Monterey Symphony 2024-2025 Season Program Book by montereysymphony

Season at-a-glance

2024-2025 Special Events

Letter from Music Director

Letter from President and CEO

Letter from Board Chair

Monterey Symphony Orchestra

Jayce Ogren Biography

RHAPSODY IN BLUE Program

Adam Golka Biography

Program Notes

BRAHMS SYMPHONY Program

Simone Rubino Biography

Program Notes

BEETHOVEN VIOLIN CONCERTO Program

Simone Porter Biography

Program Notes

HAYDN CELLO CONCERTO Program

Adelle-Akiko Kearns Biography

Program Notes

RACHMANINOFF PIANO CONCERTO Program

Joyce Yang Biography

Nicola Shangrow Reilly Biography

Program Notes

Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli Biography

Symphony Board and Administration

Donor Lists

2024-2025 Symphony Season

SUNSET CENTER, CARMEL

November 16, 2024 7:30 PM

November 17, 2024 3:00 PM

Adam Golka, piano

February 15, 2025 7:30 PM

February 16, 2025 3:00 PM

Simone Rubino, percussion

March 15, 2025 7:30 PM

March 16, 2025 3:00 PM

Simone Porter, violin

SEASON SPONSOR

Bertie Bialek Elliott

Adelle-Akiko Kearns, cello

May 17, 2025 7:30 PM

May 18, 2025 3:00 PM Joyce Yang, piano

SUNSET CENTER, CARMEL

Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli,

PRE-CONCERT PARTIES

Season Opening Party

November 16, 2024

6:00-7:30 PM

Sunset Center Lobby

7th Annual Women’s Night Out

March 15, 2025

6:00-7:30 PM

Studio 105, Sunset Center

SATURDAY POSTCONCERT

TALK BACK

Jayce Ogren and guest artists

February-May concerts immediately following the concerts Sunset Center Lobby

SUNDAY LOBBY SESSIONS

1:45-2:00 PM & 2:30-2:45 PM Sunset Center Lobby

November 17 February 16

March 16

April 27 May 18

Frank Wyant and Tim Dent, percussion

Zlata Grekov, violin

Dylan Girard, trumpet

Sarah Bonomo, clarient

Christina Mok, violin

“This season is filled with iconic repertoire, including many of the pieces that make people fall in love with classical music for the first time.”

Welcome to another thrilling season with the Monterey Symphony!

I can’t wait to share this incredible music with all of you. No matter your age, background or experience, there’s a place for you here. Music is indeed the universal language! It’s for everyone, and we welcome you into this wonderful world of the concert hall, with all its delights, surprises, and its unique ability to move and transform the soul.

This season is filled with iconic repertoire, including many of the pieces that make people fall in love with classical music for the first time. We’ll also feature truly world class soloists, who I know will inspire you with their virtuosity and expressive power. Expect the unexpected, too. We’ll play a number of future classics—new pieces that uniquely communicate what it means to live and breathe right now, in this moment. Music is a living art, and the dialogue between old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, comforting and disarming, it is the lifeblood of a great concert experience.

One highlight I want to be sure to mention: 2024 marks the centenary of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and we’re so pleased to present this beloved work with acclaimed piano soloist Adam Golka in November. I hope you’ll join us in celebrating this great, singular piece of American music!

I’m also honored to lead a piece of my own composition, Intertidal, on our May program. It’s inspired by shorebirds along the Pacific coast, honoring my native Washington state as well as my adopted musical home of Monterey.

It’s my absolute pleasure to serve as Music Director of our amazing Monterey Symphony! Enjoy the season!

Hello! A warm welcome to our 79th season!

If you’re brand new to MSO, or have been coming for years, thank you for keeping orchestral music alive in our community! If you have questions about anything, please find a Symphony staff member with an “Ask Me,” button.

This is an exciting season for us. Before our opening concerts at Sunset, Monterey Symphony will have performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival, for the first time ever. In collaboration with Kyle Eastwood, the Symphony played Eastwood Symphonic in honor of Clint Eastwood.

In October, we had our Love Letter to Hollywood, Vol. 2 concerts at the Forest Theater, and youth concerts where we invited over 6,000 Monterey County students to hear the Symphony. And in September, we celebrated the 10-year work anniversaries of Virginia Marine, Director of External Relations, and Noemi Vera, Director of Operations.

The Symphony is strong because of you!

Thank you to everyone who makes this possible.

Musically yours,

Nicola Shangrow Reilly, President and CEO

Dear Music Lovers!

With great excitement and anticipation of the stirring music we will present this year, I welcome you on behalf of the Board of Directors. In these last few years, under the exceptional baton of Music Director Jayce Ogren and the premier leadership of President and CEO Nicola Shangrow Reilly, the Monterey Symphony has evolved and broadened our offerings and appeal to stalwart veterans and youthful newcomers alike. The Fall opener –Love Letter to Hollywood, Vol. 2 - enchanted us with some of the best known movie scores ever written. The Classical series from November through May will offer a mix of traditional favorites and some newer works by composers and soloists making their mark in the world of great music. We have broadened our commitment and engagement with the entire community, particularly with the youth of Monterey County with a greatly expanded program of Youth Concerts and In-School demonstrations.

Our mission to educate and entertain remains the core of what we do. We strive to accomplish this by way of presenting the finest musicians and the most appealing mix of great music as possible. We are only able to do this with your engaging participation and generous gifts.

Thank You!

Charles Schimmel, Board Chair

The Orchestra

MUSIC DIRECTOR

Jayce Ogren

Sponsored by Herschel Loomis and Sherrie McCullough

VIOLIN I

Christina Mok, Concertmaster

VIOLIN II

Zlata Grekov, Principal

VIOLA

Vladimir Khalikulov, Principal

David Allcott, Assistant Principal

Valerie Bengal

Fan Hu

Chad Kaltinger

Sarah Lee

Alexander Volonts

CELLO

Robin Bonnell, Principal

Adelle-Akiko Kearns, Assistant Principal

BASS

Bruce Moyer, Principal

FLUTE

Dawn Walker, Principal

Sponsored by Lloyd Nattkemper and Neal and Elaine Whitman

Teresa Orozco

Jayce Ogren

Jayce Ogren has established himself as one of the most innovative and versatile conductors of his generation. From symphonic concerts to revolutionary community service programs to operatic world premieres, he is a leader in breaking down barriers between audiences and great music.

Mr. Ogren is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, where he conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra, Contemporary Directions Ensemble and the Michigan Youth Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, he serves as Principal Guest Conductor of Philadelphia’s new music ensemble Orchestra 2001.

Mr. Ogren began his career as Assistant Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, an appointment he held from 2006-2009. In the years since, he has conducted many of the world’s most prominent orchestras, including the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, the Dallas and San Francisco Symphonies, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Among the numerous progressive projects Mr. Ogren has conducted are Basil Twist’s The Rite of Spring with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center; the

world premiere of David Lang’s symphony for a broken orchestra, bringing together 400 amateur and professional musicians in Philadelphia; 30th anniversary performances of Frank Zappa’s The Yellow Shark with Orchestra 2001; and the world premiere of Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown at Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

For over a decade, Mr. Ogren has been closely associated with the Leonard Bernstein Office, conducting the New York premiere of Bernstein’s only opera, A Quiet Place, at Lincoln Center; the European premiere of the film with live orchestra version of West Side Story at London’s Royal Albert Hall; and the world premieres of new orchestrations of Fancy Free and Dybbuk with Lost Dog New Music Ensemble.

A longtime collaborator of singer/songwriter/composer Rufus Wainwright, Mr. Ogren conducted the U.S. premiere of his opera Prima Donna at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Scandinavian premiere at the Royal Swedish Opera, and led its recording with the BBC Symphony on Deutsche Grammaphon. Mr. Ogren and Mr. Wainwright have since appeared together throughout the world, with ensembles such as the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France in Paris and the Toronto Symphony.

A devoted educator, he was invited by renowned poet Paul Muldoon to create an interdisciplinary studio class at Princeton University for the 2017-2018 academic year. He has worked with students at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Brevard Music Center, Cleveland Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, Music Academy of the West and Verbier Festival. In 2016, he presented a unique workshop in orchestral rehearsal techniques for music teachers at Carnegie Hall in collaboration with the Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute and the Juilliard School Pre-College.

As a composer, Mr. Ogren has received commissions from ensembles throughout the United States. His Symphonies of Gaia for symphonic wind ensemble has been performed extensively throughout the world, and is published by C. Alan Publications.

Jayce Ogren holds degrees from St. Olaf College, New England Conservatory and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar with Alan Gilbert and Jorma Panula. His wife, Carly Berger Ogren, is an architect, and together they have an adventurous 5 year old son, Alistair.

An avid athlete, he has competed in the Big Sur, Boston and New York City marathons, the JFK 50 Miler trail run, and the Ironman Lake Placid triathlon. As an individual member of 1% for the Planet, Mr. Ogren is proud to connect his artistic work with his deep love of nature and concern for the environment.

Sponsored by Herschel Loomis and Sherrie McCullough

November 16 & 17, 2024

SUNSET CENTER, CARMEL

Sponsored by The William H. and Patricia M. Smith Family Foundation

Jayce Ogren, Music Director and Conductor Adam Golka, piano

The Star-Spangled Banner [running time 2’]

Fanfare for the Common Man [3’]

Orchestral Variations [13’]

Rhapsody in Blue [16’]

Music by John Stafford Smith (1750-1836)

Lyrics by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Aaron Copland

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

INTERMISSION [20’]

Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 1 [3’]

Symphony No.9 in E minor, Op. 95 “From the New World” [42’]

I. II. III. IV. Adagio – Allegro molto Largo Scherzo. Molto vivace Allegro con fuoco

Joan Tower (b. 1938)

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)

The November concert will be rebroadcast on KAZU’s HD2 Classical station on December 7th and 8th, 2024, both at 4 PM.

Polish-American pianist Adam Golka has been regularly on the concert stage since the age of sixteen, when he won first prize at the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition. He has also received the Gilmore Young Artist Award and the Max I. Allen Classical Fellowship Award from the American Pianists Association.

