierce Nordic determination to reclaim their rights and their freedom. Beginning without a pause, the final movement is a mighty and inspiring bardic song of triumph, a glorious picture of what life promises when they win their deliverance and independence. The concluding full-throttle two minutes of this composition -- one of my favorites -- are genuinely as grand and moving as any ever written, especially to the early 20th Century Finns. In effect, this work is the heartfelt symphonic rendition of Finlandia, Sibelius’s strong-fisted unofficial anthem of the underground Finnish resistance. Schnéevoigt heard it as a musical symbol of liberty. But what if Sibelius was just jesting, and Schnéevoigt was all wet? Maybe Sibelius believed Mahler when Mahler said if a composition has to be explained with words, it need not have been written. After all, to survive the test of time, a composition has to be more than a newspaper editorial. Maybe Sibelius simply wanted us to kick back and enjoy his music without being distracted by a program. That’s fine, because this masterpiece works beautifully as a romantic adventure in pure orchestral sound. It is as different from the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as Trump is from Jefferson, but for my money it is utterly marvelous. So, choose your poison, or your potion. I’m sure you’ll like it either way.
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IS A PROUD SPONSOR OF THE
Boise
Philharmonic �
CONCERT SEASON 75
Classic Series 7
Featuring the
Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale Margie Rodriguez, soprano Marjorie Maltais, alto Brian Cheney, tenor Derrick Parker, bass March’s concert generously sponsored by
Cloverdale Funeral Home Hotel Sponsor
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Radio Sponsor
March 11 | 12, 2016 Robert Franz, conductor Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale Dr. Jim Jirak, BPMC Music Director Margie Rodriguez, soprano • Marjorie Maltais, alto Brian Cheney, tenor • Derrick Parker, bass Wolfgang A. Mozart (circa 1756-1791) Don Giovanni Overture, K. 527 Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Suite No. 4 in G major, Op. 61 “Mozartiana” I. Gigue. Allegro II. Menuet. Moderato III. Pregheira. Andante non tanto IV. Thème et variations. Allegro giusto Intermission Wolfgang A. Mozart Requiem I. Introitus II. Kyrie III. Sequenz- Dies irae Tuba mirum Rex tremendae Recordare Confutatis Lacrymosa IV. Offertorium- Domine Jesu Hostias V. Sanctus VI. Benedictus VII. Agnus Dei VIII. Communio- Lux aeterna Scan the QR Code to see more information about tonight’s concert, answer concert trivia, and leave feedback about tonight’s performance. Prizes given!
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the composers
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791 Overture to Don Giovanni: The Rake Punished Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni foreshadows not only the music we hear when the curtain rises, but it also perfectly sets the stage for the opera’s intriguing plot. Thus, knowing the drama’s story line helps us appreciate the Overture when it is played without the opera. The plot is a variation on the myth of the libertine Don Juan. Don Juan, and thus Don Giovanni, is the archetype of the unrepentant womanizer who eventually meets his comeuppance. In Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni attempts to seduce Donna Anna. When her father, the Commendatore, intervenes, Don kills him in a sword fight and escapes to pursue other conquests. Eventually, the marauding Don happens upon the Commendatore’s stone statue in a cemetery, and the Don mockingly invites “him” to dinner. The statue obliges, and when it shows up for the feast, it vehemently exhorts the Don to repent, to abandon his evil ways. The predatory Don refuses, and the ground opens up and conveys him to hell and damnation. The rake has been punished! With the story in mind, now we understand why the Overture begins where the opera ends, with ominous and jarring orchestral chords in d minor, the key of conflict, tragedy, and doom. These thunderous blasts and the mysterioso sequence that follows foreshadow the opera’s dramatic climax involving the high octane confrontation between the stone guest and the Don, ending with the Don’s descent into the Inferno. After the dark beginning, Mozart deftly alters the mood of the music and introduces an allegro, featuring the juxtaposition of masculine chords and feminine responses in the strings. Are the flattered but unsuspecting maidens playing coy with the seductive and insistent Don? Mozart also uses this music to introduce us to the comedic aspects of the opera, which he called an “opera buffa,” or a comic opera. Some comedy! Mozart reportedly wrote this Overture the day before its premier. He had the opera’s music already in his head, but the story is nevertheless impressive. This is his wife Constanze’s account, as recounted by her second husband: “In the evening he told her that he wanted to write the Overture that night, and asked her to make him some punch and stay up with him to keep him merry. She did so, told him fairy tales of Aladdin’s Lamp and so on, which made him laugh until the tears came to his eyes. But the punch made him sleepy, so that he nodded whenever she paused, and worked only while she was talking. But since this exertion, his sleepiness, his frequent nodding and catching himself made the work terribly hard, his wife made him lie down on the couch promising to wake him up in an hour. But he slept so soundly that she did not have the heart to do so, and only wakened him after two hours had passed. This was at five o’clock. The copyist had been ordered for seven o’clock; at seven o’clock the Overture was finished.” Jay Goodwin calls Don Giovanni “the apotheosis of 18th Century Italianate opera and a startling premonition of Romanticism, Wagnerian music drama, and even the psychological dramas of the 20th Century.” If you enjoy the Overture, you’ll love the opera.
