Rhapsody in Blue Concert Programme

A Fairfield by Marriott Kamloops Signature Performance

RHAPSODY IN BLUE

Saturday September 23, 2023 • 7:30pm

kamloopssymphony.com 250.372.5000

The City of Kamloops is a proud sponsor and wishes the symphony all the best during its 2022–2023 season.

Kamloops.ca

Allen Douglas (from KSO files)

Proud Sponsor

A Greeting from the President of the Symphony Board and the New Executive Director As the gates of summer close behind us, I am inspired by the thought that other gates now open and a new season unfolds before us.

I welcome all of you to the rich variety of our 2023/24 season. From the rhapsodic to the romantic, the traditional to the contemporary, your orchestra is eager to bring you many months of music with an excitingly diverse series of concerts and artists.

Whether the music is Canadian or international, popular or time-honoured, the performance is here— live and local. I hope you will let the KSO be your musical home for live performances in the coming months.

And this year it is my pleasure to extend the warmest Kamloops welcome to our new Executive Director, Christopher Young, whose hands will help guide this new season and many seasons to come.

John McDonald

I am thrilled to extend a warm welcome to each and every one of you as we embark on an exciting new season with the Kamloops Symphony.

I am honored to stand before you as the newly appointed Executive Director, and it is with great enthusiasm that I join this remarkable community of passionate audiences and musicians As we gather for our first program of the season, I am reminded of the power of music to connect us, uplift our spirits, and inspire change. Throughout the season, we aim to bring you exceptional performances that transcend boundaries, and delight, move and challenge us. Our talented musicians have poured their hearts and souls into creating unforgettable experiences for you, and will continue to do so under the guidance of our music director Dina Gilbert.

I look forward to getting to know each of you, forging new friendships, and collaborating to ensure the Kamloops Symphony continues to thrive and bring the joy of music to our beloved communities. Your support means the world to us, and together, we will create a beautiful symphony of memories that will last a lifetime.

Thank you for entrusting us with the privilege of enriching your lives through music.

Here's to a sensational season ahead!

Yours in music, Christopher Young Executive Director KSO & KSO Music School

Board President

BC Interior Community Foundation Kamloops Symphony Foundation Shuswap Community Foundation SOCAN Foundation

GOVERNMENT FOUNDATIONS GRANTS

The Kamloops Symphony wishes to acknowledge that this concert is taking place on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory within the traditional lands of the Secwépemc Nation.

®

®

®

—— Proud to be the Kamloops Symphony Signature Series Sponsor ——

Proud Sponsor of the Kamloops Symphony Ron & Rae Fawcett k e lsong roup.c om 2

Kamloops Symphony Society BOARD OF DIRECTORS

John McDonald, ICD.D | President Steve Powrie | Vice President Tyler Klymchuk | Treasurer Kait Methot | Secretary Kathy Collier Lisa Fuller Christy Gauley Lucille Gnanasihamany Gabriele Klein Rod Michell Daleen Millard Sydney Takahashi Simon Walter

HONOURARY LIFE MEMBERS Bonnie Jetsen Art Hooper

ADMINISTRATION Executive Director

Christopher Young Music Director

Dina Gilbert

Office Administrator

Sue Adams

Operations Coordinator

Sam Bregoliss

Marketing Coordinator

Ryan Noakes Librarian

Sally Arai

Orchestra Personnel Manager

Olivia Martin

Production Assistant

Adrien Fillion

Chorus Master

Tomas Bijok

Collaborative Pianist

Daniela O’Fee Proud Member of Orchestras Canada, the national association for Canadian orchestras

Chorus Administrator

Marnie Smith

Music Director Emeritus

Bruce Dunn

MUSIC DIRECTOR Music Director Dina Gilbert is a Canadian conductor passionate about communicating with audiences of all ages to broaden their appreciation of orchestral music through innovative collaborations. This commitment, along with her extensive knowledge of the orchestra repertoire, has brought her to conduct orchestras across Canada as well as in France, Spain, the United States, Colombia and Japan. She has received critical acclaim for her energic presence on the podium, her versatility, and her audacious programming.

