As we emerge from the murky months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we at the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus are drawn again to the power of music as a tool of healing and illumination. In that light, we have designed “Horizon,” our 2021-2022 season, toward reflecting the welter of complex emotions in this time. Grateful. Mournful. Hopeful. United. Including works by Pauline Oliveros, Joan Tower, Nee Commission recipient Anthony Vine, Aaron Copland, Ludwig van Beethoven, Benjamin Britten, Gustav Mahler, and others, this season features music for healing and rejoicing. This is music for all who have emerged from the past months with a greater love for friends and family and a more fervent commitment to community and art. This is music for all who look longingly into the distance and in acts of faith both large and small begin to walk toward the beckoning horizon. Please join us for “Horizon,” the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus’s 2021-2022 season. Sincerely,
Steven Schick Molli and Arthur Wagner Music Director Conductor La Jolla Symphony & Chorus
MUSIC IS ALWAYS SUBJECT TO CHANGE
VIRTUAL
Considering current COVID conditions and UCSD campus restrictions, we have revised our opening concert plan. Under current guidelines we are currently rehearsing and will perform without audience in Mandeville. We will record and stream the performance for safe, online, distribution to our patrons. The primary goal of this concert is to gather as many of the players of the full orchestra in a safe environment for indoor performance. We will feature three parts, representing the various orchestral instrument families brass, winds, and strings: La Jolla Symphony Brass William Byrd: The Earl of Oxford’s March Gabrieli: Canzoni in Echo Tielman Susato: Pavane Bataille La Jolla Symphony Winds Mozart: Serenade for Winds in C-Minor; K388 La Jolla Symphony Strings Barber: Adagio for Strings Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings The October performance formerly scheduled for October 30-31 will be recorded on October 30 with the revised programming and modified/reduced small ensembles and will be released virtually on November 29. Patrons will be provided with information about how to log in to the stream in a separate communication .
HORIZON
We have some exciting news about the December concert. As we are still uncertain about the possibility of an indoor performance at Mandeville Auditorium, we have created a new concert opportunity at off-campus location to replace the previously planned performance. The first will be a community concert at the Organ Pavilion at Balboa Park on December 5 at 3:00 pm. We will be joined by members of the SDSU orchestras and other community groups and will be hosted by the Spreckels Organ Society. The LJS&C, in collaboration with several other community orchestras, and the SDSU orchestras will be performing Beethoven’s monumental “Eroica” Symphony No. 3.
LIVE EVENT In January, we will explore a beautiful venue, that will be new for many of us. On January 13 and 14, we will perform a full program at the Joan B. Kroc Theatre, located in the Salvation Army-Ray & Joan Kroc Center. We will once again feature Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, and will add Carlos Chavez’s effusive Piano Concerto, with local favorite Kyle Adam Blair as soloist. We’ll also add to the program, George Walker’s Lyric for Strings. Thursday, January 13 will be an open dress rehearsal, and will be free and open to the public – families welcome and encouraged! Both concerts will be at 7 p.m.
DEEP RIVER OF SONG In another program of American music, we will combine orchestral arrangements of the Lomax Songbook—early American folk music originally captured on field recordings—with the electric Jayme Stone and Folklife as soloists. And we’ll present a new work by an original American, Leon Joseph Littlebird, whose piece Meeting Place is the 2021 Brenda and Steven Schick commission.
REQUIEM In honor of those we lost To those we have lost, we dedicate a performance of Benjamin Britten’s profound War Requiem. Commissioned for the rededication of Coventry Cathedral which was destroyed in WWII. In March 2020, we were in the final week of rehearsal for this moving ode to peace and human connection when we were forced to cancel our concerts. Two years later, in March of 2022, we will offer this music as a requiem for the 3,000,000 fellow humans we have lost—each one a friend, a family member, a co-worker of someone left behind to mourn.
LEGACY Sameer Patel, Guest Conductor Sameer Patel will conduct a program of American music made for this time and place. He will complete our multi-year cycle of extraordinary music with Symphony No. 1 by Florence Price. Maestro Patel will also conduct George Walker’s intimate Lyric for Strings and Jennifer Higdon’s Viola Concerto, featuring our 2019 Young Artist winner, Pearl de la Motte
RESURRECTION In honor of those who look to the future
We conclude our season with Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. One of Mahler’s most popular and successful works during his lifetime, it was his first major work that established his lifelong view of the beauty of afterlife and resurrection. We offer it both as connection to the past and as a promise for the future.