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Requiem Leave it to the Russians to infuse dark elements of murder into the backstory of Mozart’s Requiem, a story which without any embellishment is strange enough on its own. Near the end of his life, Mozart not only wrote magnificent works such as The Magic Flute and his Clarinet Concerto, but because he was ill and short of money, he began to accept any commission that came along. These included music for a mechanical clock, glass harmonica, and dance music for court balls -- not the stuff with which we associate his genius. In July 1791, an anonymous stranger contacted Mozart with the offer of a commission for a Requiem. The stranger offered a substantial fee for the work, with the stipulation that no one should ever know who wrote it. The stranger was the envoy of Count Walsegg who paid others to ghost-write music which the Count would then palm off to his friends as his own. The Count went as far as to copy the original scores in his own handwriting to avoid detection. The Count’s purpose was to amaze his friends with “his” talent, and in this case, he wanted a mass to be performed yearly in memory of his wife’s premature death. Mozart accepted half the substantial fee as a down payment and promptly went to work. However, he became gravely ill and was unable to finish it before he died. In his challenged physical and mental state, he thought he had been poisoned, causing him to believe he was writing the mass in contemplation of his own death. He completed only the Introitus and parts of the Kyrie, Dies irae, Lacrimosa, and the Offertorium. The rest remained undone. Eager to collect the rest of the commission, Mozart’s wife, Constanze, secretly farmed out the unfinished parts to one of Mozart’s pupils, Franz Süssmayr (no relation to Robert). Why she chose Süssmayr is curious because Mozart had once referred to him in a letter to her as a blockhead who has the acumen of “a duck in a thunderstorm.” Fortunately, the apprentice Süssmayr had learned from the master what he had in mind for the unfinished sections, and the composite Requiem is a masterpiece. Milton Cross described it as containing “other worldly beauty and a depth of awareness unique even for Mozart.” In any event, the deception worked, and Constanze collected her money from the Count. When she delivered the original manuscript to the Count, Mozart’s signature on it was forged. I wonder by whom? Years later, however, now interested in her husband’s reputation and the income potential of the work, Constanze claimed that Mozart had written the entire Requiem, not just parts of it. Why? So she could collect revenue from the work’s publication and performance. So, how do the Russians come into this saga? Remember the representation in the movie Amadeus that Salieri was the mysterious emissary who drove Mozart to death and then claimed the Requiem as his own? This myth originated with Alexander Pushkin in 1830 in a short drama called Mozart and Salieri, part of a series called The Little Tragedies. In it, Salieri poisons Mozart and steals the Requiem. Next, Rimsky-Korsakov picked up the ball in 1897 and ran with it in an opera, using Pushkin’s juicy drama as the libretto. The opera contains musical quotations from Don Giovanni and the Requiem. Finally, along came Peter Shaffer’s play and subsequent screenplay for Amadeus, and Pushkin’s false narrative about Salieri’s treachery became part of the conventional wisdom. The Ruskies must have something nefarious in their water.
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the composers
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893 Suite No. 4 “Mozartiana” The young Tchaikovsky’s path to the mature composer whose music we enjoy today was anything but direct. Although he exhibited some musical talent, as a child of ten his family sent him to a distant preparatory boarding school. The purpose of the school was to groom him for acceptance at the elitist Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg, which he entered at twelve. Upon graduation at nineteen, he became a lowly civil service lawyer/clerk in the prestigious Ministry of Justice. Predictably, he found the job boring and unrewarding. The austere Imperial School of Jurisprudence did not feature music in its curriculum, but while on summer vacation, his aunt introduced him to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and he was hooked. Later, he said, “This was the first music to make an impression on me. Through it, I penetrated into that sphere of artistic beauty in which soar only the greatest of geniuses. It is entirely thanks to Mozart that I chose to dedicate my life to music.” Tchaikovsky often called Mozart the “musical Christ.” In his twenties, Tchaikovsky began lessons at night in music theory and piano while during the day, he bided his time in the Ministry of Justice. When he felt ready, he quit the Ministry and became a member of the first class at the newly opened St. Petersburg Conservatory. Albeit a late bloomer, he was on his way. Thank goodness. We have plenty of good lawyers, but not enough Tchaikovskys! In 1884, he wrote in his diary, “Played Mozart with great enjoyment. Idea for a suite from Mozart.” Three years later, the centenary of Don Giovanni, he converted his idea into a reality, arranging and orchestrating a suite of four of Mozart’s relatively obscure piano pieces. He enjoyed this short form as a “good rest” from the arduous challenge of writing a symphony. In his preface to the suite, he wrote, “For some incomprehensible reason, several excellent compositions by Mozart are little known not only to the general public but to many musicians. The arranger of this suite, which is entitled Mozartiana, hoped to give a fresh impulse to the playing of these little masterpieces. They are full of inimitable beauties.” The first piece in the suite is a gigue, the second a minuet -- both dances. The third, Prayers, is based on Liszt’s transcription of Mozart’s religious motet Ave, Verum Corpus. Liszt called his transcription, In the Sistine Chapel. The final piece is a theme and variations based on a Mozart piano original inspired by an aria from a comic opera written in 1764 by Christoph Gluck. Mozart wrote it in honor of his elder contemporary. Tchaikovsky told a friend that playing Mozart made him “feel younger, almost a youth.” You can hear it in this heart-felt tribute.
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Classic Series 8
Guest Artist
Jennifer Frautschi violin
April’s concert generously sponsored by
Jo-Anne, Jeff, & Patti Smith
in honor of Patti Smith’s 100th year celebration Hotel Sponsor
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Radio Sponsor
April 16 | 17, 2016 Robert Franz, conductor Jennifer Frautschi, violin
Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) The Moldau from Ma Vlast Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Concerto for Violin in D major, Op. 77 I. Allegro non troppo (D major) II. Adagio (F major) III. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace Jennifer Frautschi, violin Intermission Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) Symphony No. 2 in B minor I. Allegro moderato II. Scherzo. Molto vivo III. Andante IV. Finale. Allegro
Scan the QR Code to see more information about tonight’s concert, answer concert trivia, and leave feedback about tonight’s performance. Prizes given!
