MSO Program Booklet 2022-23

MIDC O A S T SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

ROHAN SMITH, MUSIC DIRECTOR

(207) 653-9195 | NilesShedlarskiAndCo@gmail.com

Music Collection Donated to MSO

In the fall of 2021, the MSO was honored to receive a substantial gift of music from Robert Carabia, a Maine musician now living in Florida. After his retirement, he needed to find a home for 25 boxes of mostly orchestral music that were part of his personal library. Wanting to keep it in Maine, he searched the internet for orchestras and found the MSO. Why us? He was pleased to see a name he knew, our manager, Ray Libby. Years ago, they both lived in Harrison, Maine; both play multiple woodwind instruments, and they gigged together over the years.

Carabia was music director and conductor of the community orchestra affiliated with the Portland Symphony, of the Augusta Symphony Orchestra, and of several orchestras in New York State and Virginia. He personally collected and purchased music for these orchestras over the years, resulting in the library he donated.

In addition, he is a music arranger and played professionally all over the country and the world as a "woodwind doubler." He performed with the Portland Symphony, the Maine Woodwind Chamber Ensemble, the Guy Lombardo Orchestra, and the Metropolitan Opera Studio Orchestra.

In 2010 Carabia founded and became music director of the Ambassadors of Swing band in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where he currently lives.

The MSO is grateful for this gift and will perform some music from his collection this season and for years to come.

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Friends of MSO We Appreciate All You Do!

The “Friends of MSO” is a group of community members who directly support the activities of the orchestra by helping with such important tasks as mailings, fundraising activities, ushering, tickets, and refreshments. They are valuable advocates for the orchestra within the community and have been responsible for bringing many new audience members to these performances. The time commitment is minimal: usually 1–2 hours the month prior to each concert. Naturally, advocacy for the orchestra is on-going whenever an opportunity arises.

If you would like to join in this effort or learn more about their activities, please speak to one of the “Friends,” call the orchestra office at (207) 315-1712, or email: info@midcoastsymphony.org.

Friends, 2022 – 2023

Sally Adair

Nancy Aliberto

Jane Almeida

Roger Bogart

Dirk Brunner

Andrea Butler

Dana Cary

Marcia Clayton

Shanna Cox

Peg DeBruyn

Tony DeBruyn

Joyce DeVito

Richard DeVito

Judy Fiterman

Marilyn Flynn

Clara Forkey

David Forkey

Carol Freeman

Joy Hayes

Simon Hayes

Candi Hine

Sherry Holt

Sarah Irish

Judith Johanson

Laura Katz

Jane Kresser

Terry Law

Sharon MacCallum

Peggy Mason

Hollis McBride

Martha McBride

Leon Neihouse

Sandie Neihouse

Marjorie Platou

Dan Pelletier

Carolyn Perkins

Beth Preston

Lynn Reese

Deston Rogers

Devon Rogers

Barbara Rondeau

Jack Schneider

Brian Sedlarski

Edna Stoddard

John Teller

Linda Wilson

Peter Woodrow

The Midcoast Symphony is a community orchestra founded in 1990. Started as a chamber orchestra, we now have over 80 members on our roster. We continue to grow under the baton of Rohan Smith, bringing top-notch performances to the Orion Center in Topsham and the Franco Center in Lewiston. Our members are volunteer players: we are teachers, doctors, homemakers, business people, retired people, professional musicians, and a variety of other occupations. We hail from the midcoast, Lewiston-Auburn, and Portland regions, and we are excited to connect further with audiences and talented players from our state. Our repertoire ranges from Mozart and Haydn to recently written music.

In addition to our regular concerts, we have “More with Midcoast,” education and community engagement programs that support our goal to contribute significantly to the cultural life of midcoast and central Maine.

The orchestra welcomes membership inquiries from talented musicians and also community residents who would like to join our orchestra auxiliary group, FRIENDS of MSO. Please contact info@midcoastsymphony.org or (207) 315-1712.

show our appreciation for Midcoast Symphony Orchestra.

Sponsoring Organizations and Grants

Underwriters

Season Sponsors

Bath Savings

HM Payson

OceanView at Falmouth

Two-Concert Sponsor

Lamey Wellehan Shoes

Single-Concert Sponsors

Berman & Simmons Trial Attorneys

L.L.Bean

Media Sponsors

Bennett Radio Group

WCME Radio

Advertising Sponsors

The Cryer

The Times Record

Sun Journal

Artist Lodging Sponsors

Fairfield Inn & Suites, Brunswick

The Brunswick Hotel

Foundations and Grants

Alfred M. Senter Fund

Davenport Trust Fund

Harold W. and Mary Louise Shaw Foundation

Maine Community Foundation Grant

Nathaniel Davis Fund

Onion Foundation

Van Winkle Family Charitable Fund

Special Thanks: Bowdoin College

Many individuals have generously cooperated with us to make our live orchestra performances possible.

MSO proudly and sincerely thanks the following:

Orion Performing Arts Center

Judy Lloyd, Auditorium Coordinator

Franco Center

Penny Drumm, Denise Scammon, Jake Hodgkin

Mt. Ararat Middle School

Megan Hayes Teague, principal, Kaili Phillips assistant principal, and Renovia Marro-Day and Josh Hyssong, music teachers

Friends of MSO

Our support group who volunteer for orchestra activities and are advocates for audience development

Program Notes Author

Mary Hunter

Stage Crew

Mike Adair, Ara Dedekian, Chris Hall, Ray Libby, Moira Walden, and Holly Whitehead

Recording Technician

Trevor Peterson

Radio Interviews

Denise Shannon

MSO Musician Volunteers

The many musician volunteers who work behind the scenes, as well as perform on stage and for community outreach performances.

Healthy Aging. Living Well.

Mid Coast Senior Health offers a full range of award-winning health services and living options for seniors, all in one place.

Rehabilitation at Bodwell

Assisted Living at Thornton Hall

Memory Care at The Garden

Long-Term Nursing at Mere Point

For more information, call (207) 373-3646 or visit www.midcoastseniorhealth.com.

