prélude

PRÉLUDE WEST MICHIGAN SYMPHONY / CONCERT MAGAZINE / VOLUME 7 / SEPTEMBER 2018 – JUNE 2019

TRUMPET

TUBA BASSOON

TROMBONE

CLARINET

OBOE FLUTE

HARP

PERCUSSION TIMPANI

PIANO

BASS

VIOLIN 1 CELLO

HORN

VIOLA SCOTT SPECK CONDUCTOR

VIOLIN 2

WHAT'S INSIDE

03

20

40

Message from the Music Director

Home for the Holidays

About: West Michigan Symphony

04

24 Choral Fantasy

41

About: Scott Speck

05

28

42

A Letter from the Board President

West Michigan Symphony Musicians and Board

06

Sustaining the Symphony

12

Classic Broadway

About: The Block

30

44

Disney in Concert: Around the World

About: Education

32

46

Festival Season Opening

Sharon Isbin & Beethoven's 7th

About: Community Engagement

16

36

Advertisers

Scheherazade Showcase

48

Slavic Fire

Masterworks

Pops

THEATER ETIQUETTE Latecomers will be seated by the ushers at a suitable pause in the program.

Cameras and recording equipment are strictly prohibited.

Accommodations are available for hearing-impaired patrons. Please see box office personnel.

We respectfully request that all light and sound emitting devices be turned off before entering the hall.

Patrons wearing hearing aids should be aware that such devices are sensitive to pitch and may transmit a shrill tone.

The wearer often is not conscious of this and nearby patrons may wish to alert them discreetly if this happens.

We appreciate your cooperation in helping to make our concerts as enjoyable as possible for everyone.

Thank you to tonight’s ushers—volunteers courtesy of Friends of the Frauenthal.

Program notes by Sarah A Ruddy, PhD

All sales are final. Dates, artists and programs are subject to change.

Frauenthal Theater Seating Chart MUSIC DIRECTOR Scott Speck ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF Andrew Buelow Executive Director Rhonda Bogner, CPA Chief Financial Officer Amanda Dykhouse Orchestra Librarian Kate McClure Patron Services Manager Perry Newson Director of Operations/Guest Artists Keely Payne Art Director/Marketing Manager Gabe Slimko VP of Operations/Orchestra Personnel Manager Karen Vander Zanden Director of Education and Corporate Engagement WEST MICHIGAN SYMPHONY CHILDREN'S CHOIR Beth Slimko Conductor Karen Vander Zanden Manager DEBUT STRINGS Angela Corbin Conductor Karen Vander Zanden Manager TICKET OFFICE / 231.726.3231 x223 360 W Western Avenue, Muskegon, MI 49440 Walk-in hours: M – F, 11 am – 4:30 pm / Phone hours: M – F, 9 am – 5 pm Online at westmichigansymphony.org

West Michigan Symphony Ticket Office 360 W Western Avenue, 1st Floor Muskegon, MI 49440 p: 231.726.3231 westmichigansymphony.org WMS Ticket Office Hours Monday – Friday, 11 am – 4:30 pm Phone Hours Monday – Friday, 9 am – 5 pm A special thank you to The Hearthstone Bistro for being our season-long ticket sponsor.

Symphony concert tickets are also available at startickets.com or 800.585.3737 (fees applied) or the Frauenthal Box Office.

2 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

FIND US ONLINE West Michigan Symphony Website: westmichigansymphony.org Facebook: facebook.com/wmsymphony Twitter: twitter.com/westmisymphony Email: info@westmichigansymphony.org The Block Website: theblockwestmichigan.org Facebook: facebook.com/AtTheBlock Twitter: twitter.com/attheblock Email: info@theblockwestmichigan.org Symphony concert tickets are also available at startickets.com, 800.585.3737

The West Michigan Symphony is an Equal Opportunity Employer and provides programs and services without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex or disability. Programs are funded in part by a grant from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Message from the Music Director

Dear Friends, As the West Michigan Symphony launches its 2018-19 season, I want to share with you why we musicians do what we do.

We do it for those moments of supercharged elation that only music can provide. You know the feeling. It's like standing astride the highest mountaintop, with a sheer drop on all sides, wind in your hair, overlooking the most astounding landscape.

Join us this season as we continue the popular Lunch n’ Learn series.

The Block | 360 W Western Ave | 2nd floor

The West Michigan Symphony's 2018-19 season is bursting with moments like that. The rocket-like beginning of Bernstein's Candide.

The infectious rhythms of Beethoven's Seventh. The roaring climax of Respighi's Roman Festivals. The ravishing violin solos in RimskyKorsakov's Scheherazade. The soaring slow movement of Chopin's Piano Concerto no. 2. The final thrilling bars of Shostakovich's Fifth.

These are moments when time and space disappear, when everything is distilled into the instant of music-making, and we are all connected as one.

Coffee and water provided, bring your own lunch Doors open at 11:45 am

Our musicians live for those moments, and we love nothing more than bringing them to you. We know that live music, played at the highest level, can stir a human soul like almost nothing else on earth.

Wednesday, October 31, Noon Lunch n’ Learn: Scheherazade Showcase

Among the magnificent guest artists we're presenting for the first time are the Russian pianist Natasha Paremski, superstar guitarist Sharon Isbin, and our own WMS principals Clinton McCanless and Matt Beck. Beloved pianist Alessio Bax also returns by popular demand. These artists join with the unsurpassed exuberance of the West Michigan Symphony to create life-changing moments for you.

Most importantly, we are grateful to you for joining in the thrill of our 2018-19 season. It's truer now than ever: none of this would be possible without you. Enjoy the concert!

Scott Speck Music Director

Wednesday, September 26, Noon Lunch n’ Learn: Festival Season Opening

Wednesday, January 30, Noon Lunch n’ Learn: Choral Fantasy Wednesday, May 8, Noon Lunch n’ Learn: Beethoven's 7th Wednesday, June 5, Noon Lunch n’ Learn: Slavic Fire

Sign up for our e-newsletter to get updates.

Email your name to info@westmichigansymphony.org.

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 3

A Letter from the Board President Welcome to the 2018-19 Season!

These are exciting times in West Michigan.

The “Watch Us Go” campaign has heralded a time of growth and revitalization that is bringing new business and new people to Muskegon and the surrounding shoreline communities. This renaissance is reflected in the arts and cultural community, with new executive leadership at the Art Museum, Civic Theater, Frauenthal, and our own West Michigan Symphony.

New “Travel-Friendly” schedule starting October 5 with daily flights* departing at 6 AM & 2:30 PM and arriving at 2:00 PM & 9:00 PM. Check MKG First at UNITED.COM or FLYMKG.com. *approximate times only

The mission of West Michigan Symphony is to inspire generations through music.

The Latin word for “inspire” means “to breathe into,” or “to impart a truth or idea to someone.” It reflects our belief that classical music is not simply entertainment, but a conveying force for creativity, ideas, and truth. “Generations” reflects the respect and value we hold for audiences of all ages—from children attending education programs to long-time concert subscribers—and our goal to provide programming appropriate to each.

How will our fulfillment of this mission grow and change over the next few years? The Board of Directors is actively working with Music Director Scott Speck and new Executive Director Andy Buelow to explore different ideas and options. We’re engaging our core stakeholders—sponsors, patrons, musicians and community leaders—in this conversation. We’re dialoguing with colleagues throughout the arts and cultural community to find ways to work together for greater impact and efficiency. And we’re exploring ways to reach out to areas of the community that have been underserved in the past.

Happy 102nd to the Howmet Playhouse!

How can you help? You’ve already done the most important thing: you’re here tonight. Keep coming back. Invite your friends and neighbors. Visit with staff and Board members in the lobby. Come to our Gala and our events at The Block. Tell us how we’re doing and share your ideas. Subscribe. Donate. Join us as part of the committed community of support that surrounds the Orchestra.

At WMS, we believe music is the great community builder, inspiring all generations. With your help, we’re making that come true... in Muskegon and throughout West Michigan.

Paul R. Jackson President, WMS Board of Directors

She is getting much-needed renovations and we plan to re-open in late 2018.

Follow our progress online. www.howmetplayhouse.org

231.894.4048 4 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

West Michigan Symphony Musicians FIRST VIOLIN Jennifer Walvoord concertmaster Gene Hahn assc. concertmaster Jacie Robinson asst. concertmaster Adam Liebert asst. principal Hannah Christiansen* Sofiya Levchenko Jennifer Kotchenruther May Shiraishi Oxana Sourine SECOND VIOLIN Amanda Dykhouse principal Mark Portolese assc. principal Katie Bast Francine Harris Karen-Jane Henry Natalie Hockamier Britta Bujak Portenga Rachele Torres Carol Wildgen Tatiana Zueva VIOLA Arturo Ziraldo principal Mikhail Bugaev assc. principal Sara Churchill Csaba ErdĂŠlyi R. Rudolph Hasspacher Jonathan Moore Valentina Shmyreva

CELLO Alicia Gregorian Sawyers principal Igor Cetkovic assc. principal Brook Bennett asst. principal Lee Copenhaver Chi-Hui Kao* Willis Koa Calin Muresan Lillian Pettitt

BASSOON Marat Rakhmatullaev principal Jason Kramer

BASS Dennis Bergevin principal Matthew Burri assc. principal Adam Attard David Chapman-Orr Lindsey Orcutt

TRUMPET Pamela Smitter principal Bill Baxtresser Anthony DiMauro

FLUTE Jill Marie Brown principal Marissa Olin Leslie Deppe piccolo

HORN Paul Clifton-O'Donnell principal Greg Bassett Lisa Honeycutt assc. principal Leah Brockman*

TROMBONE Edward Hickman principal Joe Radtke Evan Clifton bass trombone TUBA Clinton McCanless principal

OBOE Gabriel Renteria principal Rehmann - Musical Chair Sponsor Mika Allison Phil Popham English horn CLARINET Jonathan Holden principal Stephanie Hovnanian Lisa Raschiatore bass clarinet

TIMPANI Simon Gomez principal PERCUSSION Matthew Beck principal Joseph LaPalomento Eric Jones HARP Sylvia Norris principal *Leave of absence

2018/19 Board of Directors The WMS Board of Directors collectively provides a balanced matrix of skills and expertise, including legal, marketing, education, finance and public affairs. The common denominator is a passion for the symphony and its role in the community. The current WMS board consists of 12 members. All are major donors and subscribers, personally committed to the success of West Michigan Symphony. The Block Board provides oversight to the staff, serves as advisors to the WMS Board, and works as advocates and ambassadors throughout the community in furtherance of the mission of The Block.