In addition to conducting the Kamloops Symphony, highlights of the 20232024 season include return invitations with the Toronto Symphony, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, as well as debuts with the Walla Walla Symphony and the Kingston Symphony. As the Principal Conductor of the Orchestre des Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Dina will perform Prokofiev’s Cinderella, as well as works of Lili Boulanger, Clara Schumann, Louise Farrenc and Kaija Saariaho in the ballet premiere of La Dame aux Camélias by choreographer Peter Quanz.

Her innate curiosity towards nonclassical musical genres and her willingness to democratize classical music has brought her to conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Orchestre national de Lyon in several Hip Hop Symphonic

programs featuring renowned Hip hop artists I AM, MC Solaar, Youssoupha and Bigflo & Oli. Dina is also renowned for her expertise in conducting multidisciplinary projects such as film concert performances (The Red Violin, The Artist, E.T. the Extraterrestrial).

As the founder and artistic director of the Ensemble Arkea, a Montrealbased chamber orchestra, Dina has premiered over thirty works from emerging Canadian composers and has reached thousands of children with her interactive and participative Conducting 101 workshops. From 2013 to 2016, Dina Gilbert was the assistant conductor of the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal and Maestro Kent Nagano, also assisting notable guest conductors including Zubin Mehta and Sir Roger Norrington.

In April 2016, she received great acclaim for stepping in to replace Maestro Alain Altinoglu with the OSM in a program showcasing Gustav Holst’s The Planets.

Featured in the recent documentary “Femmes symphoniques”, Dina Gilbert earned her doctorate from the Université de Montréal andpolished her skills in masterclasses with Kenneth Kiesler, Pinchas Zukerman, Neeme Järvi and the musicians from the Kritische Orchester in Berlin. Awarded the Opus Prize of “Découverte de l’année” in 2017, Dina Gilbert was also named as one of the “50 personnalités créant l’extraordinaire au Québec” in 2018 by the Urbania Magazine.

Dina Gilbert

Proud Supporters of the

Season Overview

KAMLOOPS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

With great pleasure, I invite you to discover our 2023/24 Season, one that features local and international artists and celebrates tradition—and innovation—in symphonic music. Rich and diverse, our programming this season highlights beloved works by Mahler, Mozart, and Ravel, and gives you the opportunity to hear many exciting pieces for the first time in Kamloops.

You’ll be at the edge of your seat with some of the most riveting American music, such as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and immersed in the tragic love story of Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet. Your young ones will even have a chance to discover the KSO with a special Family Concert, the Canadian premiere of author Dan Brown’s Wild Symphony.

Celebrate the festive season with Christmas with the KSO, then come on a Hypnotic Journey with a multi-sensory experience featuring the music of Julie Thériault. We will then bewitch you with music from the Red Violin, and Light the Night will carry you into Alma Mahler’s world through projected illustrations, in a symphonic graphic novel. You’ll also get to hear a different side of your orchestra when we perform the music of Pink Floyd with Jeans n’ Classics, mash up expression of struggle, mourning, and hope for the future when Mozart Meets Margit Sky, and share the stage with versatile Juno Award winner Jeremy Dutcher.

From celebrating the 100th birthday of the Kamloops-born “Dean of Canadian Jazz” Phil Nimmons, to sharing the stage with our very own KSO Chorus, we will also collaborate with stellar artists from our region, including Rachel Casponi, Heidi Muendel, Martin Krátký, and Margit Sky Project.

We can’t wait for you to join us for this exciting season!

Dina Gilbert

PERFORNMANCE SPONSORS

SEASON SPONSORS

SERIES SPONSORS

Sponsors

Orchestra FIRST VIOLIN

CELLO

Cvetozar Vutev

Martin Kratky* Doug Gorkoff Laure Matiakh Olivia Walsh

—concertmaster*

Elyse Jacobson

—assistant concertmaster*

Susan Aylard Meredith Bates Evelyn Creaser-Rumley Michelle Gao Carol Hur Molly MacKinnon

BASS

Michael Vaughan++ Lukas Peladeau Yefeng Yin

FLUTE

SECOND VIOLIN

Jeff Pelletier++ Thomas Law

Boris Ulanowicz Susan Cottrell Annette Dominik Narumi Higuchi Haley Leach Sandra Wilmot *