Board of Directors 2022-2023

Tim Kenlan, President

Meghan Metzger, Secretary

Marc Solebello, Treasurer

Quinn Gormley

Kathryn Krott

Meg Lewis

Heather Linkin

Denise Shannon

Rachel Stettler

Ted Walworth

Carol Preston, Ex Officio

MIDCOAST SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

P.O. Box 86, Brunswick, Maine 04011

info@MidcoastSymphony.org

(207) 315-1712

Music Director: Rohan Smith

Executive Director: Carol Preston, cpreston@midcoastsymphony.org

Orchestra Manager: Ray Libby, info@midcoastsymphony.org

Ticketing : info@midcoastsymphony.org or (207) 481-0790

Friends of MSO: info@midcoastsymphony.org or (207) 315-1712

Contributors

MSO would like to thank those who make our concerts possible with their generous contributions. The list below acknowledges contributions received by October 6, 2022. Donations received after that date will be acknowledged on an insert in the January 2023 program.

Margaret & Martin Naas

Julia O’Brien-Merrill

Joyce Poulin

David & Julie Pease

Trevor Peterson

Benefactors

Anonymous

Anonymous

Robert Frank

Timothy M. Kenlan

Patrons

Anonymous

Gerry Orem

Mary Hunter

Donald & Carolyn Kanicki

Ann Slocum

Sponsors

Margaret & Robert Abbott

Susan & David Duncan

Cynthia Harkleroad

Meg Lewis

George & Irene Minich

Denise Shannon & Richard Papetti

Donors

Michael Adair

Dr. & Mrs. Richard A. Anderson

Patsy Dickinson & Greg Anderson

Brunswick Downtown Association

Thomas Baumgarte

Rev. Robert Beringer

Jessie Boardman

Rachel Boddie

Eleanor Cappon Bowman

Billie Jo Brito

Linda & Dirk Brunner

Philip Carlsen

Caroline Cornish

Peggy Rotundo & Loring Danforth

Darren R. Linkin

Scott & Sharon Dow

Douglas Ertman

Jeff Ertman

Judith Falconer

Gerry Flanagan

Kathy Gleason

Kate & Bill Gray

Paul Greenstone

Frank Gross

Sally Morrison & Gary Haggard

Lester & Sidney Hodgdon

Donna Johnstone

Karen Jung

Eric Kawamoto

Eleanor & Peter Kuniholm

Ed & Nancy Langbein

Daniel Levine

Ray Libby

Heather Linkin

Benjamin F. Lounsbury

Robert Marshall

Carole A. Pope

Emily Reese

Lynn Reese

Marjorie Roberson

Kate & Stephen Rosenfeld

Alicia Scott

Rick Seeley

Richard Sipe

Martha & Mitchell Stein

Rachel & David Stettler

Margie & John Sunderland

Elizabeth Volckening

Moira M. Walden

Lisa & Joe Walker

Edward Walworth

Rupert White

David & Lois Widmer

Friends

Kathryn S. Becker

Barbara Berry

Barbara Bevelanqua

Art Boulay

Julie Brown

Andrea Butler

Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Chandler

Caroline C. Chinlund

Robert Clifford

Peter Cook

Pamela Craig

Robert Dent

E. Scott Dow

Pamela & Garth Duff

Karin Duncan

Charles B. Durfee

Eugenia Gallagher

Anna Ginn

Catharine W. Guiles

Joseph Guttentag

Ann Hartzler

Nancy H. Holler

Oliver Jones

Dick & Reta King

Mary M. Lancaster

June Leahey

Julia MacDonald

Abigail A. Manny

Paul Naas

Anne & Michael Olivo

Rachel L. Ouellette

Mark Pendleton

Janis Petzel

Carol Preston

Laurel K. Sisson

Margaret Spinner

Emilia Toro

Susan & Elwood Trask

Corie Washow

Marjorie A. Whipple

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Orchestra Personnel (listed alphabetically)

Violin I

Carol Preston, Concertmaster

Talia Audley

Jessie Boardman*

Jeanne DiFranco

Kate Gray*

Mary Hunter*

Eric Kawamoto*

Meghan Metzger

Julia O’Brien-Merrill*

Sally Morrison*

Trevor Peterson*

Emily Reese*

Rick Seeley*

Violin II

Caroline Cornish, Principal*

Phoebe Blume

Ara Dedekian

Karen Egee

Judy Falconer*

Robert Frank*

Bev Hochberg

Janice Kieschnick

Julie Pease*

Kate Rosenfeld*

Denise Shannon*

Moira Walden*

Viola

Heather Linkin, Principal*

Margaret Abbott*

Alfred Beattie

Rebecca Dreher

Meg Estapa

Meg Lewis*

Judy Pagon

Aaron Park

Katie Toro-Ferrari

Jeanie Wester

Cello

Patsy Dickinson, Co-principal*

Karen Jung, Co-principal*

Ben Bridges

Philip Carlsen*

Dan Leeman

Daniel Levine*

Jen Reeber

Martha Stein*

Rachel Stettler*

Lisa Walker*

Alex Wong

Laura Zitske*

Ray Libby*

Bassoon

Frank Gross, Co-principal

Lara Bailey

Chris Falcone

Ted Walworth* (Contrabassoon)

Double Bass

Paul Greenstone, Co-principal*

Sally Johnstone, Co-principal*

Michael Adair*

French Horn

Carolyn Kanicki, Principal*

Beth Almquist*

Loren Fields

Cynthia Harkleroad*

Trombone

Bruce Theriault, Principal*

Jim Boyd

Jeff Ertman*

Chris Hall

Dan Labonte

Tuba

Douglas Ertman*

Percussion

Quinn Gormley, Principal*

Tyler Lee

Rusty Quinn

Timpani

Durell Bissinger

Harp

Suki Flanagan*

Piano

Jim Parakilas

Oboe/English Horn

Billie Jo Brito, Principal*

Linda Hornig

Sarah Dow-Shedlarski*

Martin Naas*

*This musician is sponsored by one or more persons or organizations through a “Chair Sponsorship” fundraising effort.

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More with Midcoast

Our Education and Community Engagement Events

Join us for our free pre-concert Sunday events at the Orion Performing Arts Center.

Sunday, October 30, 2022

1:30 – 2:00 p.m. • Meet the Soloist

Get to know piano soloist Chiharu Naruse in a relaxed, live interview.