WMS BOARD Paul R. Jackson President Gary Nelund Secretary Jan L. Deur Treasurer Peter Brown Immediate Past President

Pat Donahue Kevin Even Kimberly L. Hammond Kenneth Hoopes

Michael Olthoff Suzanne Richards Thomas Schaub Gilbert A. Segovia

THE BLOCK BOARD Emma Torresen Chair Josh Silvis Secretary Jason Olthoff Kerri Vanderhoff Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 5

Sustaining the Symphony Your contributions to West Michigan Symphony help to sustain a vital community resource.

65% of contributions to WMS during the 2017-18 season came from individual patrons, with the remainder generated from corporate and foundation support. We extend our deepest appreciation to you for helping to make WMS a cultural touchstone in our community.

The listings below represent total pledges and gifts by each patron household from August 1, 2017 through July 31, 2018. This includes our Annual Sustaining Fund, Education Fund, and other special initiatives. In particular, we wish to express our gratitude to Mike and Kay Olthoff for their support of our Year-End Matching Challenge and the May-June Dal Segno Challenge.

We have given careful attention to ensure a complete and accurate list. Please notify us of any inaccuracies by calling 231.726.3231.

$10,000 and up Pete & Sherry Brown Jan & Christine Deur Deborah DeVoursney Pat & Julie Donahue David Gerdes & Carolyn Smith-Gerdes Douglas & Janet Hoch Michael & Kay Olthoff Mary Price $5,000-$9,999 Michael & Bonnie Gluhanich Bari Johnson Scott & Donna Lachniet Monica Morse Steve & Deborah Olsen Jack & Becky Slimko Gary Verplank $2,000-$4,999 Charles & Gloria Alstrom Roger A. & Marilyn V. Anderson Fund of the Community Foundation for Muskegon County (CFFMC) Susan & Bill Bissell Jon & Jane Blyth Dr. Harold Bowman Andy & Beth Buelow Michael Cerminaro, DDS & Connie Verhagen, DDS Cathleen & Robert Dubault Darcy Dye William & Mary Lou Eyke Kimberly Hammond Kenneth & Maria Hoopes Paul & Karen Jackson Charles Johnson 6 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

Charles & Nina Johnson III Robert & Wendy Kersman Daniel & Sheryl Kuznar John & Jessie Martin Barbara Murphy Fred & Joanna Norris Greg & Shelley Olson Suzanne Richards & Lee Burlison Michael & Corina Soimar Scott Speck Alan Steinman Peter Turner $1,000-$1,999 Anonymous Bruce & Paula Baker Stephen & Martha Bartlett Frank & Susan Bednarek Fund of the CFFMC Cathy & Bernie Berntson Fund of the CFFMC Herbert & Anne Bevelhymer Ardy Bulthouse Kroes Mark & Kristina Clark Orville Crain & Susan Cloutier-Crain Marcia D'Oyly Sarah Emmerson Martha Giacobassi Dr. Tom & Heidi Hill Steve & Deb Jackson Family Fund of the CFFMC Amy Klop Robert & JoAnn Landman Clara Lang Mark & Bonnie Meengs Mary C. Payne Fund of the CFFMC Chip & Susan Sawyer Family Fund of the CFFMC Mort & Gayle Speck

Dr. F. Remington & Ginny Sprague Susan & Stephen Struck Louis & Marilyn Sytsma David & Linda Taylor Elinore Verplank L.J. Verplank Michael & Patricia Wade $600-$999 David & Lisa Bayne Gordon & Mary Buitendorp Maureen Campbell Dr. Donald & Nancy Crandall Mary Douville Charles & Lynn Freeman Robert & Clara Harrell Barbara & Hugh Hornstein Julie Johnson Thomas & Barbara Kelso Kent & Charlotte Krive Hester Newton Gary & Beth Post Denis & Barbara Potuznik Tom Schaub Carol Parker Thompson & Jerry Engle Bruce & Nina Van Dop Judy Wilcox Paul & Sherylee Wilson Kenneth & Marguerite Winter Jane Wright $300-$599 Christine Adams Luanne & Bill Baldridge Fund of the CFFMC Barbara Bates-Lalick Paul & Grace Benedict Gary & Rhonda Bogner David Bowen Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Brown Joe & Natalie Carmolli Curtis Chambers George & Deborah Chmelar Rudy & Pat Chmelar Dr. Paul & Nancy Christie Ruth Clark Lee & Darlene Collet Ryan & Angela Corbin Allan & Anne Dake Gust & Mary Danigelis Janet Day Bruce & Esther Drukker Valerie Eggert Joel & Linda Engel Timothy & Anne Erickson Kevin & Annette Even Eugene & Karen Fethke Carol Folkert Ron Fritz

James & Susan Geisler Donald & Betty Goodman Marjorie Harrison James & Julie Hegedus William & Nancy Hohmeyer Bruce & Donna Hood Wilda James John & Mary Jamieson G. Thomas & Pat Johnson Bruce & Mary Krueger Donna Little & Faye Redmond Charles & Kay Cater Matthews Roger & Jane Missimer Garry & Charlotte Olson Steve & Kathy Ongert Kenneth & Merilee Otto Janet Payne Dr. & Mrs. Richard Peters Gay & William Petersen Roy & Britta Portenga Sylvia Precious David & Georganna Rice Jane Connell & Steve Rosen John & Marilyn Ruck James Rynberg Steve Schneider & Keely Payne-Schneider Sue Schuiteman Vivian Sorden matched by Gerber Foundation Anbritt & Darlene Stengele Dr. Thomas & Nanci Stone Fund of the CFFMC George & Dottie Strabel Robert Strauss John Sytsema Dan & Ann Tabor Bryce & Marti Tallant Donald & Jane Tjarksen Roger & Rebecca Tuuk Rebecca Veltman Paul Voss William & Shirley Walther Jolee Wennersten Brewster & Mary Ellen Willcox S. Enders Wimbush and Elizabeth Portale Louise Yonkers Bob & Joanne Zayko Environmental Fund of the CFFMC $100-$299 Ross & Sandra Aden Anonymous (2) Tim Arter Larry & Sandy Austin Barbara Bakker Barbara Bancroft Douglas Bard Gus & Debbie Barkett Allen & Sandy Beck Stuart & Sherry Becker Paul & Joan Bergmann

David & Barbara Bloomfield Family Fund of the CFFMC Art & Marilyn Bolt Bonnie R. Borgeson Robert & Dr. Mary Boyer Gerald & Marcia Brichan Heather Brolick Jack & Marilyn Brown Dana & Claudia Bryant Michael & Joanna Buboltz Scott & Amy Buege Brett Burza Marie Bustin Joyce Carpenter Michael & Kristine Carpenter Bob & Charlotte Chessman Valerie Church-McHugh Mike Ciulis James & Diana Cornell Jerry & Nancy Cox Marjorie Cramer William & Carol Cross III David & Marie Culver Don & Kathy Dahlstrom matched by the Mott Foundation Paula DeGregorio & Frank Galante Dr. David & Susan Deitrick Ed DeJong & Diane Van Wesep Dortha Manning DeWit David A. Dietrich & Mary Jo Thies-Dietrich Hon. & Mrs. Graydon Dimkoff Herb & Karen Driver Dennis & Barbara Dryer Doris Ducey Dr. Beth Dunning Lower Janice Dyer Gregory & Amanda Dykhouse Jackie & Robert Engel Harold & Mary Englund Robert & Anne Erler Charles & Patricia Fisher Roberta Fleischmann Kurt & Cathy Forrest Tom & Janet Fortenbacher Dale & Bridget Fox Charlotte Franczek Alexandria Fricano Julie Giacobassi & Zach Hall Marjorie Gorajec Ann Gorter Marcia Grasman Sandra Green David Greer & Robby Cramer Rev. Gerald & Susan Hagans Raymond Hamil Helga Hamm Bill & Ellen Hanichen Gary & Anita Hasper Dr. Margot Haynes Mary Henry

John & Barbara Hermanson Patricia Hesling Roberta Hilleary John & Terry Hoekstra Cornelia Holley Mary Ann Howe Richard & Holly Hughes Pat Hunt Robert & Louise Jewell Don & Penny Johnson Robert & Susan Johnson James & Connie Karry David & Loretta Kasprzyk Jack & Joanne Kelley Robert & Norann Kelly Ed & Lynn Kinkema Justin & Kathleen Kleaveland Pete & Marilyn Kunz Peter Kurdziel Valerie Kushman Paul & Patricia Ladas Tricia Lamiman Wayne & Irene LaPointe Greg & Diane LaPres Joan Leder Ken & Christine Lee Frank & Gina Lister Mary Lombard Noel Long Sandy Majeski Cynthia Mazurek Shirley McIntire David & Carol McLeod Paul & Winnie McNergney Jim & Shirley Meeks Susan Meston Alice Michaud William & Mary Ellen Miller Robert & Susan Mixer Phyllis Monte-Holtrop Scott & Janee' Musselman Rhonda Myers Ed & Ginevra Naill Marvin & Connie Nash Gary Neal & Chris McGuigan Kathryn Neumann Perry & Deb Newson Dr. C. Michael & Mary O'Brien Kenneth & Katherine Olthoff Richard & Gay Pardini Thomas Pascoe & Jean Stein Leslie Petersen Frank Peterson David & Beth Pickard Charitable Fund of the CFFMC Albert & Eilzabeth Posthuma Jim & Debbie Potter Russell & Margaret Price Paul Prinzing William & Avis Volume 7 Randall September 2018 – June 2019 7

Susan Rehrer Dr. & Mrs. Gary Robertson David Roodvoets Susan Rositch John & Diane Saling Jane Schapka Jack & Jill Scheerhorn Schierholz/Hogan Family Fund of the CFFMC Richard & Jane Schneider Steve & Gwynne Schoff Robert N. & Merle N. Scolnik Advised Fund of CFFMC John & Elaine Severson Jocelyn Shaw & Doug Hannink Tom Shepherd Jay & Joanne Sikkenga Josh & Amy Silvis Joe & Colleen Skendzel Dar Smith Hayden Smith Helen & Jay Smith Joan Hilles Smith Shirlee Sodini Julie Stewart & Bill Papo Clifford & Lucia Storr Vicki Stroven Robert & Lee Suits Janet Sutherland Peter & Judy Theune Warren Tibbitts John & Judy Tierney Dr. Jane L. Toot Emma Torresen Richard & Marge Tourre Bill & Bev Uetricht John & Barbara Usmial Marilyn Vanderveen Jerry & Alice Waterous Jean Weirich Dan & Nancy Weller Ellie Williams Jan Witt Joe & Cindy Wolff Jon & Cathy Workman Robert & Mary Wygant

