9 - Issuu

from 2019-2020 Program Book

81

Welcome to the good ship ASO! We are flying into my second year as Music Director propelled by the strong tailwinds of our 75th Anniversary season, and I have to say it has been a joy taking up the rudder of this amazing institution. Together with you, we are exploring what vitality an orchestra can bring to our community, the surging city of Alexandria. What are our core beliefs as an arts institution? We are committed to the following: 1. connection-discovery, 2. bringing the old and the new into constructive conversation, 3. being local, 4. loosening up the idea of what an orchestra is and how a concert unfolds, and 5. bringing the voices of women and composers from diverse backgrounds to our stage.

Our season includes familiar music of Beethoven, Wagner, Dvořák, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, and Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as unfamiliar gems by Lili Boulanger, Florence Price, Duke Ellington, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Gabriela Lena Frank. On our opening program, we will premiere an Imaginary Symphony constructed in the recesses of my brain out of movements from unfairly forgotten works, and on our final concert, a newly-commissioned piece bringing the ASO into musical community onstage with Sympatico, our thriving music education program.

Although we are dead serious about what orchestral music and concerts can do for Alexandria and about the crushing need for art’s humanizing impact in today’s world, we hope you’ll join us in exploring how concerts that are not afraid of surprises and serendipity might make concert-going events that are both fun and moving for you and for listeners of all ages.

Hop on board−the voyage starts when the whistle blows.

J ames R oss , Music Director

8 James Ross is in his second season as newly-minted Music Director of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra. He is presently Orchestra Director of the National Youth Orchestra USA at Carnegie Hall and serves on the conducting faculty of the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center. He recently completed a distinguished 16-year tenure as Professor and Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of Maryland at College Park and a two-year stint as Music Director of the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès in Barcelona, Spain. Maestro Ross has led such diverse orchestras as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Utah Symphony, Les Arts Florissants, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, the KwaZuluNatal Philharmonic, and the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in side-by-side concerts. He has served as Music Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra and Assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His principal conducting teachers were Kurt Masur, Otto-Werner Mueller, Seiji Ozawa, and Leonard Bernstein whose support and cultural values became a lasting source of inspiration for James. As a horn soloist, he has performed with such orchestras as the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Leipzig Radio Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. When he was awarded Third Prize in the Munich International Horn

9 Competition in 1978, he became the first American and one of the youngest competitors ever to do so. His performances and recordings as principal horn of the Gewandhaus, including Strauss’ Four Last Songs with soprano Jessye Norman, helped him gain international recognition as an artist. As a teacher, Maestro Ross has also served on the faculties of Yale University, the Curtis Institute of Music, Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges, and taught conducting for four summers at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz. He was Artistic Director of the National Orchestral Institute (NOI) at the University of Maryland from 2002-2012 where his leadership helped served as an impetus for change in the orchestral landscape of the United States. This year, he also led the first editions of two vital new youth orchestra projects: the Cuban American Youth Orchestra (Havana) and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Young (Amsterdam). He is internationally recognized for his work advancing the future of orchestras through cross-genre collaborations especially with choreographer MacArthur Fellow Liz Lerman, polymath designerdirector Doug Fitch, and video artist Tim McLoraine. Maestro Ross is a native of Boston, an improviser, a committed questioner of concert rituals, a man who likes to move, a story-teller, and a firm believer in and advocate for the ongoing humanizing impact of classical music on the lives of those it touches.