OBOE

Marea Chernoff* Lauris Davis

CLARINET Sally Arai* Julie Begg

VIOLA

Ashley Kroecher* Catherine Chen Samantha Kung Caroline Olsen Wennie Wei Principal

*

+

Acting Principal

Chair Sponsors

BASS CLARINET Marcella Barz

BASSOON

HORN

Sam McNally* Heather Walker

TRUMPET

Mark D’Angelo* Rob Hogeveen Jeremy Vint

TROMBONE

Bob Rogers++ Cindy Hogeveen Rod Simmons

TUBA

Brett Lacroix-Durocher++

TIMPANI

Brian Nesselroad++

PERCUSSION Martin Fisk++ Jacob Kyger

HARP

Naomi Cloutier*

Olivia Martin*

Substitute Principal

++

Geoff & Judith Benson | concertmaster Rod Michell | assistant concertmaster Gabriele Klein | principal second violin June McClure | principal viola Anonymous | principal cello Eleanor Nicoll | principal flute John & Joyce Henderson | principal clarinet Kelvin Barlow | principal bassoon Hugh & Marilyn Fallis | principal trumpet

RHAPSODY IN BLUE P R O G R A M M E

Dina Gilbert, Conductor Rachel Casponi, Soprano Daniel Clarke Bouchard, Piano

Samuel Barber.................................Knoxville: Summer of 1915 George Gershwin.............................Summertime Florence Price..................................Piano Concerto in D minor INTERMISSION

Phil Nimmons................................. Phil Nimmons Medley Arr. Stephanie Hamelin Tomala (I Love to Play – Tides – Too Late Now – Not soon enough) George Gershwin.............................Rhapsody in Blue

PERFORMANCE SPONSORS

celistawine.com

Proud to support the

Kamloops Symphony Orchestra 250.374.0906

idealever.com We craft powerful, profitable, and persuasive websites that get results

ARTIST BIO

Phil Nimmons

Celebrating the 100th Birthday of Phil Nimmons!

Born in Kamloops BC, Phil Nimmons, OC OOnt is leader of NIMMONS ‘N’ NINE PLUS SIX and the PHIL NIMMONS QUARTET. He studied piano and clarinet in Vancouver, and later worked at The Juilliard School (NY) and the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto). As a composer, he functions in the classical and jazz media. Much of the music played by Nimmons ‘n’ Nine Plus Six has been written and/or arranged by Phil Nimmons. As an educator, he cofounded, with Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown, the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto (1960), and following that was the Director of the University of Toronto’s Jazz Ensemble, where he currently holds the title ‘Director Emeritus’.

Phil received his earliest education in Vancouver (BC), and is a graduate of the University of British Columbia (B.A., Pre-Med). He was then a scholarship student at The Juilliard School of Music (New York), and he completed his postgraduate studies in composition at The Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) and the University of Toronto. Phil was a student of notable professors, Dr. Arnold Walter, Professor John Weinzweig, and Professor Richard Johnston.

Phil was a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers (1951) and the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto (19601966).

Phil has toured extensively throughout Europe and Canada. He has represented Canada on a world tour and his Atlantic Provinces Tour was funded as a special cultural event.

Phil has written contemporary classical works for piano, strings, flute, voice, instrumental in addition to over 400 original jazz compositions. His compositions include Film scores; Radio, TV, Stage Plays, Theatre Specials; CBC, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Royal Alexander Theatre, Crest Theatre; O’Keefe Centre, EXPO ‘67; World Music Week—CBC/IMC of UNESCO, 1975; World Olympics, 1976; The Trojan Women, St. Lawrence Centre.

Highlights amongst the hundreds of orchestrations include: Norman Campbell’s television premiere of Anne of Green Gables and Oscar Peterson’s themes for Ontario Place film Big North Ontario.

100 YEARS

admin@kamloopssymphony.com

ARTIST BIO

Stephanie Hamelin Tomala Composer

Stephanie Hamelin Tomala is a Canadian-American composer, violinist, pianist and singer with Ecuadorian and Lebanese roots.