CORPORATE, ARTS COUNCIL & FOUNDATION DONORS $50,000 and up Nichols $20,000-$49,999 Hines Corporation Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs

8 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

$10,000-$19,999 DTE Energy Foundation Greatest Needs Fund of the Grand Haven Area Community Foundation (GHACF) Harbor Steel & Supply Corporation Meijer, Inc. Secure the Spirit Fund of the CFFMC Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge $5,000-$9,999 Fifth Third Bank Fremont Area Community Foundation Howmet Community Fund of the CFFMC JSJ Foundation of the GHACF Mercy Health Northern Trust PNC Bank Warner Norcross + Judd LLP Samuel L. Westerman Foundation Women's Division Chamber Of Commerce Youth Advisory Council of the CFFMC $1,000-$4,999 Comerica Bank Consumers Energy Eagle Alloy, Inc. Grand Valley State University Hearthstone Bistro Hooker DeJong, Inc. Hung & Elsie Liang Fund for Music of the GHACF Huntington National Bank Lake Michigan Credit Union Leonel L. & Mary Loder Fund of the CFFMC Lorin Industries Muskegon Community College Gary Nelund State Farm Insurance Newkirk Electric Pratt & Whitney Component Solutions, Inc. Sand Products Corporation Shoreline Insurance Agency, Inc. Wasserman's Flowers and Gifts Up to $999 Alpha Delta Kappa Ann & Bud Eichmann Fund of CFFMC Betten Baker Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Folkert Family Foundation Gerber Foundation Greater Muskegon Woman's Club MasterTag McCroskey Law Firm The Mott Foundation Muskegon Awning & Fabrication Salon 297 White Lake Community Fund

Endowment Fund STS Kerri Bennett John & Suzie Cress Thomas & Rita Higgins Linda Middleton Hester Newton Audrey B. Thompson

PAST PRESIDENTS CLUB The Past Presidents Club provides ongoing guidance, advocacy and support to the WMS long after its members' terms are completed. WMS thanks and honors these individuals for their generosity, collective wisdom, and continuing leadership.

Timothy Arter Susan Bissell Pete Brown Marcia D'Oyly Valerie Eggert David Gerdes David Hogan Holly Hughes Pat Hunt Paul Jackson Wendy Kersman JoAnn Landman

Clara Lang Fred Norris Kay Olthoff Michael Olthoff Sylvia Precious Chip Sawyer Ann Tabor Jane Toot Peter Turner Becky Veltman Jane Wright

COMPOSER CLUB Without the patroness Nadezhda von Meck, the music of Tchaikovsky might never have been heard. Archduke Rudolph was instrumental in advancing the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. In this great tradition, members of our Composer Club combine their resources to support the creation and performance of new music on the WMS Season.

Jon & Jane Blyth Gary & Rhonda Bogner Pete & Sherry Brown Jan & Christine Deur David Gerdes & Carolyn Smith-Gerdes Bari Johnson Gary Nelund & Angie Wasserman-Nelund Michael & Kay Olthoff Tom Schaub & Mary Price Jack & Becky Slimko Alan Steinman Peter Turner

EDUCATION FUND West Michigan Symphony is dedicated to providing programs that help children develop an appreciation for music that they will carry with them their entire lives. Your donations to the Education Fund help the WMS provide in-house music instruction programs as well as music enrichment opportunities that reach deeply into our local schools and community organizations.

Alpha Delta Kappa Ann & Bud Eichmann Fund of the CFFMC Larry & Sandy Austin Douglas Bard Gus & Debbie Barkett Barbara Bates-Lalick Frank & Susan Bednarek Susan & Bill Bissell Jon & Jane Blyth Ardy Bulthouse Kroes Brett Burza Comerica Bank Ryan & Angela Corbin William & Carol Cross III Jan & Christine Deur DTE Energy Foundation Cathleen & Robert Dubault Sarah Emmerson William & Mary Lou Eyke Fifth Third Bank Carol Folkert Fremont Area Community Foundation Martha Giacobassi Ann Gorter Greatest Needs Fund of the GHACF Hung & Elsie Liang Fund for Music of the GHACF Greater Muskegon Woman's Club David Greer & Ms. Robby Cramer Dr. Margot Haynes Roberta Hilleary Hines Corporation Stephen & Debra Jackson Julie Johnson Jack & Joanne Kelley Thomas & Barbara Kelso Robert & Wendy Kersman Daniel & Sheryl Kuznar Greg & Diane LaPres Mercy Health Roger & Jane Missimer Scott & Janee' Musselman Gary Neal & Chris McGuigan Nichols Steve & Deborah Olsen Garry & Charlotte Olson

Michael & Kay Olthoff Steve & Kathy Ongert Kenneth & Merilee Otto Thomas Pascoe & Jean Stein Mary Payne PNC Bank Denis & Barbara Potuznik Pratt & Whitney Component Solutions, Inc. Sylvia Precious Mary L. Price Fund of the CFFMC David & Georganna Rice Sand Products Corporation Fund of the CFFMC Jack & Jill Scheerhorn John & Elain Severson Peter Turner Roger & Rebecca Tuuk Daniel & Nancy Weller Samuel L. Westerman Foundation White Lake Community Fund Judy Wilcox Kenneth & Marguerite Winter Women's Division Chamber Of Commerce Jane Wright Louise Yonkers Youth Advisory Council of the CFFMC

FRIENDS OF CATHIE RYAN Roger & Marilyn Andersen Bruce & Paula Baker Jon & Jane Blyth Pete & Sherry Brown Jan & Christine Deur William & Mary Lou Eyke David Gerdes & Carolyn Smith-Gerdes Larry & Lari Hines Doug & Janet Hoch Bari Johnson Robert & Wendy Kersman Scott & Donna Lachniet Michael & Kay Olthoff Barbara Potuznik Jack & Becky Slimko Peter Turner Judy Wilcox

BLOCK UNDERWRITERS Pete & Sherry Brown Consumers Energy Jan & Christine Deur Eagle Alloy Grand Valley State University Hooker DeJong, Inc

Huntington Bank Lake Michigan Credit Union Lorin Industries Muskegon Community College Nichols Steve & Deborah Olson Shoreline Insurance Agency

2018 GALA TABLE SPONSORS Title Sponsor Nichols Presenting Sponsor Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge Susan & Bill Bissell Pete & Sherry Brown Community Foundation for Muskegon County Jan & Christine Deur Pat & Julie Donahue John Essex – Core Realty David Gerdes & Carolyn Smith-Gerdes Kimberly Hammond – Merrill Lynch Kenneth & Maria Hoopes Robert & Wendy Kersman Gary Nelund & Angie Wasserman-Nelund Michael & Kay Olthoff PNC Bank Suzanne Richards & Lee Burlison Peter Turner Warner Norcross + Judd LLP

MUSICAL CHAIR SPONSORS With this new gift designation, introduced in the fall of 2018 in anticipation of next year’s 80th Anniversary Celebration, corporations and individual donors may have their name listed as the sponsor of the musician or “chair” of their choosing for the entire season. For $1,000, a donor may underwrite one of our section players, and starting at $1,500, one of our principal musicians or section leaders. We thank Rehmann for their inaugural gift to underwrite the Principal Oboe Chair.

For more information about becoming a Chair Partner, contact Andy Buelow at 231.726.3231.

Rehmann 2018-19 Principal Oboe Chair Partner Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 9

Endowment Fund The Pathetique Symphony threads all the foul ditches and sewers of human despair; it is unclean as music well can be.

1898 critical review of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6, which went on to be lauded as his greatest masterpiece.

The future is hard to predict. But one thing we do know is that we will need resources to fuel our mission in the years to come. That’s why we’ve created the West Michigan Symphony Endowment Fund at the Community Foundation for Muskegon County.

Our fund is professionally invested for the long-term, and each year, 4% of the average fund balance is available to us to support our ongoing needs. The Foundation handles all administrative details and investment responsibilities for our fund, freeing us to concentrate on our mission.

We hope you will consider playing a part in our future. Whether through an outright gift or a designation in your will, a Legacy Gift will help to ensure that the concerts and youth education programs WMS provides today are still positively impacting the community tomorrow.

To learn more, please contact Andy Buelow at WMS, 231.726.3231 or abuelow@ westmichigansymphony.org; or Heidi Sytsema at the Community Foundation at 231.332.4107 or heidi@muskegonfoundation.org.

I’m Not There

Music has inspired filmmakers for generations, from the first ‘talkie’ featuring Al Jolson in 1927’s The Jazz Singer to the iconic 1970 rockumentary Woodstock to the recent Academy Award darling La La Land featuring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

Join us at The Block for casual evenings, including snacks and cash bar, as we explore the creative marriage of movies and music through a series of three acclaimed films.

Doors open at 6:30 pm Film starts at 7 pm Panel/discussion to follow

$8 general admission The Block 360 W Western Ave, 2nd floor, Muskegon theblockwestmichigan.org 231.726.3231 10 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

JANUARY 9 Biography, Drama, Music I'm Not There uses a nonlinear narrative, shifting between six characters in separate storylines "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan". Each character represents a different facet of Dylan's public persona: poet (Arthur Rimbaud), prophet (Jack Rollins/Father John), outlaw (Billy McCarty), fake (Woody Guthrie), "rock and roll martyr" (Jude Quinn), and "star of electricity" (Robbie Clark).

Once

FEBRUARY 13 Drama, Music, Romance A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.

Searching for Sugar Man

MARCH 13 Documentary, Biography, Music Though he faded into obscurity in the U.S., an early 70s musician known as Rodriguez became a huge hit in South Africa and was widely rumored to have died. Two obsessed fans set out to learn the man's true fate. Their investigation led them to a story more extraordinary than any of the existing myths about the artist. This is a film about hope, inspiration and the resonating power of music.

2018-2019

SEASON

Celebrating the strength and beauty of all women!

by Deborah Brevoort Nov. 16–Dec. 2, 2018

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Sept. 14–29, 2018

Season Tickets and Flex Packs now on sale !

231.722.3852

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Jan. 18–26, 2019

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Feb. 15–March 2, 2019

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Photography by Franco Emme (www.francoemme.com) courtesy of I Performers Produzioni Artistiche (www.disincantateilmusical.it)

May 2–5, 2019

muskegoncivictheatre.org

presents

October 20, 2018 7:30pm October 21, 2018 3pm

THE BEST ARRANGEMENTS AREN’T ALWAYS FINANCIAL ONES. Northern Trust is proud to support the West Michigan Symphony.