In 24/25 Adam Golka performs with the Lakeside Symphony and August Symphony. Other performances include the Jamestown Community Piano Association and the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park for Dan Cozier’s Piano Etude. A passionate chamber music performer, Golka is the pianist for the Manhattan Chamber Players, performing throughout the US.

In recent years, Adam Golka performed the eleven-hour cycle of Beethoven’s Sonatas five times in its entirety, three times for socially distanced audiences at the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park (Florida), once at the Archway Gallery in Houston, and also a live-streamed cycle at the Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue (NYC), with a growing live audience as the year-long series proceeded. Adam’s performances were complemented by 32 short films he created with Zac Nicholson, known as 32@32 (available on YouTube).

As a concerto soloist, he has appeared with dozens of orchestras, including the BBC Scottish Symphony, NACO (Ottawa), Warsaw Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, as well as the San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, New Jersey, and San Diego symphonies.

In 2009 adam won the Max I. Allen Fellowship from American Pianists Association. Adam has recorded works by Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms for First Hand Records and he has premiered works composed for him by Richard Danielpour, Michael Brown, and Jarosław Gołębiowski.

Program Notes

By Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli

NOVEMBER 16-17, 2024

Concert Synopsis

A luminous American prism reveals facets of the nation’s diverse musical character. The program opens with two anthems, one official and one adopted: The StarSpangled Banner and Copland’s iconic Fanfare for the Common Man. Orchestral Variations finds Copland as an American in Paris embracing the continent’s new modernist sounds. The precocious New York songsmith George Gershwin burst onto the classical scene with his dazzling Rhapsody in Blue, a Jazz Age masterpiece celebrating its 100th birthday in 2024. Living American icon Joan Tower composed a spirited response to Copland with her Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No.1. The program closes with Dvorák’s beloved New World Symphony, a work that sought to establish an American identity from a European perspective.

The Star-Spangled Banner (1814)

Music by John Stafford Smith (1750-1836) Lyrics by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)

On September 14th 1814, the United States appeared dangerously close to losing the War of 1812. British troops burned the U.S. Capitol and advanced their attack on another critical stronghold, Fort McHenry, in Baltimore. That night, American lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key sat imprisoned on a British warship in the Baltimore harbor. As he watched the “rockets’ red glare,” he began composing a poem: The Defense of Fort McHenry

Key awoke the next morning to find the battle was over and “our flag was still there.” U.S. Troops held the fort! After his release, Key shared the poem with his brother-in-law who discovered the verses fit the popular drinking song To Anacreon in Heaven by John Stafford Smith (ironically, a Brit).

Published as The Star-Spangled Banner, Americans quickly adopted it as a song of national pride. An Act of Congress established it as the U.S. National Anthem in 1931.

Fanfare for the Common Man (1943)

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

As America entered the Great Depression, Aaron Copland wanted his music to reflect the experience and concerns of the “common man.” Known as a leading composer of New York’s modernist avant-garde, Copland turned his attention to field recordings of American and Mexican folk music published by the Library of Congress in 1935. Copland mined the music for motifs and rhythms that would infuse his compositions with a popular spirit and connect with a wider audience. His new style was forged in a 1938 ballet score for choreographer Martha Graham, Billy the Kid, based on the Old West folk hero. The music’s open sonorities and folkdance rhythms resonated deeply with audiences and came to define the sound of American music. Copland won the Pulitzer Prize for another collaboration with Graham, Appalachian Spring

Fanfare for the Common Man represents Copland’s American sound adapted to a more solemn occasion. Commissioned in 1943 in support of the nation’s World War II effort, the title references Vice President Henry Wallace’s speech “The Century of the Common Man.” The fanfare begins with powerful percussion strikes followed by consonant, vaulting brass motifs and hymn-like chorales. It reveals a composer committed to clarity and directness, qualities that would help solidify this work’s status as an American classic. To Copland, the enlisted soldier epitomized the common man and, in the composer’s words, “he deserved a fanfare.”

Orchestral Variations (1958) Aaron Copland

“If a young man at the age of twentythree can write a work like the one you’ve just heard,” said conductor Walter Damrosch to his 1925 New York concert audience, “in five years he’ll be ready to commit murder.” Damrosch’s affectionately sarcastic remark received a hearty laugh, even from the young man in question: Aaron Copland. Before achieving his popular American sound, Copland confronted listeners with searing, dissonant, and angular music. The composer had recently made a pilgrimage to Paris to study with famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and experience cutting-edge premieres by the likes of Stravinsky and Debussy. In 1930 he composed his most aggressive work to date: Piano Variations.

The twenty seamlesslyconnected variations that follow create a journey through a multitude of tempos and textures.

Nearly thirty years later, Copland returned to his younger, vanguard self with an orchestral arrangement of Piano Variations fittingly titled Orchestral Variations. The piece opens with a crisp four-note motif. “The notes are dealt out one by one,” says conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, “like tough cards in a poker game.” The twenty seamlessly-connected variations that follow create a journey through a multitude of tempos and textures. Copland displays exceptional skill by infusing the varied episodes with his four-note motif’s sonic signature. He took Boulanger’s advice to heart: “Write down lots of notes,” she said, “but keep only those that really matter.”

Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

In 1937 George Gershwin visited Carmel-by-the-Sea to meet a poet he greatly admired, Robinson Jeffers. The two spent an afternoon at “Tor House,” Jeffers’ remote residence on Carmel Point, where they discussed all manner of things creative. Gershwin performed on the Steinway grand piano in their living room while Jeffers autographed books of his poetry. No record exists of what Gershwin played that day, but we can imagine excerpts from Rhapsody in Blue, the American masterpiece celebrating its centenary in 2024.

A decade prior to his Carmel visit, the twenty-something George Gershwin dazzled Manhattan’s high society with his Broadway musicals and Tin Pan Alley hits. In 1924 bandleader Paul Whiteman encouraged Gershwin to compose a virtuosic classical piece incorporating jazz. Many conservative concert-goers still considered the new art form a corrupting influence, but Gershwin vigorously defended it: “I heard [jazz] as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.”

Gershwin’s “jazz concerto” premiered at New York’s Aeolian Hall in a program with a lofty title: Experiments in Modern Music. At the end of a long program of works now mostly forgotten, Gershwin walked on stage to perform “A Rhapsody in Blue.”

The opening clarinet glissando perked up the audience. One hundred years later audiences are still at rapt attention. Rhapsody in Blue contrasts energetic solo piano episodes with broad, expansive orchestral themes. Though strictly notated, it possesses the essential quality of jazz: a sense of spontaneity and improvisation.

Fanfare for the Common Woman, No. 1 (1987)

Joan Tower (b. 1938)

Joan Tower composed Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 1 as the first in a six-part series inspired by Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man It shares the same instrumentation and much of its open resonant character. Tower’s lively textures and rhythmic drive set it apart. “It is dedicated to women who take risks and are adventurous,” says Tower. The composer dedicated this first work in the series to celebrated conductor Marin Alsop.

Joan Tower, one of the most lauded composers of her generation, became the first woman to win the distinguished Grawemeyer Award in composition for her orchestral work Silver Ladders in 1990. A native of New York city, she currently teaches at Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York.

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 “From the New World” (1893) Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)

Prior to Gershwin and Copland, European Romanticism dominated American concert halls. The audiences craved music they could call their own and, in 1892, wealthy New York arts patron Jeanette Thurber hatched a plan to provide it. She reached out to Antonin Dvořák, a composer who captured the soul of his native Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) through brilliant use of the region’s folk music. International hits like Slavonic Dances firmly established Dvořák as a leader of the Bohemian “national style.”

Why reach out to a European? Thurber wanted America’s young composers to follow in Dvořák’s footsteps by embracing their own folk music and, in the process, their own identity. Dvořák welcomed the idea and Thurber made him a handsome offer to head up the National Conservatory of Music, an institution she founded in 1885. Dvořák accepted and arrived in New York on September 27, 1892.

For Dvořák, authentic American folk music meant African American Spirituals and Native American music. He intended to immerse himself in that music and compose a new symphony incorporating it as a roadmap for his students to follow. Thurber suggested that he title it “From the New World.” Dvořák absorbed Spirituals via performances by Harry Burleigh, an African American baritone singer and student at the conservatory. To hear Native American music, Dvořák ventured to Iowa to attend Oglala Sioux ceremonies at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. For her part, Jeanette Thurber gave Dvořák a copy of Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha, about the Native American chieftain.

With all of this American influence and intention Dvořák produced a symphony squarely in the European Romantic tradition, containing an abundance of stirring, memorable themes that weave and develop throughout the four

movements. The first movement, Allegro molto, features a spritely transformation of the spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in the flute. The second movement, Largo, presents a beloved solo by the oboe’s deeper-voiced sibling the English horn, an instrument chosen for its similarity to Burleigh’s baritone.This poignant theme portrays the death of Minnehaha from Song of Hiawatha and later became a spiritual of its own, Goin’ Home

The third movement scherzo, Molto vivace (“very fast”), opens with a startling timpani flourish that echoes Beethoven’s Ninth symphony. The finale, Allegro con fuoco (“with fire”), opens with an aggressive motive in cellos and basses portending a tumultuous, but ultimately joyous, conclusion.

Musicologists have spilled a lot of ink discussing the New World Symphony’s “American-ness,” but maestro Leonard Bernstein sums it up best: “…what a beautiful ‘Old World’ Symphony it turned out to be.”

February 15 & 16, 2025

SUNSET CENTER, CARMEL

Sponsored by Bill and Nancy Doolittle and Beverly Hamilton

Jayce Ogren, Music Director and Conductor Simone Rubino, percussion

Canzon septimi toni No.2 [running time 5’]

The Unanswered Question [6’]

Eternal Rhythm [25’]

Giovanni Gabrieli (1554/7-1612)

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

Avner Dorman (b. 1975)

INTERMISSION [20’]

Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op. 68 [45’]

I. II. III. IV.

Un poco sostenuto –Allegro – Meno allegro Andante sostenuto Un poco allegretto e grazioso

Adagio – Più andante –Allegro non troppo, ma con brio –Più allegro

Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor [3’] featuring Carmel Dance Festival

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Johannes Brahms

The February concert will be rebroadcast on KAZU’s HD2 Classical station on March 8th and 9th, 2025, both at 4 PM.