Sunday, January 15, 2023

1:30 – 2:00 p.m. • Meet the Instruments

Wannabe musicians of all ages are invited to toot, strum, and squawk on a variety of orchestral instruments with MSO musicians.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

1:30 – 2:00 p.m. • Youth Performers

To be announced

Sunday, May 21, 2023

1:30 – 2:00 p.m. • “Pictures and Stories in Music”

Dr. Mary Hunter, Bowdoin Professor of Music Emerita

You’ll enjoy today’s concert music even more after an introduction by our music historian and program notes author.

Franco Center, Saturday Concert Intermission Music

January 14, March 18, May 20, 2023

Enjoy your intermission with the sound of local youth musicians.

More with Midcoast is supported by donations from businesses, individuals, and grants.

Rohan Smith

Conductor and Music Director

Conductor and violinist Rohan Smith has been Music Director of the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra since 2003. He has led the MSO to critical acclaim in performances of the major symphonic repertoire of all eras to the present. In recent seasons, Smith and MSO have performed Mahler’s First and Fourth Symphonies; Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra; Beethoven’s Eroica, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Symphonies; Brahms’s First and Second Symphonies; Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique; Debussy’s Nocturnes; Stravinsky’s Petrouchka, and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2.

In May 2006, MSO under Smith was one of 65 orchestras across America to perform the newly commissioned “Made in America” by Joan Tower. In May 2015, Smith led Midcoast Symphony, the Oratorio Chorale, and Vox Nova in two memorable performances of the Verdi Requiem.

Rohan Smith is Director of Orchestral and Chamber Music at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he conducts the Symphony Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra. Smith has conducted the PEA Chamber Orchestra on cultural exchange, service, and outreach tours to Vietnam, Hong Kong, Quebec, England, New York, and the Coachella Valley, California, performing there for children of immigrant farm workers.

As an orchestral violinist in New York, Rohan Smith performed regularly with the American Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the New Orchestra of Westchester, and on Broadway. He has performed under conductors James Levine, Kurt Masur, Andrew Davis, Kyrill Kondrashin, Dennis Russell Davies, Mark Elder, Kurt Sanderling, and Charles Mackerras. As an orchestral violinist he has been privileged to perform with many

distinguished artists such as Jessye Norman, Itzhak Perlman, Thomas Hampson, Marilyn Horne, Pinchas Zuckerman, Midori, Kathleen Battle, Andre Watts, Garrick Ohlson, Billy Taylor, and Frank Sinatra.

Smith performed with the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra under Adam Fischer for many years, including frequently at Haydn’s summer residence at the Esterhazy palace near Eisenstadt, and in festivals throughout Europe, Japan, and Taiwan. In 1991 and 1995, he participated in the Mahler Festspiel in Kassel, Germany, with members of the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and Concertgebeouw orchestras under the batons of Adam Fischer and Manfred Honeck. Smith performs regularly with members of America’s leading orchestras in the “Music for Life” benefit concerts at Carnegie Hall, to bring attention to the humanitarian needs of refugees in Syria, Darfor, and HIV-infected children in Africa.

As a chamber musician, Smith has performed at the Kowmung Music Festival in Australia, the Cervantino Festival in Mexico, the Toronto International Chamber Music Festival, and Klangfrühling Schlaining in Austria. Smith was a member of the contemporary music group Terra Australis from 1986 to 1989 and performed with them as soloist at the 1988 Aspen Music Festival in Andrew Ford’s Chamber Concerto No. 3: In Constant Flight. He recorded several of Ford’s works on the CD Icarus, which was named one of the best 10 CDs by The Sydney Morning Herald in 2001.

Rohan Smith is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music. He studied violin with Robert Pikler, Zinaida Gilels, Szymon Goldberg, and Burton Kaplan, and conducting with Michael Charry, Adam Fischer, and Kenneth Kiesler.

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Season Opener

Saturday, October 29, 2022

7:00 p.m.

Franco Center, Lewiston

Sunday, October 30, 2022

2:30 p.m.

Orion Performing Arts Center, Topsham

Seven O'Clock Shout

Valerie Coleman (Active 1997-present)

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op.102

Allegro

A ndante

Allegro

Intermission

Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98

A llegro non troppo

Andante moderato

Allegro giocoso

A llegro energico e passionato

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

*Piano Concerto No. 2 by Shostakovich presented under license from G. Schirmer Inc. and Associated Music Publishers, copyright owners.

Underwriters: New England Cancer Specialists, The Highlands Season Sponsors: Bath Savings, HM Payson, OceanView at Falmouth Concert Sponsors: Lamey Wellehan Shoes

Season Opener

Seven O’Clock Shout, Valerie Coleman

Valerie Coleman is an acclaimed flutist, founder of the ensemble Imani Winds, and an active composer. She is a faculty member at the Frost School of Music of the University of Miami and a Clara Mannes Fellow at the Mannes School of Music. Her music, which includes solo, chamber, band, and orchestral works , incorporates elements of jazz and other African diaspora elements. “Seven O’Clock Shout” was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and given its first, virtual performance in July of 2020. The composer writes about this work:

“Seven O'Clock Shout” is an anthem inspired by the tireless frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the heartwarming ritual of evening serenades that brings people together amidst isolation to celebrate life and the sacrifices of heroes. The work begins with a distant and solitary solo between two trumpets in fanfare fashion to commemorate the isolation forced upon humankind, and the need to reach out to one another. The fanfare blossoms into a lushly dense landscape of nature, symbolizing both the caregiving acts of nurses and doctors as they try to save lives, while nature is transforming and healing herself during a time of self-isolation.”

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 102, Dmitri Shostakovich

Shostakovich, a Soviet-era Russian composer, wrote this concerto in 1957 for his then-nineteen-year old son Maxim, still a conservatory student. (Maxim went on to become a renowned pianist and interpreter of his father’s music). This was the period, often designated “The Thaw,” when Nikita Khruschev was the General Secretary of the Communist Party, and the Stalinist Soviet regulation of artistic expression was relaxed somewhat.

The traditional story about Shostakovich is that after 1936, when Stalin had condemned the composer’s somewhat avant-garde and definitely risque opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Shostakovich wrote enough “positive,” easily accessible, and

functional music to satisfy the authorities. However, he embedded elements of agony and dissent in his more artistically ambitious pieces, with these representing the “true” expression of his inner life and his more “affirmative” works a mere façade. The idea of “two Shostakoviches” was a common theme in non-Soviet commentary on his work. There is some truth in this idea, but , of course, the reality is more complex. Shostakovich was legitimately terrified of being sent to the gulag, as had happened to some of his colleagues in the arts, and his music was clearly written in part in response to this terror and the power of the regime. But it is not correct to hear his cheerful music, which often has a slightly hysterical edge, as an emotionally false submission to the Party’s retrograde aesthetics. As he himself said in 1953 after a roller-coaster ride, “I love the madcap… You’ve undoubtedly forgotten that I am the author of the opera The Nose (his 1930 absurdist work based on a story by Gogol).