For more than 125 years, we’ve been meeting our clients’ financial needs while nurturing a culture of caring and a commitment to invest in the communities we serve. Our goal is to help you find perfect harmony.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

Joe Murphy, Wealth Strategist 45 Ottawa Avenue SW, Suite 500 Grand Rapids, MI 49503 616-233-0660 or jm541@ntrs.com northerntrust.com

WEALTH PLANNING \ BANKING \ TRUST & ESTATE SERVICES INVESTING \ FAMILY OFFICE

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 11

Festival Season Opening

passport was temporarily revoked. Yet while Hellman seemed to approach the libretto with bitterness, Bernstein latched on to the optimism of the title character and composed music that can only be described as ebullient.

Candide and Bernstein’s more famous work, West Side Story, were composed simultaneously and premiered only nine months apart.

Perhaps because of the enduring success of West Side Story, Bernstein is primarily known as a composer who incorporated jazz and other vernacular musical forms into his classical music. But it may be more accurate to note the variety of music he could assimilate. In the case of Candide, it was classical European dance forms like the Waltz, Gavotte, Schottische and the Mazurka: an array of styles befitting Candide’s globetrotting.

Scott Speck conductor Friday, September 28, 7:30 pm Frauenthal Theater Leonard Bernstein Overture to Candide Richard Strauss

Intermission

Der Rosenkavalier Suite, op. 59

Hector Berlioz

Roman Carnival

The Overture is not simply a pastiche of pieces from the operetta.

Instead, Bernstein builds a full—though only four-minute—sonata form out of four of its numbers. The first number of the operetta, “The Best of All Possible Worlds,” opens the overture with an unusual fanfare. This then stumbles into the Mazurka-like Battle Music, which makes up the first theme. Prominent cymbals and timpani sound like the clashing of swords, alternating with the rush of high winds and triangle. The warmer sounds of the low strings provide the second theme, taken from the lyrical duet between Candide and his beloved Cunegonde, “Oh Happy We,” where they imagine incongruent visions of their future life together. And finally, Cunegonde’s coloratura aria “Glitter and be Gay” ushers in the coda, which crescendos and accelerates to the end of the overture.

Ottorino Respighi Roman Festivals

I. Circus Games

II. The Jubilee

III. Harvest Festivals in October

IV. Epiphany

PROGRAM NOTES LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990) Overture to Candide It was librettist Lillian Hellman who approached conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein with an odd idea for a twentiethcentury musical drama: Voltaire’s 18th-century novella, Candide. The title character is an optimist who believes that everything happens for the best. Throughout the story, this philosophy is tested as terrible things happen to Candide: he’s evicted from his country, endures a shipwreck, is forced into the army, and gets caught up in the Spanish Inquisition. Hellman and Bernstein embarked on the project with the hope of drawing a parallel between the Catholic Church’s inquisitions, in which heretics were tortured and killed as an “act of faith,” and the era of McCarthyism, where artists and intellectuals were scrutinized for any perceived Communist or Leftist activities.

Bernstein himself suffered under McCarthy: in the early 1950s, his music was banned from U.S. State Department functions and his

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While the operetta had a rocky performance history after its initial short run in 1956, the overture was an instant hit. It received performances by over one hundred different orchestras in the two years following its 1957 premiere by the New York Philharmonic and has never faded from the repertoire. Since the composer’s death in 1990, the New York Philharmonic frequently performs the overture without a conductor as a tribute to Bernstein, one of the great American conductors and composers of the twentieth century.

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949) Der Rosenkavalier Suite, op. 59 Up until 1905, Richard Strauss was known as a pianist, conductor and composer of tone poems. The traditional music education provided by his horn-playing father prepared him well to compose safe, romantic music. But then in 1905, Strauss experienced a breakthrough success with his opera Salome, a work that was rebellious, modernist and shockingly sexual. With the royalties

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from that opera, Strauss built a villa in the Bavarian Alps where he set to work composing another modernist opera, Elektra, followed by something completely different: Der Rosenkavalier, composed in 1909-1910.

After composing Elektra, which was very Wagnerian in its dissonance and power, Strauss was overheard saying that he would now “write a Mozart opera.” He embarked upon the composition of Der Rosenkavalier with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The two created a work that is traditional rather than avant-garde, but with just the right amount of dissonance, chromaticism and orchestral virtuosity. Though it was set in Mozart’s 18th century, Der Rosenkavalier is known for its lush waltzes, a dance form that would not rise to prominence until a few decades later. Der Rosenkavalier was an instant success, premiering in Dresden but making its way to Vienna in only a few short months. It was so popular that there was a rush of “tie-in” merchandise including Rosenkavalier champagne and Rosenkavalier cigarettes.

In contrast to Candide, where Bernstein immediately churned out a concert overture based on the operetta, Der Rosenkavalier Suite did not appear until decades later and was not created by the composer himself. The arrangement of this Suite has been attributed to the conductor Artur Rodzinski, who premiered it with the New York Philharmonic in 1944. It was then published, with Strauss’s permission, in 1945.

In this 24-minute suite, the listener can hear the basic outline of the plot, though necessarily condensed and simplified from the nearly four-hour opera. The suite begins in the same manner as the opera, with bold horn music depicting a night of passion between the middle-aged Marschallin and her youthful lover, Octavian. We hear the horns vigorously work to a climax, followed by a luxurious afterglow. In the opera, we then learn that the Marschallin arranges for Octavian’s role in the engagement of her buffoonish cousin Baron Ochs to the young, rich Sophie. Not wanting Sophie to fall into a loveless marriage like her own, the Marschallin plays matchmaker for her young lover and the sweet Sophie. Her plan works, and when Octavian delivers Ochs’s silver rose as a symbol of his proposal—his arrival announced by a loud cymbal crash and a short fanfare—Octavian and Sophie fall in love. About five minutes into the Suite, we hear their first tentative and then tender duet, played by the oboe, at times intertwined with the warm, mellow (no longer thrusting) sounds of the horn. The sweet duet is brought to a close by the entrance of Ochs with his clumsy, chaotic music.

This leads into a waltz, to which Ochs dances and sings a bawdy song: “With me, no night will be too long for you... no room too small for you.” After a good six minutes of waltzing, the solo violin plays a nostalgic soliloquy, with the horn intermingling at times: the Marschallin sees that Octavian and Sophie are happy together and makes her exit. A duet between Octavian and Sophie is cut short with a roll from the snare drum. Ochs refuses to make a graceful exit, instead returning with one more pompous waltz before the boisterous coda—newly composed for the Suite—brings the piece to a rollicking close.

HECTOR BERLIOZ (1803-1869) Roman Carnival In 1830 Hector Berlioz won the prestigious Prix de Rome. The prize guaranteed income for the composer for a few years and finally convinced his parents, who were dead set on a medical career for their son, of the seriousness of his musical pursuits. A requirement of the award was that the composer had to travel to Rome for a year to study and be inspired by all that Italy had to offer. Berlioz left for Rome grudgingly just as his career in Paris was taking off with the success of his Symphonie Fantastique.

Berlioz was inspired by his time in Italy to compose the quasiconcerto for viola Harold in Italy and his opera Benvenuto Cellini. The opera tells the story of the adventurous life of the title character, a 16th-century Florentine sculptor. Cellini is in love with a young woman named Teresa, who is already betrothed to a rival sculptor.

When, during the course of the opera, Cellini finally completes the great statue of Perseus for the Pope, he also wins the hand of his beloved Teresa. The opera debuted in Paris in 1838 with no success.

Berlioz was humiliated and wrote that the experience was like being “stretched on the rack” and “dragged to execution.” The failure of Benvenuto Cellini closed the door to opera composition for Berlioz.

However, Berlioz did not abandon Benvenuto Cellini completely. In 1843 he returned to the score and revived bits of it in his Roman Carnival. With Berlioz conducting the premiere, it was an instant hit. The piece is essentially comprised of two themes. After a brief introduction, the English horn plays music from the first act duet between Cellini and Teresa. Amidst the tender music, listen for the tambourines that hint at the approaching carnival. Following rapid ascending and descending woodwind scales the orchestra plunges into up-tempo carnival music. Later, the duet theme returns briefly, played first by the bassoons, then passed around to the trombones and high woodwinds, before the orchestra launches back into the frenetic carnival music to close the piece.

Ever since the operatic flop of 1838, Berlioz had blamed his opera’s failure on the incompetent interpretation of the conductor of the Paris Opéra, Antoine Habeneck. Berlioz encountered Habeneck backstage after the victory of the Roman Carnival Overture. Berlioz wrote, “I saw Habeneck standing with a slightly crestfallen air, and said casually as I went past, ‘That’s how it goes.’”

OTTORINO RESPIGHI (1879-1936) Roman Festivals In 1928, Ottorino Respighi completed the last of his Roman trilogy, Roman Festivals. It was preceded by Fountains of Rome (1916) and Pines of Rome (1924). In each of these pieces Respighi, a master of the orchestral show piece, presented four distinct Roman vignettes, in this case four festivals of ancient and modern Rome. Thanks to Respighi’s acute tone painting and his notes in the score, the subject of each movement is unquestionable. He wrote:

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 13

I. Games at the Circus Maximus—A threatening sky hangs over the Circus Maximus, but it is the people’s holiday: “Ave, Nero!” The iron doors are unlocked, the strains of a religious song and the howling of wild beasts floats on the air. The crowd rises in agitation: unperturbed, the song of the martyrs develops, conquers, and then is lost in the tumult.

The first movement opens with a fanfare played by three buccine: Ancient Roman animal horns covered in brass that were used for military signals. Thankfully, Respighi indicated that offstage trumpets could substitute for these obsolete instruments. Respighi uses the lowest instruments of the orchestra to mimic the sound of growling beasts. You’ll first hear their terrifying, slow approach about one and a half minutes into the piece. This is followed by modal melodies played by woodwinds and strings that eerily suggest the plainchant of the Christian martyrs facing their deaths at the Circus.

II. The Jubilee—The pilgrims trail along the highway, praying. Finally, from the summit of Monte Mario, the holy city appears to ardent eyes and gasping souls: “Rome, Rome!” A hymn of praise bursts forth, the churches ring out their reply.

In the second movement Respighi presents the papal tradition of the Christian Jubilee, which brings pilgrims to Rome every fifty years.