4 time Socan foundation award winner, she has written music for over 200 short films, multiple documentary feature films as well as the series “L’industrie de la Vieillesse,” directed by Denys Desjardins for which she was nominated for a Gemini award in 2021 (Prix Gémeaux) in the emerging artist category for her work as a composer. She has composed music for multiple National Film Board of Canada productions since 2020. She is also known for her concert music with two wins in a row for her string quartet music at the composition competition SmackDown string quartet held in Texas in 20192020.

She was also nominated in the contemporary/classical instrumental composition category for her orchestral piece Ceremonial Tribute to Krakow at the 2021 ceremony awards of the Hollywood Music in Media Awards. She received an honorable mention at the 2022 HER MUSIC AWARDS and won the emergent culture Télé-Québec prize in 2022. She recently was nominated in the category best original score for a feature documentary for the music of the film I lost my mom, directed

by Denys Desjardins. Some of her arrangements and compositions have been featured on network television such as CRAVE, SUPER ÉCRAN, Radio-Canada/CBC, IciTou. tv, Canal Savoir, Illico, and Unis Tv.

#LOCALMATTERS

Proud to support the arts! enjoy the show!

October 19 to 28, 2023 SAGEBRUSH THEATRE PRESENTING PARTNER

TICKETS FROM $22 AT WCTLIVE.CA | 250.374.5483

GUEST ARTIST

Daniel Clarke Bouchard Piano

Daniel Clarke Bouchard began playing the piano at the age of five and gave his first piano recital at the age of six. He received the Grand Prize at the Joy of Music Festival held at McGill University.

In 2009, he won the gold medal at the Montreal Classical Music Festival. In 2010, he won Gold at the Quebec Music Educators Association Competition.

In 2011, Daniel won first place at the Canadian Music Competition and received the Yamaha, Canimex and Gilles Chatel scholarships.

Daniel is known by his fans for his numerous appearances on television.

His first big television appearance came on the show “Kiwis et des hommes” in 2011. Ever since, he has been interviewed countless times on CBC Radio and RadioCanada and articles have been written about him in magazines and newspapers all across the world. Recently, he made appearances on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Tout Le Monde En Parle, Canada AM and the George Stroumboulopoulos show.

Daniel has shared the stage many times with the great Oliver Jones, who was his mentor and idol growing up. Daniel performed at the 2012 International Jazz Festival with Molly Johnson, at the Tedx Youth Conference, and at the Place des Arts with the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir and Trevor Payne. Daniel also performed for the Vision Awards Gala in Montreal. He also was the Jeunesses Musicales of Canada’s cultural ambassador in 2014.

In 2014, he was invited to perform on stage with Earth, Wind and Fire as part of their Shining Star World Tour.

Daniel has performed with many orchestras, including the Montreal Symphony Orchestra with Dina Gilbert, the National Arts Center Orchestra with Alexander Shelley, the I Musici of Montreal with Jean-Michel Malouf, the Sinfonia de Lanaudière with Stephane Laforest, the Metropolitain Orchestra of Montreal with Daniel Myssyk and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Appassionata Ensemble with Daniel Myssyk, with the world-renowned Auryn Quartet and several others. Daniel has won numerous awards, including the Félix Award for the 2014 Classical Album of the Year, the 2014 Montreal International Music Competition’s Choquette Symcox Award and the 2017 SPACQ Foundation’s Eval-Manigat Award.

GUEST ARTIST

Rachel Casponi Soprano

Rachel Casponi is a performer, director and educator holding a Bachelor of Arats in Music and Drama from university of Windsor and a Master of Music from the University of Western Ontario. She has worked across Canada including with BC’s North Peace Community Choir that she led at their Carnegie Hall performance.

A regular performer with the Chamber Musicians of Kamloops and director of local choirs, Rachel teaches for the Kamloops-Thompson School District and Kamloops Music Collective.

PROGRAMME NOTES Yes indeed, Shakespeare knew about summer, as he knew about most things—that “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines.” Yet, like most of us, he lamented summer’s brevity—that “summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” Now, we are fortunate (as Shakespeare was not), in that we have the Kamloops Symphony ready to launch their 2023–24 season in a delightful concert that begins by savoring warm memories of summer.

