COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS, TAYLOR MARTIN, AND MARY LOUISE BURKE, directors
Friday, May 2, 2025 at 7:30pm
Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 1:00pm
Boettcher Concert Hall
VALERIE COLEMAN Fanfare for Uncommon Times
BRAHMS Schicksalslied, Op. 54 “Song of Destiny”
RAVEL La Valse, poème chorégraphique
INTERMISSION
HOLST
The Planets, Op. 32
I. Mars, the Bringer of War
II. Venus, the Bringer of Peace
III. Mercury, the Winged Messenger
IV. Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
V. Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
VI. Uranus, the Magician
VII. Neptune, the Mystic
CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 47 MINUTES INCLUDING A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION.
PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
ERIC JACOBSEN, conductor
Already well-established as one of classical music’s most exciting and innovative young conductors, Eric Jacobsen combines fresh interpretations of the traditional canon with cutting-edge collaborations across musical genres. Hailed by the New York Times as “an interpretive dynamo,” Eric, as both a conductor and a cellist, has built a reputation for engaging audiences with innovative and collaborative programming.
Eric joined the Virginia Symphony Orchestra as Music Director in 2021, being named the twelfth music director in the orchestra’s 100+ year history. Current and recent projects include recording projects of Dvorak and Coleridge-Taylor with Gil Shaham and Rhapsody in Blue (on banjo!) with Béla Fleck.
Eric is in his tenth season as Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, as he continues to pioneer the orchestra’s programming and community engagement in new and exciting directions. The 24-25 season highlights include An Evening with Jamie Bernstein and the World Premiere of Gabriel Kahane’s clarinet concerto for Anthony McGill.
Eric is also artistic director and co-founder of The Knights, the uniquely adventurous NYC-based chamber orchestra. The ensemble, founded with his brother, violinist Colin Jacobsen, grew out of late-night music reading parties with friends, good food and drink, and conversation. Current endeavors include a multi-year Rhapsody project as well as a residency at Carnegie Hall. Under Jacobsen’s baton, The Knights have developed an extensive recording collection, including albums with longtime collaborators Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Aaron Diehl, Gabriel Kahane, and Anna Clyne.
Eric’s musical life started from a very young age surrounded by a musical family, where he discovered his love of pulling a bow across a string as a cellist. He and his brother founded the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and also performed regularly with Yo-Yo Ma as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble, touring around the world. This collaborative spirit and sense of music is something that Eric strives to bring to every concert and project.
A frequent guest conductor, Eric has established continuing relationships with the Colorado Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. Recent engagements also include concerts with Classical Tahoe and Grant Park Music Festival, and special performances with Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony and Utah Symphony.
Eric brings joy, storytelling, and a touch of humor to what he describes as “musical conversations” that delight audiences around the world, including those who do not traditionally attend classical music concerts. Jacobsen is married to Grammy-Winner singersongwriter Aoife O’Donovan and together they have a daughter.
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
TAYLOR MARTIN, director designate, Colorado Symphony Chorus
Taylor Martin is Director Designate and Conductor for the Colorado Symphony Chorus and Artistic Director of ELUS Vocal Ensemble. In 2019 Taylor made his debut with the Colorado Symphony conducting their staged version of Handel’s Messiah, titled Messiah: Awakening. Now in his tenth season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus, he has frequently taken the podium during the holiday season for productions of A Colorado Christmas and Messiah. Taylor has prepared the Chorus for productions with the Colorado Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Dallas Symphony, and he recently conducted a concert tour of Austria featuring works for chorus and organ, leading Anton Bruckner’s Te Deum with the Salzburg Domorchester. Known for his musical versatility, Taylor has prepared choruses for Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, Al Green, and Josh Groban, among other critically acclaimed artists. Now in his eighth season with ELUS Vocal Ensemble, Taylor has led performances of great a cappella repertoire through imaginative programming of new music and major works, such as David Lang’s the little match girl passion and Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem to considerable acclaim.
MARY LOUISE BURKE, associate director Colorado Symphony Chorus
Mary Louise Burke is in her 31st season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus. In addition to assisting Chorus Director Duain Wolfe for many years, she has also prepared the chorus for various Colorado Symphony pops concerts and special projects, including Too Hot to Handel. She is the Creative Director of the Symphony’s A Colorado Christmas concerts. In the summer of 2022, she conducted the Symphony chorus on their concert tour of Austria. She has worked as the Associate Director of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, participating in hundreds of concerts and dozens of the Chorale’s regional, national and international tours. She was also Vocal Director of the Children’s Chorale, where she provided specialized vocal coaching and opera preparation. With an expertise in vocal technique, Burke frequently conducts seminars in vocal and choral techniques for area church and community choirs. She is the Vocal Advisor at Montview Presbyterian Church and has taught classes in Find Your Authentic Voice at the University of Denver. She has a Doctorate in Voice Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Colorado.
COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS
The Colorado Symphony’s 2024/25 Season marks the 41st year of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. Founded in 1984 by Duain Wolfe, our chorus has earned a reputation as one of the finest symphonic choruses in the United States. This outstanding chorus of volunteers joins the Colorado Symphony for numerous concerts each year, performing the great Masterworks, as well as pops concerts, movies and special projects, all to repeated critical acclaim.
Additionally, the Chorus has been featured annually at the Bravo!Vail Music Festival, performing with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra or Dallas Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of notable conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jaap van Zweden, Alan Gilbert, Fabio Luisi, Hans Graf, as well as 25 years with the Aspen Music Festival.
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
In 2009, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the chorus, Duain Wolfe conducted the chorus on a concert tour of Europe, presenting the Verdi REQUIEM in Budapest, Vienna, Litomysl and Prague; in 2016 the chorus returned to Europe for concerts in Paris, Strasbourg and Munich featuring the Fauré Requiem. In the summer of 2022, the Chorus toured Austria, performing to great acclaim in Vienna, Graz and Salzburg.
COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS
Duain Wolfe, Founding Director and Conductor Laureate
Taylor Martin, Director Designate and Conductor
Mary Louise Burke, Associate Director and Conductor
Jared Joseph, Assistant Conductor
Hsiao-Ling Lin and ShaoChun Tsai, Pianists
David Rosen, Chorus Manager
Barbara Porter, Associate Manager
Eric Israelson, Chorus Manager Emeritus
SOPRANO
Meredith Anderson
Lottie Andrews
Lori Ascani
Brianna Bettis
Jude Blum
Susan Brown
Jeremy Burns
Emily Burr
Denelda Causey
Ruth Coberly
Suzanne Collins
Angie Collums
Kerry Harrold Cote
Claudia Dakkouri
April Day
Mary Dobreff
Kate Emerich
Gracie Ewert
Madalyn Farquhar
Lisa Fultz
Andria Gaskill
Jenifer Gile
Lori C. Gill
Susan Graber
Rachel Harston
Jackie Havens
Alaina Headrick
Elizabeth Hedrick-
Collins
Erin Hittle
Elizabeth Hott
Angela Hupp
Lauren Kennedy
Lindsey Kermgard
Meghan
Kinnischtzke
Leanne Lang
Anne Maupin
Shannon McAleb
Erin Montigne
Wendy Moraskie
Jeannette O’Nan
Kimberly Pflug
Barb Porter
Roberta Sladovnik
Syd Timme
Susan von Roedern
Alison Wall
Karen Wuertz
Cara Young
Joan Zisler
ALTO
Priscilla Adams
Brenda Berganza
Mary Boyle Thayer
Charlotte BraudKern
Michelle Brown
Cass Chatfield
Clair Clauson
Jayne Conrad
Martha Cox
Janie Darone
Debbie Davies
Barbara Deck
Valerie Dutcher
Michelle Fronzaglia
Sharon Gayley
Daniela Golden
Gabriella Groom
Pat Guittar
Sheri Haxton
Kaia Hoopes
Wendy Ho-Schnell
Hansi Hoskins
Olivia Isaac
Brandy Jackson
Christine Kaminske
Naryoung Annette
Kim
Annie Kolstad
Andrea LeBaron
Juliet Levy
Carole A. London
Tinsley Long
Joanna K.
Maltzahn
Susan McWaters
Annélise Nelson
Kristen Nordenholz
Christine Nyholm
Sheri Owens
Jill Parsons
Syder Peltier
Jennifer Pringle
Donneve S. Rae
Leanne Rehme
Kathi Rudolph
Elizabeth Scarselli
Melanie Stevenson
Deanna Thaler
Clara Tiggelaar
Kim Trubetskoy
Pat Virtue
Benita Wandel
Beth York
TENOR
Kevan Angel
Gary Babcock
Ryan Bowman
Jim Carlson
Dusty Davies
Nicholas Dietrich
Jack Dinkel
John Gale
Frank Gordon Jr.