That said, Shostakovich spoke belittingly of this undoubtedly cheerful concerto in a letter to a friend. As always with Shostakovich, though, the cheerfulness has an acidity that we can read either as simply inherent in modernism, as a barely-hidden resistance to the demands of the regime, or just as more generally ironic. Sandwiched in between the first and third movements of (ironic? resistant?) good cheer is a slow movement of exceptional sweetness.

Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98, Johannes Brahms

Brahms published his four symphonies in the relatively narrow span of nine years, between 1876 and 1885. He was at the peak of his fame not only as a composer but also as a touring pianist and conductor when the Fourth Symphony came out in 1885. He himself conducted the first performance of this work.

T he symphony is archetypical Brahms in a number of ways. The first movement uses some of his most characteristic rhythmic devices. Brahms is famous for using “cross rhythms”—that is, rhythms that in one way or another tug against the beat that you might want to tap your foot to. He puts groups of three against groups of two within the same beat, he asks the performers to accent the weak beats, he changes the groupings of the notes from one bar to the next, so there is often a pervasive feeling of delicious tension or uncertainty, which he often emphasizes with the rich chords he deploys. The first movement of this sym-

Season Opener

phony begins with the simplest of rhythms—an upbeat followed by a downbeat (like the word “ballOON”). This simple rhythm is present throughout the movement, which could easily become tedious. But Brahms plays with it by adding notes in between the “syllables” (“ball-a-LOON-a”) by adding more syllables at the end of the idea (“ballOON game”), by having it sometimes very detached and other times extremely connected, and by changing the stress (“BALLoon”). And to make things more interesting, the conductor Fritz Steinbach, a close friend and colleague of Brahms, left instructions about how to conduct Brahms’s music; he mentioned the importance of “Brahmsian nuances,” chief among which was stressing the upbeat more than the downbeat (“BALLoon”) even when it wasn’t marked in the score, which would make it harder for listeners to find the beginning of each bar.

T he second movement contrasts sweeping lyricism with almost march-like figuration, which is a trick Brahms may have learned from Schubert. The third movement plays around with accents in a more straightforward way—it may remind us of the peasant dances often evoked in the scherzos of symphonies by Haydn and Beethoven but with a duple rather than a triple beat.

Brahms’s sense of himself as a carrier of that “Classical” tradition—German composers from Bach to Schumann—is especially evident in the last movement, which is a passacaglia, or a ground bass movement . It is a series of variations all built on the same 8-bar-long bassline, which occurs 33 times in the course of the movement, with some extra bars for transitions between the variations. (Some of the variations take only one go-round of the bass; others take two or more.)

Ground bass is a compositional device that originated well before Bach and which is probably most familiar today from Pachelbel’s famous “Canon in D.” However, Brahms’s contemporaries would probably have associated the technique with Bach, not only because they thought of Brahms as an inheritor of that Germanic tradition in general, but because he was known to be deeply involved in bringing public attention to Bach by sponsoring the first complete edition of his music.

©Mary Hunter 2022

Chiharu Naruse

Piano Soloist

Chiharu Naruse has performed as a soloist and a chamber musician throughout the United States, Germany, France and Japan. Her broad range of orchestral repertoire includes performances of Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann piano concertos with multiple orchestras. Naruse has also performed with the DaPonte String Quartet, the Portland String Quartet, Venti Cordi, and the Portland Ballet. Her musical projects range from German classical repertoire to regular collaboration with contemporary composers in the interpretation and performance of their compositions. Naruse is frequently contracted by recording companies to record contemporary music. To date, she has several recordings with Navona Records and, most recently, released a solo album of compositions by Kenneth Kuhn from Big Round Records.

In addition to maintaining a regular performance schedule, Naruse is also a well respected teacher, chamber music coach, and competition adjudicator, with many of her students receiving competition awards and gaining acceptance to major music conservatories. Naruse is currently a Collaborative Pianist and member of applied music faculty at Bates College and the faculty of the Portland Conservatory of Music.

Naruse is a graduate from Hochschule fu r Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin, Germany, where she studied piano with Klaus Ba ßler, art song collaboration with Wolfram Rieger, and chamber music with Suzanne Glutzmann. She is also a former student of Frank Glazer.

Favorite Music for All Ages

Saturday, January 14, 2023

7:00 p.m.

Franco Center, Lewiston

Sunday, January 15, 2023

2:30 p.m.

Orion Performing Arts Center, Topsham

Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust Hector Berlioz (1869-1903)

Tubby the Tuba George Kleinsinger, Music (1914-1982) Paul Tripp, Lyrics (1911-2001)

Douglas Ertman, Tubist & Denise Shannon, Narrator

Danzon No. 2 Arturo Marquez (b. 1950)

Yankee Doodle Arr. Morton Gould (1913-1996)

Joel Preston,“Conduct the Orchestra” Winner

Intermission

Piano Concerto in A Minor Edvard Grieg

Allegro molto moderato (1843-1907)

Mesa Schubeck, Pianist and Judith Elser Concerto Competition Winner

Capriccio Espagnol Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Alborada (1844-1908)

Variazioni

Alborada

Scena a Canto Gitano

Fandango Asturiano

Underwriters: New England Cancer Specialists, The Highlands Season Sponsors: Bath Savings, HM Payson, OceanView at Falmouth

Concert Sponsor: Berman & Simmons Trial Attorneys

Program Notes

Favorite Music for All Ages

This concert is family-oriented in a number of ways. Some of the music was written for children; some features young and young-at-heart performers, and all is just appealing for everyone to listen to.

Hector Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, written in 1845, is an epic work for voices and orchestra, which tells the story of the aging and world-weary scholar Faust who is tricked by the Devil into seducing a young woman and ends up in Hell. This “Hungarian March” occurs in the first part of the work, and its relentless good cheer forms an ironic counterpoint to Faust’s existential misery. When the march is excerpted, of course, as it is here, the good cheer remains and the irony is lost.