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Jennifer Frautschi, violin Two-time GRAMMY nominee and Avery Fisher career grant recipient Jennifer Frautschi has garnered worldwide acclaim as an adventurous musician with a remarkably wide-ranging repertoire. As the Chicago Tribune noted, “violinist Jennifer Frautschi is molding a career with smart
interpretations of both warhorses and rarities.” Equally at home in the classic and contemporary repertoire, her recent seasons have featured innumerable performances and recordings of works ranging from Brahms and Schumann to Berg and Schoenberg. She has also had the privilege of premiering several new works composed for her by prominent composers of today. Ms. Frautschi has appeared as soloist with Pierre Boulez and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Christoph Eschenbach and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival, and at Wigmore Hall and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. Selected by Carnegie Hall for its Distinctive Debuts series, she made her
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New York recital debut in 2004. As part of the European Concert Hall Organization’s Rising Stars series, Ms. Frautschi also made debuts that year at ten of Europe’s most celebrated concert venues, including the Salzburg Mozarteum, Vienna Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, La Cité de la Musique in Paris, and Brussels’ Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. She has also been heard in recital at the Ravinia Festival, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Washington’s Phillips Collection, Boston’s Gardner Museum, Beijing’s Imperial Garden, Monnaie Opera in Brussels, La Chaux des Fonds in Switzerland, and San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico. Ms. Frautschi performs regularly at the Caramoor Center for the Arts, where she has appeared annually since she was first invited by André Previn to play there as a “Rising Star” at the age of 18, during her freshman year at Harvard. As a chamber artist she appears frequently at the Boston Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Northwest (in Portland, OR), and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Formerly a member of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two, she has also appeared at the Charlottesville, La Jolla Summerfest, La Musica (Sarasota), Moab, Music@ Menlo, Newport, Seattle, and Spoleto USA Chamber Music Festivals, as well as at New York’s Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums of Art, the 92nd Street Y, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and Mainly Mozart in San Diego. Internationally, she has performed at the Cartagena International Music Festival in Columbia, the Spoleto Festival of the Two Worlds and Rome Chamber Music Festival in Italy, Pharo’s Trust in Cyprus, Kutna Hora Festival in the Czech Republic, St. Barth’s Music Festival in the French West Indies, and toured England with musicians from Prussia Cove, culminating in a concert in London’s Wigmore Hall. She has premiered important new works by Barbara White,
Mason Bates, Oliver Knussen, Krzysztof Penderecki, Michael Hersch, and others, and has appeared at New York’s George Crumb Festival and Stefan Wolpe Centenary Concerts. Born in Pasadena, California, Ms. Frautschi began the violin at age three. She was a student of Robert Lipsett at the Colburn
School for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. She also attended Harvard, the New England Conservatory of Music, and The Juilliard School, where she studied with Robert Mann. She performs on a 1722 Antonio Stradivarius violin known as the “ex-Cadiz,” on generous loan to her from a private American foundation.
the composers
Bedich Smetana March 2, 1824 – May 12, 1884 Moldau / Vltava Smetana, an ardent Czech Nationalist, wrote this patriotic piece as one section of an heroic symphonic poem called Ma Vlast, or My Fatherland. His intent was to exalt what is now the Czech Republic and to inspire the Czech people to love their homeland. The Moldau is a river that sweeps through the resplendent Bohemian countryside. Smetana’s score contains this general guide to the music: “Two springs pour forth in the shade of the Bohemian Forest, one warm and gushing, the other cold and peaceful. Their waves, gayly flowing over rocky beds, join and glisten in the rays of the morning sun. The forest brook, hastening on, becomes the river Vltava (Moldau). Coursing through Bohemia’s valleys, it grows into a mighty stream. Through thick woods it flows, as the gay sounds of the hunt and the notes of the hunter’s horn are heard ever nearer. It flows thorough grass-grown pastures and lowlands where a wedding feast is being celebrated with song and dance. At night wood and water nymphs revel in its sparkling waves. Reflected on its surface are fortresses and castles -- witnesses of bygone days of knightly splendor and the vanished glory of fighting times. At the St. John Rapids the stream races ahead, winding through the cataracts, hewing out a path with its foaming waves through the rocky chasm into the broad river bed -- finally, flowing on in majestic peace toward Prague and welcomed by time-honored Vysehrad [a mountain fortress overlooking the city]. Then it vanishes far beyond the poet’s gaze.” Tragically, Smetana never heard aloud a single note of his monumental tone poem. He went stone deaf in 1874 just as he was beginning to compose it, causing him to withdraw from the world and to finish it in total silence. Like Beethoven he continued to compose, but his affliction finally caused his mind to snap. He died in 1884 in an insane asylum. In the Moldau, at the point at which the swirling rivulets and tributaries combine musically to form the great river, Smetana introduces a magnificent theme derived from an old Czech folk song. Interesting, it is the same folk song and melody that later became the music for the National Anthem of Israel, the Hatikvah or Hope. Oppressed people everywhere have always used uplifting music that inspires ethnic or national pride to bind themselves together in pursuit of freedom.