Samuel Barber (1910–1981) Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947) SSamuel Barber (composer of the widely and justly admired Adagio for Strings) was the musically precocious son of a Philadelphia physician and his wife. At age 14 he was accepted into Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of music to study piano, voice and composition. He was successful almost immediately with works like the Overture to The School for

Scandal, (1931) and Music for a Scene from Shelley (1933); these and other compositions won him Pulitzer prizes and also a prestigious American Prix de Rome. When the USA entered World War 2 in December 1941, Barber was conscripted but did not see active service owing to imperfect eyesight. Nonetheless, his war years were productive musically, seeing the

PROGRAMME NOTES

completion of his Second Symphony and, just after the war’s end, his Cello Concerto and his ballet Medea for Martha Graham. These works clearly established his musical reputation in the Western Hemisphere alongside that of Aaron Copland.

In spite all his wartime productivity, the war’s disruption provoked other reactions in Barber, a yearning perhaps for a return to the quiet and grace and earlier certainties of his youth. Knoxville: Summer of 1915 which he completed early in 1947, a time when his father’s health was in serious decline, reflects these feelings.

The work is a setting for soprano and orchestra of a passage of poetic prose by author James Agee (1909-1955), an autobiographical fragment that Barber had encountered a year earlier.

As Barber himself described, “the summer evening [Agee] describes in his native southern town reminded me so much of similar evenings when I was a child at home.”

The setting is lightly scored, and opens with a sentence from Agee’s novel A Death in the Family: “We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in a time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.” A five-bar introduction leads to a lilting section for the soloist, Andante un poco mosso, a catalogue of evening sounds and scents. The orchestra reprises this material until the noisy rumble of a streetcar interrupts. The orchestra and soloist carry us forward as the night sky becomes “one blue dew” and the family group rests “on the rough wet grass”. The singer enumerates (and blesses) his adult companions and at the mention of death, “the hour of their taking away,” the music becomes Maestoso. Then comes the restful concluding section, “After a little while I am taken in and put to bed…” and we are left to ponder the child’s final wistful thought—that those closest to him “will not ever tell me who I am.”

George Gershwin (1898–1937) “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess (1935) Porgy and Bess is based on the novel, Porgy, by poet DuBose Heyward. It was first staged in Boston in the fall of 1935. The critics were not enthusiastic.

It ran for only 124 performances and was a loss financially: Gershwin did not even make in royalties what it had cost him to have the orchestral parts printed. But the composer himself loved it. “I think the music is so marvelous” he commented—“I really can’t believe I wrote it.”

For Gershwin Porgy and Bess was, by his own admission, “a labour of love.” He viewed it as an opera, but an opera for the theatre not for the opera house, and that meant he could write songs for it. “I am not ashamed of writing songs at any time so long as they are good songs.” Well, Porgy and Bess is full of the lovely melodies Gershwin produced at all stages of his career, and the tender cradle song, “Summertime,” with its echoes of

PROGRAMME NOTES

negro spiritual, is among the loveliest of them all, a blend of vitality and

sadness that is part of special appeal of Gershwin’s music.

Florence Price (1887–1953) Piano Concerto in One Movement (1934) Florence Price was born in 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her mother was a music teacher and it was she who directed Florence’s early musical education. Her talent showed early: she gave her first piano performance at age four and had her first composition published at age eleven.

Opportunities for more advanced musical education for women of colour were distinctly limited in the South so her mother enrolled her in the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. There she majored in piano and organ and studied composition. After graduation she returned to the South, taught and married. Racial pressures of the Jim Crow era, however, prompted her move north to Chicago, and it was here that she made connections with other black artists, Marion Anderson and Langston Hughes among them, and began to find success herself.

In 1932 Price won first prize in the Wanamaker Foundation Awards for her Symphony in E minor, and in the following year the symphony received its premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra, an event that brought her a measure of national recognition.

