8 minute read
Conductor Biography
Conductor
Andrew Crust
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Andrew Crust is the Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony where he conducts the VSO in Subscription, Film, Pops, Education, and other series each season. In the challenging 2020/21 season Andrew filmed and recorded dozens of programs released on the VSO’s innovative platform theconcerthall.ca. He is also the recently-appointed Music Director of the Lima Symphony Orchestra in Ohio where he has collaborated with recent guest artists such as Amit Peled, Katherine Jolly, and Awadagin Pratt.
Recent or upcoming engagements include concerts with the symphony orchestras of Vermont, Arkansas and Bozeman as Music Director finalist, and San Diego, Hartford, Winnipeg, and others as guest conductor. International performances include l’Orchestra Giovanile Italiana, the Hamburger Symphoniker, the Moravian Philharmonic, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile, and others. In 2018, he was awarded first prize at the Accademia Chigiana by Daniele Gatti, was selected for a residency at the Salzburg Festival by the Ansbacher Fellowship and members of the Vienna Philharmonic, and was a semi-finalist for the internationally renowned Salzburg/Nestlé Young Conductors award in Austria. In 2020, Andrew was awarded a Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award.
Previously Assistant Conductor of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Andrew conducted more than 35 performances each season and led the vital Memphis Youth Symphony Program. As an arranger, he has orchestrated dozens of works and is currently working on a collaboration with Schirmer to orchestrate the art songs of Florence Price.
Andrew has also served as Assistant Conductor of the Portland Symphony, Cover Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony and Nashville Symphony, Assistant Conductor of the Boulder Philharmonic, and Assistant Conductor of Opera McGill. In 2017/18 he served as Assistant Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of the USA with Michael Tilson-Thomas, Marin Alsop, and Giancarlo Guerrero, and accompanied the orchestra on a tour of Asia.
Andrew is equally at ease in the pit, having conducted ballet with Ballet Memphis and the New Ballet Ensemble, and opera with Opera McGill, College Light Opera Company, Boulder Opera Company, and others. As a pops conductor, Andrew has collaborated with such artists as Rufus Wainwright, Michael Bolton, Cirque de la Symphonie, the United States Jazz Ambassadors, and many others.
Andrew is also a visual artist working in watercolor, ink, and digital media, using a style which often combines the worlds of art and music. Andrew was born in Kansas City and studied conducting in Montréal and Boulder, Colorado.
Andrew’s website: www.andrewcrust.com.
Program Notes
Max Steiner
Casablanca Suite
Maximilian Raoul Steiner was born on May 10, 1888 in Vienna, Austria and died on December 28, 1971 in Hollywood, California. The score for the Casablanca Suite calls for three flutes (one doubling on piccolo), two oboes (one doubling on English horn), three clarinets (one doubling on bass clarinet), two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani, percussion, two pianos, celeste, two harps, and strings. The duration is approximately seven minutes.
Austrian-born Maximilian Raoul Steiner was a child prodigy, who graduated in 1904 from the Imperial Academy of Music, becoming a professional composer, conductor, and arranger at 15. After a stint in Britain, he moved to the United States in 1914, first working on Broadway. In 1929 he was hired by RKO Pictures and moved to Hollywood, one of the first to compose scores for film. By his retirement he had scored over 300 of them, a who’s who list of Hollywood’s best.
Casablanca, the story of love, life, and death in Nazi-occupied French North Africa, is considered one of filmdom’s greats. Steiner’s score was nominated for an Academy Award but lost out to The Song of Bernadette. Ironically, Casablanca’s theme song “As Time Goes By” was not by Steiner, but circumstances forced him to use it and he made it the centerpiece of his score.
Other themes in the film act as leitmotifs representing ethnic North African music and the jaunty French and threatening Germans warring with their respective national anthems.
Bernard Herrmann
Suite from Psycho
Bernard Herrmann was born Maximilian Herman on June 29, 1911 in New York City and died on December 24, 1975 in Los Angeles. The RSO will perform eight of the 11 movements of the Suite from Psycho. The score calls for strings only. The duration is approximately 11 minutes.
The film music scene in Hollywood of the 1930s and early 40s was dominated by German and Austrian émigrés who had escaped Nazism. But by the late 1940s, American-born composers began taking over.