Simone Rubino

After winning the ARD competition in 2014 and receiving the Crédit Suisse Young Artist Award in 2016, Simone Rubino has never stopped attracting enthusiastic audiences both as a soloist (with the likes of the Vienna Philharmonic and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks), under such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Manfred Honeck and Tan Dun, and in extraordinary collaborations, with the Labèque sisters and Beatrice Rana among others.

A regular guest at festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and La Folle Journée (both in France and Japan), Rubino has transported percussion from the periphery to the center of the classical, contemporary and even baroque scene.

The idea of building a bridge – between generations, styles, ideas – is central to Simone’s creative process. A quick look at his discography illustrates how Rubino’s process of juxtaposition (of old and new, of sacred and profane, of “popular” and “cultured”) lies at the basis of his diverse and audacious experiments: from Bach to Piazzolla and John Cage and collaborating with dancers and children’s choirs.

With his interest in generational clashes and synergies, the richness and challenges posed by the dialogue between the ancients and the moderns, between fathers and sons, between classic and contemporary, Rubino sets himself the challenge of bringing today’s generations together both live and in recordings.

He took part in BBT’s 20th anniversary celebrations in June 202, both at Bold Tendencies, Peckham in Kate Whitley and Multi-Story Orchestra’s Young Creatives’ Verified and at Wigmore Hall, where his BBT-supported film Il Ritmo della Terrawas screened.

“Ever since I met BBT and got the fantastic news of becoming one of the BBT Fellowship winners 2020, a wonderful relationship has opened up with the team, which is always ready to contribute with passion and love to help the artist and make dreams become true.”

Program Notes

By Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli

FEBRUARY 15-16, 2025

Concert Synopsis

Renaissance refrains echo from a glorious brass ensemble in Giovanni Gabrieli’s Canzon septimi toni No. 2, written while the composer served as organist of Venice’s vaunted St. Mark’s cathedral. American maverick Charles Ives asks “the perennial question of existence” in his deeply contemplative The Unanswered Question of 1908, a work that looked far into the musical future. A battery of bells, drums, and wood forges a striking contrast in Avner Dorman’s lively percussion concerto Eternal Rhythm. Johannes Brahms’ passionate Symphony No. 1 firmly established the Romantic master as a worthy successor to Beethoven. Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5, one of classical music’s greatest hits, provides a rousing conclusion.

Canzon septimi toni No. 2 (1597)

Giovanni Gabrieli (1554/7-1612)

Born during the Italian Renaissance, composer Giovanni Gabrieli is closely associated with the city of Venice. The organist and principal composer at St. Mark’s cathedral from 1585 until his death, Gabrieli is a key figure in the musical transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque era. His Canzon septimi toni is from a collection of brass music published as Sacrae symphoniae. The septimi or “seventh” tone refers to the mixolydian mode–a scale built on the seventh note above C. The Canzon’s main feature is antiphony, created by dividing the ensemble into groups placed throughout the space to foster a musical conversation in what we today call “surround sound.”

The Unanswered Question

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

On its surface, the life of composer Charles Ives appears perfectly ordinary. He grew up in the idyllic Connecticut town of Danbury, attended Yale University, and enjoyed a successful career in Manhattan selling insurance. On nights and weekends, however, Ives composed some of America’s most radical and visionary music. Inspired by the self-reliant and hyper-individual philosophy of New England Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Ives’ unencumbered imagination produced music without equal in its originality and prescience–anticipating polytonality, tone clusters, random “chance” elements, and other techniques that would later become commonplace. To paraphrase his biographer Jan Swafford, the only way to describe Ives’ music is “Ivesian.”

is a native of Israel now living in the United States. Dorman draws on a variety of cultural and historical influences in composing, resulting in music that affects an emotional impact while exploring new territories. His percussion concerto Eternal Rhythm was commissioned by the North German Radio Symphony Hamburg and George Enescu Festival Bucharest. It premiered in October of 2018 in Hamburg, Germany, with soloist Simone Rubino and conductor Stefan Geiger.

The Unanswered Question is a contemplative musical collage. It begins with a bed of placid strings evoking, in the composer’s words, “the silence of the Druids.” Against this backdrop a solo trumpet intones “the perennial question of existence” and a quartet of woodwinds portray “the fighting answerers.” As the title suggests, the brief drama is left unresolved and the strings disappear in “undisturbed solitude.”

Dorman provided the following program notes:

“Rhythm is, perhaps, the most fundamental aspect of music. In fact, the basic properties of rhythm express the essential signs of life. Without a pulse, we cannot live. Without pulsation and repetitive motion, the physical world cannot exist. To the best of our knowledge, the universe began with a large impulse, and the resulting oscillations, pulses, and beats, are what we still experience — an Eternal Rhythm that stretches from the beginning of time in perpetuity.

The concerto begins with a short introduction based on the harmonic series of overtones. Structured in five movements, each part is connected by a short interlude that echoes the familiar introduction. Each of the movements echoes the general idea of the harmonic series — an infinite series of oscillations — in a different way. The soloist alternates between a variety of percussion instruments, including >>>

Avner Dorman (con’t)

The music of the Balinese Gamelan inspires much of the first movement, employing a limited number of pitches, yet organizing them in complex rhythmic cycles. As in Gamelan music, metallic keyboard percussion features prominently, along with a variety of flute-like melodic combinations. As the movement progresses, energy accumulates leading to a virtuosic drumming section. The movement ends with a simple tune that repeats and recalls the opening materials.

The second movement begins with an expressive chromatic melody. The accompanying figure employs spiral structures oscillating at perfect fifths (the second interval of the harmonic series). As the movement develops, more spirals and melodic lines emerge and weave together into a complex web.

Rhythmic and angular, the third movement is structured as a call and response between the orchestra and soloist. Rising scales and syncopated rhythms come together to create a movement that is both light-hearted and energetic. While the scales initially appear to be standard at the outset, every few notes, a ‘wrong’ interval appears. As a result, as the scale rises, the music arrives at different and unexpected places. While the harmony of the movement is completely consonant (again drawn from the natural harmonic series), the rate of change is so fast that our ears hear what they interpret as ‘dissonance.’

Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 (1924)

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

The heart of the piece is its fourth movement. Featuring a Hebrew text from the 11th century, this movement raises deep questions regarding our interaction as conscious beings with the physical world:

Does the tear know whose cheek it runs down, Or the heart by whom it is turned? It turns to its light that is now in the ground, And the ground knows not who has returned. Returned is a grandee of our town, A man who feared God and was upright and learned.

(original poem by Yehuda Halevi, translated by Hillel Halkin)

The text figuratively reverses the roles of consciousness and physicality, asking whether one’s tears know who is crying them and whether the earth knows who lays in it. At this point in the piece we realize that the rhythm of life and rhythm of the universe are one and the same; our experience of the world is inevitably linked to the pulse of the universe and the oscillation of matter and energy.

The work ends with an exuberant movement: a celebration of life, energy and an ever-present and eternal rhythm.”

A few years before his death in 1897, Johannes Brahms attended the inauguration of a new concert hall in Zürich, Switzerland. He looked up and saw three faces painted on the ceiling: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. The weight of history was first placed on the German composer at age twenty by his mentor Robert Schumann who publicly declared Brahms a “darling of the Muses” and prophesied his future fame. By the end of his life, Brahms was widely acknowledged as the last in a long line of German masters and a keeper of the flame of “absolute music” whose beauty results from the classical values of inner logic and formal integrity. The more progressive music of the day (descriptive and pictorial “program music”) was the purview of his contemporaries Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner.

Brahms started sketching his Symphony No. 1 in C Minor in 1856. Sensitive to the public’s high expectations, he didn’t complete it until twenty years later. If Brahms was ever apprehensive, one would never know it from above it. Cellos and violins strive upward as woodwinds descend. This turbulent phrase sets the stage for the drama of the entire symphony.

The second movement is a soft, lyrical answer to the first. The striving is still present, but the orchestration is delicate. The use of intimate chamber music within the large orchestra is a practice Brahms would develop in his later symphonies and be taken up a generation later by symphonist Gustav Mahler. An exceptionally light and airy clarinet theme opens the third movement, un poco allegretto e grazioso (“moderately fast and graceful”). Rather than a traditional scherzo, Brahms opts for the relaxed quality of an intermezzo–literally an “in between” piece.

Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor (1869)

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms embraced Hungary’s “gypsy style” through the teachings of famed violinist Ede Reményi, a Hungarian whom Brahms accompanied as pianist on a concert tour in 1853. Brahms used Reményi’s frenetic melodies and energetic rhythms in his set of twenty-one Hungarian Dances for piano published between 1869 and 1880. This concert features Hungarian Dance No. 5 in an orchestral arrangement.

The weight of history was first placed on the German composer at age twenty by his mentor Robert Schumann who publicly declared Brahms a “darling of the Muses” and prophesied his future fame.

The finale is the symphony’s most substantive movement and one Brahms struggled to complete. In the opening Adagio, an air of mystery returns when the violins present a fateful minor-key theme. The music tip-toes along in plucked pizzicato strings until the sun breaks through the clouds with the famous “Alpen” theme in a prominent solo French horn. This is a melody that had personal significance for Brahms. During a vacation in the Alps, he wrote the melody in a birthday card to his lifelong confidante and unrequited love: Clara Schumann, Robert’s widow. After a soft trombone chorale, a noble and triumphant violin theme–perhaps a nod to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy–delivers the symphony from darkness to light.

Brahms appears to have met the public’s high expectations. In a review of the premiere, a critic referred to it admiringly as “Beethoven’s 10th.”

The Hungarian Dance No. 5 immediately launches into a passionate Allegro tempo led by a minor key violin theme. It bears the uncanny quality of joyous energy mixed with dark melancholy, a common trait in gypsy music. A contrasting major key section features the strings utilizing their bows to push extreme surges in volume that has a surprising effect. The opening violin theme returns and propels the dance to its exhilarating conclusion.

