5. Orchestral Experience by Dr. Y.M. Alvin Wong

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5. Orchestral Experience

Professional Orchestral Experience 2010-13 2011-13 2012 2011

Principal, Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, Connecticut. New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Connecticut. Principal, Atlantic Music Festival Orchestra, Maine. Principal, The Virginia Hagemann Cello Chair, Missouri Symphony Orchestra, Missouri. Principal, iPalpiti Orchestral Ensemble of International Laureates, California.

Ensemble Performances 2011

Jul 23 iPalpiti Orchestral Ensemble of International Laureates; Temple University, Philadelphia; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California, USA. Britten Young Apollo, Op. 16, Avner Dorman's Concerto Grosso for string orchestra and quartet, Mahler Adagio from 10th Symphony in F# minor, Dvořák Serenade in E major, Op. 22 and Rachmaninoff Romance & Scherzo. Eduard Schmieder, director.

2012 Apr 1 “De Profundis,” Yale in New York Series; Carnegie Hall, New York City, USA. Sofia Gubaidulina’s Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings. Frank Morelli, bassoon. Apr 11 “The Yale Cellos,” Yale School of Music, New Haven, Cconnecticut, USA. Schumann Träumerei from Kinderszenen, Op. 15 (arranged by Alvin Wong), Popper Hungarian Rhapsody, Op. 68, Christopher Rouse’s Rapturedux (2001), Albinoni Adagio in G Minor and Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1. The Yale Cellos. Aldo Parisot, director.

Aug 1 “American Masters,” The Atlantic Music Festival; Colby College, Waterville, Maine, USA. Copland Appalachian Spring. Gene Kim, conductor.

2013

Apr 11 “Serenade & Metamorphosis,” Yale in New York Series; Sprague Hall, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Apr 12 “Serenade & Metamorphosis,” Yale in New York Series; Carnegie Hall, New York City, USA. Matthew Barnson’s The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (memento mori after Gerhard Richter) (2012), Richard Strauss Metamorphosen, Op. 142 and Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48; David Shifrin, artistic director; Ani Kavafian, concertmaster.

10/23/12

Review: A starry start to the ECSO season -‐‑ theday.com Mobile Edition

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Review: A starry start to the ECSO season By Milton Moore Published 10/21/2012 12:00 AM Updated 10/22/2012 05:28 PM

New London — The Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra opened its 66th season Saturday night at The Garde Arts Center with a stirring performance of a pair of major works and a performance by a major star. Audience expectations ran high for piano soloist Peter Frankl, who was in town to perform Brahms’ vast Piano Concerto No. 2 for the 100th time in his illustrious career, and he did not disappoint. At age 77, the Hungarian-born pianist embraced the score like an old friend. ECSO Music Director Toshi Shimada kept a sure sense of direction and brisk pacing through the 45-minute concerto, the most through-composed and audience pleasing of all Brahms’ major orchestral works, and Frankl seemed to feed off the energy. In the powerful opening allegro, he stamped his foot for emphasis as the rhapsodic central theme grew in his hands, and he all but fell off the bench as he leaned to maintain eye contact with Shimada. This grand movement, alternately solemn, heroic and endearingly warm, grown huge from the three-note opening horn motif first intoned by principal Dana Lord, was pushed forward crisply by Shimada, while Frankl at times chose to linger with tantalizing phrasing. The concerto’s major horn passages were played subsequently by Coast Guard Band member Brian Nichols, but the orchestra member ordained by Brahms to take the spotlight was cello principal Alvin Wong, as the novel, four-movement concerto seems to begin its andante as a cello concerto. And in this slow movement, the moments of magic were found. After a scherzo movement that crackled with energy, Wong opened the andante with a soothing richness in its serene theme, which sang in his cello until Frankl entered, the role of the piano not so much to expand the theme, but to comment on it. Here, Frankl was rapt, hunched over his hands with an unhurried, almost meditative approach. On this 100th performance, he gave the sense of a very personal, very deep communion with the score, and it suddenly felt like a moment to treasure. This testing piano part was not without some awkward moments, and ensemble wavered for the final coda. But Frankl thrilled the Garde audience with a sense of mastery, moments of intimacy and a full-body involvement with a vast musical monument. The program started with a work by a composer who got to take a bow, an ECSO trend for which we must thank Shimada. The season opened with a sonically scintillating 13-minute piece called “Atlantic Riband” written by Kenneth Fuchs, a professor of composition at the University of Connecticut. This Copland-esque piece, with echoes of “Lincoln Portrait,” took variants of a scrap of a theme through a sound tour of the orchestra, at times blustery and at times haunting, such as when English horn principal Olav van Hezewijk played over tolling tubular bells. The theme variants piled up in a thrilling contrapuntal swirl for a satisfying finale. The truncated second half of the program featured selections from Berlioz’ epic “Roméo et Juliette,” program music much like his Symphonie fantastique, but not so much a literal narrative as a musical evocation of the play’s themes. And here, Shimada earned his stripes. Berlioz’ scoring is nothing if not odd — odd voicings, odd entrances and odd approaches to sectional counterpoint. From the weirdly hyperkinetic opening fugue, through the fragile sectional harmonies of the love scene, to the raucous “Great Festival” finale, the chorale of trombones, tuba and brass soaring above a boiling cauldron of sound, Shimada kept the forces focused and allowed the lyricism to flower. m.theday.com/article/20121021/ENT10/121029985/1113/mobile&template=mobile