Tubby the Tuba, a work written in 1945 by the lyricist Paul Tripp and the composer George Kleinsinger, is both a kid-oriented introduction to some of the instruments in the orchestra, and a fable about the importance of self-esteem, especially if you are, like both tubas and bullfrogs, the butt of too many jokes.

Arturo Marquez is a Mexican composer. “Danzon No. 2,” written in 1994, is one of his most popular works. It combines elements of dance music from both Cuba and Mexico. The most prominent Cuban element is the claves rhythm, which you hear first on the wooden sticks appropriately named the clave. This rhythm is five unevenly spaced notes, and you can hear it throughout the piece, sometimes in the percussion but often in other parts of the orchestra too.

Everyone knows “Yankee Doodle.” The exact origins of the tune are not clear, but the words seem to have been written by a British doctor as an insult to the Revolutionary Americans—Yankees who were uncouth and couldn’t tell the difference between feathers and macaroni. But for whatever reason, these Americans proudly adopted the song, and here it is, strikingly arranged by Morton Gould.

Edvard Grieg’s only piano concerto, written in 1868, is a favorite with pianists and audiences alike. It allows the pianist to show off both her virtuosity and her

sweet tone in the lyrical sections. The Midcoast Symphony Orchestra is proud to play the first movement with rising young pianist Mesa Schubeck.

Rimsky-Korsakov was one of the most famous composers and teachers in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. One of Rimsky’s signal qualities as a composer was his brilliant use of the orchestra to create different colors. Depicting Spain (or “España”) had long been an opportunity for composers to show off what they could do with the resources of a full orchestra, as well as to write music that puts sultry melodies alongside infectious dance-like rhythms. Rimsky's Capriccio Espagnol does not disappoint.

©Mary Hunter 2022

Individual Performers

Mesa Schubeck

Raised in the coastal village of Blue Hill, Maine, Mesa Schubeck's musical roots began with an immersion in her family’s folk music tradition. Drawn to the piano at a young age, her formative instruction was influenced by the Suzuki method, and her dedicated classical training was honed through her early teachers Win Pusey and Dr. Ginger Hwalek. Gaining a degree in Piano Performance, with a minor in Business Administration at the University of Maine, Orono, and studying with Baycka Voronietsky, Mesa's collegiate experience included: University Singers, Renaissance, an all female a cappella group, UMaine Jazz Ensemble, accompanist for Collegiate Chorale, and guest conductor for University Singers.

Throughout her musical development, the influence of pop, rock, jazz and soul artists has contributed to her diverse style. Traveling to “Music City” in 2014 with a pop/rock trio, she settled in Nashville for three years, composing, performing, and recording. In addition, as a sought-after collaborative pianist and musical director, she worked multiple productions with Belmont University and Middle Tennessee State University theater departments.

Mesa returned to Maine in 2017 and completed a Masters in Piano Performance and is currently pursuing a second Masters in Piano Pedagogy at the University of Southern Maine under the mentorship of Dr. Laura Kargul. From 2020-2022 Mesa served on the faculty at Gould Academy teaching middle and high students in general music and individual instruction.

Now as a resident of Portland, Maine, Mesa is active as a performing artist, accompanist, and full-time teaching artist at 317 Main Community Music Center in Yarmouth. She is thrilled to be diving deeper into classical piano through her graduate work and is honored to have the opportunity to perform with the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra as the winner of the 2022 Judith Elser Concerto Competition.

Doug Ertman

Doug Ertman has been the tubist (and occasional cellist) for the MSO since 2008. As a high school and early college student he played cello and euphonium in the school orchestra and concert bands. After an almost 30-year stretch of non-music activities—sports, medical degree, starting a family—he decided to take up the tuba. He studied with Scott Vaillaincourt in Lewiston and has attended low brass workshops with Oysten Baadsvik, Velvet Brown, and the Sotto Voce Tuba Quartet. He plays with the Bayside Brass Quintet and Low Commotion, a tuba-euphonium ensemble. He is a family physician employed in Urgent Care with Mercy Hospital.

Denise Shannon

Denise Shannon is a violinist in the MSO, an actor, and voice actor. She has played the main character Rhonda on the Restless Shores podcast since January 2019. Denise can also be heard doing radio interviews for MSO on WIGY and WCME prior to each concert.

She says her voice training started when reading stories to her two children and realizing they were more entertained when she added some dramatic flair. Although her children are grown, she hopes to give you a bit of fun in hearing her rendition of Tubby the Tuba.

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HIGHLAND GREEN

THIS IS WHERE YOU WANT TO BE IN LIFE

Tried and True, Plus a Newer Crew

Saturday, March 18, 2023

7:00 p.m.

Franco Center, Lewiston

Sunday, March 19, 2023

2:30 p.m.

Orion Performing Arts Center, Topsham

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Propellers in the Sun

Tanner Porter (b. 1994)

Symphony No. 35 in D major, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

K. 385, “Haffner” (1756-1791)

Allegro con spirito

A ndante

M enuetto

P resto

Intermission

Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, BWV 1043 Johannes S. Bach

V ivace (1685-1750)

L argo

Allegro

E va Gruesser & Rohan Smith, Violinists

Symphony No. 3 Florence Price

Andante (1887-1953)

Andante ma non troppo

J uba: Allegro

S cherzo: Finale

Underwriters: New England Cancer Specialists, The Highlands

Season Sponsors: Bath Savings, HM Payson, OceanView at Falmouth

Concert Sponsor: L.L.Bean

Tried and True, Plus a Newer Crew

Propellers in the Sun, Tanner Porter

Tanner Porter is a singer, songwriter, cellist, and classical composer with degrees from Michigan and Yale. She received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019. “Propellers in the Sun,” is, according to the composer, “loosely based on the Icarus myth; flight in the piece is represented by the coughing and hum of propellers.” The piece more or less alternates between quieter passages of short phrases (perhaps trying to get off the ground?) and fuller passages of longer phrases of varying moods, moving from serene to more agitated. The piece’s end is reminiscent of the beginning, with solo flute and violin, but the propellers are silent.