The composer uses the 12th-century German Easter hymn, “Christ ist erstanden” (“Christ is Risen”) as the basis for this movement. As the movement proceeds, the pilgrims’ solemn, steady steps give way to more joyous sounds. Listen for church bells ringing at the end as they arrive in Rome.

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III. The October Festival—The October festival in the Roman castelli covered with vines, hunting echoes, tinkling bells, songs of love. Then in the tender even fall arises a romantic serenade.

The ceremonial horn calls at the end of the second movement turn into the more jovial call of hunting horns in the third. Violins and woodwinds play a sinuous, syncopated melody. And as the horn calls fade into the distance, pizzicato strings, mandolin and tambourine take over with a sleepy serenade.

IV. The Epiphany—The night before Epiphany in the Piazza Navona: a characteristic rhythm of trumpets dominates the frantic clamor; above the swelling noise float, from time to time, rustic motives, saltarello cadences, the strains of a barrel-organ from a booth, the barker’s call, the harsh song of the intoxicated, and the lively verse in which is expressed popular sentiments. “We are Romans, let us pass!”

In the final movement a clarinet solo begins the cacophonous sounds of the celebration. Brass instruments join in with fluttertongued notes, adding to the clamor of the Roman festival. And a solo trombonist plays the part of a drunken reveler with glissandos and stumbling melodies. The movement accelerates to a joyful finale, far from the terror of the circus that started the piece. •• Program notes by Sarah A Ruddy, PhD

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Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 15

Scheherazade Showcase

opera, Silent Night, which depicts the 1914 Christmas Truce among the Scottish, French and Germans during World War I. Puts was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, and grew up in Alma, Michigan. He studied at Yale University and the Eastman School of Music. He now teaches composition at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and directs the Composer’s Institute at the Minnesota Orchestra. His compositions include three operas, four symphonies and numerous other orchestral works, including several concertos.

Scott Speck conductor Matt Beck marimba Clinton McCanless tuba Friday, November 2, 7:30 pm Frauenthal Theater Kevin Puts Marimba Concerto

I. "… terrific sun on the brink"

II. "… into the quick of losses"

III. "… logarithms, exponents, the damnedest of metaphors"

Matt Beck, marimba Underwritten by WMS Composer Club

Ralph Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto in F minor

I. Prelude: Allegro moderato

II. Romanza: Andante sostenuto

III. Finale; Rondo alla tedesca: Allegro

Clinton McCanless, tuba

Puts has contributed to the concerto repertoire of common solo instruments like piano, violin, cello and flute. But he has also written concertos for instruments that are less often featured in front of the orchestra: oboe, clarinet, percussion and marimba. The marimba, though occasionally heard from the back of the orchestra, rarely takes the spotlight in orchestral repertoire. It is a percussion instrument comprised of a set of wooden bars struck with mallets.

Like a xylophone, its bars are arranged like keys on the piano, with wide, long bars at the lower end and narrow, short bars at the higher end. Resonators—pipes, usually made of aluminum— suspended underneath the bars amplify the sound. Compared to the xylophone—which does not have resonators—the marimba creates a lower sound and one that is much warmer and more resonant.

The marimbist strikes the instrument’s bars with mallets, the tips of which are made of rubber wrapped in yarn to create different levels of hardness and therefore different sounds. Marimbists can manipulate four mallets at a time as their hands make the mallets dance across the bars.

Kevin Puts writes of his Marimba Concerto:

Intermission Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade, op. 35

I. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship

II. The Tale of Prince Kalendar

III. The Young Prince and the Princess

IV. The Festival at Bagdad; The Sea;

The Ship Goes to Pieces on a Rock

PROGRAM NOTES KEVIN PUTS (1972-) Marimba Concerto Kevin Puts is an American composer whose works have been commissioned, performed and recorded by leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his SEASON & CONCERT SPONSOR

Marimba Concerto reflects my love of Mozart’s piano concertos, works with instrumentation similar to that of this concerto, i.e. a keyboard instrument with chamber orchestra. I decided to write a piece which is lyrical throughout and to feature the marimba in both melodic and ornamental roles. The influence of Mozart lies mainly in the relationship between the soloist and orchestra, one of near equality in which the marimba continually interacts with the instruments of the orchestra.

The work is comprised of three movements—fast, slow, fast— like a Mozart concerto, and each movement bears a subtitle taken from the poetry of my aunt, Fleda Brown. The overriding message is one of optimism and exuberance.

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958) Tuba Concerto in F minor Ralph Vaughan Williams, the British composer most known for his Britishness, took an interest in unusual instruments and timbres in

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16 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

the last decade of his life. This can be heard in his Eighth Symphony of 1956, which has a prominent part for vibraphone, and his Ninth Symphony (1958) which includes flugelhorn and three saxophones.

His Seventh Symphony (1953) employed a wind machine amidst a large complement of percussion instruments. He wrote a Romance in D-flat for Harmonica, Strings and Piano in 1951. And in 1954, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the London Symphony Orchestra, he composed his Tuba Concerto, to be performed by the Symphony’s principal tubist, Philip Catelinet.

This work—the first major concerto to be written for Tuba—was initially viewed as an eccentric piece from an aging composer.

But it soon became one of his most popular works. The tuba—the “youngest” instrument of the symphony orchestra—had only been on the orchestral stage for about 100 years when Vaughan Williams provided it with this essential piece of repertoire. At the start of the 19th century, driven by the necessity of a strong bass instrument for growing wind bands, instrument makers in Europe and the United States were simultaneously working on tuba-like instruments.

Wieprecht and Moritz won the tuba-race, filing a patent in Prussia in 1835 for the instrument that would become the modern tuba. By the second half of the 19th century, the tuba was firmly planted in orchestras. But it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that composers such as Vaughan Williams would shine a spotlight on the tuba, liberating it from its essential role of providing foundational bass lines in large orchestral and wind ensembles.

Vaughan Williams wrote:

The form of this concerto is nearer to the Bach form than to that of the Viennese School (Mozart and Beethoven) though the first and last movements each finish up with an elaborate cadenza which allies the concerto to the Mozart-Beethoven form. The music is fairly simple and obvious and can probably be listened to without much previous explanation.

In this short concerto for an under-appreciated instrument, you’ll hear the tuba shine. It will display its wide range; you’ll likely feel as well as hear its lowest notes. It may surprise you with its lyrical vocal quality, which is shown off in the Romanza second movement. And you will witness its agility as it plays fast passages, wide leaps, and quick trills, especially in the showy cadenzas that conclude the first and last movements.

NICOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908) Scheherazade, op. 35 In the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales, One Thousand and One Nights, the storyteller Scheherazade is a clever young woman. An evil Sultan, humiliated by the infidelity of one of his many wives, cooks up a plan to punish all women. He decides he will take a new wife each day, spend a single night with her, then execute her the next morning. The bloodshed ends with Scheherazade. She marries the Sultan in order to save all future young women from his egotistical

reign of terror. Beginning on her wedding night, she tells the Sultan fascinating stories, leaving him in such suspense each night that he can’t kill her; he has to hear the end of the story. After 1,001 nights of storytelling, the Sultan finally gives up his murderous plan and allows Scheherazade to live.

Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov set this narrative to music in his most popular orchestral work, Scheherazade (1888). Though obviously unable to capture 1,001 nights’ worth of stories, RimskyKorsakov aimed rather to portray a more general sense of the exotic locale and the enchanting narrative, writing that the listener “should carry away the impression that it is beyond a doubt an oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders.” He accomplished this in four movements, providing four vignettes framed by musical themes that represent the Sultan and Scheherazade.

The Sultan’s theme opens the piece, played in unison by the low instruments of the orchestra at a loud volume. It is a loud domineering theme; you can almost hear the big burly Sultan entering the room, daring anyone to challenge him. After some chords from the woodwind section, a solo violin presents Scheherazade's theme. In contrast to the Sultan’s, it is tender, winding its way effortlessly up and down the instrument, accompanied only by a softly strumming harp. After this introduction, Scheherazade launches into her story of “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” as the first movement is titled. Listen for the sounds of the undulating waves, sometimes wrapped up with the Sultan’s theme, as he seems to angrily pace the room as Scheherazade's story wears on.

The two characters’ themes sound repeatedly throughout the work.

Listen especially for Scheherazade (again played by the solo violin) at the start of the second movement, as she begins the story of “The Kalandar Prince.” Her theme returns to begin a cadenza-like passage for solo violin in the middle of the third movement, “The Young Prince and the Young Princess.” The Sultan and Scheherazade are otherwise absent from the third movement’s sweet love story. At the start of the fourth movement the Sultan’s theme, played at a brisker tempo, sounds impatient for the story to continue. His theme is followed by Scheherazade's, more ornamented than in previous iterations. The two themes alternate again before launching into the story of the “Festival of Baghdad,” a movement which returns to much of the musical material heard earlier in the piece.

At the very end of the piece we hear Scheherazade's theme once more played by solo violin. This is followed by the Sultan’s theme, which is now more subdued as he seems to have given up his vengeful quest to kill Scheherazade and all his future wives. The piece winds down peacefully, with many long, sustained notes in the solo violin. One can imagine that the victorious Scheherazade is finally allowed a decent night’s sleep. •• Program notes by Sarah A Ruddy, PhD

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 17

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CLINTON MCCANLESS Clinton McCanless is Assistant Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at the University of Louisville. An active soloist and chamber musician, he was a first prize-winner at the International Tuba Euphonium Association solo competition and the Leonard Falcone International Euphonium and Tuba competition. Mr. McCanless has been featured as a soloist with the Chicago Brass Band, Michigan State University Wind Symphony, the ITEC Festival Orchestra, and Muskingum Valley Symphonic Winds in Ohio, as well as with student ensembles at the University of Louisville. He has performed with the internationally acclaimed Dallas Brass and the Tuba Bach chamber festival and is currently a member of the Louisville Brass, the faculty brass quintet at the University of Louisville.

An active educator and clinician, Mr. McCanless has taught at summer programs at the University of Illinois, Michigan State University and at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. In addition to teaching at the University of Louisville, he has served on the faculties of Oakland University, Spring Arbor University in Michigan and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Mr. McCanless holds an undergraduate degree in Music Education and a Masters of Music Performance from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He is a candidate for the Doctorate of Musical Arts at Michigan State University. ••

MATT BECK Matthew Beck currently serves as Principal Percussionist with four orchestras: West Michigan Symphony, Lansing Symphony, Battle Creek Symphony, and Canton Symphony (OH). Formerly Principal Percussionist of the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra, Mr. Beck has also appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra, Honolulu Symphony, New World Symphony, and as Acting Principal Percussionist or Timpanist with a dozen other regional orchestras.