Changes in musical styles before and after World War 2, and Price’s death in 1953 overshadowed the impact of her

music, as did the actual loss of some of her works. Recent rediscovery of a cache of her manuscripts, including violin concertos and another symphony, have begun to restore her reputation once more.

Price’s Concerto in One Movement for piano was premiered in Chicago in 1934 with Price herself as pianist. The premiere was followed by another performance in Chicago by the Woman’s Symphony of Chicago, with Price’s student Margaret Bonds as soloist.

Although its title declares otherwise, Price’s piano concerto is comprised of three different “movements,” Mo d e ra t o — A d a g i o — A l l e g re t t o , that are played through without interruption. A meditative call on the trumpet opens the concerto with fragments of a theme, the melody encompassing the pentatonic scale in D minor, deliberately calling to mind African American folk song. The woodwinds reply and this dialogue continues briefly until the piano introduces itself emphatically in an impressive cadenza. The second movement, Adagio, in the key of D major, is almost a piano solo with little orchestral accompaniment.

The pentatonic scale helps voice the melody’s unmistakable Spiritual qualities. And this lyrical theme is treated in a variety of ways: “calls”

PROGRAMME NOTES

and responses between oboe and the lightly scored orchestra with piano embellishments, western harmonies that converge with chromatic excursions, even a few jazzy outbreaks.

The concluding movement, also, draws on black musical traditions, this time a spirited folk dance, specifically the lively body percussion style known as “pattin’ juba.” Price uses this dance

form in other of her works both for piano and for orchestra. Here she develops the movement’s theme through a range of keys and rhythmic patterns, and exciting interchanges between orchestra and piano which, with all its inherent folksy energy, brings the concerto to a boisterous conclusion.

Phil Nimmons (Born in Kamloops in 1923) Medley of Original Tunes (I Love to Play – Tides – Too Late Now – Not soon enough) arranged by Stéphanie Hamelin Tomala

Now is a time to celebrate the achievements of a great Canadian musician, a centenarian no less, Kamloops born, Vancouver raised, clarinetist, composer, arranger, bandleader and educator Phil Nimmons through a special commission by the Kamloops Symphony in which you will discover four of his original tunes arranged by Stéphanie Hamelin Tomala.

Nimmons originally attended UBC intending a career in medicine, and while there he played in local dance bands, including that of longtime band leader Dal Richards, and began his calling as an arranger and composer. Medicine’s loss was Canadian jazz’s gain. Nimmons went to the Juilliard School in 194547 to study clarinet, and then to the Royal Conservatory of music to study composition. In 1953 he formed his own jazz group which in 1957 became the Nimmons’N’Nine, and then, in 1965, was enlarged to

Nimmon’N’Nine plus Six. This big band group performed and gave clinics in many Canadian schools, toured widely in Canada and twice performed at Canadian Armed Forces bases in Europe.

Nimmons was a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers, and also established jazz programmes at several schools and universities, including Banff, and the University of Toronto where he became director emeritus of the degree program in jazz studies. His composing career has been long—his early compositions include a Sonatina for flute (1948), Toccata (1949), String Quartet (1950), and many other works through the 1960’s and 1970’s. After his band dissolved in the 1980’s he had more time for composition including several commissioned pieces, some for fellow clarinetist James Campbell, as well as a trumpet concerto and a concerto for vibraphone and piano.

Over the years, his composing has

PROGRAMME NOTES

included collaborations with radio, especially CBC, with television, in film work and, naturally, recording.

We salute his astoundingly productive

and influential career for which he is justly referred to as the “Dean of Canadian Jazz”.

George Gershwin (1898–1937) Rhapsody in Blue (1924) Born in Brooklyn, American composer George Gershwin was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents.

He described himself musically as a “modern Romantic,” his style rooted in jazz and in the urban “folk music” of New York. That is, in part, because he left school early to make his living as a pianist and “song-plugger” in Tin Pan alley, playing the latest popular songs to entertain (and sell to) shoppers as they shopped. Initially self-taught as a composer he was, even before the age of twenty, contributing his own songs with increasing success.

Inspired by the example of composers like Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin, his music introduced a new style of sophisticated jazz coloured by subtle rhythmic inflection and a delicacy that is uniquely Gershwin’s.