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the composers
Johannes Brahms May 7, 1833 – April 3, 1897 Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 As a child, Brahms trained as a classical pianist. While still a teenager, he became an accomplished composer, but only for the piano. As he matured, he expanded his output to include orchestral forms. It is not surprising, therefore, that when he decided at the age of 44 to tackle a concerto featuring the solo violin, he turned for assistance to his close friend of 24 years, the renowned violinist Joseph Joachim. Composing for a solo string instrument played with a bow is quite different from writing for a keyboard instrument played with the fingers. What is technically practicable for the latter may not be for the former. Moreover, writing a concerto for an instrument that produces less sound than a piano has its own challenges, such as the problem of balance between the orchestra and the violin. Brahms intended the Concerto to be a gift for his friend and collaborator, and he wanted it to be special. The Concerto, which Brahms dedicated to Joachim, became a showcase for the talents of both. At the Concerto’s premiere in 1879, Joachim played the violin, with Brahms on the podium. Joachim wrote the extended cadenza at the conclusion of the first movement. It remains the standard to this day. Joachim was of Hungarian heritage, dislocated from his homeland by the revolutionary tumult of 1848 in Eastern Europe. He burst on the European scene at twelve years old with a bravura performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn. Until that performance, Beethoven’s Concerto had gone unperformed for thirty-five years. Joachim’s cadenza for Beethoven’s jewel is still routinely played. This performance catapulted Joachim to fame, and he became one of the great violin virtuosi of his century. The gypsy flavored fiddle music to which he was exposed as a child markedly influenced the style and substance of his playing. The Concerto begins with the orchestra, by itself, presenting the thematic material of the movement, with one significant exception: the obligatory second theme is missing. Meanwhile, the soloist stands in silence, simply absorbing the music. When she enters, however, there is no doubt who is the unchallenged star of the show. The soloist’s vigorous entrance in a minor key confidently stakes her claim to the center of attention. After playing a ravishly embellished version of the orchestra’s first theme, then we finally hear the second theme, which is one of the loveliest and most lyrical melodies Brahms ever wrote. Brahms deliberately held out this tender second theme so that the audience would hear it for the first time from his friend, Joachim. The overall effect of the First Movement is to present Joachim’s prodigious talents in all their glory. In the Second Movement, the oboe steps up with another gorgeous melody, giving the soloist a well-deserved rest. When she enters, it is with her own version of the oboe’s melody; and she then holds hands with the orchestra until they both retire into a glowing sunset. Now, it’s time for an astounding display of unparalleled virtuosity as Brahms celebrates Joachim’s gypsy heritage with a joyous rondo. If you happen to hear strains of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s hit song from “Evita,” “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” in the recurring rondo theme, you are correct: Weber acknowledged that he “borrowed” the idea from Brahms.
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The movement ends with a triumphant “Turkish march,” one of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s favorite devices. Later on in their careers, Joachim hosted a dinner in Brahms’s honor. During the festivities, Joachim arose, glass in hand, and proposed a toast “to the greatest composer ever . . . .” Before he could finish, Brahms jumped up and said, “Quite right, here’s to Mozart!,” and he circled the table clinking glasses with all the guests. Over the years, this Concerto has taken its place with Beethoven’s as one of the two best ever written. Bruch and Mendelssohn might disagree, but at this level, who’s counting?
the composers
Alexander Borodin November 11, 1833 – February 27, 1887 Symphony No. 2 in B Minor In the mid-1860s, Mily Balakirev assembled in St. Petersburg, Russia a group of five men with raw but unschooled musical talent. His purpose was to develop a national school of uniquely Russian music, a fresh sound deriving its inspiration from the rich heritage and folk music of their native land. Although Balakirev has faded into obscurity, three of the “Mighty Five” have survived the rigorous test of time: Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai RimskyKorsakov, and Alexander Borodin. Listing Borodin’s accomplishments outside of music leaves one wondering how he had anytime to compose. The illegitimate son of a Prince, he became a medical doctor, a professor of pathology, a surgeon, a botanist and a lecturer at the Academy of Forestry, and one of Russia’s leading experimental chemists. Along the way, he founded the first Russian School of Medicine for Women and a free laboratory for impoverished science students. The Soviet Government later erected a monument to him not for his music, but for his medical services to the Russian people. He was so busy with his scientific work that the only time he had to attend to his “hobby” was when he was too sick to pursue his occupations. He told his musical friends, “Never say to me, ‘I hope you are well,’ but ‘I do hope you are ill.’” Oh yes, he played the cello (self-taught), the flute, and the piano, he was fluent in four languages, and he was an accomplished watercolorist who made his own pigments. You might call him a master of all trades, and a jack of none. Borodin’s programmatic Second Symphony exemplifies the “Mighty Five’s” objective of celebrating their fertile Russian heritage. Beginning with a powerful declamatory theme in unison strings, the first movement establishes an heroic and epic character. Borodin told a friend that this ruggedly barbaric movement depicts a gathering of powerful feudal Russian princes. His second movement, a winged scherzo, has been described as the “glitter of sunlight on the helmets of advancing Slavic warriors.” The composer intended the third movement, an andante, to evoke the compelling songs of ancient Slavic troubadours, or minstrels. Take note of the beautiful horn motive. The finale is a victorious banquet of legendary heroes, a kaleidoscopic array of blazing color, vigorous dance themes, confident melodies, and dramatic gestures. After hearing this symphony, Franz Liszt told Borodin, “You are always lucid, intelligent, and perfectly original. Work in your own way and pay no attention to anyone!” Debussy
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called it “the best of all the Russian symphonies,” which is high praise considering that Tchaikovsky was one of those in the comparison. Borodin was fascinated with the music from the remote area of the Russian Empire that merges with the mysterious world of Asia. We hear this sinuous Eastern influence throughout his work, as we do in much of the compositions of his colleague RimskyKorsakov. Twentieth Century popular composers frequently “borrowed” melodies from the classical masters, turning them into popular songs and film scores. In 1954, “Kismet” won Broadway’s Tony Award for Best Musical. Where did most of the exotic music and songs come from, including Stranger in Paradise, and This is My Beloved, and Baubles, Bangles and Beads? From the passionate pen of epic poet Alexander Borodin. For his contribution, Broadway posthumously awarded him his own personal Tony. And so, another marvelous season comes to a close. Enjoy the summer. We’ll see you in the fall.
Thank You!
Friends of the Philharmonic Volunteers are an integral part of our organization and the arts community. We thank you for your time and support!
