Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 7:30 PM Sunday, October 12, 2025 at 2:30 PM Hemmens Cultural Center, Elgin, IL
Chad Goodman, conductor
Orion Weiss, piano
Thisweekend’sconcertsarededicatedtothememoryofJimTammi,adedicated BoardMemberandlongtimesupporteroftheElginSymphonyOrchestra.Hispassion andjoyforESOperformanceswillbegreatlymissed.
H. HANSON
Symphony No. 2, op. 30, "Romantic" Adagio Allegro moderato Andante con tenerezza Allegro con brio ~ Intermission ~
Concerto in F ed. F. Campbell-Watson Allegro Andante con moto Allegro agitato
Orion Weiss, piano
Violin I
Isabella Lippi Concertmaster
Eleanor Bartsch* Associate Concertmaster
Gerald Loughney
Kate Carter
Eric Pidluski
Joseph Malmquist
Susan Carlson
Carol Dylan
Helen Kim Lee
Wendy Evans
Carmen Abelson
Jennifer Leckie
Violin II
Daniela Folker
Principal
Robbie Herbst*
Assistant Principal
Caroline Slack
Maria Arrua
Susan Thorne
Steve Winkler
Cristina Buciu
Elizabeth Huffman
Kelvin Lin
Meg Lanfear*
Kathryn Siegel
*On Leave, 25/26 Season
+Season Substitute
General Manager
Eric Gaston-Falk
Stage Managers
Viola
Rebecca Swan Principal
Loretta Gillespie
Assistant Principal
Josef Fischer+
Jason Butler
Erin Rafferty
Sava Velkoff
Susan Posner
Cello
Matthew Agnew Principal
Nazar Dzhuryn
Assistant Principal
Kerena Fox
Robert Weber
Elizabeth Start
Sara Sitzer
Double Bass
Nicholas De Laurentis
Principal
Jeremy Attanaseo
Assistant Principal
Susan Sullivan
Grace Heintz
Jason Niehoff
Lauren Pierce+
David Goldman and Eric Block
Flute
Jean Bishop
Principal
Scott Metlicka
Piccolo
Scott Metlicka
Oboe
Cameron Slaton
Principal
Joseph Claude
English Horn
Joseph Claude
Clarinet
Gene Collerd
Principal
Trevor O’Riordan
Bassoon
Vincent Disantis
Principal
Collin Anderson
French Horn
Greg Flint
Principal
Steven Replogle
Sharon Jones
Mary Buscanics-Jones
Orchestra Librarian
Macauley Manzano
Orchestra Personnel Manager
Grace Heintz
Trumpet
Ross Beacraft
Principal
Michael Brozick
David Gauger
Assistant Principal
Trombone
Reed Capshaw
Principal
Adam Moen
Bass Trombone
Mark Fry
Tuba
Charles Schuchat Principal
Timpani
Robert Everson Principal
Percussion
Brian Oriente Principal
Michael Folker
Harp
Lillian Lau Principal
Keyboard
Patrica Lee
Principal
Violins
Laura Burns, Julia Evans, Lisa Fako, Betty Lewis, Erik Liljenberg, Pamela Lutter-Yeo, Emily Nash, Joanna Nerius, Sara Oliva, Matthew Weinberg
Viola
Becky Coffman, Nick Munagian
Cello
Richard Yeo
Double Bass
Allison Gaines, Hannah Novak, Weldon Anderson
Flute
Maria Schwartz
Oboe
Grace Hong, Will Stevens
Clarinet
Leslie Grimm, Patrick Rehker
Bassoon
Peter Ecklund, Karl Rzasa
Horn
Mary Jo Neher
Trumpet
Christian Anderson
Timpani
Joseph LaPalomento
Percussion
Rich Janicki, Jon Johnson, John Plate
Chad Goodman has received widespread praise for thrilling conducting that combines “precision, agility and fervor” (N. Stanić Kovačevic, South Florida Classical Review) and for displaying the “pitch perfect combination of abandon and subtlety” (L. Budman, South Florida Classical Review)
The 2025/26 season marks Goodman’s 3rd season as Music Director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra only the fifth leader in the orchestra’s prestigious seven-decade history. Concerts with the ESO include Beethoven’s Symphony No.5; Barber’s Violin Concerto with Geneva Lewis; Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, coupled with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, and Fauré’s Requiem with the Elgin Master Chorale.