Mr. Beck currently teaches percussion at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. He was a winner of the Cleveland Institute of Music Concerto Competition and won the Drum Corps International Marimba Competition at age 16. Mr. Beck has performed on five continents as a participant in many music festivals including Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, Japan’s Pacific Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and Youth Orchestra of the Americas. He was also awarded a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center. He has performed under many prominent conductors, including James Levine, Gustavo Dudamel, Valery Gergiev, Charles Dutoit, Michael Tilson-Thomas, Yuri Temirkanov, and Neeme Jarvi.

Mr. Beck received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where his primary teachers were Richard Weiner (percussion) and Paul Yancich (timpani), both of the Cleveland Orchestra. He obtained his Master of Music degree from DePaul University, where he studied with Ted Atkatz of the Chicago Symphony. He has pursued additional studies with members of the Vienna Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Boston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra. ••

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 19

Home for the Holidays Teresa Cheung conductor Reeths-Puffer High School Choirs Regina Schlaff, director West Michigan Symphony Children's Choir Beth Slimko, director Miracle on 34th Street - Main Title Theme Deck the Halls

Bruce Broughton

Friday, December 14, 7:30 pm Frauenthal Theater “Dance of the Tumblers” from The Snow Maiden

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Traditional/Thomas Oliphant, arr. Carmen Dragon Away in a Manger

Suite from The Nutcracker, Op. 71 Overture Miniature March Chinese Dance Waltz of the Flowers

Peter Tchaikovsky

“Bellevue Carol” from Miracle on 34th Street Reeths-Puffer High School Choirs

Bruce Broughton

We Need a Little Christmas

Traditional, arr. Carmen Dragon

The Christmas Song

Mel Torme, arr. Robert W. Lowden

Winter Lullaby WMS Children's Choir

Pinkzebra

African Noel WMS Children's Choir

Victor Johnson

Jerry Herman, arr. Mark Hayes

“Trepak” from The Nutcracker

Peter Tchaikovsky

Hark! the Herald Angels Sing Felix Mendelssohn/Charles Wesley

arr. Carmen Dragon

White Christmas Reeths-Puffer High School Choirs WMS Children's Choir

Irving Berlin, arr. Roy Ringwald

It's the Most Wonderful time of the Year Reeths-Puffer High School Choirs

Edward Pola/ George Wyle

Christmas Singalong

John Finnegan

Intermission

Currently celebrating her 11th Anniversary Season as Music Director of Pennsylvania’s Altoona Symphony Orchestra, Teresa Cheung is in frequent demand for symphonic, choral, operatic and balletic productions throughout the United States and Canada.

TERESA CHEUNG

Recent engagements have found her on the podia of the Amarillo, American, Bakersfield, Mobile, New Amsterdam (NYC), Phoenix, Portland, Stamford, and Venice symphony orchestras; the Evansville, Fort Wayne and Rochester philharmonic orchestras; the Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, New York City Ballet, Brooklyn’s Regina Opera and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. She has also served as a conducting clinician for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’“Meet the Artist” program.

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20 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

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Ms. Cheung is widely known for her creative concert programming, collaborative projects and community outreach programs and for being a passionate advocate for music education for all ages. Since the beginning of her tenure in Altoona, Ms. Cheung has created numerous outreach programs that engage area children and high school musicians and choristers. The ASO has also performed with university ensembles from Penn State University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Juniata College. Her vision of extending the Altoona Symphony’s artistry and reputation beyond Central Pennsylvania led to an acclaimed project with Pennsylvania Council for the Arts’ Commonwealth Speaker Karl Middleman in “Dvořák’s New World,” a Humanities on the Road program that was broadcast throughout Pennsylvania in December, 2011.

the Michigan School Vocal Music Association and serves as District 7’s Solo & Ensemble Host. She is the Vocal Director of the RPHS school musicals. She co-directs a musical theater camp for grades 3-12 at Reeths-Puffer. Mrs. Schlaff has served as a classical soloist in Muskegon and Grand Rapids. She sang and directed her own a cappella quintet Good Clean Fun and she has performed leading roles with Muskegon Civic Theatre and the Howmet Playhouse. Mrs. Schlaff served as the music director for Montague United Methodist Church and she has repeatedly served as a judge for various singing competitions. Mrs. Schlaff’s most recent pleasure was to direct both of her sons, Brett and Kyle, in their school musical, Les Miserables. ••

Ms. Cheung began her career as Resident Conductor of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, where she was also conductor of the Evansville Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and Evansville Philharmonic Chorus. Among her many artistic initiatives, she led the Evansville Philharmonic Youth Orchestra on its first international concert tour to Japan in 2002. Subsequently, she served as Resident Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Conductor for the Bard Music Festival and SummerScape.

A native of Hong Kong, Ms. Cheung received her Masters Degree in Conducting from the Eastman School of Music. She is also the recipient of the JoAnn Falletta Conducting Award for the most promising female conductors. ••

WMS CHILDREN'S CHOIR REETHS-PUFFER HIGH SCHOOL CHOIRS This is the Reeths-Puffer High School Choirs’ third collaboration with West Michigan Symphony, and they are delighted to be a part of the program. The RPHS Choirs have also collaborated with groups such as: Muskegon Chamber Choir, Camerata Singers, Deke Sharon’s group The House Jacks, The MSU Spartan Dischords, MSU Ladies First, Good Clean Fun, and the Montague UMC Bell Ringers.

The RPHS Choirs consistently achieve Division I ratings at MSVMA District and State Events. The select ensemble Reeths-Puffer Madrigals has performed at the Michigan Music Conference and has been selected several times as Michigan Youth Arts Festival Finalists. It has also performed at Carnegie Hall and at St. Paul in New York City. The RPHS Choirs have collaborated with various instrumental ensembles, on works such as: Brubeck’s “To Hope,” Haydn’s The Creation, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Handel’s Messiah.

The RPHS Choirs present a bi-annual Renaissance Dinner Concert The Boar’s Head Feast, an annual Pops Concert, and over 400 choir students from grades 5-12 perform the National Anthem at homecoming with the RPHS Marching Band.

With an emphasis on the development of musical skills and understanding, WMSCC cultivates and encourages student achievement and provides quality music education with the goal of attaining the highest level of artistic excellence in choral music performance. The audition-based program was formed in 2013 to provide children in Muskegon and surrounding communities the opportunity to develop their voices, experience exciting singing opportunities and work with a professional arts organization. Each year members of the choir perform concerts at events and locations throughout West Michigan and often are invited to share the Frauenthal stage with West Michigan Symphony; this season joining them for Home for the Holidays. Open for children ages 8-13, WMSCC rehearses weekly at The Block and is under the direction of Music Director Beth Slimko.

REGINA SCHLAFF has been directing the choirs at Reeths-Puffer High School in Muskegon since 1994. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Western Michigan University and her Master’s degree in Music Education. She also studied opera in Graz, Austria, at the American Institute of Musical Studies. Mrs. Schlaff is a member of Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 21

BETH SLIMKO holds a Bachelor of Music in Music Education with dual concentrations in vocal and instrumental pedagogy from Butler University. She also holds a Masters Degree in Elementary Education from Grand Valley State University. Additional studies include time with the Indianapolis Children’s Choir under the mentorship of Henry Leck, the Zoltan Kodaly Pedagogical Institute in Hungary and many years of advanced training in Education through Music with the Richards Institute. Mrs. Slimko has also served as a clinician for Michigan Music Education Association events and Michigan State Vocal Music Association conferences as well as a Kindermusik instructor.

Mrs. Slimko is currently the director of the North Muskegon Public School middle school and high school choir program and is a vocal music specialist for elementary music. Under her direction the choir

program has grown from one choir with six female members in 2004 to five choirs and more than 230 dedicated members. North Muskegon choirs routinely receive superior ratings in performance and sight-reading in Michigan State Vocal Music Association events.

Her North Muskegon choirs have performed at such venues as the Frauenthal Center with the West Michigan Symphony, Downtown Disney at Disney World, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Lumberjack Hockey games, and many local and regional events.

In 2013, Mrs. Slimko helped found the WMS Children's Choir which she currently directs. She is also an accomplished oboist, pianist, and vocalist, continuing to perform in these areas as well as maintain a full private lesson studio. Mrs. Slimko resides in North Muskegon with her husband and two sons. ••

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Dec. 9: The Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys Note this is at 5 pm Dec. 18: Caron Farmer – "Christmas at the Organ" Feb. 26: Clifford Jazz Quartet – Ed Clifford, sax Mar. 26: Campbell's Clarinet Collage – Dr. Arthur Campbell, director Apr. 23: Reeths-Puffer Madrigal Singers

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Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 23

Choral Fantasy

PROGRAM NOTES

Scott Speck conductor Alessio Bax piano Chamber Choir of Grand Rapids Mark Webb, director Friday, February 1, 7:30 pm Frauenthal Theater Antonio Vivaldi

Gloria, RV 589 I. Gloria in excelsis II. Et in terra pax III. Laudamus te IV. Gratias agimus tibi V. Propter magnam gloriam VI. Domine Deus VII. Domine Fili unigenite VIII. Domine Deus; Agnus Dei IX. Qui tollis X. Qui sedes ad dexteram XI. Quoniam tu solus sanctus XII. Cum Sancto Spiritu

Chamber Choir of Grand Rapids

Intermission Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concerto no. 24

in C minor, K. 491

I Allegro

II. Larghetto

III. Allegretto

Alessio Bax, piano

Ludwig van Beethoven

Fantasia, Piano, Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 80 I. Adagio II. Finale

Alessio Bax, piano Chamber Choir of Grand Rapids

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ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678-1741) Gloria, RV 589 In 1703, the recently ordained priest Antonio Vivaldi was appointed maestro di violono at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice. The Pieta was not a hospital in the modern sense, but rather an orphanage. And being master of violin did not mean that Vivaldi only taught violin; his duties included teaching a number of string instruments, performing, directing ensembles, and composing both choral and instrumental music for Catholic liturgies at the church associated with the orphanage. There was high demand for his compositions, because the church services— which included such elaborate music that they were practically concerts—were an important part of the social calendars of Vienna’s nobility and foreign visitors. Vivaldi, employed at the Pietà for most of his adult life, composed nearly all of his major works there. And his reputation as a composer was built on the performances of the orphanage’s girls.