Thank you to all of our volunteers who have helped us in the Box Office, Annual Gala, Special Events, and in other ways! We couldn’t do it without you! Thank you! If you are interested in joining our 2015-16 Volunteer Alliance please call us at 344-7849 ext. 3 or email us at volunteer@boisephilharmonic.org
Debs & Phils A special thank you to our Debs and Phils who start volunteering at a young age and help out at the various events such as this concert and the Annual Fundraising Gala. Presidents: Emma DeAngeli, Adele Kramber, Brooke Mickelson Vice Presidents: Grant Breidenbach, Sara Matlock Recording Secretary: Olivia Robison | Corresponding Secretary: Rachel Lee Sargent at Arms: Daniel Huang, Thomas Seabourn, Helen Wang
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Purchase advanced tickets for only $15! Call 208-344-7849 or online boisephilharmonic.org Join us this season for the Boise Philharmonic’s Chamber 360º music series featuring four unique concerts performed in the beautiful Saint Michael’s Cathedral in downtown Boise. These one hour concerts feature ensembles of the Boise Philharmonic and hosted by Jamey Lamar. These more intimate concerts are performed earlier in the day making them perfect for seniors, families, and anyone who loves chamber music! We wish to thank St. Michael’s Episcopal Cathedral for the use of the Cathedral for these performances.
January 30th, 11:00 a.m.
at Saint Michael’s Episcopal Cathedral
College of Idaho Langroise Trio Geoffrey Trabichoff, David Johnson, Samuel Whitney Smith
Beethoven’s Serenade in D Major
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February 20th, 11:00 a.m. at Saint Michael’s Cathedral
BP Woodwind Quintet Jeffrey Barker, Peter Stempe, Carmen Izzo, Patty Katucki, Brian Vance
La Chiminee de Roi Renee by Darius Mihaud Three Short Pieces by Jacques Ibert Suite no. 1, op. 57 by Henri Lefebvre
March 19th, 11:00 a.m.
at Saint Michael’s Cathedral
BP Brass Quintet Brad Peters, James Smock, Philip Kassel, George Turner, Adam Snider
Short pieces by Mozart Renaissance Dances by Tielman Susato Canzone No. 2 by Giovanni Gabrieli
April 23rd, 11:00 a.m.
at Saint Michael’s Cathedral
BP String Quartet and Clarinet Chia-Li Ho, Geoffrey Hill, Lindsay Bohl, Ned Johnson, Carmen Izzo
Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B Minor
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SINATRA AND MORE MORRISON CENTER
NEWDANCE, UP CLOSE (SPRING SERIES) ESTHER SIMPLOT PERFORMING ARTS ACADEMY
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY MORRISON CENTER
For tickets visit BalletIdaho.org
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Deanna Tham
BPYO Music Director
Deanna Tham is currently the Music Director of the Boise Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in Boise, Idaho. She has additionally performed with the Boise Philharmonic and Ballet Idaho. Tham has studied with Carl Topilow at the Cleveland Institute of Music and received her Master of Music degree in conducting with conducting program honors from Northwestern University studying with Dr. Mallory Thompson. Additionally, Tham was invited as a scholarship participant to the 2015 Conductors Guild Conductor/Composer Training Workshop at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, where she worked with renown conductors Marin Alsop and James Ross. She was also the recipient of the 2015 Wintergreen Summer Music Academy Conductor’s Guild Scholarship where she worked with Master Teachers Victor Yampolsky and Erin Freeman. In 2013, Tham made her debut with the National Music Festival. There she was one of two assistant conductors who appeared with Maestro Richard Rosenberg working with some of the top professional musicians and teachers in the United States as well as musicians from around the world. Her work with the festival has been featured on National Public Radio as well as American Public Media. Previously, Tham was the cover conductor for the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra working with James Feddeck and Brett Mitchell. She has also been resident music director of the American Chamber Opera, based in Chicago, Illinois. Her work with the company has included a groundbreaking semistaged production of Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah, and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, staged in English.
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BPYO Concert Schedule 2015 - 2016 Fall Concert November 14th, 3:00 p.m. at the Morrison Center Von Suppe - Prokofiev - Saint-Saens - Rimsky-Korsakov
Winter Concert February 27th, 3:00 p.m. at the Morrison Center with the Boise Junior High Honor Orchestra Mendelssohn with Abrie Church, piano - Tchaikovsky
Spring Concert April 16th, 3:00 p.m. at the Morrison Center repertoire to be announced
Violins Aurin Bagchi Anna Black You-Jean Cho Katelyn Cook Annalisa Hamilton Bing Xuan Ho Daniel Huang Ellie Hunt Hyonoo Joo Alice Jung Nathaniel Kim Minji Ko Jusung Lee Elizabeth Lee Hannah Lim Lynzee Linnarz Rachel Liu Daniel Liu Anthony Luo Caitlin Nguyen Lauren Rawlings Abby Robison John Shieh Hanna Shields
Dani Skerratt Emma Stucki Adam Tzeng Lauren Vandervelden
Violas Anaise BoucherBrowning Camille Broski Ashlee Burton Julia Caven Gerren Friel Aaron Gould Megan Anne Harwood Charles Kramer Grace Liu Sara Matlock Brooke Mickelson Nikki Muggli Heegi Yun
Cellos Ava Camilo Emma DeAngeli Lewis Garner Hari Gopalakrishnan Abbie Hagen
Nicolas Herman Hannah Hilgeman Serrin Kim Sam Matthews Hanna Prisbey
Basses Bryce Bilderback Olivia DeAngelis Charlie DeMaria Lexie Friel Marlowe McBride McClain Nicholas
Flutes Rachel Lee Katherine Marx Ashley Reeves Katherine Townsend
Oboes Natalya Bleier Kyle Kaupins Max Ryan
Clarinets Cidney Beitia Benjamin Huang
Alyssa Lu Jessica Wenzel
Bassoons Oliver Blumenstein Ryan “Jack� Gonzalez Madeline Wickard
Horns Doug Focht Justin Granados Conner Hansen Billy Hays Hannah Marker Brendan Wiggins
Trumpets Zoe Harpole Sebastian Houk Anna Schmitz James Trandem
Trombones Brenden Billing Josh Gentile Jackson Murphy
Percussion/Timpani William Tanguy
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8:00 p.m. Deanna Tham, conductor Ben Model, organ Musicians of the Boise Philharmonic Purchase your advanced tickets by Feb 5th and get Free Chocolate
$15 Adults $10 Students Call 344-7849 Sponsored by Albertsons and Dr. Paul Collins
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Donors & Sponsors Thank you to the generous supporters of our 2015-2016 season which runs from July 1, 2015 through June 30, 2016.