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10/23/12

Review: A starry start to the ECSO season -‐‑ theday.com Mobile Edition

Then, he got to ham it up on the podium, dancing and swaying along to an encore that a generation of Americans first heard in a Bugs Bunny cartoon: Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5. The audience clapped along and left smiling. m.moore@theday.com

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10/27/11

Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra - AUDITIONS ANNOUNCEMENT

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AUDITIONS ANNOUNCEMENT

We will be having Auditions for

Section Cello 2011-2012 Seasons Tickets and Seating

on Friday, September 23, 2011 from 6-9:30 P.M. at the Garde Theater.

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SECTION CELLO AUDITION MATERIAL 1. Concerto of your Choice: 1 movement only 2. Brahms Symphony # 3: {3rd Movement from the beginning up to Letter A} 3. Beethoven Symphony # 5: a. Entire 2nd Movement b. 3rd movement: {Measures 1-18 and Measures 140-177} 4. Debussy: La Mer {Start 2 measures before rehearsal 9 and continue} 5. Strauss: Don Quixote {Variation # 5 only}

2011-2012 Program Book Ads

CONGRATULATIONS! We welcome the following new musicians to the ECSO Family! Terrence Fay - New Principal Trombone Alvin Wong - New Principal Cello Evan Shallcross - New First Violin Erika Stierli - New First Violin Nicole Stacy - New Second Violin

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10/27/11

Music review: iPalpiti concert in Disney Concert Hall - latimes.com

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Music review: iPalpiti concert in Disney Concert Hall July 24, 2011 |

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For a short time each summer, the Russian violinist, conductor and pedagogue Eduard Schmieder brings together some two dozen young string players from around the world to form a small training ensemble, iPalpiti, performing chamber music in and around Beverly Hills. The grandly named Festival of International Laureates, with the help of a noted youngish soloist or two, culminates in a concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. This year that was Saturday night. The program was intriguingly quirky. The playing was good enough that anyone walking in clueless as to the makeup of the ensemble and not bothering to pick up a program could have easily been fooled into thinking this was one of the world’s better string orchestras. Schmieder began and ended with pieces by young composers who later rejected the works. The opener was Benjamin Britten’s “Young Apollo,” an odd but cheerful eight-minute fanfare for piano, string quartet and string orchestra written in 1939. The closer was the two movements of a student string quartet that Rachmaninoff never finished but later in life revived by orchestrating for strings as Romance and Scherzo. The Britten is worth the bother. The 26-year-old composer, a pacifist who had fled England, was newly arrived in the U.S. He wrote the fanfare on commission from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. His inspiration was Keats’ “Hyperion,” with its “new dazzling Sun-god, quivering with radiant vitality.” Britten played the brilliant piano part at the premiere in Toronto. But without explanation, he withdrew the piece and it was only revived in 1979, three years after his death. On Saturday, it quivered with radiant vitality anew. Svetlana Smolina, an outstanding Russian pianist with a luxuriant tone, was the evening’s underused soloist. Her piano was placed behind the orchestra, and she didn’t stand out quite as much as she might have. Still she caught both the flicker of the young Sungod and also found urgency in the flashy solo part. Smolina was then the harpsichordist in the next piece, a Concerto Grosso for string quartet and string orchestra by Avner Dorman. Written in 2003 when the Israeli composer was 28, this is a piece that Dorman, who has become hot lately, may, himself, think about withdrawing. It is an update of Handel and Vivaldi,

