DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

A COMMU N I T Y -SU P P ORT E D ORCHESTRA

TERENCE BLANCHARD

Fred A. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair

JADER BIGNAMINI , Music Director

Music Directorship endowed by the Kresge Foundation

NA’ZIR MCFADDEN

Assistant Conductor, Phillip & Lauren Fisher Community Ambassador

PVS CLASSICAL SERIES

Title Sponsor:

STRAUSS’ ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA & DUEÑAS PERFORMS LALO

Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 9, 2023 at 8 p.m.

Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 8 p.m. in Orchestra Hall

JADER BIGNAMINI, conductor MARIA DEUÑAS, violin

Wynton Marsalis Herald, Holler and Hallelujah! (b. 1961)

Édouard Lalo Symphonie espagnole for Violin and Orchestra, (1823 - 1892) Op. 21

I. Allegro non troppo

II. Scherzando: Allegro molto

III. Intermezzo: Allegretto non troppo

IV. Andante

V. Rondo Maria Deuñas, violin

Intermission

Richard Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (1864 - 1949)

Saturday’s performance will be webcast via our exclusive Live From Orchestra Hall series, presented by Ford Motor Company Fund and made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

If there ever existed a ranking of showstopping orchestral programs, this one would certainly be on the list. Opening with a brilliant fanfare for brass and percussion by Wynton Marsalis, Herald, Holler and Hallelujah! produces a powerful, declaratory, and unforgettable entrance. A DSO co-commissioned work, this piece features influences of brass bands, swing, and jazz, and was first performed by the DSO in June 2022. This fanfare is followed by Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole for violin and orchestra, a masterful and spectacular work resembling a dance-suite with the soloist. This piece was originally composed for violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate. Lalo chose Symphonie espagnole as the title for the piece because “it conveyed my thoughts—that is to say, a violin soaring above the rigid form of an old symphony.”

Ending this program is Strauss’s renowned Also sprach Zarathustra, a piece that contemplates philosophy and its relationship to the art of composition, with the title based on one of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s poems. You may recognize its first 22 measures from the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Each of these works carries its own immense power and is brought to life by the DSO, kindling fires of passion, intensity, and excitement within our beloved Orchestra Hall.

Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!

Composed 2021 | Premiered 2022

WYNTON MARSALIS

B. October 18, 1961, New Orleans, Louisiana

Scored for 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, and percussion. (Approx. 5 minutes)

Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed musician, composer, bandleader, and educator, and a leading advocate of American culture. He has recorded more than 70 jazz and classical albums that have garnered him nine Grammy Awards. In 1983, Marsalis became the first and only artist to win both classical and jazz Grammy Awards in the same year; he repeated this feat in 1984. In 1997, he became the first jazz artist to be awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in Music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields, which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has created and performed an expansive range of music from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras, and tap dance to ballet, expanding the vocabulary for jazz and classical music with a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.

Marsalis’s core beliefs and foundation for living are based on the principals of jazz. He promotes individual creativity (improvisation), collective cooperation (swing), gratitude and good manners (sophistication), and faces adversity with persistent optimism (the blues). With his evolved humanity and through his selfless work, Marsalis has elevated the quality of human engagement for individuals, social networks, and cultural institutions throughout the world.

Marsalis’s Herald, Holler and Hallelujah! is a fanfare for brass and percussion. This piece was co-commissioned by the DSO; the symphony orchestras of New Jersey, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Milwaukee; and Germany’s WDR Symphonieorchester. The New Jersey Symphony was the lead commissioner and performed the world premiere of the piece in 2022 under Music Director Xian Zhang.

The DSO first performed Wynton Marsalis’s Herald, Holler and Hallelujah! in June 2022, conducted by Jader Bignamini.