Featuring musicians of the Boulder Symphony. This is the first in the exciting chamber concert series that the orchestra will launch our 2011-12 Season of Transformation!
Saturday, September 24, 7:00 PM
First Presbyterian Church (15th & Canyon, Boulder)
Pastorale, Op. 147 (1935) Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
Trio Triad
Ginger Hedrick, Flute
Jack Chen, Clarinet
Sarah Wise, Bassoon
Sonata for Guitar and Cello (1969) Radamés Gnattali (1906-1988)
I. Allegretto comodo
II. Adagio
III. Con Spirito
Kimberly Patterson, Cello
Patrick Sutton, Guitar
INTERMISSION
Trio, op. 87 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Allegro
Adagio
Minuetto/Trio
Finale
Trio Triad
Ginger Hedrick, Flute
Jack Chen, Clarinet
Sarah Wise, Bassoon
Tributaries [Five String-Method Duos] Carter Pann (*1972)
I, IV, and V
Cassandra Mueller, Viola
Andrea Dobbs, Viola
Brass Music
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A collaboration with the Cherry Creek Chorale
Brian Patrick Leatherman, Music Director & Conductor
The Longmont Youth Symphony
Keynes Chen, Music Director
October 14 (Fri), 7:00PM, First Presbyterian Church, Boulder
October 15 (Sat), 7:30PM, Bethany Lutheran Church, Denver
Music of Brahms, Vaughan Williams, Poulenc and a world premiere by Austin Wintory
Ozie C. Cargile II discovered his love for music and composition about the age of 11 years old, teaching himself to play piano. He accredits his music teachers and composer John Williams with being the greatest inspirations to him during the most formable years of his life. Cargile advanced his study of composition at theUniversity of Michigan. In 2003, he received a Bachelor of Composition from the School of Music having studied with Michael Daugherty, Erick Santos, Susan Botti, and Bright Sheng. Cargile’s compositional library includes an eclectic repertoire of solo, ensemble and orchestral works. His music has been performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Psalm 150 Symphony, the Black History Festival Orchestra, and the Lamont Symphony in Boulder, Colorado. When he’s not creating music, Cargile works as a private piano instructor in Royal Oak, Michigan.
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Equally sought after as performer and composer, The Boulder Symphony Orchestra has recently commissioned Colin Thurmond for a new orchestral work, resulting in the Concierto de Pampas, a duo concerto for guitar and percussion, to be premiered in April of 2011 with Mr. Thurmond himself as guitarist. In addition, his works have been performed by Denver’s premier contemporary music ensemble, The Playground, in which he has been a regular performer.
Mr. Thurmond’s concert engagements have carried him across the United States, Canada and Europe. As a collaborator and chamber musician, he has shared the stage with performers such as Daniel and Maria Stabrawa, concertmaster and violinist of the Berlin Philharmonic, Tracy Silverman, electric six-string violinist and American flamenco guitar virtuoso, Miguel Antonio. Mr. Thurmond maintains a passionate interest in chamber music, performing with mezzo-soprano, Molly Kittle in the voice and guitar duo, Eisteddfod.
Colin Thurmond earned his Bachelor of Music from the University of Denver with renowned pedagogues Ricardo Iznaola and Jonathan Leathwood, graduating Magna Cum Laude and being awarded the 2007 Senior Recital of Distinction and the Elective Recital of Distinction in the same year. He was also prizewinner in the Lamont Concerto Competition in 2007 and grand prizewinner of the 2009 Lamont Chamber Music Competition. He earned his Masters of Music in March of 2010 after being awarded the Graduate Recital of Distinction. Thurmond is currently pursuing his doctorate at the New England Conservatory with guitar virtuoso, Eliot Fisk.
Mr. Thurmond has been Adjunct Professor of Music Theory at the University of Denver, Guitar Instructor at Arapahoe Community College and Musicology Instructor at the Academy of Lifelong Learning.
Thurmond interests include a strong commitment to contemporary music, aiming for the expansion of repertoire through composition and commissioning of new works.
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After graduating from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Science in Music and English, Gregory T.S. Walker performed solo synthesizer concerts throughout California under the auspices of the University of California Touring Artists program before obtaining a masters degree in computer music from the University of California at San Diego. He performed his Concerto No. 1 for Orchestra and Synthesizer with the Oakland Sinfonietta and earned a second masters in musical composition from Mills College before completing a doctorate in composition at the University of Colorado.
In 1993, the Colorado Symphony commissioned Walker to compose what was acclaimed to be the first “rap symphony,” Dream N. the Hood, described as “an American masterpiece” by the Minneapolis Pioneer Press. He received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellowship in 2000.