Forrest Guittar
David Hodel
Sami Ibrahim
James Jensen
Curt Jordan
Ken Kolm
Sean Lund-Brown
Tom Milligan
Richard Moraskie
Garvis J. Muesing
Tim Nicholas
Dallas Rehberg
David Rosen
Andrew Seamans
Evan Secrist
Jerry Sims
Hannis Thompson
Max Witherspoon
Kenneth Zimmerman
BASS
John Adams
Bob Friedlander
Tim Griffin
Chris Grossman
Colin Hall
Nic Hammerberg
Douglas Hesse
David Highbaugh
Leonard Hunt
Terry Jackson
Tom Jirak
Jared Joseph
Matthew KerstenGray
Jakson McDaniel
Nalin Mehta
Matthew Molberg
Greg Morrison
Gene Nuccio
Ben Pilcher
Tom Potter
Jacob Pullen
Ken Quarles
Joshua Richards
Adam Scoville
Russ Skillings
Matthew Smedberg
Riley Somo
Wil Swanson
Mike West
Marc Whittington
Lu Wu
Jeffrey Zax
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
VALERIE COLEMAN (B. 1970)
Fanfare for Uncommon Times for Brass and Percussion
Valerie Coleman was born on September 3, 1970 in Louisville, Kentucky. Fanfare for Uncommon Times was composed in 2021, and premiered on June 27, 2021 at the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, New York by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, conducted by Tito Muñoz. The score calls for four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba and percussion. Duration is about 6 minutes. This is the premiere performance of this piece by the orchestra.
Valerie Coleman, Performance Today’s “2020 Classical Woman of the Year,” was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1970 and began her music studies at age eleven; within three years she had written three symphonies and won several local and state flute competitions. Coleman received bachelor’s degrees in both composition and flute performance from Boston University, where she was two-time winner of the Young Artist Competition and recipient of the University’s Woodwind Award; she earned a master’s degree in flute performance from the Mannes College of Music in New York City. Coleman made her Carnegie Hall recital debut as winner of Meet the Composer’s 2003 Van Lier Memorial Fund Award; among her additional distinctions are the Aspen Music Festival Wombwell Kentucky Award, inaugural Michelle E. Sahm Memorial Award from the Tanglewood Music Festival, first recipient in the Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Mentorship Program, ASCAP Concert Music Award, Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning Program, Herb Alpert Ragdale Residency Award, and award nominations from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and United States Artists.
Valerie Coleman was the founder of the Grammy-nominated Imani Winds and the ensemble’s flutist and resident composer until 2018. She has also performed across North America and Europe as soloist and chamber musician. Her rapidly expanding creative catalog includes works for orchestra, concert band, chamber ensembles, ballet (Portraits of Josephine Baker), and arrangements for woodwind quintet; in September 2021, she was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera along with two other Black composers — Jessie Montgomery and Joel Thompson — to develop new works in collaboration with the Lincoln Center Theater. She has taught at the University of Miami, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and Mannes School of Music in New York; in 2024, she joined the composition faculty of the Juilliard School.
Coleman composed Fanfare for Uncommon Times in 2021 on a commission from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s for premiere at the Caramoor Festival in Katohan, New York on June 27, 2021, soon after some of the restrictions prohibiting live concerts during the Covid pandemic began to ease; Tito Muñoz conducted. Coleman wrote of composing the Fanfare during the difficult preceding months: “As a New Yorker in 2021, past feelings of a lost innocence resurfaced, as when I had to re-enter the streets and airports during the insecure post-9/11 era. We all had to hold onto our own manufactured self-assurance that we would be protected. Fanfare attempts to construct that belief in ourselves, to offer affirmation to people emerging from unimaginably ‘uncommon times’ and serve as the opening statement to mankind’s journey into a new era.’” Coleman also said that, as a Black woman, she wanted to “bring in the experience of people of color in this country, the turmoil, the upheaval, the complexity of race conversations. You’re going to hear dissonances and machine-gun repetitive sounds, but then you’re going to hear that turned into something more Caribbean in nature, all elements that lend themselves to being part of a melting pot. I want Fanfare for Uncommon Times to have a responsibility to remind ourselves of what President Barack Obama called ‘our better angels.’”
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Schicksalslied (“Song of Destiny”) for Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 54
Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, and died on April 3, 1897 in Vienna. He began Schicksalslied in 1868, but did not complete it until 1871. Hermann Levi conducted the first performance, in Karlsruhe on October 18th of that year. The score calls for woodwinds, horns and trumpets in pairs, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration is about 18 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra October 4-6, 2013, and was conducted by Bramwell Tovey.