Goodman holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and a Master of Music degree from San Francisco State University. His mentors include Michael Tilson Thomas and Alasdair Neale.
Orion Weiss is one of the most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians of his generation. Hailed as a “brilliant pianist” (The New York Times) with “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post), he has performed with major North American orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Orchestra, and appeared at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Aspen, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
In 2025, Weiss released Arc III, the final album in his recital trilogy on First Hand Records, completing a project that has earned international praise. His discography also includes collaborations with violinist Augustin Hadelich whose recording with Weiss won the 2025 Opus Klassik Award for Best Chamber Music Recording as well as numerous releases on Naxos, Warner Classics, Cedille, and other labels. A passionate chamber musician, Weiss performs regularly with artists such as James Ehnes, William Hagen, Michael Stephen Brown, Shai Wosner, and the Ariel, Parker, and Pacifica Quartets.
Recent highlights include Beethoven’s complete violin sonatas with James Ehnes, a return to the Chicago Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas, his National Symphony debut under KenDavid Masur, and tours across Europe and Asia. A native of Ohio, Weiss studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. His honors include the Gilmore Young Artist Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year.
Written by - Craig Doolin
Motherboxx Connection
Carlos Simon (b. 1986)
ESO last performed:
This weekend’s concerts mark the ESO’s first performances of this work.
Grammy-nominated Carlos Simon is a multi-genre composer and performer who is a passionate advocate for diversity in music. As winner of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence 2021 and Composer-inResidence at the Kennedy Center, Simon is a unique voice and sought-after cultural ambassador for new music globally as well as an important spokesperson for the Black community and new audiences.
Simon is passionate about social outreach, and his work addresses complex themes that include migration, belonging and community especially illuminating the transatlantic slave trade, the Jim and Jane Crow era, and the injustice people of African ancestry face today. His unique upbringing and journey into music has resulted in his music possessing both classical textures and structures in a contemporary aesthetic alongside strong jazz, hip-hop and heavy gospel influences as well as branching out into the world of film Carlos Simon’s music transcends genre.
Simon wrote the following about his Motherboxx Connection, which also serves as the first movement of a longer multi-movement work, TALES: A Folklore Symphony:
“‘Where are all the black people in comics?’ This is a question posed by the creative duo, Black Kirby (John Jennings and Stacey Robinson). Based heavily in Afrofuturism, Black Kirby’s characters show black people as heroes using ancient customs and futurist motifs from the African and African American diaspora. This piece is inspired by the many of the heroic characters found in the work of Black Kirby, but mainly Motherboxx Connection. (Black Kirby: In Search of the Motherboxx Connection)
“According to scholar Regina N. Bradley, Motherboxx Connection is ‘a pun on Jack Kirby’s motherbox, a living computer connected to the world, the Motherboxx too is a living computer with a heightened awareness of racial and sexual discourses surrounding the black body. The Motherboxx is the technological equivalent of the ‘mother land’ in the black diaspora imagination. She is where black identities merge and depart.
“To represent the power and intelligence of the Motherboxx, I have composed a short, fast-moving musical idea that constantly weaves in and throughout the orchestra. A majestic, fanfare-like motif also provides the overall mood of strength and heroism. I imagine the Motherboxx as an allknowing entity that is aware of the multi-faceted aspects of blackness. This piece is a part of a larger multi-movement symphonic work entitled TALES, which explores several African and African American folklores, as well as Afrofuturist stories. This work is commissioned by the Sphinx Organization for its 25th Anniversary and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra.”
Biography and Program Notes courtesy of the composer
Symphony No. 2, “Romantic”
Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
ESO last performed: February 1-3, 2008; Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
The son of Swedish immigrants, Howard Hanson exerted a powerful influence on American music in the twentieth century. Hailing from the Midwest, Hanson had a warm personality, a dry sense of humor, and a friendly demeanor that gained him numerous friendships with people of stature. One such friend was George Eastman, the founder of Kodak and a philanthropist with a genuine interest in music. In 1924, troubled by the number of talented American composers and musicians studying abroad, he suggested that Hanson assemble a stellar faculty and serve as director of a new American training facility for musicians. The Eastman School of Music,
funded by George Eastman’s personal fortune, almost immediately became the leading musical institution in America. Hanson encouraged academic excellence and artistic creativity throughout his forty years as director of the Eastman School. Particularly close to young composers, he personally conducted over 1500 new works by over 700 student composers during his tenure.