$20,000 + Albertsons Boise Philharmonic Foundation Inc. Gladys E. Langroise Foundation Howard & Dottie Goldman Idaho Commission on the Arts Morrison Center Endowment Foundation Esther Simplot/J.R. Simplot Foundation, Inc. Jeanie & Ken Smith John & Linda Stedman The Honorable Steve and Mrs. Carol Trott
$10,000- $19,999 Mrs. Mary Abercrombie AJ & Susie Balukoff Dr. Christopher Davidson & Sharon Christoph Dunkley Music Mark Durcan & Shelly Bedke Bob & Anne Hay Don & Iris Hendricksen Hotel 43 Julie Kilgrow & Alan Gardner Dennis McCoy Micron Technology Foundation National Endowment for the Arts Northwest Nazarene University
$5,000-$9,999 Amerifirst Financial Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation ArmgaSys, Inc. Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center Fred & Phoebe Boelter Joan & Mike Boren Suzi Boyle & Michael Hummel City of Eagle
Comstock Leather Ralph Comstock Pete & Susan Daines Nancy Davidson Tom Donndelinger The Very Rec. & Mrs. Martin Dwyer Alei Goldberg George & Bev Harad Donald & Iris Hendrickson Idaho Community Foundation John & Margaret Janzen Lee Landin Karen Meyer & C.K. Haun Owen Orndorff Dick & Susan Parrish Gary & Ann Peterson Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center Andrew & Elizabeth Scoggin Ann Troxell Murdoch & Troxell Fund, Inc. University of Idaho
$2,500- $4,999 Glenn & Glida Bothwell Steven & Connie Cady Dani & Micki Chapin City of Boise Cloverdale Funeral Home Kelli & Ryan Cole Bill & Sandra Culhane Corey Doolin Bill & Leslie Drake Sandra & Brent Fery Mr. Robert Franz Gardner & Company Richard & Sondra Hackborn George Iliff J.R. Simplot Foundation Lana & Ron Jutzy Lee Landin John Matthew & Judy McKay Nicholas Miller & Cathy Silak Mountain West Bank
Dr. James Quinn Jodi Reynolds Dr. Peggy Rupp St. Luke’s Health System Adelia Simplot Breanne Simplot John & Deb Sloan Justin Smith Ray & Linda Stark Richard Stillinger Michael Stoddard & Diane Minnich US Bank Lynn & Sandy Watson Mike Winter & Mona Morrison Mrs. Renee Zerwas
$1,000- $2,499 Advanced Clinical Chuck & Sandra Anderson Craig Anderson Bradley Barker Eugene & Mary Arner Bank Of The Cascades Bradley Barker Kris Barker John Barnet & Jeannette Bowman Tricia Baur Dr. Thomas & Marilyn Beck John & Barbara Bender Boise Cascade Corporation Frank Bowles Russ & Janet Buschert Elizabeth & Jim Carmody Scott & Helen Carter Rex & Mary Beth Chandler Mary K Cook Lt. Col S.K. Carnie & Kellie Cosho Peter & Arlene Davidson Bill Drake & Elgin Syferd Drake Drake Cooper Mark & Karen Dunkley William & Dorothy Dunkley
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Shirley Fields Robb Gibson Gjording & Fouser, PLLC Jack S. & Trudy Gjording Bernie & Darlene Gratton Sharon Grisham William & Jean Harenberg Leo & Pauline Harf Hawley Troxell Doug & Carole Heimforth Sus Helpenstell Tom & Alice Hennessey Sylvia Dunkley Hessing William & Joyce Hickey Don & Mary Hobson Marjorie & Bob Hopkins Idaho Power Foundation Sondra & George Juetten Kirk Kahla & Patricia Johnson Chris & Marie Kantarian Gregory Kaslo & Kay Hardy Dr. G. Robert & Dorothy Klomp John & Lois Kloss Dr. Lawrence & Kaye Knight John Knochel Langroise Trio Cecelia & Don Lojek Chris & Carey Lombardo Carol MacGregor Renee & Ward Malewski Alexandria Manning Nancy & Carter Marsden Kathleen McClenahan Jean & Calvin McGillis Michael & Krista McIntyre Moffatt Thomas Barrett Rock Guillermo Odorico Skip & Esther Oppenheimer Philip & Pamela Peterson Scott & Karen Petersen Bob Pitts Horace & Margarita Pomeroy Teresa Poppen Susan & Richard Riley Carol Rohwedder Alyce Rosenheim Marlys & Jerry Saltzer Elke Scholl Karen Scott John & Carroll Sims Joel Slagg
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Jeffrey & Jo-Anne Smith Patricia Smith Beth Sterling Paul Suedekum Laurence & Ann Sutton Gordon & Edith Swenson Sylvan Creek Foundation Kem Tanner Stephen Thomas United Heritage Fund US Ecology Inc Vasconcellos Investment Consulting Carol & Terrence White Bonnie & Justin Wilkerson Tom & Alberta Woodall Gini & Bill Woolley Scott Zanzig
$500- $999 Annex, Inc. Anonymous Fred & Holly Badke Susan Block Mack & Carole Bingham Christopher & Sharon Bisgaard Darren Board Boise State University Carolyn Burke Phil & Margaret Carroll Jim & Jacquie Classen Claude & Susan Connelly Robinson & Socorro Cook Steve Crooks Elma & Zelma Doerksen Andy & Shannon Erstad Nancy & Kevin Fehrmann Fredrikson Health Insurance Steve & Adalaide Fredriksen Free, Inc Beverly Fritchman Constance J. Gordon Michelle & Terry Hales Loretta Halling Charles & Polly Hedemark Avonne & Wendell Higgins Gary & Barbara Hindman David and Mary Jane Hill Robert and Leslie Hoover Charles & Calista Hummel