March 15 & 16, 2025

SUNSET CENTER, CARMEL

Simone Porter VIOLIN

Violinist Simone Porter has been recognized as an emerging artist of impassioned energy, interpretive integrity, and vibrant communication. She has debuted with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle and Pittsburgh Symphonies and with a number of renowned conductors, including Stéphane Denève, Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Nicholas McGegan, Ludovic Morlot, Donald Runnicles, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Manfred Honeck, Louis Langrée and David Danzmayr. Raised in Seattle, Washington, Simone made her professional solo debut at age 10 with the Seattle Symphony and her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London at age 13. In March 2015, Simone was named a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

In the 24/25 season Porter will return to Nashville and Baltimore symphonies, as well as Santa Rosa, Monterey and Westchester symphonies with a debut with Arkansas Symphony performing Glass’ 1st violin concerto and a visit to Johnson City Symphony in TN.

At the invitation of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Simone performed his work ‘Lachen verlernt’ (‘Laughing Unlearnt’), at the New York Philharmonic’s “Foreign Bodies,” a multi-sensory celebration of the work of the composer and conductor. Simone made her Carnegie Zankel Hall debut on the Emmy Award-winning TV show From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall followed in November 2016 by her debut in Stern Auditorium. She will return to Carnegie in December of 2024 together with cellist Joshua Roman as a part of their Well-Being Concerts. In June 2016, her featured performance of music from Schindler’s List with Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and members of the American Youth Symphony was broadcast nationally on the TNT Network as part of the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams.

Simone Porter performs on a 1740 Carlo Bergonzi violin made in Cremona Italy on generous loan from The Master’s University, Santa Clarita, California.

Program Notes

By Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli

MARCH 15-16, 2025

Concert Synopsis

In this program, suppressed voices struggle to break free. With Soul Force contemporary composer Jesse Montgomery pits a solo horn and serene strings against raucous percussion in a sonic drama inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We must respond to physical force with soul force.” Two Scandinavians endeavor to establish sovereign identities. Norway’s Edvard Grieg captured the character of a fairy-tale adventurer in his imaginative music to Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. Finland’s Jean Sibelius composed the patriotic tone poem Finlandia in anticipation of his country’s fight for independence. In 1806 Ludwig van Beethoven was facing several health crises and crippling physical pain. Yet in that year he produced an astonishing array of works now considered masterpieces–including his titanic Violin Concerto in D Major.

Soul Force (2015)

Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)

Jessie Montgomery, Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year, Jessie Montgomery, Musical America’s 2023

Composer of the Year, is a Grammy-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of twenty-first century American sound and experience. Soul Force was composed in 2015 and commissioned by The Dream Unfinished orchestra.

Montgomery has provided the following program notes:

“Soul Force is a one-movement symphonic work which attempts to portray the notion of a voice that struggles to be heard beyond the shackles of oppression. The music takes on the form of a march which begins with a single voice and gains mass as it rises to a triumphant goal.

Drawing on elements of popular AfricanAmerican musical styles such as big-band jazz, funk, hip-hop and R+B, the piece pays homage to the cultural contributions, the many voices, which have risen against aggressive forces to create an indispensable cultural place.

I have drawn the work’s title from Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in which he states: ‘We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”

Peer Gynt Suite (1875)

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen thought his surreal fable Peer Gynt would be impossible to stage so he initially published it as a poem intended solely to be recited aloud. Peer Gynt’s unexpected success convinced Ibsen to attempt a staging at Oslo’s Christiana Theater in 1876. Ibsen believed music was the key to unlocking the audience’s imagination so he turned to countryman Edvard Grieg, a composer known for his brilliant Piano Concerto and arrangements of Norwegian folk music. Apprehensive about the “unmanageable subject,” Grieg relented to Ibsen’s request and labored to an impressive ninety minutes of music divided into twentysix incidental pieces. Grieg published two suites from Peer Gynt. This program features Suite No. 1 in its entirety with the addition of “Solveig’s Song” from Suite No. 2.

Based on a Norwegian folk tale, Peer Gynt’s arrogant but loveable title character ventures from his home on a Norwegian farm, stumbles his way through a series of international misadventures, and returns home to receive love’s redemption.

Morning Mood opens in the Moroccan desert at dawn. A solo flute presents a theme that audiences may recognize as the classic “sound of daybreak” from television and films. Flute and oboe trade the theme back and forth giving way to the theme’s majestic statement for the violins.

Peer’s mother contemplates the end of her life in Aese’s Death. Opening with slow, mournful strings marked in the score as doloroso (“sorrowful”), the violin theme has the quality of a song without words made of melodies that continually reach upward. A second, descending phrase comes to rest on a final chord marked morendo (“dying”).

A Moroccan princess attempts to seduce Peer in Anitra’s Dance. Grieg sets the comical scene with a mischievous violin theme accompanied by plucked pizzicato strings playing a light rhythm marked Tempo di Mazurka, a reference to the waltz-like Polish dance form.

In Solveig’s Song, a farm girl devoted to Peer yearns for his return. It begins in a relaxed Andante tempo with a melancholy violin theme evoking Solveig’s suffering as she sits at her spinning wheel. The mood turns hopeful when Solveig reassures herself of Peer’s dedication to her.

In the Hall of the Mountain King depicts Peer’s narrow escape from the domain of the trolls. The plodding of pizzicato cellos and basses set into motion one of Grieg’s most famous melodies. The theme builds slowly and with a menacing inevitability, portraying the Troll King’s oncoming anger when Peer refuses to take his daughter’s hand in marriage. British playwright George Bernard Shaw called it “a riotous piece of weird fun.”

Finlandia, Op. 26 (1899)

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

As a Grand Duchy of the Russian Federation As a Grand Duchy of the Russian Federation, Finland enjoyed a reasonable amount of autonomy until Czar Nicholas II’s February Manifesto of 1899 forced the use of Russian language, currency, and religious practices on the Finnish people. That year Finland’s newspaper workers organized a benefit concert ostensibly to raise money for their pensions, but the concert’s true purpose was the promotion of a free press and a fostering of national unity.

Jean Sibelius composed a new piece for the occasion: A Press Celebration. Sibelius already achieved success with a patriotic work for chorus and orchestra, Kullervo, based on Finland’s national epic poem, the Kalevala. A Press Celebration consisted of a prelude followed by six tableaux, each portraying a different episode of Finnish history. The final tableau is the provocatively-titled “Finland Awakes,” which Sibelius separated to create the symphonic tone poem Finlandia

Finlandia’s brassy and defiant introduction awakens a sleeping giant. Woodwinds answer the brass gently with a lyrical refrain reinforced aggressively by the strings. Rapidly repeating brass figures animate the exuberant Allegro. Woodwinds present a reverent hymn melody, one that moved Finnish poet V.A. Koskeniemi to bestow it with patriotic lyrics and the title “Be Still, My Soul.” Finns embraced it as a song of national pride and it serves as the theme that triumphantly concludes Sibelius’ most famous work.

The final tableau is the provocativalytitled “Finland Awakes,” which Sibelius separated to create the symphonic tone poem Finlandia.

Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 (1806)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

In 1802 Ludwig van Beethoven, despondent over his increasing deafness, In 1802 Ludwig van Beethoven, despondent over his increasing deafness, wrote a letter to his brothers Carl and Johann from his country home in Heiligenstadt, Germany: “But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing…a little more of that and I would have ended my life. It was only my art that held me back. Oh, it seemed impossible to me to leave this world before I had produced all that I felt capable of producing…”

Those familiar with the life of Beethoven will recognize this as his famous Heiligenstadt Testament, a document that turned out to be less a letter than a manifesto. Beethoven not only never sent the letter, but he kept it close for the rest of his life as a comforting reminder of his mission.

For all of its reputation as a statement of artistic inspiration, the Heiligenstadt Testament also reveals a harsh reality. Age thirty-one and no longer able to perform, Beethoven faced the prospect of surviving only on his earnings as a composer. Even his distinguished predecessors Bach, Haydn, and Mozart never had that kind of economic insecurity.

Whether out of inspiration or desperation or both, Beethoven set out on a creative trajectory that is arguably unequalled in

history. In 1806 alone he composed an astonishing number of works now considered masterpieces: the three “Razumovsky” string quartets, the Fourth Symphony, most of the Fourth Piano Concerto, the second and third Leonore Overtures, a revision of his opera Fidelio, and the Violin Concerto in D Major.

Beethoven composed the concerto for soloist Franz Clement, a former child prodigy and popular Vienna concertmaster. Beethoven finished the score only two days before the premiere in December of 1806.

Having little time for experimentation, the concerto represents Beethoven at his most instinctive. The first movement, Allegro, ma non troppo (“not too fast”), establishes a march feel with four repeated timpani strokes. This uniquely simple motto ushers in a movement made from simple elements: four-bar phrases with flowing melodies made of step-wise scales. The slow movement, Allegretto, presents a serene theme embellished by ornamental filigree. The Rondo finale features “hunting” music with a galloping triplet feel and frequent French horn arpeggios. Historians speculate that Franz Clement composed the finale’s main theme himself to help Beethoven meet his deadline. Whatever the case, the theme and its accompaniment harken back to the more conventional, youthful Beethoven.

April 26 & 27, 2025

SUNSET CENTER, CARMEL

Adelle-Akiko Kearns CELLO

San Francisco native Adelle-Akiko Kearns began studying the cello at the age of 11 and continued her studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School with Irene Sharp, Bonnie Hampton, Joel Krosnick, and Sadao Harada. The recipient of a prestigious Artists International Award, Adelle made her New York recital debut at Carnegie’s Weill Hall in November of 2008. In 2006 Adelle performed the Japanese premiere of the Korngold Cello Concerto with the Tokyo Philharmonic, and was invited back to perform the Dvorak cello concerto with them the following year. Additionally she has made solo appearances with several American orchestras performing the concerti of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Khachaturian and Barber.

