July 9

Conductor and composer Christopher Rountree stands at the intersection of classical music, new music, performance art, and pop. Following his 2020-21 debut with Long Beach Opera conducting Philip Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles, he was named music director from the 2021-22 season.

Christopher maintains a long-term relationship with Martha Graham Dance Company resurrecting, recording, and performing works by Copland, Kodaly, Rountree (MGDC commission), and others, with his ensemble Wild Up. In 2019, he began recording a four-volume set of the music of Julius Eastman. In conjunction with this recording project, he toured the country with Wild Up, culminating in an Eastman portrait at the National Gallery. Christopher is currently working on two operas about love and technology with librettists Royce Vavrek and Roxie Perkins.

His inimitable style has led to collaborations with: Björk, John Adams, Yoko Ono, David Lang, Scott Walker, La Monte Young, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mica Levi, Alison Knowles, Yuval Sharon, Sigourney Weaver, Tyshawn Sorey, Ragnar Kjartansson, Ashley Fure, Julia Holter, Claire Chase, Missy Mazzoli, Ryoji Ikeda, Du Yun, Thaddeus Strassberger, Ellen Reid, Ted Hearne, James Darrah, and many of the planet’s greatest orchestras and ensembles, including the San Francisco, Chicago, National, Houston, and Cincinnati Symphonies; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; International Contemporary Ensemble; Roomful of Teeth; Opéra national de Paris; and the Los Angeles, Washington National, and Atlanta Operas. He has presented compositions and concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Palais Garnier, Mile High Stadium, the Coliseum, Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, ACE Hotel, National Sawdust, MCA Denver, The Hammer, The Getty, a basketball court in Santa Cruz, and at Lincoln Center on the New York Philharmonic’s Biennale.

Christopher is the artistic director and conductor of Wild Up, the ensemble he founded in 2010, and artistic director of an interdisciplinary ambient series called SILENCE in a Los Angeles oak grove. He is a seventh-generation Californian descended from the first sheriffs of Santa Cruz County. He lives in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles.

“A compelling, sparkling virtuoso” (Boston Music Intelligencer), pianist Michelle Cann made her orchestral debut at age 14 and has since performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

A champion of the music of Florence Price, Michelle performed the New York City premiere of the composer’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra in July 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra in February 2021, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called “exquisite.” Highlights of her 2021–22 season include debut performances with the Atlanta, Detroit, and St. Louis symphony orchestras, as well as her Canadian concert debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. She also received the 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, and the 2022 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. Embracing a dual role as both performer and pedagogue, her season includes teaching residencies at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and the National Conference of the Music Teachers National Association.

Michelle regularly appears in solo and chamber recitals throughout the United States, China, and South Korea. Notable venues include the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Beijing), the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, D.C.), Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), and the Barbican (London). She has also appeared as cohost and collaborative pianist with NPR’s From the Top. An award winner at top international competitions, in 2019 she served as the Cincinnati SymphonyOrchestra’s MAC Music Innovator in recognition of her role as an African-American classical musician who embodies artistry, innovation, and a commitment to education and community engagement. Michelle studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music, where she holds the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies.

Miller Outdoor Theatre

MENDELSSOHN HENSEL Overture PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 1, Classical MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 4, Italian

PRESENTED BY

GUARANTOR

City of Houston through the Miller Theatre Advisory Board

The Houston Symphony's Miller Outdoor Theatre concerts are endowed by The Brown Foundation, Inc. in memory of Hanni Orton and Stewart Orton

The Houston Symphony's sound shell ceiling is made possible through the generosity of the Beauchamp Foundation and the Fondren Foundation

Overture in C major

• Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was the oldest of four children of the Mendelssohn family. An outstanding pianist and a gifted composer, she was nonetheless forbidden from pursuing a career in music by her father, who insisted it must be but an “ornament” for her, she continued to write and perform throughout her short life.

• Although many of her pieces were published under the name of her younger brother Felix

Mendelssohn, much of her work was not heard during her lifetime outside of the salon performances given by her family. This is true for her Overture in C major, which was performed only once and which she conducted herself.

• While the exact date of composition is unknown, it is speculated that Fanny composed her Overture between 1830 and 1832. It remains the only piece she wrote for orchestra alone. The manuscript for her overture would remain untouched until 1992, when it was recorded by the Women’s Philharmonic of San

Francisco.

• The piece begins with a soft introduction by the horns, before blooming into a tentative string melody. A sudden cascade in the violins brings in a second theme at a lively Allegro. A pointed descending line in the woodwinds then transitions into a third, romantic theme, which is propelled by constant repeated notes in the wind accompaniment. A stormy contrasting melody emerges, passing between instruments until the return of the romantic third theme.

This builds in energy until the stately finale, which brings the piece to a triumphant close.

Symphony No. 1 in D major, Opus 25 (Classical)

• Prokofiev began composing his lively and much-beloved Classical

Symphony in 1917 while on holiday in the Russian countryside. He aimed to craft a symphony that captured the lightness and style of the Classical-era symphonies of Mozart and Haydn while retaining modern compositional techniques and a freer treatment of harmony.

• The symphony was originally set to premiere in Petrograd in

November of that same year, but the performance was delayed due to the Bolshevik uprising a month earlier. Prokofiev instead conducted the premiere on April 18, 1918. He would leave just days later for a trip to America, where he would largely remain for the next 14 years.

• The first movement unfolds in a traditionally Classical fashion, contrasting a sprightly main theme with a simpler, bouncing second theme, both of which return in full at the end of movement, culminating in a triumphant, cascading coda.

• The tender second movement begins with a lyrical melody in the violin, which is soon passed to the flute. A livelier interior section is ushered in with pointed articulations by the bassoons and strings, before ending exactly as it began.

• The third movement of a symphony traditionally takes the form of a dance in Mozart’s time, this was most commonly a minuet. In his stately third movement, Prokofiev instead opts for a gavotte, a baroque dance form which features a strongly accented second beat.

• In his diary, Prokofiev confided that he had completely re-written the fourth movement in favor of one that used major harmonies. This resulted in a sprightly finale, which was thoroughly Classical in affect and atmosphere, but which included rapidly shifting harmonies in a style distinct to Prokofiev.