Symphony in D Major, K.385, “Haffner,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

From the early nineteenth century on, and especially since Beethoven, to write a “symphony” was to write a work of large proportions and high aesthetic ambition. However, the origins of the symphony lie in the opera overture (often called “sinfonia”) and in instrumental pieces written for particular occasions and not necessarily intended to endure past those moments. Mozart’s “Haffner” symphony fits this tradition. He wrote it in 1782 after he had moved from the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg to a more freelance life in Vienna. But his father Leopold, who was still in the Salzburg musical establishment, ordered this work from his son to celebrate the ennoblement of Siegmund Haffner, the son of a prominent local businessman. Mozart wrote it within the space of 10 days, while also finishing a serenade and the arrangement for winds of his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail. He was not delighted to receive the commission in the midst of all this work, but took enough trouble over it that he was late sending it off, declaring to his father that he was “really unable to scribble off inferior stuff.”

The work is unusually compact and very tightly constructed. It is very much “about” contrasting musical gestures. In the first movement the loud striding fanfare of the opening is immediately answered by a quieter “tiptoe march” figure, and these

two ideas never leave us (or each other) alone. In the second movement a graceful melody is set against a staccato tick-tock accompaniment, and in a couple of places the tick-tock gets confined to a single high note in the first violins and looms over the more graceful material under it. In the third movement, the more boisterous jollity of the Minuet is offset by a gentle melodic Trio. The opening of the Finale introduces perhaps Mozart’s silliest-ever tune, which is countered by ostentatiously loud and busy material. There’s a second graceful tune later, but the alternation between quiet and loud material continues throughout the movement.

Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach wrote this work in 1730–31 for the collegium musicum he directed, on top of his jobs as kantor at St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig and supervisor of music in three other churches and in Leipzig’s civic life more generally. The collegium musicum was a group of professional musicians and students who gave weekly public concerts; both Bach’s solo violin concertos and this double concerto were written for this ensemble. This double concerto is one of Bach’s best-known and most beloved works, not least because it is part of the Suzuki violin method, and YouTube offers many videos of groups of kids playing the solo parts of the first movement in unison. The work is also a master class in how two solo parts can politely take turns in the spotlight (the first movement is particularly good at this), wind around each other to create a kind of musical double helix, as is the case in the slow movement, and chase each other mercilessly, as they do in the last movement.

Symphony No. 3, Florence Price

Florence Price composed throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and towards the end of her life she gained considerable fame in a variety of circles: Marian Anderson sang her songs; the Marine Band played some of her music, and the Halle Orchestra in England commissioned her to write an overture. After her death in 1953, however, her music occupied only small corners of the repertory until the recent intensification of interest in making the classical music canon more fully representative.

She was educated at the New England Conservatory, paused her large-scale composing in the early days of her marriage and child-rearing, but resumed writing seriously when the family relocated to Chicago in 1927. Partly influenced by the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance, Price, like other creative artists of the time, 57

aimed to include and “elevate” African American elements within a musical style that was largely based on late Romantic music, especially that of Dvo ř ák, who also included and transformed national idioms within a largely Germanic style.

Price wrote three symphonies, her first being the first work by an African-American woman to be performed by a major orchestra (the Chicago Symphony). Her Third Symphony, her last, was written in 1938-39. In 1940, she wrote to Eric Schwass, an administrator of the Michigan WPA orchestra, in language that we would no longer use about race, “[The symphony] is intended to be Negroid in character and expression. In it no attempt, however, has been made to project Negro music solely in the purely traditional manner. None of the themes are adaptations or derivations of folk songs.”

The references to African-American music in the Third Symphony are unmistakable—the most prominent being melodies reminiscent of spirituals and rhythms born of African American dance (especially in the third movement). However, even when this material stands out from its immediate context, it always relates intimately to material elsewhere in its movement. The harmonic language is mostly reminiscent of Brahms or Dvo ř ák, and even Wagner, but there are moments when a more modern idiom—more like Debussy or Ravel—appears. Throughout the work, Price features the brass and wind instruments in important melodic roles, especially for the more lyrical material, and often writes for “choirs” of instruments, giving the work as a whole a distinctive color.

©Mary Hunter 2022

Eva Gruesser

Violin Soloist

Eva Gruesser has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Australia as solo violinist, chamber musician, and concertmaster of many orchestras. Ms. Gruesser held the Roger Sessions chair of concertmaster of the American Composers Orchestra from 2000 until 2020. Previously she was concertmaster of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra under music director Kenneth Kiesler from 2002 until 2007.

As first violinist of the Lark Quartet from 1988 to 1996, Gruesser performed on many occasions at many of the world’s most distinguished concert halls including New York’s Lincoln Center and Weill Hall, the Kennedy Center and Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Théâtre des ChampsElysées in Paris. With the Lark Quartet she won the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1991, and the Gold Medal at the Shostakovich International String Quartet Competition in St. Petersburg in 1991. Following the Shostakovich Competition, the Lark Quartet was invited by Gidon Kremer to play at the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. With the quartet Ms. Gruesser also performed at the Sviatoslav Richter Festival at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, and the San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico. She has performed as guest concertmaster with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia Orchestra, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, and was a member of the Da Capo Chamber Players from 1997 until 2001. As a committed exponent of contemporary music, Ms. Gruesser collaborated on commissions with composers Aaron Jay Kernis, Libby Larson, Penka Kouneva, and Jon Deak. She performed with Lukas Foss at Weill Hall in his “Three American Pieces” for violin and piano, and recorded Martin Bresnick’s “Bird as Prophet” for violin and piano, and Trio for violin, clarinet, and piano.

Eva Gruesser has been a regular guest at summer chamber music festivals including the Klangfrühling Schlaining, the Moab Music Festival in Utah, the Kowmung Music Festival in Australia, and Monadnock Music in New Hampshire. She has recorded with Decca/Argo, Arabesque and New World Records. Gruesser can be heard in a recent recording of the Bach Double Concerto where she was co-soloist with distinguished violinist Elmar Oliviera and the Arco Ensemble. She played in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for two years, performed as soloist with the BBC Scottish Orchestra, and was a founding member of the Ensemble Modern in Germany. Ms. Gruesser studied violin with Wolfgang Marschner in Germany, Ilona Feher in Israel, Ramy Shevelov, Simon Goldberg, and Zinaida Gilels and graduated summa cum laude from the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik.

Eva Gruesser is also a graduate of the Hannover Hochschule für Musik and the Juilliard School.

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French Impressions

Saturday, May 20, 2023

7:00 p.m.

Franco Center, Lewiston

Sunday, May 21, 2023

2:30 p.m.