The Pietà housed many illegitimate children of Venice’s noblemen. As such, it was generously supported by those wealthy noblemen, and the children were well taken care of. In their time at the orphanage, boys learned a trade before being released into the world at age 15. Girls, on the other hand, received a music education. The most talented were invited to stay on at the Pieta, becoming members of the renowned orchestra or choir and taking on students of their own, both from within and outside the orphanage’s walls.

The orphan girls premiered many of Vivaldi’s works at Santa Maria della Pietà. In order to keep the young girls away from leering eyes and sheltered from the corruption and decadence of the wealthy audience, they performed from behind a screen in the upper galleries of the church. This lent an angelic but also theatrical and tantalizing air to the performances. It is in this context that the Gloria was likely first heard in 1715.

The Gloria sets the traditional Latin text of the Catholic Liturgy in twelve movements. Though Vivaldi set the Gloria at least three times, this version is the one that has endured in the modern concert hall after being found in a stack of forgotten manuscripts in the 1920s. The Gloria encompasses a wide range of styles and emotions. Homophonic syllabic chorale-like writing, as heard in the first movement, contrasts with imitative writing that harkens back to the Renaissance in the second movement; listen for the staggered entrances of “Et in terra...” from each section of the choir. Expressive arias for soprano (sixth movement) and alto (eighth movement) are MEDIA SPONSOR

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24 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

masterfully paired with solo obbligato parts for the violin and cello, respectively. And Vivaldi ties it all together by reprising melodies from the instrumental introduction in the eleventh movement before an elaborate fugue ends the piece. The demanding parts for the soloists and instrumentalists throughout attest to the talent of the girls for whom it was first written.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Piano Concerto no. 24 in C minor, K. 491 The years 1784 to 1786 were Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s busiest and most successful. His life was a nonstop stream of socializing, teaching, composing and performing. During these years he wrote The Marriage of Figaro (in just six months), composed the Symphony no. 38, and churned out a number of string quartets and smaller works. And he wrote a dozen piano concertos. His Piano Concerto no. 24 was the penultimate of this series, completed in March of 1786. In many ways, it marked a turning point in his style as he defied conventions at every turn. John Burk, in his book Mozart and his Music, wrote, “If Mozart could be said ever to have ignored his public in a concerto and followed completely his own inner promptings, it was here.”

The divergence from the norm begins with the key Mozart chose for this concerto: C minor. It is one of only two piano concertos he wrote in a minor key. Mozart favored major keys throughout his career. This is especially evident in the opera he was working on concurrently with this concerto: his comic opera The Marriage of Figaro is made up almost entirely of major key numbers. Musicologist Robert Levin speculates that, while Mozart was entrenched in the light, majorkey Figaro, he used three Piano Concertos (nos. 22, 23 and 24) as an outlet for his darker expression. Regardless of whether this was the impetus behind its minor key, there is no doubt that this concerto is more dramatic, passionate and emotive than Mozart’s earlier works.

In this work, Mozart expanded the piano concerto in many directions.

For one, he used the largest orchestra of any of his concertos, including both oboes and clarinets at a time when the clarinet was not yet a conventional orchestral instrument. Mozart manipulated this augmented woodwind section to great effect, highlighting their timbral variety throughout the concerto. Secondly, Mozart expanded the length and scope of the concerto, writing his longest concerto first movement to date. He did this by repeatedly adding new thematic material at unusual points. The piano soloist’s entrance is a passage of new material rather than the conventional soloist exposition of the primary theme, and the pianist presents a secondary theme that is entirely different from that which the orchestra exposited. Mozart then ingeniously recapitulates all the thematic material before the coda, where, yet again, the pianist interjects new virtuosic material.

Mozart is famously known for exceedingly neat manuscripts that have prompted speculation of divine inspiration: it is as though he heard complete works in his head and simply transcribed them whole. This is not true in this case, where one can see Mozart’s emotional working out of new musical ideas on paper. Musicologist Friedrich Blume describes the manuscript as evidence that this concerto was “obviously written in great haste and under internal strain.” There are numerous crossings out, obvious mistakes, and no tempo markings. Mozart left the solo part incomplete, often only writing the outlines of arpeggios and scalar passages and sometimes running out of room so that he had to make use of unused space on the trumpets’ or timpani’s staves. Yet, the work successfully made it through its premiere with the composer conducting from the piano and necessarily improvising much of his own part.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 24 has since been recognized as the composer’s greatest work in this genre. Brahms described it as “a masterpiece of art and full of inspired ideas.” And Beethoven, upon hearing the work in rehearsal, turned to his colleague Johann Cramer and said that “we shall never be able to do anything like that.”

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Fantasia, Piano, Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 80 (Choral Fantasy) In December of 1808, the already revered yet struggling composer Ludwig van Beethoven produced a benefit concert for himself. This blockbuster concert included the premieres of both his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, his Fourth Piano Concerto (performed by the composer), the aria Ah Perfido! and excerpts from his Mass in C Major. To conclude this already four-hour-long concert, Beethoven wanted a piece that would unite all the musical forces involved that evening: orchestra, solo piano, chorus and vocal soloists. To that end, he composed his opus 80 Fantasia for Piano, Chorus & Orchestra, usually known simply as the Choral Fantasy.

Beethoven rushed through the composition of the Choral Fantasy.

He then asked a poet—whose identity has yet to be agreed upon by scholars—to write text for the already completed music. There was a last minute substitution with an inexperienced soprano, the musicians had very little rehearsal time, the theater was bitterly cold and, according to Beethoven’s secretary Anton Schindler, the performance “simply fell apart.”

Thanks to the writings of the Austrian musician Ignaz von Seyfried, we have some idea why. He refers to “wet” vocal parts and a hurried rehearsal, during which Beethoven instructed the musicians that the second variation should be played without the repeat. However, during the performance, which came at the end of a very long evening, “absorbed in his creation, Beethoven forgot all about the

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 25

instructions which he had given, repeated the first part while the orchestra accompanied the second, which sounded not altogether edifying.” It was the concertmaster—not the hearing impaired composer/piano soloist—who noticed the mistake and tried to correct it by shouting directions to the orchestra. However, the whole thing “simply fell apart” and had to be re-started.

Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy is, of course, not the only great work of classical music to fail at its premiere. Other notable premiere debacles include Bizet’s Carmen, Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony. But out of this failed premiere came the seed for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In 1824, Beethoven described his current symphonic project (the Ninth) as “a setting of the words of Schiller’s immortal An die Freude (‘Ode to Joy’) in the same way as my pianoforte fantasia with chorus [the Choral Fantasy], but on a far grander scale.” Perhaps you will hear some of the similarities.

First of all, the key structure of the Choral Fantasy is similar to that of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Most obvious is the overall harmonic move from a minor key (C minor in the Choral Fantasy, D minor in the Ninth) to its parallel major (C major and D major, respectively). While this is not uncommon in works of the Romantic period, combining this modulation with the amplification of sound provided by the addition of chorus in the final minutes of both works produces a particularly striking effect. Secondly, you may notice that the primary theme of the Choral Fantasy sounds very much like the “Ode to Joy” theme of the Ninth Symphony. The two themes have similar phrase structure, simple stepwise motion, and steady, even rhythms.

And, as in the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven treats the theme to a set of instrumental variations before bringing in the vocalists. Finally, when the chorus joins in during the last few minutes of the piece, the poetry they sing has a similar sentiment to Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” Both refer to the common human experience and glorify the arts. In the case of the Choral Fantasy, “When music’s enchantment reigns, speaking of the sacred word, Magnificence takes form, the night and the tempest turn to light…When love and strength are united, Divine grace is bestowed upon man.” •• Program notes by Sarah A Ruddy, PhD

ALESSIO BAX Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Alessio Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone).

He catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions, and is now a familiar face on four continents as a recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist who has appeared with more than 100 orchestras.

This season, for his first appearances with three major orchestras, Bax revisits the two concertos heard on his acclaimed Signum disc, Alessio Bax Plays Mozart. He makes his Boston Symphony debut playing

26 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

Mozart’s C minor Concerto (K.491) with Sir Andrew Davis. On a spring tour of Australia and New Zealand he reunites with the eminent conductor to perform the same work in his Melbourne Symphony debut. He also leads Mozart’s B-flat major Concerto (K.595) from the keyboard in his first performances with the Sydney Symphony. Bax completes the tour with solo recitals and his Auckland Philharmonia debut in the Grieg Concerto, with Tadaaki Otaka conducting. His international lineup also includes concerts in Israel and a Japan tour featuring dates with the Tokyo Symphony, solo recitals, and chamber music at Le Pont International Festival in Ako and Himeji.

Back in the U.S., he performs Brahms’s Second Concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony under Miguel Harth-Bedoya; and the Barber Concerto with the Kansas Symphony conducted by Edo de Waart. He rejoins the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for a Hungarianthemed program and season-closing concert. A full summer of festivals—highlighted by his debut at France’s International Chamber Music Festival of Salon-de-Provence—rounds out the season. He also returns to the Great Lakes Music Festival, Saratoga Chamber Music Festival, and Tuscany’s Incontri in Terra di Siena festival, where he serves as Artistic Director.

Alessio Bax graduated with top honors at the record age of 14 from the Conservatory of Bari, his hometown in Italy. In 1994, he moved to Dallas to continue his studies at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, where, with Lucille Chung, he is now the Johnson-Prothro Artist-inResidence. He also serves with Chung as co-artistic director of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation, created to support young pianists’ careers. A Steinway artist, Bax lives in New York City with Chung and their four-year-old daughter, Mila. Beyond the concert hall he is known for his longtime obsession with fine food; as a 2013 New York Times profile noted, he is not only notorious for hosting “epic” multicourse dinner parties, but often spends his intermissions dreaming of meals to come. ••

CHAMBER CHOIR OF GRAND RAPIDS The Chamber Choir of Grand Rapids was established in 1978. The flexibility and artistry of 40 musicians in the greater West Michigan area has enabled it to bring Grand Rapids audiences concerts as diverse as our community.

Don’t let sinus problems keep you from a performance.

Perhaps the most notable of its accomplishments, the Chamber Choir raises social awareness by collaborating with community organizations including the Holland Youth Advisory Panel, Heartside Ministries, Degage, Senior Neighbors, Children’s Assessment Center, Silent Observer and The Butterworth Foundation. The Chamber Choir continues to collaborate with other fine arts organizations, including the Grand Rapids Ballet Company, Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, St. Cecilia Youth Chorale, West Michigan Symphony, Aquinas College, Grand Valley State University and many local musicians.