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10/27/11

Music review: iPalpiti concert in Disney Concert Hall - latimes.com

something that was already tired a decade or two ago. But the players sawed away with verve and the score went down easily. Different members of the ensemble formed the solo string quartets in the Britten and the Dorman. There wasn’t a weak player to be heard all evening. A controversial arrangement of the slow first movement of Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony by a German composer and conductor, Hans Stadlmair, was the most significant piece on the program. Here, a great dying composer enters new ethereal realms while simultaneously struggling with his deepest despair. The Adagio is one of music’s most profound depictions of the ineffable thin thread that separates life and death. Stadlmair reduced Mahler’s large orchestra to 15 strings, in a version that Gidon Kremer recorded with his Kremerata Baltica a decade ago. Schmieder has raised the ante slightly to 23 strings, which still means that without the weight of a full orchestra, Mahlerian ecstasy and anguish are both moderated. On the other hand, there is something very moving about intimately confronting Mahler’s beatific and tortured last thoughts with only a few strings. Schmieder’s approach was very much in the direction of chamber music. With sweeping and expressive arm gestures, he led an even-handed and slightly otherworldly account of the Adagio, more on the side of Mahler’s angels than his devils. The intonation and balances were beautiful. The program’s second half was lighter. For Dvorák’s tuneful Serenade in E Major, Schmieder reseated the orchestra with the cellos on the left (the violins were divided for the Mahler), and achieved near orchestral bulk while still maintaining the flowing lyricism that was a hallmark of everything on the program. The Romance and Scherzo proved an unnecessary curiosity, though. The teenager who wrote these two movements was not yet Rachmaninoff, although the intimations of his harmonic fingerprints could be detected. A week earlier in Beverly Hills, Schmieder gave the U.S. premiere of Kareem Roustom’s Three Klezmer Dances for violin, tambourine and strings, and he repeated it in a shortened version as an encore Saturday. No one knows where the Middle East is headed. But here was hope. A composer from Syria has made lovingly fanciful arrangements of Jewish music. The violin soloist, Daniel Turcina -- stepping out from an orchestra made up of Jews, Christians and Muslims from 19 countries -- is Slovakian. He played with improvisatory sounding fire and soul. RELATED: Music review: iPalpiti crosses L.A.'s cultural divide at Disney iPalpiti's world of talent Review: iPalpiti at Walt Disney Concert Hall Composer Avner Dorman spices things up -- Mark Swed Photo: Eduard Schmieder conducts iPalpiti with Daniel Turcina as soloist in Kareem Roustom's Three Klezmer Dances on Saturday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Credit: Dana Ross/iPalipiti

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1/4/14

Feast of Music's Year in Review: 2013 - Feast of Music

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Feast of Music's Year in Review: 2013

Photo credits: Pete Matthews, Ryan Jensen (SubCulture) It was definitely a banner year for both New York City's music scene and Feast of Music. Here at FoM, we provided over 450 reviews, previews, op-ed's, and ticket giveaways over the course of 2013, and are happy to report that those numbers will be increasing even more during the new year. Taking a look back at 2013's roster of events, a collection of FoM's staff took the time to crown their favorite performances of the year, and give our readers a hint of what they're looking forward to in 2014. Happy New Year from all of us at Feast of Music! Pete Matthews, Editor-in-Chief Performances of the Year: Two Boys at the Metropolitan Opera www.feastofmusic.com/feast_of_music/2013/12/feast-of-musics-year-in-review-2013.html