Adelle is currently the principal cellist of the Santa Rosa Symphony, assistant principal cellist of the Monterey Symphony, Symphony Silicon Valley, the Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra, and the Stockton Symphony, as well as a section cellist with the Marin Symphony. An avid chamber musican, she is a former member of the Farallon Quintet and has performed with acclaimed musicians such as Robert Mann, Jorja Fleezanis, Daisuke Suzuki, Axel Strauss, Ian Swensen, Paul Hersh, and the Da Capo Chamber Players.

Program Notes

By Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli

APRIL 26-27, 2025

Concert Synopsis

This program challenges us to hear familiar delights with new ears. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s memorable Eine kleine Nachtmusik (“A Little Serenade”) is a piece of light entertainment by a musical genius at the height of his power. Mozart’s mentor, Franz Joseph Haydn, pushed the technical limits of a then-new new solo instrument in his Cello Concerto in D major. Underrated German composer Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony is an emotional kaleidoscope of hyper-Romanticism, an evocative representation of a musical culture in transition. The program returns to Mozart with the celebrated overture to his opera The Marriage of Figaro, a comedic romp based on Pierre Beaumarchai’s appropriately-titled play, “The Crazy Day.”

Serenade in G Major “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”, K.525 (1787)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his wife Constanze departed Vienna in October of 1787 in a carriage bound for Prague to attend the premiere of his anticipated new . Just prior, the composer finished an untitled work for strings that he catalogued in his personal notebook as “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.” We know the German term “Nachtmusik” better in its Italian translation, “serenade.” By the 18th century the Serenade referred to an instrumental piece of light entertainment rather than the traditional medieval song of evening courtship. Therefore, Mozart likely intended his notebook entry not as a title but as an indication of the work’s genre.

The Serenade in G Major “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” is the kind of piece that Mozart, at the height of his powers, likely composed quickly and with little effort. It’s also the kind of piece whose uncomplicated perfection would have elicited envy in his contemporaries. The first movement, a lively Allegro, opens with one of classical music’s most famous “hooks”: a leaping gesture for the entire ensemble that Mozart’s audience would have recognized as a “Mannheim rocket,” named after its use by that city’s esteemed orchestra. The Romanza movement proceeds in a more relaxed Andante tempo and evokes a Baroque era dance called the gavotte. Mozart gives it a delightful rhythmic ambiguity with two repeated violin notes before cellos and basses play on the main downbeat. A buoyant Menuetto follows containing a smoother, more lyrical “trio” section, and the Rondo finale features surprising harmonic changes but never strays from its nimble simplicity.

Cello Concerto in D Major, Hob. VIIb/2, Op. 101 (1783)

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

The musicians at the Austrian Court of Esterházy nicknamed their esteemed director “Papa Haydn,” an apt title for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, Franz Joseph Haydn ran his rehearsals and performances as a strict task master with zero tolerance for tardiness or shenanigans. On the other, he fiercely protected his musicians, often defending them against press criticism and the whims of his boss Prince Nicholas II when the Prince threatened to fire them. In addition to his prodigious gifts as a composer, Haydn’s strong work ethic and professional savvy led to worldwide fame, considerable wealth, and a vast catalog of works–accomplishments made all the more impressive by the fact that he was largely self-taught and self-made.

Born of modest means in the small town of Rohrau, Austria, Haydn received little musical training as a child. Residents nevertheless took notice of him as a standout talent in the local boys’ choir. By his teens, he was determined to become a composer and took any odd musical job he could find. Haydn’s big break arrived at age 29 when he assumed the post of Kapellmeister at the Esterházy court, a position he held for the next thirty years.

Although Haydn composed 24 concertos (that we know of), he’s not particularly known for the genre. His output only suffers by comparison to the 104 symphonies, 84 string quartets, and the multitude of other works that make up his collection. Only two of Haydn’s concertos feature the cello, an instrument yet to emerge frequently in the solo spotlight. Previous cello concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini, and C.P.E. Bach provide notable exceptions.

Haydn’s strong work ethic and professional savvy led to worldwide fame, considerable wealth, and a vast catalog of works.

It’s believed that Haydn composed the Cello Concerto in D Major for Anton Kraft, the Esterházy orchestra’s principal cellist and a well-known virtuoso. True to character, Haydn pushed the envelope by requiring the cello soloist to play high above the rest of the orchestra in its singing soprano register. (Most of this concerto is playable on the violin!) In passages when the cello descends to its lower range, notice how Haydn reduces the orchestration to near silence to keep its dark tone audible. Haydn skillfully divides multiple melodic lines across the solo cello’s four strings generating the uncanny impression of counterpoint. Technical virtuosity aside, this concerto’s memorable themes and charming character account for its popularity and longevity. It set the stage for the blossoming of the cello concerto in the Romantic era with works by Schumann, Dvořák, and Tchaikovsky.

Chamber Symphony (1916)

Franz Schreker (1878-1934)

In the 1920s Franz Schreker’s name regularly graced marquees throughout Europe. A child of fin-de-siècle (“end-of-thecentury”) Vienna, Schreker composed operas and concert works that enjoyed hundreds of performances, and he served as director of Berlin’s prestigious music academy Hochschule für Musik. In 1933 the Nazi party took power in Germany forcing Schreker, born of a Jewish father, to end his career and bear Hitler’s infamous “degenerate” label. Schreker made plans to emigrate to the United States like fellow composers Arnold Schoenberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold but a severe stroke in 1934 cut short his plans and he passed away soon thereafter at age fifty-six.

Franz Schreker has always had champions and his music is enjoying a revival of late. In 2024 Germany’s Theater Bonn staged his opera Der Singende Teufel (The Singing Devil) and the concert works appear on programs with increasing frequency. Conductor James Conlon features Schreker in Recovered Voices, a series of recordings, concerts, and lectures that Conlon organized to promote music suppressed by political regimes.

Like much of the art of the fin-de-siecle, Schreker’s music is voluptuous and romantic but tinged with unsettling angst. To quote music writer Alex Ross, Schreker “delighted in the traumas of hypersensitive artist types.” He authored his own opera libretto texts populated with neurotic protagonists and femme fatales whose tumultuous music oscillates between joy and torment.

Schreker’s Chamber Symphony, a concert piece composed in 1916, traverses similar emotional terrain. It compresses a traditional four-movement form into one continuous movement. The “chamber” aspect refers to the fact that the orchestra is made up of twenty-three soloists–not in the sense that each gets the spotlight, but in the sense that no musician shares another’s part. Each may play an individual musical line allowing for extraordinarily rich harmony and complex counterpoint.

The opening sets a mysterious scene with a solo flute trapped in undulating repetition while entangled in a watery texture of piano, celeste, and harmonium. A tenacious theme in cellos punctuated by timpani drum introduce the Allegro vivace (“vivacious”) tempo. A more passionate, romantic theme in violins soars high above the orchestra with a heroism reminiscent of a film score from Hollywood’s Golden Age. The playful scherzo that follows reveals a refreshingly light texture initiated by the oboes. The finale weaves together previous themes concluding with a resolved major chord that retains a subtle dissonance.

Overture to The Marriage of Figaro (1785)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Pierre Baumarchais’ stage play The Marriage of Figaro, or The Crazy Day created a scandalous sensation in its Paris debut in 1783. With the French Revolution looming, this comic farce about a privileged, lusty aristocrat and the scheming servant who outwits him ruffled a few feathers, understandably so. In order to grant permission for Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte to stage their opera buffa (“comic opera”) version of The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna, government censors required edits. Da Ponte capitulated and removed the overtly political content but the result preserved its potency as a story of class frustration disguised as a raucous sex comedy.

The overture begins in a brisk Presto tempo, dropping the listener into the swirling atmosphere of an impending wedding. The first theme flutters with nervous energy, punctuated by startling timpani accents. An agitated transition led by violins and violas delivers a second, gentler theme that briefly relaxes the energy. The music’s jittery character resumes in the violins, supported by a heartbeat of cellos and bassoons. The overture’s extended coda builds to a resolute and confident conclusion.

... this comic farce about a privileged, lusty aristocrat and the scheming servant who outwits him ruffled a few feathers, understandably so.

May 17 & 18, 2025

SUNSET CENTER, CARMEL

Sponsored by Sherrie McCullough with additional support from the Martin R. Wolf Family Fund

Jayce Ogren, Music Director and Conductor

Joyce Yang, piano

Nicola Shangrow Reilly, violin

Mélodie [running time 4’]

Intertidal [10’]

Intertidal sponsored by the MONTEREY AUDUBON SOCIETY

The Fountains of Rome [15’]

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Jayce Ogren (b. 1979)

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

I. II. III. IV. I. II. III. IV.

The Valle Giulia Fountain at Dawn

The Triton Fountain in the Morning

The Trevi Fountain at Midday

The Villa Medici Fountain at Sunset

The Pines of Rome [23’]

The Pines of Villa Borghese

The Pines Near a Catacombe

The Pines of the Janiculum

The Pines of the Appian Way

Ottorino Respighi

INTERMISSION [20’]

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra

No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 [33’]

I. II. III.

Moderato Adagio sostenuto Allegro scherzando

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

The May concert will be rebroadcast on KAZU’s HD2 Classical station on June 7th and 8th, 2025, both at 4 PM.

the youngest contestant at 19 years old, she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and a year later made her New York Philharmonic debut.

She received the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant and earned her first Grammy nomination for her recording of Franck, Kurtág, Previn & Schumann with violinist Augustin Hadelich.

Notable orchestral engagements have included the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and BBC Philharmonic, among others.

As a recitalist, Joyce Yang has performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Chicago’s Symphony Hall, Zurich’s Tonhalle, and all throughout Australia.

In the 2024/2025 season, Yang shares her versatile repertoire performing with the orchestras of Indianapolis, Portland, Oregon, Buffalo, Nashville, Omaha, Rochester, Wichita, Quebec City, among others. She will be heard in recital in several cities including San Francisco, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Durham (Duke University).

Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She is a Steinway artist.