Hanson’s own music is very direct in its musical language. Using a lyrical Neo-Romantic musical palette, he composed numerous works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and even opera (with his Merry Mount, commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera). His seven symphonies, composed over the span of fifty years, are among his most popular works.
The Second Symphony, composed in 1930 for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is his most admired work. Hanson wrote in his own program notes for the 1930 premiere, “My aim is to create a work young in spirit, Romantic in temperament, and simple and direct in expression.” The first movement begins with a simple rising three-note theme in the woodwinds that soon spreads throughout the orchestra before receding back into quietness. The Allegro is a study in musical textures with many opportunities for principal players to shine. Of particular interest is the subordinate theme in the strings, coupled with a countersubject played by the solo horn. This unassuming theme recurs in each of the symphony’s movements near the end of the first movement, in the middle of the second, and twice in the third movement. It becomes the emotional focus of the work, also making the symphony cyclic because of its recurrence.
The second movement, marked Andante con tenerezza, begins with a yearning melody in the woodwinds and strings. A stormy transition section follows, based on the introduction to the first movement, building steadily to a grandiose statement of the cyclic theme. The opening theme returns to gracefully close the movement.
Opening with a majestic fanfare in the horns, the Allegro con brio finale is a bracing movement consisting of several segmented components. Out of the fanfare surfaces a lush English horn solo. A fragmented horn call enters, along with a brittle accompaniment by pizzicato strings that students of Hanson claim the composer referred to as “subterranean music.” A more conjunct fanfare appears in the trumpets and the texture grows denser. The cyclic theme returns, fortissimo, in an unforgettably glorious moment. The movement ends
with a one-page coda, comprised of a final fanfare using the entire brass section.
ESO last performed:
November 5 & 6, 2011; Stephen Squires conductor; Kevin Cole, piano
George Gershwin was a first generation American of Russian-Jewish parents. By his late teens, he had learned the piano and became a “song-plugger’ in New York’s Tin Pan Alley the area where the popular music publishing trade was centered. Gershwin would sit at the piano in the Remick showroom playing the latest sheet music for customers. From this experience, Gershwin became keenly aware of popular musical styles and began to compose his own songs, often with his younger brother Ira as lyricist. Over the course of only eight years, the Gershwins became established as the leading figures on Broadway.
It was this background that George Gershwin brought with him when he decided to write works for the concert hall. Beginning with a grand experiment in 1924 that brought the world the Rhapsody in Blue as a work in the jazz idiom but for the concert hall (originally for piano solo with a jazz band expanded with violins). The year after his success with the Rhapsody, Gershwin decided to write a more extensive piece for piano and orchestra. The result was the Concerto in F a work steeped in the traditional form of the Romantic concerto but peppered with jazz elements throughout.
Gershwin wrote about the Concerto in F:
“The first movement employs the Charleston rhythm. It is quick and pulsating, representing the young enthusiastic spirit of American life. It begins with a rhythmic motif given out by the kettle drums, supported by other percussion instruments, and with a Charleston motif introduced by the bassoon, horns, clarinets, and violas. The principal theme is announced by the bassoon. Later, a second theme is introduced by the piano.
“The second movement has a poetic, nocturnal atmosphere, which has come to be referred to as the American blues, but in a purer form than that in which they are usually treated.
“The final movement reverts to the same style of the first. It is an orgy of rhythms, starting violently and keeping the same pace throughout.”
The orchestration of the Concerto was troublesome for Gershwin. Due to time constraints, Gershwin had not orchestrated his Rhapsody but had entrusted this work to Ferde Grofé, an arranger with Paul Whiteman’s band who had premiered the work. During the composition of the Concerto, Gershwin felt unsure of his abilities as an orchestrator and eventually hired an orchestra to give a private reading so he could check his work. The work was premiered on December 3, 1925, and Gershwin was to play it six more times in the next few months. Three years later, Whiteman took the work on tour but decided to trim down Gershwin’s orchestration from one hundred players to a more manageable traveling ensemble. Whiteman called in Grofé to produce the smaller orchestration that is regularly heard today.
©2025 Orpheus Music Prose & Craig Doolin www.orpheusnotes.com
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