Orion Performing Arts Center, Topsham

hmpayson.com

Hiroya Miura , Guest Conductor

D’un matin de printemps Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)

Prologue

Air pour les esclaves Contredanse

Air pour l'adoration du soleil

Les Sauvages

Les Indes Galantes, Suite No.1 Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) Arr. Paul Dukas (1865-1935)

Air pour les sauvages Chaconne

La Valse Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Intermission

Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1981)

Promenade

The Gnomus Promenade

The Old Castle Promenade

The Tuileries Gardens

Bydlo

Promenade

Ballet of Chickens in Their Shells

Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle

Promenade

The Market at Limoges (The Great News)

The Catacombs

The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga)

The Great Gate of Kiev

Orch. Maurice Ravel (1887-1953)

Underwriters: New England Cancer Specialists, The Highlands Season Sponsors: Bath Savings, HM Payson, OceanView at Falmouth

Concert Sponsor: Lamey Wellehan

French Impressions

All the music in this concert is either completely or partly French. Since the seventeenth century, the French style had defined itself as, at least in part, in contrast to the German or Germanic, and Italian or Italianate styles. In the Baroque period (1600-1750 or so), French characteristics included more speech-like (as opposed to song-like) vocal lines; less intricate textures (i.e., more music where everyone is playing more or less the same rhythms); and a fondness for uneven and very sharply dotted rhythms (i.e., longer sounds preceded by extremely short ones, as in the word “because”.) By the turn of the twentieth century, French style was characterized by particularly colorful use of the orchestra and by chords that did not lead inexorably from one to the next, as was the case in much Germanic music. Instead the chords seem more to “wander” than to “lead,” often creating a sort of floating feeling akin to the vaguer outlines of objects in Impressionist paintings.

D’un matin de printemps, Lili Boulanger

Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the famous Prix de Rome composition prize at the tender age of 20: a prize which her father, Ernest Boulanger, had won in 1835; Hector Berlioz won in 1830; and Claude Debussy received in 1884. Because of persistent ill health she studied composition privately. Her music is in the same Impressionist style as that of Debussy and Ravel, with vivid orchestral colors and some experimentation with scales and harmonies beyond the normal major and minor. “D’un matin de printemps” (About a Spring Morning) was written in 1917–18, first for violin or flute and piano, and then arranged for full orchestra. It begins energetically, perhaps evoking the energy of new life thrusting its way out of the ground, then moves to a dreamier, more lyrical phase. Energy and dreaminess more or less alternate for the rest of this short work.

Les Indes Galantes, Suite No. 1, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Arr. Paul Dukas

Jean-Philippe Rameau was the most famous French composer of his time. Although he started life as a church musician and the author of immense music-theoretical tomes, his great fame, then and now, rests on his operas, all written in the later part of his life, all performed at the Paris Opera, and many given performances for Louis XV. His opera Les Indes Galantes enacts a series of amorous adventures in

the “Indies,” a term that indicated any exotic non-European locale. These are an Indian Ocean island for “Le Turc généreux,” the vicinity of a Peruvian volcano for “Les Incas,” Persia for “Les fleurs,” and North America (nowhere specific) for “Les sauvages.” The settings are of course wildly inaccurate and exoticized, with the indigenous people of these settings (usually the supposed rulers of their groups) used merely as foils for the hypocrisies and other failings of Europeans rather than as individuals and societies with their own independent characteristics and cultures.

Because French Baroque operas were seriously multimedia events, with elaborate scenery, extraordinary costumes, and professional dancers, as well as singers and orchestra, the suite we play today is made up almost entirely of dances that use the rhythms of courtly social dances of the time. They would have occurred between the sung numbers and would also have been staged to illustrate aspects of the imagined “local customs.”

La Valse, Maurice Ravel

“La Valse” (The Waltz) was written in 1919, just one year after World War I had ended. Commentators have described the work’s extraordinary colors and intermittent hysteria in relation to this cataclysmic world event, but Ravel’s first prose description of it says, “one should only see in it what the music expresses: an ascending progression of sonority, to which the stage adds light and movement.” “The stage” here refers to Ravel’s evident intention that it should be used as ballet music. He called it a “poème choréographique,” and it has been set for dance by several famous choreographers, not least George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet. However, Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario for whom Stravinsky had already written The Firebird and Petrushka, and on whose prompting Ravel had created it, passed it up, saying “it’s a masterpiece, but it’s not a ballet …it’s the portrait of a ballet.”

Possibly in response to the work’s reception among the critics, Ravel revised his own original commentary and in 1922 wrote, “it is a dancing, whirling, almost hallucinatory ecstasy, an increasingly passionate and exhausting whirlwind of dancers, who are overcome.” This is not at all the only way to hear the work, but it does encapsulate both what Ravel does to the idea of the social dance on which it is based and how that idea progresses over the work’s course.

Pictures at an Exhibition, Modest Mussorgsky

Orchestrated by Maurice Ravel

Modest Mussorgsky was one of the "Mighty Handful" of five self-consciously Russian and modernist composers (Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, and Rimsky-Korsakov in addition to Mussorgsky) in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Having studied piano in his youth (and becoming an accomplished player) he studied composition privately with Balakirev, and then by analyzing the works of many other composers, both Western-European and Russian.

This work was written in 1874, originally for solo piano; like many of Mussorgsky's works it was not published until after his death and was revised (in this instance very slightly) by his mentor Rimsky-Korsakov. Most of the movements are musical responses to pictures by Victor Hartmann, an artist/architect friend of Mussorgsky who had just died. Opening the work, and then linking some of these musical pictures is the "Promenade" refrain, whose irregular meter gives a wonderful sense of a leisurely meander through a museum. Only a few of the relevant Hartmann pictures are still extant, but there have been numerous attempts to complete the set and match Mussorgsky’s music.

Because this piano work is so obviously picturesque, it has cried out to be orchestrated (set for orchestra). The first orchestration, by Mikhail Tushmalov, appeared only five years after the first publication of the piano work. The one we play today, by Maurice Ravel, is the most famous. Not all reworkings of the piece are for classical orchestra; there's at least one electronic version and a rock one by the group Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Ravel's version is an amazing orchestral showcase, especially for the brass and winds. From the haunting saxophone solo in "Il Vecchio Castello" to the galumphing tuba in "Bydlo," (hay wagon), or the brilliant trumpet work in "Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle" or the chirping flutes and oboes in the "Ballet of Chickens in Their Shells," the palette of sounds is always changing, but always perfectly calibrated to capture the colors of Mussorgsky's responses to these pictures.