Sponsored by Chuck Wall

Nicola Shangrow Reilly

age of 12. A graduate of the Northwest School for the Arts in Seattle, the University of Puget Sound, and the University of Washington, she studied violin with Mikhail Schmidt and Edward Seferian. She has collaborated with Book-It Repertory Theatre and Seattle Repertory Theatre in providing music and soundscapes. In college, she lived in Granada, Spain and worked with the concertmaster of the Granada Symphony. Nicola founded two all-female chamber music groups: The Four Muses and The Bella Trio. She has recorded with Sera Cahoone, Sky Cries Mary, and Mastodon and performed with Orchestra Seattle, Northwest Sinfonietta, Bellevue Philharmonic, Seattle Rock Orchestra, I Cantori, Ensemble Monterey, the Western Stage, Carmel Chamber Players, and New Canon Theatre Company. Nicola is also the President and CEO of the Monterey Symphony.

Program Notes

By Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli

MAY 17-18, 2025

Concert Synopsis

This program resonates with the forces of nature and embraces a deep sense of place. Tchaikovsky’s haunting violin showpiece Mélodie, performed by Monterey Symphony’s own President and CEO Nicola Shangrow Reilly, comes from a suite fondly titled “Memories of a Dear Place.” Conductor Jayce Ogren conducts his own composition: Intertidal–an evocation of the wildlife and majesty of his native Pacific Northwest. Ottorino Respighi depicts the culture and landscape of Italy’s capital city with a pair of powerful tone poems for an enormous orchestra. Fountains of Rome awakens at dawn at the Valle Giulia fountain and conjures the mythical stories of the city’s famous wellsprings. Pines of Rome travels through the city’s outskirts with children playing in the forest, monks chanting in the catacombs, and ranks of soldiers marching along the Appian Way. Sergei Rachmaninoff became Tchaikovsky’s heir with his voluptuous Piano Concerto No. 2, a Late Romantic favorite anchored by its unforgettable “big tune.”

Mélodie

(1878)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

“I am living in a palace in the literal sense of the word,” wrote Tchaikovsky on his first visit to the Ukrainian town of Brailov in 1878. “The furnishings are luxurious…and at my disposal I have carriages, horses, a library, several pianos… What could be better?” The composer visited Brailov at the invitation of Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s benefactress and owner of the country estate where he retreated from bustling Moscow to compose and find inspiration. During his stay Tchaikovsky produced a suite for violin and piano fondly titled Souvenir d’un lieu cher (“Memories of a Dear Place”). He dedicated it to Brailov.

Mélodie, the suite’s final movement arranged here for orchestra, has become a favorite showpiece for violinists. Tchaikovsky referred to the violin’s yearning, nostalgic main theme as a “song without words.” Each new phrase displays the composer’s unique ability to generate anticipation with rapid successions of notes that suddenly slow in tempo and pause on a single sustained note. A delicate, fragile version of the main theme returns to the solo violin guiding the piece to a hushed conclusion.

Intertidal (2021)

Jayce Ogren (b. 1979)

Steel mills, coal plants and other massively polluting projects have long sought to build on the site. This tension between development and conservation—locally, globally—also shapes Intertidal. Following an introduction filled with fog, mist, gentle breezes, bird song, murmuration and bursts of sunlight, more jagged sounds start to compete. Things metal and mechanical grate against the beauty, disturbing the peace, with the potential to destroy.

The raucous dissonance of the first climax of Intertidal represents the ‘bottleneck, ‘ a moment of extreme discord with our planet.

Jayce Ogren provided the following program notes: “I grew up in Hoquiam, Washington, along the Pacific coast of the Olympic Peninsula. At the edge of town is Bowerman Basin, a vast intertidal zone of mud flats, reeds, alders, and at certain times of year, hundreds of thousands of birds. The area has now been designated the Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge, protecting one of the few spots south of Alaska where shorebirds stop during their migration. Every spring, people come from around the country and the world to see staggering numbers of sandpipers and dunlins against moody skies and distant old-growth evergreen trees. Their murmuration—the changing shapes and colors of flocks in flight, with the contrast of dull brown backs and shining white bellies as they catch the sun—is a wondrous and exhilarating sight to behold, and functions as the starting point of Intertidal

Throughout my life, Bowerman Basin has also been a target for industrial development. The shoreline and estuary are protected, but the land is not. The local airport lies just next to the refuge, threatening the safety and migratory patterns of the shorebirds.

Edward O. Wilson’s seminal book The Future of Life had a tremendous influence on me, especially his comparison of the environmental crisis to a ‘bottleneck.’ The path to balance and sustainability is exceedingly narrow. But we have a chance to make it through. The raucous dissonance of the first climax of Intertidal represents the ‘bottleneck,’ a moment of extreme discord with our planet. A small flame of nature and humanity remains, and builds— not without tension and missteps—to a state of harmony and balance in the bright shining sun.

Intertidal was commissioned by the St. Olaf Band and conductor Timothy Mahr, and was premiered in November 2021. The premiere of the orchestral version was performed by the University of Michigan Philharmonia in January 2024.”

The Fountains of Rome (1916) Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

I believe in the search for a new common language of European music,” wrote composer Ottorino Respighi, “In this quest, Italy can lead the way as she did four hundred years ago.” Born in 1879 and raised in the Italian city of Bologna, Respighi rejected the modernism of his contemporaries and forged a path that honored Italy’s heritage of melody and song. That path led the composer to Gregorian chant, the medieval liturgical melodies whose organic rhythms contained, in his words, “the indestructible germ of real human values.” These ancient chants served as the raw material of romantic and expressive works exemplified by his 1921 violin concerto, Concerto Gregoriano

In 1913 Respighi left his beloved home in Bologna to take a teaching position at the Santa Cecilia Music Academy in Rome. Initially, he felt overwhelmed by the capital city and, for two years, produced no new works. An idea finally came to light: an orchestral tone poem based on Rome’s famous fountains. Respighi’s wife, Elsa, described the new piece as “a deliberate attempt to overcome his anxieties by celebrating the city in music.” Premiered in 1916, The Fountains of Rome was a

tremendous success, and two sequels followed: The Pines of Rome and Roman Festivals. All the works in Respighi’s “Roman Trilogy” have become audience favorites for their evocative moods, colorful orchestrations, and epic scale.

The Fountains of Rome consists of four movements played without pause. The Valle Giulia Fountain at Dawn paints an impressionistic picture of daybreak in the Villa Borghese park, one of the quiet suburbs where Respighi often took respite. French horns provide the wake-up call to open The Triton Fountain in the Morning where mythical water nymphs play. A majestic ascending woodwind theme opens The Trevi Fountain at Midday depicting Neptune, God of the sea, riding a chariot at a rapid vivace tempo. The energy subsides to reveal The Villa Medici Fountain at Sunset, returning the listener to Rome’s outskirts as daylight dims and church bells toll.

The Pines of Rome (1924)

Ottorino Respighi

After The Fountains of Rome enjoyed international success, Respighi sought to create a companion work. Rome’s historic pine trees, in Respighi’s words, “bear witness to the principal events in Roman life” and proved a perfect subject. In an inverse of Fountains, The Pines of Rome begins in the daytime, continues through the night, and concludes at dawn. Respighi makes a surprisingly progressive move by requesting that a field recording of a nightingale’s song be amplified into the theater at the end of the third movement, a request not easily granted in 1916. The four movements of Pines of Rome are, like Fountains, played without pause.

Respighi provided the following descriptions of each movement:

“The Pines of the Villa Borghese: Children are at play in the pine groves of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of ‘Ring around a Rosy.’ They mimic marching soldiers and >>>

battles. They twitter and shriek like swallows at evening, coming and going in swarms. Suddenly the scene changes.

The Pines Near a Catacomb: We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant, which echoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced.

The Pines of the Janiculum: There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Janiculum’s Hill. A nightingale sings.

The Pines of the Appian Way: Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of unending steps. The poet has a fantastic vision of past glories. Trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul bursts forth in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline Hill.”

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 (1901) Sergi Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

“I feel like a ghost in a world grown Sergei Rachmaninoff once said. “I cannot cast out the old way of [composing], and I cannot acquire the new.” In Rachmaninoff we find, like Respighi, a composer rejecting modernism and adhering to the heritage of his homeland. Rachmaninoff’s refusal to evolve past Russia’s great Romantic tradition made him almost an anachronism, but he wore it as a badge of honor. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s works stand the test of time and he remains one of the great composers and piano virtuosos of his generation.

Rachmaninoff entered the Moscow Conservatory to study piano at age twelve. His interest moved quickly to composition, and his student works received praise from another Russian Romantic master, Tchaikovsky. The embarrassing failure of his ambitious Symphony No. 1 in 1897 sent Rachmaninoff into a depression, one so severe that he stopped composing. Out of desperation he agreed to see Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a psychiatrist pioneering the experimental new technique of hypnotherapy. As the composer recounts, Dr. Dahl recited continuous, constant affirmations: “You will begin to write your concerto … The concerto will be of excellent quality…” To Rachmaninoff’s astonishment the therapy worked and, in his words, “new musical ideas began to stir within me.” Dahl’s affirmations proved accurate: Rachmaninoff finished his concerto and audiences loved it. The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor premiered in April of 1901. On the score’s first page, the dedication reads “To Monsieur N. Dahl.”

Memories of the giant bells of the Russian Orthodox Church seem to ring in the introductory chords of the concerto. After reaching maximum intensity, the piano launches into a furious Allegro of virtuosic arpeggios that serves as a bed for a tragic, voluptuous theme in violins and violas marked in the score con passione (“with passion”). The common practice in a concerto is to pit soloist and orchestra in opposition to one another. In this concerto they augment and support each other as partners. The Adagio sostenuto (“slow and sustained”) movement features an enchanting theme in clarinet and that is later transformed by the piano and emerges again in the violins. The piano dazzles with flickering textures and arresting virtuosity in the finale Allegro scherzando (“fast and playful”). Solo oboe and violas play a slower, lyrical Moderato theme that provides a brief respite before Rachmaninoff finishes the work with a swift presto tempo of rhapsodic interplay among the various themes.

Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli’s innovative compositions for the concert stage, his deeply-felt scores for the studio and indie film worlds, and his skilled musical direction for artists from across the pop music spectrum earned him a reputation as a musician with a collaborative spirit and a broad vision.

His current release, Continent’s End, received “Critic’s Choice” from Opera News. The nine-song concert work for mezzo-soprano and piano on poems by California iconoclast Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) “perfectly embodies with its unpredictable harmonic twists and turns and its multi-tonality Jeffers’ hypermasculine, pantheistic, often erotic poetry” (Raphael’s Music Notes). Nominated for an Emmy Award at age twenty-one, Anderson-Bazzoli composed scores for twenty feature and short films including the Venezuelan thriller Ellipsis (Fox) and the technology documentary Revolution OS (7th Art), among others. He received a Sundance Composer Fellowship and served as copyist, music librarian, or orchestrator on over three hundred films and TV shows including Disney’s Encanto, The Lion King (2019), and Top Gun Maverick. As a conductor he worked with top recording artists Michael Bublé, Dr. Dre, Christina Aguilera, and She & Him (Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward) and served as editor and copyist for eminent composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

While growing up in Pacific Grove, California, Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli learned tuba at age eleven, graduated from Stevenson School, and later earned a B.A. in Tuba and an M.A. in Music Composition from UCLA. In 2022 he relocated from Los Angeles to Carmel with his wife Donna Eshelman, a neuromuscular therapist and choreographer.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS & ADMINISTRATION

BOARD OFFICERS

Charles Schimmel, Chair

Pinkie Terry, Vice Chair & Treasurer

Jeffrey Wallace, Secretary

Bruce Lindsey,

Immediate Past President

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Jeryl Abelmann

Susan Breen

Mollie Hedges

Wendi Kirby

Jenny Kuan

Lisa Lapin

Elizabeth Lyman

Diane Mall

Alan Mason

Noelle Micek

Nena Montgomery

Brenda Murdock

Lee E. Rosen

Maureen Sanders

William Sharpe

Donn Wilkerson

Martin Wolf

LEGAL COUNSEL

Mark O’Connor

HONORARY COUNCIL

Bill Doolittle

Bertie Bialek Elliott

Gabrielle Hahn

Carol Lee Holland

Sherrie McCullough

Joanne Taylor

ADMINISTRATION

Nicola Shangrow Reilly, President and CEO

Noemi Vera, Director of Operations

Virginia Marine, Director of External Relations

Julie Lim, Director of Patron Services

Tina Gomez, Director of Community Engagement

Drew Ford, Personnel Manager and Orchestra Librarian

PROGRAM BOOK

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Virginia Marine

PROGRAM BOOK DESIGN

Steve Averitt, Averitt Creative

PHOTOGRAPHY

Manny Espinoza

Randy Tunnell

Julie Chon

MONTEREY SYMPHONY

PHYSICAL: SW corner of 7th and San Carlos, Hampton Ct. Suite 7 (upstairs)

MAILING: PO BOX 7130, Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA 93921

(831) 646-8511

info@montereysymphony.org montereysymphony.org

DONOR LIST 2023-2024

These gifts were received from July 1, 2023 – June 30, 2024

AWilliam Abbott

Mr. and Mrs. Ron and Jeryl Abelmann

Mr. Steve Adams

Janet Abla and William Huggins

Regina Adams-Piazza

Ms. Robin Aeschliman

Gregory Ahn

Carl Alasko

Peter and Anne Albano

Mr. Timothy K. Allen

Mrs. Aileen Amadore

Leonard Anable

Amy Anderson

Ginger and James Andrasick

Jane Anfinson

Suzanne and Geoffrey Ashton

Anonymous Donors (2)

BMr. and Mrs. George and Kristina Baer

Christina Bailey

Mrs. Jane Barry

Dr. and Mrs. Seth Bates

Mr. David P. Beach

Ms. Dorothy L. Becker

Mrs Linda Beidleman

Ms. Anne Bell

Mr. Jim Bell

Hillary Bennett

Dr. and Mrs. Buzz Berger

Fay Biddle

Susan and Mads Bjerre

Gary and Carolyn Bjorklund

Margot Black and Mark Peters

Mr. and Mrs. Roger Bolgard

Stephanie Booth

Sandie Borthwick and Gloria Souza

Ms. Linda Brandewie

LTC and Mrs. William W. Breen

Mrs. Jean L. Brenner

Hilary and Peter Brewer

Amy Brewster

Mr. Paul Brocchini

Vernon Brown

Daniela Bryan

Ms. Betty Bunce

Michael Burger

Ms. Janet Bush

CDenise and Kevin Cardona

Carmel Valley Women’s Club

Ms. Kevin Ann Cartwright and Steve Eimer

Mary Castro

Keith Chase

Ms. Linda F. Chetlin

Mr. and Mrs. James and Sharon Chibidakis

Michael Clark

Sarah Elizabeth Clampett

Charitable Trust

Donna Clavo

Robert Cofresi

Ms. Nancy Collins

Ms. Katharine Comstock

Mr. Alan H. Cordan

Allison and Ty Cresap

Mr. and Mrs. Wayne Cruzan

DMrs. Lucia Dahlstrand

Ms. Victoria Davis

Mr. Gary Davis

June Dawson

Rebecca Dering and Richard Butterworth

Mrs. Sandra Dewey

Mr. Denys Diaz

Mr. and Mrs. Edward and Peggy Dickson

Carol and Daniel Dobberpuhl

Dr. Dara Dobry

Joyce Dodd-Gombrich and Peter Gombrich

Diana and Dennis Dolley

Nancy and Stephen Donaldson

Bill and Nancy Doolittle

Mrs. Susan W. DuCoeur

John and Eve Duddy

Dr. Anita Dunsay

Mr. and Mrs. John and Nancy Durein

EPatricia and Ronald Eastman

Priscilla and Bill Eckert

Mrs. Bertie Bialek Elliott

Frances Elgan & Werner Kunkel Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Janice Elster

Dr. John Enbom

Minna Engstrom

Dr. Bee Epstein Shepherd

FLawrence G. Finch

Dr. Anne R. Fitzpatrick

Dr. Robert Flanagan

Kit and Rick Franke

Frisone Family Foundation

Ms. Patricia Fritz

Mrs. Judith Furman

GJames and Jill Gabbe

Carrol Galanti

Maria Garcia

Carla and David Garnham

Mrs. Frances Gaver

Mr. and Mrs. Edward and Jeanne Gavrin

Priscilla Gilbertson

Ms. Margaret Goodman

Ms. Rosanne Gould

Robert M. Graham, Sr. Testamentary Trust

Ms. Wendy Grainger

Mrs. Sarah Grandcolas

Kathryn Greenwald and John Heyl

HMrs. Beverly Hamilton

Ms. Terry Hanson

Dr. and Mrs. David Hart

Ruth S. Hartmann Charitable

Remainder Unitrust

Ms. Shari Hastey

Mr. Russell Hatch

Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey and Janice Hawkins

Lenis Hazlett and Tim Bresnahan

Ms. Mollie Hedges

Adrienne Herman Trust

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Heston

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hierl

Mr. and Mrs. Don Hilburn

Dr. Astrid Holberg and David Awerbuck

Ms. Carol Lee Holland

Mrs. Marilyn Hopkins

Mrs. Arden Hoppe

Gurdon Hornor

Thomas Hout and Sonja Ellingson Hout

Katherine Hudson

Christine Hunsley

Gail Hurvitz and Jerry Newton

Curtis and Lyde Hussey

Dr. Robert Hylton

IWard D. and Mary T. Ingrim Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Robert Sykes and Kyoko Ito

JMs. Patricia Jacobs

Janzen Family Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Donna Jett

Mr. and Mrs. Patrick and Susan Jones

Sharon Jones

KPatricia and Zaheer Kasad

Marsha and Brian Kelly

Ms. Katherine Kennedy

Mr. and Mrs. Rob and Joan Kerr

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas and Shirley Kiatta

Mr. Montgomery Kingsley

Ann and Neville Kirby

Diana and Jerry Kitchen

Dr. and Mrs. David and Ila Kleinman

Mr. Richard Koepcke Jr.

Margaret Kromer

Shelley and Kenneth Kroopf

Ms. Margaret Kylander

LMr. and Mrs. Rodger Langland

Carol Lannon

Dana Lavina

Elizabeth Lays

Ms. Stephanie Lee

Mr. Brooks Leffler

Ms. Laurel Lembo

James Lico

Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Lindsey

Jesse Lipson

Mrs. Shelley Loescher

Tom and Vikki Logan

Edward and Lynn Lohmann

Dr. Herschel H. Loomis, Jr.

Mel Lopez

Mrs. Marjory Nash Lord

Mr. and Mrs. Skip Lord

Lynn Lozier

Aprille and Gilbert Lucero

The Todd Lueders Fund for the Arts of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Mrs. Valera Lyles

Mrs. Elizabeth Lyman

Ms. Jacqueline Lynch

William Lynch

Dr. Martha Drexler Lynn

MRobin Clark and Mary Mackiernan

Diane J. Mall

Mancina Family Trust

Lawerence and Angela Mann

Dianne Mar and Stephen Henry

Ms. Heather Marquard

Milton Marquard Jr.