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$250- $499 Agri Beef Co Jodi Archer Bob & Deborah Arnold Mark Audas & Idalyn Cyprus Axiom Fitness Fred & Holly Badke Zella Bardsley Boise Philharmonic Salaried Players Nyle & Galen Barnes Cathy Barney Matthew & Kyrsten Bell Angie Berman Susan Block
Bogus Basin Ski Resort Lindsay Bohl & Mike Maier Amie & Brad Bruggeman Ken Burkholder Nicholas & Diane Camilo Phil and Margaret Carroll Dave & Cheryl Churchill Tom & Karlin Coolidge Ann Curran Linda & Terry Curtis Dead-on Archery Darin & Ann DeAngeli Walter & Rita Donovan Carrie Durlin David Eberle Ennis Fine Furniture Sandra Evans Fran and Roberta Everett Karen Louise Falk Falling Star LLC Doug Flanders Michael D Forest Leslie & Marshall Garrett Dolores and Gilbert Gillette Audrey Gorgonzola Vicki Gowler Charles & Lauretta Gray Barbara & Marc Gunning Robert & Esther Henderlider Krisena Hennis Geoffrey Hill Chia-Li Ho Danial Howard Andrew Huang & Jennifer Dickey Idaho Towncar James Jirak & Sue Rhodes Melaney & Ned Johnson Rick & Patty Katucki Joy & Tom Kealey Elizabeth Kendrick Jean Kennedy Stephanie Kennedy Ron & Linda Kerr Elwood & Peggy Kleaver Vicki Kreimeyer Margaret & Karl Kurtz Cyndee Larson Mary & Boyd Leavitt David and Joan Lee Lois Lenzi
Carol Martin Susan May & Andrew Owczarek Max McCammon Robert McAndrew & Gwynne McElhinney John McDonald Mark and Robin McDonnell Rodney Miller Patricia Minkiewicz George Mitchell & Virginia DuBose Robert & Connie Mortensen Candace Murphy Dennis & Becky O’Neill Lois & Hank Ortmann Donna Overly Arlene Oyer James Patrick & Teresa Focarile Pearline & Wayne Paul Peter & Janet Petersen Susan Gelletly & Christian Petrich Quintin & Susan Phillips Rick Poplack Bob Pownall Gail Eberharter Rankin & Bruce Rankin Patricia Raino Jerrie & Lou Ratto Nancy Rankin Julia Rice & Peter Stempe Jerome & Marlys Saltzer Schlosser Properties Connie & Gerald Schroeder Barb Scott Frank & Susan Skillern Troy Smith Rev, Jenean Suess Kathlene Sutherland & Phil Masser Kim & Matthew Talbot Doug Taylor Tom James Co. of Boise Walt and Mary Thode Davis & Jennie Vandervelde Becky & Dan Vestal Glenda Viste Jesse & Harriet Walters Bill & Barb Watkins Martha Weiler
Carolyn & Charles Yochum Zion Warne Studio
$100- $249 36th Street Garden Center Ada Vision Center Albertsons Boise Open Kay Alspaugh Kyle Anderson Don & Trudy Anderson Anonymous Appearance Design Brandon Atkins Karen & George Baker The Balcony Club Beverly Barker Phyllis Barker Frederick & Shahnaz Bauer Lois Bauer Aaron & Brenda Bauges Nicki Bayer Kipp Bedard Kathleen Bell Larry & Pamela Bender Brandi Benson David & Lisa Bettis Chris Binion Kristin & Eric Bjorkman Marcia Bleymaier Robert & Dixie Blome Bodovino Boise State Auxillery Erik Bolinder Daniel Bonaminio Bonefish Grill Judy Austin & Don Bott Barry & Patricia Boydstun Don Boyer Bryce & Gayle Bradley Cafe Vicino Camp Bow Wow Thomas & Eve Chandler Charlotte Chaney Anne Church William & Mary Clark James Clayton & Cheryl Pasley Clayton Jim & Berni Cockey E Don Copple Cottonwood Grill
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Michael & Kirsten Coughlin Crane Creek Country Club Jane Crane Crazy Neighbor David & Nancy Cuoio David & Michele Czerepinski Norman Dahm Warren Danforth Richard W. Davis & L. Verlene Davis Tony & Caren DeAngelis Dillards Diversifed Mortgage Richard & Theresa Drake Dreamcast Idaho Trebelle Piano Trio James & Judith Dzur Edie Easterbrook David Ederer Nancy Eimer Kerry Ellen Elliott Dean Eyres William & Christine Farrell Sally & James Field Flying M Coffeehouse Henriette & Charles Folkner Hal & Janey Ford Marilyn Fordham Ron & Kathy Foster Fredricksen Insurance John & Maxine Freeman Robert & Patricia Fulwyler Michael Lynott Jane Gennrich Jill Gertje Marijke & Mark Geston Susan & Paul Gibson Paul & Genny Goldy Gail Grace Great Western Dist. of Idaho Frank Greene Raquel & Kjeld Guglielmetti Richard Hahn Patricia Hazard Tom & Erica Helmick Sharon Helppie Robert & Esther Henderlider Bob & Lois Hibbs Lindy High Mark Hofflund & Lynn AllisonHofflund