Brahms began work on the Schicksalslied, based on a poem by Hölderlin, in 1868 but did not complete it until three years later. Hölderlin’s poem, in the words of Brahms’ biographer Karl Geiringer, “describes the bliss of the immortal gods, and, as a contrast, the despair and suffering of mankind.” The poem ends with the expression of the sorrowful human condition and so, too, would have Brahms’ composition if it followed the progression of the words. Such fidelity to Hölderlin’s text, however, would have made for an ending of hopelessness that was at odds with the optimism Brahms had expressed in such earlier choral works as the German Requiem and Alto Rhapsody. The solution that took him three years to discover was the repetition of the serene opening “music of the gods” as a postlude to the work, so that the message of the music is a far more encouraging one than that of Hölderlin’s words, and says much about the personal philosophy of Brahms. Walter Niemann, in his study of the music of Brahms, put it this way: “Brahms does not see it as his principal task [in the Schicksalslied] to bring out the dread contrasts in this poem between heaven and earth, gods and men, in equally pitiless, inflexible and inexorable music ... but to veil it in compassion.”
Ihr wandelt droben im Licht
Ye wander above in light, Auf weichem Boden, selige Genien! on soft ground, blessed immortals!
Glänzende Götterlüfte Shimmering divine breezes
Rühren Euch leicht, touch you lightly, Wie die Finger der Künstlerin as the fingers of the artist Heilige Saiten. touch sacred strings.
Schicksallos, wie der schlafende
Free of fate, like the sleeping Säugling, atmen die Himmlischen; child, breathe the celestials; Keusch bewahrt
Chastely guarded
In bescheidner Knospe in modest bud, Blühet ewig their spirit
Ihnen der Geist, blooms eternally, Und die seligen Augen and their blissful eyes
Blicken in stiller, gaze in hushed, Ewiger Klarheit. eternal clarity.
Doch uns ist gegeben
But to us it is given Auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn; to rest in no place; Es schwinden, es fallen suffering humanity Die leidenden Menschen reels, falls Blindings von einer blindly from one Stunde zur andern, hour to the next, Wie Wasser von Klippe as water thrown Zu Klippe geworfen, from crag to crag, Jahrlang ins Ungewisse hinab. year-long downward into uncertainty.
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)
La Valse, Poème choréographique
Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, France, and died on December 28, 1937 in Paris. He composed La Valse between December 1919 and March 1920. The orchestral premiere, given by the Lamoureux Orchestra on December 12, 1920 under Camille Chevillard, was preceded by a performance of the two-piano version on October 23, 1920, when the Italian composer Alfredo Casella joined Ravel for a concert in Paris. The score calls for piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps and strings. Duration is about 12 minutes. The last time the orchestra performed this piece was February 7-9, 2020, conducted by Jun Märkl.
Ravel first considered composing a musical homage to Johann Strauss as early as 1906. The idea forced itself upon him again a decade later, but during the years of World War I, he could not bring himself to work on a score he had tentatively titled “Wien” (“Vienna”), and it was not until January 1919 that he was immersed in the composition of his tribute to Vienna — “waltzing frantically,” as he wrote to a friend. He saw La Valse both as “a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz” and as a “fantastic and fatefully inescapable whirlpool.” The “inescapable whirlpool” was the First World War toward which Vienna marched in three-quarter time, salving its social and political conscience with the luscious strains of Johann Strauss. Ravel completed La Valse in piano score by the end of 1919, and then made a piano duet version and undertook the orchestration, which he finished in the spring of the following year.
A surrealistic haze shrouds the opening of La Valse, a vague introduction from which fragments of themes gradually emerge. In the manner typical of the Viennese waltz, several continuous sections follow, each based on a different melody. At the half-way point of the score, however, the murmurs of the introduction return, and the melodies heard previously in clear and complete versions are now fragmented, played against each other, and are unable to regain the rhythmic flow of their initial appearances. The musical panacea of 1855 cannot smother the reality of 1915, however, and the music becomes consumed by the harsh thrust of the roaring triple meter transformed from a seductive dance into a demonic juggernaut. At the almost unbearable peak of tension, the dance is torn apart by a violent five-note figure, a gesture so alien to the triple meter that it destroys the waltz and brings this brilliant, forceful and disturbing work to a shattering close.