Alan Mason and Timothy Rodrigues

Dr. Patricia Mayer

Ms. Candy McCarthy

Dr. and Mrs. Michael and MaryEllen McCormick

Mrs. Sherrie McCullough

Mrs. Janet McDaniel

Susan and Gene McFarland

Mr. and Mrs. Peter B. McKee

Ms. Kate McKenna

Mr. and Mrs. Ken and Francine Meadors

Dr. Carlotta Mellon

John and Noelle Micek

Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Micheletti

Ms. Nancy Mikita

Mr. and Mrs. Eric Millar

Alexanne Mills

Beverly and Carl Mitchell

Nena Montgomery

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Moore

Barbara Moore

Lucy Moore

Ms. Patricia Morgan

Brenda Murdock

Dr. Eileen Murphy

Ms. Martha Myszak

NMr. Harry Nagel

Dr. Lloyd P. Nattkemper

Mr. Gilbert Neill

Mr. Robert A. and Mrs. Pamela Nelson

OJulie and William Obering

Deirdre Obrien

Mrs. Gay O’Connor

Wendy Ograin

Jayce Orgen and Carly Berger

Fred Ortega

Ms. Mary Alice Osborne

Stephanie and Peter Oshman

PBerniece and Pat Patterson

Betsey and Steve Pearson

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Pearson

Susan Peck

Dr. Edward Penhoet

Mr. Jay Lower and Mrs. Sharon Pezzolo-Lower

Abby Pfeiffer

Ms. Mary Pommerich

RMr. Daniel Ramirez

Dr. and Mrs. Edward and Jane Ramirez

Oscar Ramos

Mrs. Martha Renault

Barbara Ricciardi

Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Riehl

Jean Rigg

Ann and Jeffrey Roberts

Ms. Gwynneth Romano

Mr. and Mrs. Lee E. Rosen

Nancy and Barry Rund

SCarolyn Samson and Darius Sadeghi

Jennifer Sander

Mrs. Carolyn Sanders

Mrs. Maureen Sanders

Ms. Barbara Schilling and Mr. Richard Carr

Mr. Charles Schimmel

Mrs. Jean Scholefield

Mrs. Carmen Scholis

Kass Schwin and James Riesenfeld

Carlleen and Lary Scott

Ms. Elizabeth Sebring

Ms. Mary Seiersen

Michele and Peter Serchuk

Mr. and Mrs. William Shane

Deborah and Dennis Sharp

Dr. and Mrs. William F. Sharpe

Dan and Kristin Simenc

Mr. Darold Skerritt and Ms. Judy Lind

Mrs. Ramona Smith

Mrs. Margaret Smith

The William H. and Patricia M. Smith

Family Foundation

Marcia and Sara Stearns

Stephanie Stevenson and Stuart Jacobs

Gary and Karen Stotz

Mr. Nicholas Sturch

Mr. Bill Sullivan

Maj. Charles Sullivan

TMrs. Alice Tao

Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Taylor

Mrs. Alden Taylor

Frederick A. Teichert

Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Terry

Mr. Richard Thau

Mr. and Mrs. Greg and Cheryl Thompson

Dr. Robert Thompson

Mr. Peter Thorp

Mrs. Mary Louise Tomblin

Merry Truckisis

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel S. Trust

Nancy and Timothy Twomey

James and Karen Tyler

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Tyler

UMs. Joan Ungs

VMr. Anthony Foster and Mr. Scott Vandrick

Mrs. Nancy Verska

Alexander F. Victor Foundation

Marguerite Volonts

Ms. Florence Von Platen

Ms. Mary Jane Vonnegut

WEdward Waggoner

Kristie Walker

Charles Wall

Mr. and Mrs. Jeff and Janet Wallace

Mr. and Mrs. John and Patricia Walworth

Mr. and Mrs. Lowell Webster

Bonni and Joel Weinstein

Mrs. Josephine V. White

Mr. and Mrs. Donovan White

Mr. and Mrs. Neal Whitman

Mrs. Susan Johnson Willey

Mr. and Mrs. Gerald and Dorothy Williams

Maryellen and Michael Wilson

Mr. and Mrs. Martin and Francesa Wolf

Mrs. Deanna A. Woodhour

Renate-Karin Wunsch

YMr. and Mrs. Cyril J. Yansouni

Phillip Yarbrough

Dr. and Mrs. George Yellich

Diane and John Young

ZMr. and Mrs. Dave and Judith Zaches

Susan and Richard Zare

Mr. and Mrs. Gene and Barbara Zellmer

DONOR LIST 2024-2025

These gifts were received from July 1, 2024 – Oct 1, 2024

AMr. and Mrs. Ron and Jeryl Abelmann

Julia and David Abelmann

Wendy and Mike Allard

Mr. Timothy K. Allen

Pauline Bach

Gary and Carolyn Bjorklund

Sandie Borthwick and Gloria Souza

Hilary and Peter Brewer

Mrs. Susan Britton

Vernon Brown

Julie Capili and David Glickman

Denise and Kevin Cardona

Sherry and John Chen

Mr. Alan H. Cordan

Dr. Dara Dobry

Mrs. Susan W. DuCoeur

Frances Elgan & Werner Kunkel

Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

FLawrence G. Finch

Cathy Findley

Charlotte and John Flanagan

Dr. Robert Flanagan

James and Jill Gabbe

Robert M. Graham, Sr. Testamentary Trust

HMrs. Beverly Hamilton

Ms. Carol Lee Holland

Christine Hunsley

Ward D. and Mary T. Ingrim Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Janzen Family Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Wendi Kirby and Brian Hoppe

LMr. Brooks Leffler

The Todd Lueders Fund for the Arts of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Mrs. Valera Lyles

Ms. Jacqueline Lynch

MDiane J. Mall

Milton Marquard Jr.

Rachel Mueller

Brenda Murdock

Dr. Lloyd P. Nattkemper

OMs. Mary Alice Osborne

PJessica Poll

RMr. and Mrs. Lee E. Rosen

SMrs. Maureen Sanders

Dr. and Mrs. William F. Sharpe

Catherine and James Sims

Ms. Margaret J. Sincoff

The William H. and Patricia M. Smith

Family Foundation

Joanne Storkan

Kathleen and Barry Swift

TMr. and Mrs. Dennis Terry

Dr. Robert Thompson

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel S. Trust

James and Karen Tyler

VMrs. Nancy Verska

Ms. Mary Jane Vonnegut

WCharles Wall

Mr. and Mrs. Jeff and Janet Wallace

Michaelin and David Watts

ZMr. and Mrs. Dave and Judith Zaches

Thank You to our Monterey Jazz Festival Donors!

RON AND JERYL ABELMANN

DAVE AND JULIA ABELMANN

WENDY AND MIKE ALLARD

JOHN AND SHERRY CHEN

DENISE FODERARO AND FRANK

QUATTRONE

DAVID GLICKMAN AND JULIE CAPILI

HONEST ENGINE FILMS

JIM AND CATHERINE SIMS

KEN AND KATHRYN SMITH

LEGACY SOCIETY

OUR LEGACY SOCIETY is made up of those individuals who wish to be a part of the future of the Monterey Symphony. We honor and celebrate this amazing group of individuals annually, and we cordially invite you to join the Legacy Society. Please let us know that you have included the Monterey Symphony in your planned giving.

Greta Alexander

Andrew Allison

The Dorothy L. Becker Trust

Bethany Beckman*

Gary & Carolyn Bjorklund

Lewis & Sally Cantor

Jacqueline M. Clampett-Jones

Katharine Comstock

Alan and Sandy Cordan

Leland E.* & Gloria U. Dake

Roderick* & Suzanne Dewar*

Bill & Nancy Doolittle

William & Nancy Fisher*

Robert M.* & Betty Jo Graham*

Louise Guard*

Ruth S. Hartmann*

Mollie Hedges

Dr. & Mrs. Michael Hendrickson

Jill Himonas*

Peter & Patti Hoss

Herschel & Shirley* Loomis

Marjorie Love*

Sally Maggio

Sherrie McCullough

Dick* & Grace Merrill

Mr. Don Newmark

Alyce M. Nunes*

John Philips & June Dunbar

Margaret Anderson Radunich*

Nicola Shangrow Reilly

Lee & Shirley Rosen

Barbara Rupp

Virginia Ruth

Charles Schimmel

William & Kristine Schuyler*

Robert Sykes

Joanne Taylor

Elizabeth Haywood Watt*

Neal and Elaine Whitman

Donald* & Renate Wunsch

*deceased

If you are interested in joining the Legacy Society, please contact Nicola Shangrow Reilly, President and CEO, at nreilly@montereysymphony.org or call our office at (831) 645-1131.

INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORTERS

The Monterey Symphony would like to thank the following Institutional Supporters:

AmazonSmile Foundation

Arts Council for Monterey County

Barnet Segal Charitable Trust

Berkshire Foundation

California American Water

Carmel Gives Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

City of Carmel-by-the-Sea

The Community Foundation for Monterey County, Community Impact

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Local Grantmaking

Harden Foundation

IBM Corporation Matching Gift Program

KAZU, 90.3 FM

KRML, 94.7 FM

Lauralie and J. Irvine Fund and the June P. Sheppard Fund for the Performing Arts of the Community Foundation Monterey County

Monterey Audubon Society

Montage Health

Monterey County Weekly

Monterey County Gives! Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Monterey Peninsula Foundation, host of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and PURE Insurance Championship Impacting the First Tee

Monterey Private Wealth

Music Performance Trust Fund

Pebble Beach Company Foundation

Sally Hughes Church Foundation

The Robert and Virginia Stanton Fund of the Community Foundation

The Symphony Fund at the Community Foundation for Monterey County

Taylor Farms

Yellow Brick Road

Media

PublicRelations

Mana g e m e n t

Season

July 12 – 26, 2025 88th

Pictured: Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Grete Pedersen with Festival Orchestra

DANIEL HENRIKS, MUSIC DIRECTOR

Junior Youth & Honors Orchestras, South County Strings, Orchestra in the Schools and Chamber Ensemble Programs Building the next generation through music!

Christmas with the Camerata Singers

ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH SALINAS

7:30 pm • FRIDAY DECEMBER 6, 2024

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH MONTEREY

7:30 pm • SATURDAY DECEMBER 7, 2024

2:30 pm • SUNDAY DECEMBER 8, 2024

ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH SALINAS 7:30 pm • FRIDAY APRIL 11, 2025

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH MONTEREY 7:30 pm • SATURDAY APRIL 12, 2025 2:30 pm • SUNDAY APRIL 13, 2025

Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024

Sunday, Mar. 9, 2025

Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024

Sunday, Apr. 6, 2025

Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025

Péter Tóth Solo Piano

Barry Douglas Solo Piano

Michelle Djokic, Cello Siwoo Kim, Violin

Daniel Fung, Piano

Johnathan Fournel Solo Piano

Gryphon Trio

Piano, Violin, Cello

Anna Fedorova Solo Piano

Manuel Barrueco Guitar