Gershwin had taken some lessons in composition and theory, however, and was eager to master “classical” techniques and to establish himself as a composer of concert as well as popular music. His opportunity came in 1924 with a commission from band leader Paul Whiteman for a concerto for piano and jazz band.

The result was Gershwin’s first purely instrumental work, Rhapsody in Blue, which he described as “a kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot.”

The adaptation of jazz to the concert hall was not entirely new—there had been French composer Milhaud’s ballet “La Création du Monde” in 1923, and ragtime flavoured pieces

by Debussy and Stravinsky earlier still, though Gershwin may have been unaware of these. In Gershwin’s Rhapsody may hear echoes of Franz Liszt who evolved the loosely structured “rhapsody” form in the 19th Century, and at moments the piano style may remind us of Rachmaninov or Tchaikovsky. For the rest, from the opening clarinet glissando, to the solo “improvisations” on the piano, to the blues and jazzy riffs, Gershwin is pretty much right: this is music that has a distinctly American identity.

That unique clarinet glissando by the way was itself a happy improvisation by the Whiteman orchestra’s clarinetist replacing the simple chromatic scale Gershwin had written. The first version of the Rhapsody was scored for Whiteman’s Big Band, but the version we will hear tonight is the orchestral one scored by the American composer, Ferde Grofé, the version most frequently performed nowadays.

September 23 to December 30, 2023 Curated by Crystal Mowry Black Drones in the Hive is organized by the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and circulated in partnership with the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.

Deanna Bowen, installation view of Taps in Black Drones in the Hive, 2020, courtesy of the Artist and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Photo: Toni Hafkensheid

Proud to support

Music & the Arts

Todd Stone, MLA

Peter Milobar, MLA

Kamloops | South Thompson

Kamloops | North Thompson

446 Victoria Street • 250.374.2880

618B Tranquille Road • 250.554.5413

Todd.Stone.MLA@leg.bc.ca

Peter.Milobar.MLA@leg.bc.ca

ToddGStone @toddstonebc

PeterMilobarKNT @petermilobar

Thank you to our wonderful team of volunteers

Volunteers Nicholas Adams

Dina Haque

Rod Michell

Kathleen Alcock

Judy Hatch

Sharon Morrison

Wendy Allen

Roy Haugan

Davina Neve

Pierrette Beaton

Carole Hebden

Helen Newmarch

Joan Bernard

Marylyne House

Rae Nixon

Pam Bradley

Carol Howie

Bess and Kaytee Ovington

Claire Ann Brodie

Barb Humphrey

Carol Paulsen

Faye Burles

George Humphrey

Margret Peemoeller

Jo Chipperfield

Kathy Humphreys

Steve Powrie

Kathy Collier

Patricia Kaatz

Bonnie Pryce

Geoff Collier

Margaret Kerr

Cherryl Rice

John Corbishley

June Kitamura

Wilma Scheer

Jean Crowe

Gabriele Klein

Margaret Sharon

Libby Denbigh

Tyler Klymchuk

Sharlene Sharpe

Kathrine Dominik

Mary Lester

Tom Stone

Denise Douglas

Maureen Light

Sydney Takahashi

Bruce Dunn

Joan McDonald

Annette Toop

Sandy Eastwood

John McDonald

Lynn Totten

Jill Field

Deb McKeown

Simon Walter

Mel Formanski

Alison McKinnon

Mary Ann Whiting

Deb Fransen

David McKinnon

Dave Whiting

Lisa Fuller

Wendy McLean

Judy Wiebe

Christy Gauley

Linda McMillan

Lucille Gnanasihamany

Kait Methot

FUN FAMILY CONCERT

Bring the family to…

DAN BROWN’S WILD SYMPHONY Sunday November 5, 2023 • 3:30pm

BOX OFFICE: 250.374.5483

kamloopssymphony.com

H IG H L IGHTS FROM O U R 20 22/23 SE A SO N

Donors Donors

$2000+

CO NDUCTOR’ S CI RCLE Anonymous Archie & Jane Dempster Foundation Beaulieu-Saucier Gabriele Klein June McClure John & Joan McDonald