In performances ranging from the Filharmonia Sudecka’s premiere of XUCUOYKCUFA in Poland to the Detroit Symphony’s reading of micro*phone for Amplified Orchestra, Walker has pushed the stylistic limits of contemporary music. Dr. Walker has been featured on National Public Radio and in Symphony magazine; his Looking for the Perfect Planet for Amplified Chorus and Video Sampler is the subject of a 2010 Travis Fowler documentary.
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Learn MoreAll great explorers must start their journey with one step, and once that giant leap is made, it’s anybody’s guess where we are bound to end up. It is utterly important, however that one has the tools and skills to proceed. Beethoven arrived in Vienna in the 1790s with all the proper goods necessary to become the next Mozart or Haydn. As Count Waldstein, one of Beethoven’s most eminent patrons once claimed, he was to receive Mozart’s spirit through Haydn’s hands (Beethoven was a recalcitrant student of Haydn). Beethoven’s First Symphony was the beginning of the epic journey on which he would whisk western music over the next two and a half decades, culminating in his Ninth Symphony, and engendering a symphonic path on which few would tread for decades.
As the 19th century British Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon once claimed, “you can’t catch rabbits with drums, or pigeons with plums. A thing is not good out of it’s place…” Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart were three of perhaps thousands of classical composers vying for their compositions to be performed in Vienna, the contemporaneous musical capitol of the western world. What keeps us talking about them today is their ability to take all the abundant raw materials of their day, melodies, harmony, rhythms, instruments, and put them in their ‘place’ by weaving into magical creations that to this day continue to transport the listener on a tremendously thrilling journey as they awaken the spirit within us.
For the American premiere of Chip Michael’s You can’t catch rabbits with drums, from his First Symphony, the composer employs the raw materials of a whisking musical motive tossing itself around the orchestra against the percussion section. These two elements give chase to each other throughout the work, representing the universal concept of the hunter and the hunted, the dreamer and the dream, the explorer and the discovery.
As what most musicologists define as an actual Overture, Mozart’s Symphony no. 32 is in one movement, and is very unique among his symphonic output in that it was most likely conceived as the humble beginning to an opera. As an intrepid explorer himself, Mozart traveled Europe his entire life, assimilating a plethora of musical styles and idioms. The Symphony no. 32 is one of the most delightful Italianate overtures in existence and is one of the first instances of cyclicism, where a theme, being transformed on it’s journey over multiple movements, continues to recur and by the finale gloriously returns home.
If Beethoven inherited one major characteristic from his teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn, it would most certainly have to be the latter’s musical humor. Haydn was known to have instructed his musicians to walk off the stage one by one at the end of his ‘Farewell’ Symphony to send a hint to his patron Prince Esterhazy that the musicians were ready to return home to their families after a long summer leave at Eisenstadt. Haydn is also known for throwing in a fortissimo (very loud) chord in the eighth measure of what otherwise is a very delicate slow movement in his ‘Surprise’ Symphony to rouse the audience, especially the sporadically snoozing noblemen. While all great journeys must come to an end, Haydn’s 90th Symphony in C major questions the very nature of the actual end of a work of art. By peppering the finale with musical deceptions, the composer’s light-hearted wit has kept audiences chuckling for over two centuries.
Saturday November 13 2010 at 7:30PMMountain View United Methodist Church Boulder
Learn MoreDiscovery Prelude at 6:45 PM
Life presents us with many trials and tribulations, and all adventures have their own seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In wake of the genius of Beethoven, even Johannes Brahms questioned his ability to create symphonic masterpieces. His First Symphony took more than 20 years to complete, and throughout he pays tribute to the master before him. Brahms also had a soft spot in his heart for Franz Schubert. Schubert’s Second Mass went on a sordid journey of its own. It was in fact stolen for some time and attributed to a mischievous Slovakian composer. Well after Schubert’s death the work was resurrected by Franz’s brother Ferdinand and reconstructed into the masterpiece the Boulder Symphony will present in collaboration with the Cantabile Singers.
EXCHANGING GLANCES
Notes by Chip Michael, Composer-in-residenceThe inspiration behind this piece is that certain kind of magic immortalized by Rogers and Hammerstein in “Some Enchanted Evening”. Flirtations across an empty space often start with Exchanging Glances. But before we can begin the flirtation, there must be a proper mood. While the glances are harmless and fun, they quicken the pulse and come more frequent. Is there alcohol involved, or just a desire to connect? Regardless of the outcome, there is an alternate existence for those involved, not so much a stoppage of time, but moving to something outside of normalcy.