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1/4/14

Feast of Music's Year in Review: 2013 - Feast of Music

Looking Ahead to 2014: While New Yorkers have grown accustomed to seeing the Vienna Philharmonic every season at Carnegie Hall, this year they'll be in residence for three full weeks with the inaugural Vienna: City of Dreams festival. In addition to performances by the Vienna Philharmonic and concert performances of Wozzeck and Salome by the Vienna State Opera, there will be lectures, chamber music concerts, and other related events all around NYC. Michael Cirigliano II, Content Editor Performances of the Year: Detriot Symphony at Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music Festival It will be sad to say goodbye to Spring for Music in 2014, as it was one of the only chances for some of the less-mighty orchestras of the country to visit midtown's fabled hall. After the Oregon Symphony declined their return invitation due to financial problems, Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony stepped up to the plate, performing a mix of Rachmaninov, Ravel, and Weill's underperformed masterpiece, The Seven Deadly Sins, before an enthusiastic audience of New Yorkers and Detroiters. Oh, and if you've never seen Storm Large perform live, you'll want to rectify that issue as soon as possible. Lincoln Center's American Songbook: Kristin Chenoweth Surely the next person to attain an EGOT (she's halfway there), there isn't much that Kristin Chenoweth can't do. A classically trained soprano that has conquered Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, television, and film, Chenoweth was an obvious choice for this year's American Songbook series. Over the course of 90 minutes at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Hall, she tore through over a dozen classic tunes before ending the evening with a tender, muted rendition of "Edelweiss"— accompanied by a sole double bass—that didn't leave a dry eye in the house. Yale in New York at Zankel Hall A mix of faculty, alumni, and current students from the Yale School of Music's string program descended on Zankel Hall, giving an electrifying performance of Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and composition alum Matthew Barnson's new work, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying. The evolution from Strauss' post-World War II lament to Barnson's ethereal whispers was delivered in a remarkably polished performance, led by violinist Ani Kavafian. The fact that the hall was less that half full will remain one of 2013's greatest mysteries. Looking Ahead to 2014: Please, powers of the universe, I invoke thee—let's get through 2014 without another symphony or opera company going on strike, being mistreated by management, or flaming the fires that herald the media's ever-present notion of the impending "death" of classical music. Sure, the loss of New York City Opera was worrisome; the fact that the players of the Minnesota Orchestra were locked out of their jobs for all of 2013 by an uncompromising (and incredibly well-paid) management and board was infuriating; but the San Francisco Symphony musicians striking and canceling an East Coast tour because of a pay raise that wasn't in line with their desired "cost of living" was, well, eye-rolling. Here's to hoping 2014 brings a tectonic shift in the business paradigm of classical music; it honestly can't come soon enough. Nick Fernandez, Assistant Editor Looking back at 2013, I was pleased to revisit the large strides jazz musicians made both by breaking into the mainstream public consciousness and expanding the genre's role in the contemporary-art and -music scene. On a national scale, artists like Esperanza Spalding and Robert Glasper continued to garner accolades and show the world that jazz can remain stylistically current, but my favorite contribution came from Brooklyn-based composer-bandleader Darcy James Argue. This year he delighted NYC audiences with music from his 2013 release, Brooklyn Babylon—an innovative and wide-reaching album that speaks to both the relevancy and depth of the big-band tradition, and a strong demonstration of the genre's ability to continue growing in relevancy. Performance of the Year: Fred Hersch: My Coma Dreams at Miller Theater On a more academic note, I was pleased to see pianist-composer Fred Hersch continue to promote his work of jazz theater, My Coma Dreams. Hersch combines improvisation, dialogue, and visual art in a thoughtful self-exploration of his months-long coma. The opus shows the great contributions jazz artists can offer to the discussion of large-form, interdisciplinary works. Plus, it's funny and full of happening grooves! Looking Ahead to 2014: Coming up right as the calendar changes is the ever-popular Winter Jazzfest, running from January 7–11 at several venues throughout the city. Both the artists and locations range from familiar figures (Ravi Coltrane and the Blue Note Jazz Club) to fresh newcomers (Aruán Ortiz and SubCulture); the variety and sheer number of performances is sure to sate even the most fervent fans.

www.feastofmusic.com/feast_of_music/2013/12/feast-of-musics-year-in-review-2013.html

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