Born in New York to Russian émigré parents, Bernard Herrmann graduated from Juilliard and by mid-century became one of the most sought-after composers of radio, movie, and TV music. He is best known for his collaboration with Orson Welles (The War
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of the Worlds, Citizen Kane); Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone); and most of all, Alfred Hitchcock. His last score was for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
In his music for Hitchcock’s 1960 movie Psycho, Herrmann created an eerie and relentless soundtrack. It is still regarded by movie buffs as the ultimate scary movie – and scary soundtrack. In the suite, the constant drive of the opening scene is followed by the murder scene in the shower with its screeching violin accompaniment and ends with the closing scene.
Nino Rota
The Godfather Suite
Giovanni Rota Rinaldi, better known as Nino Rota, was born on December 3, 1911 in Milan, Italy, and died on April 10, 1979 in Rome. The RSO will perform two of the eight movements of The Godfather Suite. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani, percussion, two pianos, celesta, mandolin, guitar, harp, accordion, and strings. The duration is approximately seven minutes.
All but devoted movie fans pay scant attention to the credits beyond the stars and director. But great film music insinuates itself into the soul even if the composer’s name doesn’t have quite the cachet of Mozart or Stravinsky. But such titles as The Godfather, Romeo and Juliet, Eight and ½, or La dolce vita bring to mind the melodies and lush, romantic, sometimes witty sound world of Nino Rota.
Giovanni Rota was a child prodigy who composed his first oratorio, The Childhood of John the Baptist, at 11 and at 13 a lyrical comedy, Il principe porcaro (The Swineherd Prince), based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Encouraged by Arturo Toscanini, Rota spent two years in the United States studying at the Curtis Institute but returned to Italy to complete his musical studies in Milan. He remained in Italy, teaching at the Liceo Musical of Bari in Southern Italy.
Rota was a prolific composer, churning out over 30 film scores during the 1940s and a total of 150 over the course of his life. After World War II, he became particularly close to Federico Fellini, for whom he supplied nearly all of the Italian director’s film scores.
Despite great admiration and friendship for Igor Stravinsky, Rota eschewed the atonal and dissonant languages of his own century. In this regard, he most resembles fellow composer Erich Korngold, who virtually invented the musical conventions of the midtwentieth-century Hollywood film score. Of his philosophy as a composer, Rota said: “I feel happy [when writing music]...to give everyone a moment of happiness is what is at the heart of my music.”
The Godfather, the 1972 blockbuster film of the Mafia underbelly of Italian society, was
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the most profitable film to that date. Rota’s music developed a life of its own, giving rise to suites with varying number of sections, all starting with the Love Theme. Some of them include sections from The Godfather II.
Joe Hisaishi
Mamoru Fujisawa, known professionally as Joe Hisaishi, was born on December 6, 1950 in Nakano, Nagano, Japan. The score for the Symphonic Variation “Merry-GoRound” from Howl’s Moving Castle calls for three flutes (with one doubling on piccolo), two oboes, one English horn, two clarinets, one bass clarinet, two bassoons, one contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, one bass trombone, one tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, celesta, harp, and strings. The duration is approximately 14 minutes.
Joe Hisaishi is one of the best known and most prolific Japanese composers of film and TV scores, often called Japan’s John Williams. His style is eclectic, blending European and Japanese Classical styles, and experiments with minimalism and electronic music.
Hisaishi discovered his passion for music and started playing the violin at age five. As a student at the conservatory, he worked as typesetter for minimalist composers. He wrote his first film music in 1974, and by now has composed more than 100 soundtracks.
The animated fantasy film Howl’s Moving Castle was produced in 2004, with Hisaishi composing and conducting the music. The film is a strong anti-war statement and was a great success in Japan.
Hisaishi prepared a symphonic suite from the score, containing 10 pieces from the soundtrack. In 2005 he arranged the Variations “Merry-Go-Round” as a symphonic concert version of the original film score.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Finale from Robin Hood Suite
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born on May 29, 1897 in Brünn, Austria-Hungary and died on November 29, 1957 in Los Angeles. The score for the Finale from Robin Hood Suite calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, one bass clarinet, two bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, celesta, harp, and strings. The duration is approximately four minutes.