©Mary Hunter 2022

Hiroya Miura Guest Conductor

Hiroya Miura, a native of Sendai, Japan, has been active as a composer, conductor, and performer in North America. Acclaimed by Allan Kozinn of The New York Times as “acidic and tactile,” Miura’s compositions explore “the continuous change of balance” amongst the traditions, players, instruments, and sound objects. He was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts and a Literary Arts residency, La Napoule Art Foundation residency, an HB Studio Residency, and a Willapa Bay AiR residency, among others.

Miura composed works for Speculum Musicae, New York New Music Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, Prague’s BERG Orchestra, Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Momenta Quartet, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, members of Reigakusha (gagaku ensemble based in Tokyo), Hidejiro Honjoh, and Yuji Takahashi, which were presented in venues and festivals such as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Yomiuri Hall (Japan), Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), Vacances Percutantes (France), and Havana Contemporary Music Festival (Cuba). He is also a founding member of the electronic improvisation unit, No One Receiving, whose debut album from the Grain of Sound has won critical acclaim in Europe and the United States.

As a conductor Miura has given a number of premieres by emerging composers in the New York area. He has been invited as a guest conductor for Edmonton's Mercury Opera, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, and the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra. In Europe, he has participated in masterclasses and performed with the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra and North Czech Philharmonic Teplice.

He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University and he is Associate Professor of music at Bates College, where he teaches music theory and composition, and directs the college orchestra. He is Artistic Director of Columbia University’s IMJS/Japanese Cultural Heritage Initiatives and serves on the Advisory Board for the Composers Conference.

Special Event: 70s Extravaganza

Classical Night Fever!

Saturday, June 10, 2023

7:00 p.m.

Franco Center

Lewiston

Sunday, June 11, 2023

2:30 p.m.

Orion Performing Arts Center

Topsham

MSO teams up with Motor Booty Affair, Maine’s own 70s disco/funk tribute band. This performance transports you on a journey through some of the best hits of the 1970s— complete with bell-bottoms, stylin’ afros, wild polyester costume changes, and some of the coolest platform shoes this side of the Milky Way.

Not Included in Season Ticket Purcha se

All songs arranged by Terry White

(Program Subject to Change)

Also Sprach Zarathustra

Get Down Tonight

September

Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now

Love’s Theme/Can’t Get Enough of Your Love

70's TV Themes Medley

Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel

Oh What a Night

Disco Inferno

Intermission ––––––––––––––

5th of Beethoven

Chic Medley

Dancin’ Queen

Car Wash

70’s Movie Themes Medley

Night Fever

Stayin’ Alive/You Should Be Dancin’

Village People Medley

Heaven Knows

The Story of Motor Booty Affair

Motor Booty Affair has been lighting up stages across America with their 70s extravaganza for years, continually improving on the show that has been dubbed “The Ultimate Disco Party Band.”

The music is infectious—the most danceable songs of all time. The band is tighter than tight, delivering dance floor classics with confidence, groove, style, and attitude. The show is spectacular—from the afros, bell-bottoms, platform shoes, polyester, and dance moves, to the highest quality sound and light show this side of 1975.

Motor Booty Affair consists of four funkateers straight from the planet Funktar; Superfly, Spanish Fly, Vinnie Boom-Boom Funktonio, and Cyclone Link Skywalker Jr. It is their mission to get the crowd groovin’ as they deliver hits from Earth Wind & Fire, The Bee-Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, Chic, The Commodores, Barry White, Abba, and more. The songs are authentically reproduced by these top notch musicians with unsurpassed quality and attention to detail.

MBA’s show is energetic and peppered with 70s lingo jive talkin’ and stage antics to make for an event you will never forget.

Underwriters: New England Cancer Specialists, The Highlands Season Sponsors: Bath Savings, HM Payson, OceanView at Falmouth

• Concert Sponsor: WCME Radio

Support Local Arts Organizations

Entertainment on the Riverfront

The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?

International comedy

Thursday, Oct. 6

Echoes of Floyd

Pink Floyd Tribute Band

Saturday, Oct. 8

Fright Night

2022-2023 SEASON

Walk through our creepy crypt

Oct. 25, 26, 27

Magic of the Steelgraves

Family-friendly magic and illusion show

Saturday, Nov. 12

Runnin’

Down a Dream

Tom Petty Tribute Band

Saturday, Nov. 19

Don Campbell Christmas

Festive holiday concert

Friday, Dec. 16

Sights & Sounds of

Christmas

Spectacular light show

Dec. 17 & 18

Schooner Fare

Long-time favorite Band

Friday, Feb. 3

Josee Vachon

Popular French performer

Saturday, March 4

Studio Two–A

Beatles Tribute

The Beatles Before America

Friday, March 31

Silver Circus

Family-friendly magic show

Saturday, April 8

La Rencontre

Lunch & Entertainment

Sept. 8, Dec. 8, March 9,

June 22

Emily Isaacson Artistic Director

Saturday November 5 7:30 pm Sat., Dec. 10 7:30 pm Sun., Dec. 11 3:00 pm

Battle of the & Hope Sat., March 11 7:30 pm Sun., March 12 3:00 pm

Saturday, May 13 7:30 pm Sunday, May 14 3:00 pm 2022

KEITHSPIRO

75

Founded in 1985, The Cryer is a “good news”

MSO provides its all-volunteer members with unique music-making opportunities and its audiences with high-quality concerts at reasonable prices. We are committed to reaching out to people beyond our immediate audience to share our enthusiasm for music. None of this can happen without predictable support. A legacy donation from you can offer this kind of resource, and we would be most honored if you would consider it.

Meet the Instruments is a free event where folks of all ages try playing orchestral instruments.

Local music students rehearsed with and then joined MSO sitting side-by-side in a performance. It was a thrilling experience for the students to be a part of an orchestra.

As a part of our Community Outreach and Engagement Events, MSO has performed free outdoor concerts in Brunswick and Bath.

For more information please contact Carol Preston at info@midcoastsymphony.org

Students at the YMCA experienced live music by MSO musicians at an after-school program.

Please consider Midcoast Symphony Orchestra as a part of your legacy.