$1000+

BENEFACTORS Lorene & Ben Anders Geoff & Judith Benson Pauline & Jack Braaksma Holly Campbell Alan & Gwen Kerr Delores Kroetch Cindy Malinowski & Charles MacLennan

$500+

Rod Michell Rae Nixon Tacey Ruffner Maureen Stewart Sheila Stewart TELUS John Watson

OVATION

Anonymous (5) Sharlene Anderson Kim Buker Jean Chacko Tom Dickinson & Nancy Flood Gibraltar Law Group Roy & Helen Haugen Carol Howie Bob & Jo-Mary Hunter Marjorie King

John & Joan McDonald Elspeth McDougall Daniel Mills Helen & Bruce Newmarch Eleanor Nicoll Colene Palmer Terry Simpson Jolana Tamajka

Maureen McCurdy David & Alison McKinnon Helen & Bruce Newmarch Susie Safford & Carlos Tallent Jerry Stack M. Colleen Stainton David & Rosemarie Stoltze Stan Szpakowicz Don & Margaret Waldon Robert Walter & Jill Calder

DONORS

$250+

ENCORE

Anonymous

Wilma de Jong

Fred & Nancy Leake

Peter & Debra Allik-Petersenn

Dan & Denise Douglas

Elizabeth McLeman

Sue Adams

Francis & Helen Barnett

William & Pierrette Beaton John Corbishley

Murray & Ann Crawford Fred Cunningham & Helen Birdsall

$100+

Joanne Dennstedt Dawn Ebata

William and Sheena Flynn Greg & Susan Hall Lois K. Hollstedt Gabriele Klein

Christina & Reimar Kroecher Fund

David & Alison McKinnon Chris & Marg Parfitt

Michael & Pamela Saul Ray & Sue Sewell Jerry Stack

Judy Wiebe

BRAVO

Anonymous (2)

Pat & Fred Kaatz

Janice Pedersson

Luisa Ahlstrom

Lyle LeClaire

Penny & Carl Pentilchuk

Darryl & Jeryl Auten

Catherine Lee

Steve Powrie

Wendy Bainbridge

Mary Lester

Thomas Preston

Joan Bernard

D’Arcy & Mariko Lintott

Nicole & Steven Remesz

Robin Bowolin

James MacDonald

Cherryl & Rick Rice

Percy & Bernice Brackett

Ruth Majak

Jason Richard

Pamela Bradley

Keith & Shirley Martin

Terry & Susanne Rogers

Alexander Crane

Ellen & John McCurrach

Kathy Sinclair

Phil Crossley

Kirsten McDougall

Jean Dahl

Marilyn McLean

Carol & Wolfgang Sinnemann

Roxanne Dauncey

Kaitlin Methot

Philip Durell

Gudrun Meyer

Jean Ethridge

Katy Michell

Brett & Norma Fairbairn

Dianne Miller

Judith Fowles

Brian Mills

Donna Geefs

Joan Moffat

Annette Glover

Christy Morris

Lucille Gnanasihamany

Kathleen Nadler

Sheila Gorkoff

Charo Neville

Peter & Judy Gray

Angi & Russ Noakes

Susan Hammond

Gillian Oliver

William & Yvonne Heese

Marian Owens

Frances Higginson

Margaret Patten

Judy Wiebe

Greg & Danita Howard

Margaret Chrumka & Paul Clark

Michael Wisla

Claire Johnson

Barbara & Carman Smith Donald & Sandra Staff Ed Takahashi Syd Takahashi David Todd Lynne Totten Nicole Tougas Judith Treherne Robert Ulevog Lynne Van Hamme Dave & Maryanne Whiting Eric & Mary Wiebe Lois & David Williams

The above represents the individuals and corporations who have donated to the Kamloops Symphony Society in the last twelve months. For any errors or omissions, please do let us know at 250.372.5000 or info@kamloopssymphony.com.

Join us for our next concert…

A Fairfield by Marriott Kamloops Signature Performance

ROMEO & JULIET

Saturday November 4, 2023 • 7:30pm

BOX OFFICE: 250.374.5483

kamloopssymphony.com