GUSTAV HOLST (1874-1934)
The Planets, Op. 32
Gustav Holst was born on September 21, 1874 in Cheltenham, England, and died on May 24, 1934 in London. He composed The Planets between 1914 and 1917. The work was first heard at a private performance (underwritten by Holst’s friend and fellow composer Balfour Gardiner as a farewell gift before Holst departed for non-combative military duties in the Middle East) on September 29, 1918 in Queen’s Hall, London; Adrian Boult conducted. Albert Coates led the public premiere of the complete work on November 15, 1920, though Boult had conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance that omitted Venus and Neptune on February 27th of the previous year. The score calls for two piccolos, four flutes, bass flute, three oboes, English horn, bass oboe, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, six horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tenor and bass tubas, timpani, percussion, celesta, xylophone, two harps, organ, strings and female choir. The orchestra last performed this piece March 25-27, 2022 with conductor Peter Oundjian.
Holst’s interest in writing a piece of music on the attributes of the astrological signs was apparently spurred by his visit in the spring of 1913 with the writer and avid star-gazer Clifford Bax, who noted that Holst was himself “a skilled reader of horoscopes.” Of the music’s inspiration,
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
Holst noted, “As a rule I only study things that suggest music to me. That’s why one time I worried at Sanskrit. Then recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely.” Despite his immediate attraction to the planets as the subject for a musical work, however, he took some time before beginning actual composition. He once wrote to William Gillies Whittaker, “Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you,” and it was not until the summer of 1914, more than a full year after he had conceived the piece, that he could no longer resist the lure of The Planets.
“Once he had taken the underlying idea from astrology, he let the music have its way with him,” reported Imogen Holst of her father’s writing The Planets. The composition of the work occupied him for over three years. Jupiter, Venus and Mars were written in 1914 (prophetically, Mars, the Bringer of War was completed only weeks before the assassination at Sarajevo precipitated the start of the First World War); Saturn, Uranus and Neptune followed in 1915, and Mercury a year after that. Except for Neptune, all the movements were originally written for two pianos rather than directly into orchestral score, probably because Holst was then having painful problems with his writing hand due to severe arthritis. For the mystical Neptune movement, he considered the percussive sounds of the piano too harsh, and wrote it first as an organ piece. All seven movements were orchestrated in 1917 with the help of Nora Day and Vally Lasker, two of the composer’s fellow faculty members at St. Paul’s School in London, who wrote out the full score from Holst’s keyboard notations under his guidance.
Holst gave the following explanation of The Planets for its first performance, on September 29, 1918 in London, conducted by Adrian Boult: “These pieces were suggested by the astrological significance of the planets. There is no program music in them, neither have they any connection with the deities of classical mythology bearing the same names. If any guide to the music is required, the subtitle to each piece will be found sufficient, especially if it is used in a broad sense. For instance, Jupiter brings jollity in the normal sense, and also the more ceremonial kind of rejoicing associated with religious or national festivities. Saturn brings not only physical decay, but also a vision of fulfillment.”
The individual movements of The Planets employ a wide spectrum of musical styles in which the influences of Stravinsky, Dukas, Debussy and even Schoenberg may be discerned, but, according to Imogen, “The Planets is written in Holst’s own language.” It is a language of spectacular variety — a greater contrast than that between the first two movements is hard to imagine. The staggering hammerblows of Mars, the Bringer of War are followed by the sweet luminosity of Venus, the Bringer of Peace. Each of the remaining movements cuts as distinctive a figure as the first two. Mercury, the Winged Messenger is a nimble scherzo that seems, like the fast movements of Baroque music, to be a stream of notes spinning infinitely through the cosmos of which the composer has revealed only a small segment. Within Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity co-exist a boisterous Bacchanalian dance (“the most joyous jangle imaginable,” according to Richard Capell) and a striding hymn tune to which Elgar stood godfather. Hard upon Jupiter, which reportedly inspired the charwomen cleaning the hall during rehearsals for the premiere to toss away their mops and dance a little jig, follow the lugubrious solemnities of Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age, the movement Holst declared to be his favorite piece in the suite. This music is invested with a weighty, Mahlerian seriousness that recalls Das Lied von der Erde. Uranus, the Magician is shown as a rather portly prestidigitator who includes perhaps more broad humor than baffling legerdemain in his act. The haunting finale, Neptune, the Mystic, springs from the misty domain of Debussy’s Nocturnes, but possesses an even wispier, more diaphanous orchestral sonority, with the disembodied siren song of the female chorus floating away to inaudibility among the spheres at its close.