Written as a companion piece to Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, Exchanging Glances has the same instrumentation but a very different feel. Rather than using E minor, I begin the piece in E Phrygian eventually shifting to G major and then to E Aeolian (or E minor) eventually ending in E major.
The structure is somewhat Sonata Allegro, somewhat Sonata Rondo. In blending modes, forms and rhythmic patterns the piece is bound together through tentative glances, as if we are never really sure whether those glances are directed at us or someone else.
Robert Farr
Robert Farr has been Music Director and conductor of Cantabile Singers since 1992. He is responsible for the group’s musical quality and is an integral part of our success. Robert received his Bachelor of Music degree in organ and church music from Stetson University and received a Master of Sacred Music degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He has served as organist-choirmaster in churches in Florida, New Jersey, Michigan and Boulder.
7:30PM, Friday, December 17, 2010 at
First United Methodist Church, Boulder
As the Boulder Symphony continues to journey to the farthest reaches of creation, we are collecting precious gems of classical music that are based in folk elements. Both Mozart and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov traveled extensively, and absorbed musical elements of all their journeys. The Turkish Violin concerto will be performed by Gregory Walker, who will explore all the possibilities of creation, as Mozart would have done through improvised cadenzas. Rimsky-Korsakov, when he wrote Capriccio Espagnol, which will feature the exceptional solo talents of members of the Boulder Symphony, summed up Spanish life almost as well as Emmanuel Chabrier. For Finlandia Jean Sibelius took a simple folk song of his native land, and by rallying the independence movement against Russia, composed the unofficial national anthem of Finland.
Since a marathon performance of Bruch’s Kol Nidre, an original arrangement of Ora No Omboko, and his own Bad Rap for Violin and Chamber Orchestra with the Colorado Symphony in 1996, Gregory Walker has charted his own creative course while developing unique collaborations with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Breckenridge Festival Orchestra, the Ft. Collins Symphony, the Yaquina Chamber Orchestra, and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, as well as Poland’s Filharmonia Sudecka and the Encuentro Musical de los Americas in Havana, Cuba. A professor at the University of Colorado Denver and concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, his CRI, Orion, Leonarda, and Albany discography showcases the “precision and rapturous immediacy” described by the American Record Guide. An official NS Design electric violin artist, he has also appeared with pop star Lyle Lovett. His Electric Vivaldi Newport Classic enhanced compact disc, an interpretation/remix of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Boulder Philharmonic, was released in 2006. Walker appears on the cover of the April 2007 International Musician magazine. In 2009, he made his debut with the Philadelphia orchestra performing on the 1718 “ex- Székely” Stradivarius, and in 2010 his recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker’s Violin Concerto with the Sinfonia Varsovia in Warsaw, Poland was released by Albany Records. He is currently working with filmmaker Charles Fryberger on Song of the Untouchable, a documentary film project that will take him to Kerala, India, to perform with Dalit caste musicians: http://songoftheuntouchable.blogspot.com/
Emmanuel
Wolfgang A. Mozart
Saturday January 15, 2011 at 7:30PM
Alejandro Gomez-Guillen, Associate Conductor
Join the Boulder Symphony as we take a journey through time discovering the various Viennese Schools. All the masters on our program assimilated creative elements that came before them and redirected the course of music from the classical to 20th century eras. Also joined on the program are two young winners of the Colorado State Music Teachers Association concerto competition charting the waters of their own musical paths.
Join us for an interactive preconcert conversation between Alejandro and Deborah Marshall, clarinetist in the Boulder Symphony at 6:45 prior to the concert.
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-Song for Humanity
a World Premiere work by Ozie Cargile II (Sneak Preview)
-Beethoven Symphony no. 9 (Choral)
Song for Humanity, commissioned from Ozie C. Cargile II by the Boulder Symphony, was written as a companion piece to the second work on our program. It is presented in three movements created to express the path of humanity on its journey toward higher consciousness notwithstanding all of our hardships. The first movement, Prayer, is a poignant oration of our struggle to experience joy in sadness; the second movement, Rebirth, mirrors the Scherzo movement of Beethoven’s 9th as an eager, and at times volatile progression toward change; the third movement, Exultation, marks the triumphant arrival of humanity to its most desirable state of existence: one of unity and freedom.
As a political activist, spiritual guru and composer, Ludwig van Beethoven set out to change the world every time he set his quill to paper. As a child of the Enlightenment, Beethoven grew up during the American and French revolutions. His first large scale work for orchestra was a cantata commemorating the death of Emperor Joseph II, who had done so much to liberalize the Austrian empire in the 1780s. Years later, Beethoven struggled to write his lone opera “Fidelio” which tells the story of the rescue of an unjustly jailed political prisoner.