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Juanita Hogg Daphne Huang David Hume Elfriede & Robert Huntley Gordon & Debbie Hynes Idaho Heritage Inn Idaho Shakespeare Festival Idaho Whiskey Impact Guns Indian Creek Winery Integrity Insurance Randal James Ann James James & Sue Jameson Minerva Jayne Thomas Jirak J Michael Florist Harold Johnson Alex & Stephanie Johnson William & Bobbi Jones Dennis Keefer & Elly Davis Bill & Anita Kennedy Deena & Larry Kolb Kolee’s Rick Kortze Michael Kostka Mary Langenfeld Ralph & Audrey Lawrence Michael Lazare David & Joan Lee Lochsa Engineering James Lovejoy David & Janice Lucoff Lunatic Fringe Carolyn Lunstrum Lyle Pearson Motors John & Amber Mausling Bill & Beth McDonald Brad & Jody McDowell Darlene McEntire Leticia McLaughlin Mesa Tile & Stone Jordan & Mary Miller Bruce Moberly Lois Morgan Caroline Morris & David Monsees Pamela Murphy & Greg Lovell Dale & Jeannette Neuman Kathryn Nicholas J.D. Northway
Robert & Gail O’Brien Opera Idaho Peter & Kathy Pape Lonnie & Annette Park Janet Parks Steve & Tammy Peel Laura Penney Edwin Perkins Carl & Sigrid Perrin Andrea Pettit James Phillips & Harold Johnson Plantation Golf CC Priscilla & Bob Polk Elisabeth Ratcliff Gabrielle Renwick Ruth D. Rice Barbara Richner Dwayne Rife Kara Rock Laurie & Joseph Ryan St. John’s Cathedral Greg Sandmeyer Alice Scott Clint Scott Tom & Alana Seacord Mr. & Mrs. Wesley Seideman Eric Shaver Margaret Margo Simons Matt & Nathalie Simpson Alan & Margaret Skille Susan & Michael Smith Roberta & Gary Smith Susan Stacy & Ralph McAdams Rebecca & Greg Standerfer Jean Stansbury Dick & Ruby Stauber Daniel & Paula Stern Peter & Allison Steven Mark Stewart & Margaret Macdonald Stewart Marjorie & John Stolley Laurie & Doug Strother Studio TD Carl & Marilyn Tate Michelle Teague Gracie Thompson Jim & Karin Thompson Three River Ranch Maria Tindall Title One
Tom Tompkins & Jill Rowley Betty Trandem Jeanette & John Ullery Van Dyck Frame Design Chuck & Tammy VanDam Bob Vestal & Jyl Hoyt John Wagnild & Cathleen Wagnild-Morgan Mick & Jan Ware Jenny Weaver Mary Jane Webb Kenneth & Paula Weitemier James & Karen Whittaker Rod Wiens Richard Wilson Patricia Young
$50- $99 Alterations Plus Joanne & Richard Anderson Martin & Inge Anderson Nick Anderson Anonymous Jack & Rosemary Bailey John & Alison Baldwin Dee Barker Adam Bates Lynne Beautrow Nancy Becker Karen & Jim Bird Willard & H.E. Blitman Boise Art Museum Buns in the Oven Patricia Carr Phil Carroll Evelyn Cates Cliff’s John Cochrane Gary & Lynn Ann de la Motte Doris Denney
Tom Edgar Carma Elam Shirley Ewing Olga Falcon Marketa Friel Ellie & Ham Hamilton Sheryl Henley Donna Hiller Gene Hipskind Mary Hoey Idaho Botanical Garden Corrine Inzer David Jauquet Mary Ellen Kelly Jennifer Kilgrow Gail Kirkpatrick Kaye Knight Janet & Doug Kochan Marcella & Igor Krasnov Bonnie Krupp Herbert & Deborah Lafond Gary & Calista Laney Heang Lee Melinda Lindsey LipsInc! Jerry & Charlotte Mallet Mark & Robyn McDonnell Dr. & Mrs. Jerry McCain David Miles Melinda Mobley Connie & Paul Otter Jennifer & Riccardo Palagi Betty Pearson Julius Peterson Richard Pompian Elke Pont-Scholl Dan Popkey Celia & Mark Renner John & Anne Sager Ann & Lars Sandven Jerry & Doreen Schreuder
Beverly Sexton Pamela Sheldon Christine Smith Bob and Marilyn Smith Dorothy Ann Snowball Sebastian Sobolev Bob Sonnichsen Sharlene Stahl Robert Stahman Jay & Ann Swenson Frances E. Symms Jay Theiler Kenneth & Carol Todd Townsquare Radio, LLC Lee Tysseling & Elise Dubert United Way of the Treasure Valley Barbara Weber Wide Eye Productions World Center for Birds of Prey Paul Zelus Donald & Cheryl Zollman
In Memory of
In Honor Of
In Memory of Helen Hillenbrand Marcia Bleymaier
In Honor of Sharadin & Nick Sharlene Stahl
In Memory of Bob Hoke Harold Johnson and Jim Phillips
In Honor of Philip Kassel Rick Kortze
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P AUL J. & C HRIS
I DAHO ’ S F IRST M ORNING N EWS
5 AM -10 AM
R USH L IMBAUGH 10 AM -1 PM
M ICHAEL S AVAGE 1 PM -4 PM
N ATE S HELMAN 4 PM -7 PM
M ARK L EVIN 7 PM -10 PM
J OHN B ATCHELOR 10 PM -12 MID
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Beyond providing the healthcare services you and your family need to stay active and healthy, we’re supporting community initiatives that enrich life here. HEALTH
Promoting individual and community health in all sorts of fun, unexpected, and beneficial ways.
EDUCATION
Providing dependable information and supporting educational initiatives for our neighbors of all ages.
ADVOCACY
Working together to create opportunity, support positive change, and build an empowered Idaho.
INSPIRE
Bringing you the arts all year long.