In his first eight symphonies, Beethoven had already stretched and broken the boundaries of the prevailing classical and symphonic style, whose (much as the contemporaneous social status quo) lifespan was nearing an end and much needed change. For his Ninth Symphony, he returned to a lengthy poem by Friedrich Schiller that Beethoven had long wanted to set to music (“Ode to Joy”). Schiller’s famous words state that in a new age the old ways will no longer divide people and that all humanity shall reclaim their long lost fraternity.
Beethoven’s final symphony is unprecedented not only in its length, instrumentation and most importantly, the addition of voices, but also from a formal and aesthetic standpoint. By the time we get to the final movement, Beethoven actually quotes his own previous three move- ments, systematically rejecting them one by one, until we finally come to the Panglossian words of Schiller with the addition of hundreds of voices that speak to the listener as explicitly as one could.
Beethoven seems to be one of those hallmark figures throughout history who, despite all the turmoil, greed, hate, and war that has con- tinued to plague humanity, serve as a beautifully powerful reminder why we have been put on this earth: It is a profoundly simple message of love, unity and peace that Beethoven, devoutly spiritual and passionately tempestuous has sent to us, and it is really up to each of us to serve as a disciple from what can only come from “the starry tent where a loving Father must dwell.”
-Gregory T.S. Walker Song of the Untouchable for Electric Violin (World Premiere)
-Colin Thurmond Concierto de Pampas for Guitar & Percussion (World Premiere)
-Arturo Marquez Danzon no. 2
-Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade
with narration by Douglas Penick
This Event is made possible in part by University of Colorado at Denver’s College of Arts and Media
The inaugural season of the Boulder Symphony comes to a climactic and not to be missed finale as we explore multiple musical journeys and exchange glances across time and distant lands. A multimedia experience fusing symphonic colors, spectacular video, and cutting-edge technology, Gregory T.S. Walker’s Song of the Untouchable for Electric Violin and Chamber Orchestra is inspired by the composer’s recent journey to the heart of Kerala, India. The astonishing sounds of his specially-designed instrument guide the orchestra through filmmaker Chuck Fryberger’s images of exotic jungle canals and rituals, with a kaleidoscope of temple drums, Eastern melodies – and of course, audience participation.
Colin Thurmond describes his Concierto de Pampas for Guitar and Percucssion as “on many levels a commentary on the music to which I listen. The piece seeks to relate my experience and travels in the world and the rich diversity that coexists in the 21st century.” Incorporating stylistic elements of composers as far flung as Alberto Ginastera, Sergei Prokofiev, Edward Elgar and Thomas Adès, the Concierto masterfully showcases a novel, imaginative and globally-influenced compositional voice of the 21st century.
Arturo Marquez discovered the world of the Danzon along with the seeds of his classical roots during his journeys throughout Mexico: “I discovered that the apparent lightness of the danzon hides a music full of sensuality and rigor, music that our old folks live with and haunts us today…. nostalgia and joy, a world that we can still grasp in the dance music of Veracruz and the dance halls of Mexico City. [The Danzon no. 2] tries to get as close as possible to the dance, to the nostalgic melodies, its monotonous rhythms, and although it desecrates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic vocabulary, it is a personal way of expressing my admiration and feelings towards real popular music”
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov probably began contemplating his richly colorful and fantastical Sheherazade during his travels as a young sailor throughout the Orient and Near East. In this Symphonic Narrative, the Sultan Shahriar, convinced of the duplicity and infidelity of all women, vowed to slay each of his wives after the first night. The Sultana Sheherazade, however, saved her life by recounting to the Sultan a succession of tales over a period of one thousand and one nights. Overcome by curiosity, the Sultan postponed the execution of the mystical and alluring Sheherazade from day to day, and ended by renouncing his murderous appetite altogether and going monogamous.
Song of the Untouchable by Gregory T.S. Walker
A multimedia experience fusing symphonic colors, spectacular video, and cutting-edge technology, Gregory T.S. Walker’s Song of the Untouchable for Electric Violin and Chamber Orchestra is inspired by the composer’s January 2011 journey to the heart of Kerala, India. The astonishing sounds of Walker’s specially-designed instrument guide the orchestra through filmmaker Chuck Fryberger’s images of exotic jungle canals and rituals, with a kaleidoscope of temple drums, Eastern melodies – and audience participation. http://songoftheuntouchable.blogspot.com/