Invitations have taken the choir from the baroque halls of Saint Petersburg, Russia, to refined classical venues such as the famous Haydnsaal in the Esterhazy Palace in Eisenstadt, Austria. Their voices have been raised with those of the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the legendary Tabernacle in Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Utah, where they took part in the recording of the Tabernacle Choir's international Sunday morning television and radio international broadcast. They also joined the choir to perform a solo concert in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. In West Michigan, the Chamber Choir has performed around the city of Grand Rapids including the Basilica of St. Adalbert, the Cathedral of St. Andrew and St. Cecilia Music Center.

DR. MARK WEBB received his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Music Education and Choral Conducting from the University of Michigan, and his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Choral Conducting from Michigan State University. Dr. Webb retired from public school teaching in 2009, after serving for 33 years as a secondary vocal music teacher in the Kentwood and East Grand Rapids Public School Districts. His past positions include Choral/Opera Coordinator and Director of the International Choral Ensemble at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, Visiting Professor of Music at Albion College, and President of the Michigan School Vocal Music Association—receiving the honor of Teacher of the Year from that organization in 2003. Mark is currently Associate Professor of Music at Aquinas College and director of the Chancel Choir at Mayflower Congregational Church. ••

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Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 27

Classic Broadway

LISA VROMAN Lisa Vroman’s current season includes celebrations of the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein with the Philly Pops and Santa Barbara Symphony. She is part of an ongoing multimedia symphony project produced by Music Unwound and the Kurt Weill Foundation which features the work of Kurt Weill, Berthold Brecht and Marc Blitzstein.

Scott Speck conductor Lisa Vroman soprano Doug LaBrecque tenor Friday, March 15, 7:30 pm Frauenthal Theater Times Square from On the Town

Leonard Bernstein

Wunderbar

Cole Porter

I Want to Go Back to Michigan

Irving Berlin

Trolley Song/I Could Have Danced All Night

You’ve Got that Thing

Alan Jay Lerner/ Frederick Loewe arr. Blaine Cole Porter

Alexander's Ragtime Band

Irving Berlin

Rodgers and Hammerstein Tribute Love, Look Away Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’ Lonely Goatherd

Richard Rodgers/ Oscar Hammerstein

S’Wonderful

George Gershwin

I Got Rhythm

George Gershwin

Ms. Vroman starred on Broadway as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, garnering Theatre Critics’ awards in a record breaking run in San Francisco and a return engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. She starred as Rosabella in The Most Happy Fella, making her New York City Opera debut with Paul Sorvino playing the title role; and appeared as Charlotte in A Little Night Music with Michigan Opera Theatre. She starred as Lili Vanessi in Kiss Me Kate with both Glimmerglass Opera and the MUNY Theater of St. Louis; and as Marian Paroo in The Music Man with Shirley Jones and Patrick Cassidy at The Bushnell Theatre in Hartford. She sang the role of Birdie in Regina with Utah Opera, conducted by Keith Lockhart; made her New Jersey Opera debut as Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, directed by Ira Siff; and premiered and recorded John Musto’s Bastianello and William Bolcom’s Lucrezia with the New York Festival of Song.

Her Broadway debut was in Aspects of Love, and she was the first to play both Fantine and Cosette in Les Miserables. For PBS she was featured with Colm Wilkinson and Michael Ball in Cameron Mackintosh’s Hey, Mr. Producer! at the Lyceum Theatre in London—a Royal Gala attended by Queen Elizabeth II. She sang the role of Johanna in the San Francisco Symphony’s Emmy Award-winning Sweeney Todd in Concert, with Patti Lupone and George Hearn. Her appearance as Laurey in Oklahoma was filmed live in concert for the BBC Proms Festival at Royal Albert Hall in London.

Intermission 76 Trombones

Meredith Willson

Till There Was You

Meredith Willson

Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat Bring Him Home

Frank Loesser Claude-Michel Schoenberg

Phantom of the Opera Selections Think of Me All I Ask of You Music of the Night

Andrew Lloyd Webber

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28 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

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Other roles have included Lucy Brown in Threepenny Opera at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco; Laurie in The Tender Land at the Cabrillo Music Festival with Marin Alsop; Maria in The Sound Of Music with Tulsa Opera; Josephine in HMS Pinafore and Yum-Yum in The Mikado with the Utah Opera; and Anna in The Seven Deadly Sins with the Utah, Florida, Portland and Parnassus symphonies.

Her many performances have included a multi-city concert tour of China; concerts of Cole Porter’s 1928 La Revue des Ambassadeurs with L’Opera de Rennes in France; and playing the role of Maria Callas in Terence McNally’s award winning play, Master Class.

With a repertoire that ranges from Stravinsky to Broadway, Ms. Vroman is a frequent guest with orchestras across the U.S. and worldwide. She made her debut at The Hollywood Bowl in Disney’s 75th celebration, singing and dancing with legend Dick Van Dyke in a medley from Mary Poppins. Her solo CD, Broadway Classic, features Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and 47 of San Francisco’s finest orchestral players. She had the honor of singing at the Profiles in Courage Award dinner at the JFK Library as a guest of the Kennedy family. She has also sung on separate occasions for Queen Elizabeth, former presidents Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. ••

DOUG LABRECQUE Doug LaBrecque thrilled theatre audiences as The Phantom and Raoul in the Harold Prince production of The Phantom of the Opera.

In addition, Mr. LaBrecque has starred on Broadway as Ravenal in the Hal Prince revival of Showboat, a role he also performed in Canada and Chicago. He was featured in Oscar Hammerstein’s 100th Birthday Celebration on Broadway at The Gershwin Theatre, and toured nationally with Les Miserables. Regionally, Mr. LaBrecque has performed leading roles in Candide, A Chorus Line, and Man of LaMancha, among many others. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he was featured in the world premiere of A Wonderful Life, written by Sheldon Harnick and Joe Raposo, and starred in the premiere revival of Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s Love Life.

One of the most prolific concert performers of his generation, Mr. LaBrecque has been a soloist with the National Symphony, Israel

Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, and the Atlanta and San Francisco symphonies, among many others. In the last few years, Mr. LaBrecque’s U.S. appearances have included the Minnesota Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, and the orchestras of Detroit, Indianapolis, Houston, Baltimore, New Jersey, Dallas, San Diego, and Utah. He has appeared with Marvin Hamlisch at Ravinia and with the Chicago and Pittsburgh symphonies.

Mr. LaBrecque recently made his Carnegie Hall and Boston Pops debuts. Alongside Jeff Tyzik, he appeared with both the St. Louis and Seattle symphonies for their holiday celebrations. With Peter Nero he was featured in “Broadway Showstoppers,” a live recording with Mr. Nero’s Philly Pops. Other special engagements have included singing with Carole Bayer-Sager at Feinsteins’s in Manhattan and the Cinegrill in Los Angeles; performing alongside Broadway legend Jerry Herman with the Naples Philharmonic; and appearing onstage with senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch (singing together!) at Hickory Hill, the legendary home of Ethel Kennedy.

International engagements have included the Korean National Symphony, Shanghai Radio Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Vancouver and Calgary symphonies, the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony, and numerous return engagements with the Israel Philharmonic. Mr. LaBrecque recently appeared in Alba Italy as the guest soloist in an all Bernstein concert and returned to the International Music Festival in The Czech Republic. ••

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 29

Disney in Concert: Around the World Matthew Kraemer conductor Friday, April 26, 7:30 pm Frauenthal Theater Disney Classics Overture The Little Mermaid Orchestral Suite Pocahontas Suite (Edited)

Recognized for his musical sensitivity and energized sense of interpretation, Matthew Kraemer is quickly making his mark among young American conductors for his inspired performances and versatility. The Buffalo News has noted, “He presents a tall, dignified and stately podium presence with a quite clear beat, a good sense of shaping melodic lines, and an all business attitude that focused on the music without any histrionics.”

Following an extensive international search, Mr. Kraemer was appointed Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra in July 2015. He additionally serves as Music Director of the Butler County Symphony and was recently appointed Music Director of the Marion Philharmonic, beginning with the 201819 season.

His active guest conducting schedule has included appearances with many of the nation’s finest orchestras, including the Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Houston, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Saint Louis symphonies, among others. In Europe, he has appeared with the Vidin Philharmonic and the Orquesta de Cadaqués; and in Canada with the Mississauga and Niagara symphonies and the Hamilton Philharmonic. The 2018-19 season features return engagements with the Indianapolis and Toledo symphonies and the Rochester and Erie philharmonics.

Mary Poppins Fantasy Beauty and the Beast Suite Intermission Frozen Suite (from Hal Leonard) Disney's Aladdin Orchestral Suite Mulan Suite Pirates of the Caribbean (from Hal Leonard) The Lion King Song Suite Presentation licensed by Disney Concerts © All rights reserved

MATTHEW KRAEMER

Mr. Kraemer served as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic from 2009 to 2014. A passionate advocate for new music, he has led composer readings and workshops with several orchestras in the United States, in addition to leading BPO and ICO EarShot readings with the American Composers Orchestra. Recognized for his advocacy of music education and devotion to young audiences, he has created numerous arts education programs and taught at music festivals both in the U.S. and abroad. Under his leadership, the Buffalo Philharmonic’s award-winning education concerts expanded to reach more than 40,000 students throughout western New York. Mr. Kraemer has additionally served as Music Director of the Erie Chamber Orchestra (2012-17) and associate conductor of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra (2007-10).

Recipient of the distinguished Herbert von Karajan Conducting Fellowship and the Bruno Walter Career Development Grant, Mr. Kraemer served a residency with the Vienna Philharmonic at the 2006 Salzburg Music Festival. He studied conducting in Vienna, Austria with Salvador Mas Conde and was twice a fellowship conductor at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. An accomplished violinist in his own right, he was a member of the Nightingale String Quartet. When he is not performing, Mr. Kraemer enjoys cooking, running, and reading. He and his wife Megan reside in Indianapolis with their sons Gabriel and Nathaniel.

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Sharon Isbin & Beethoven's 7th

PROGRAM NOTES Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Three Latin American Sketches

Scott Speck conductor Sharon Isbin guitar Friday, May 10, 7:30 pm Frauenthal Theater Aaron Copland

Three Latin American Sketches I. Estribillo II. Paisaje Mexicano III. Danza de Jalisco

Antonio Vivaldi

Guitar Concerto in D Major, RV 93 I. Allegro giusto II. Largo III. Allegro

Sharon Isbin, guitar

Joaquín Rodrigo Fantasía para un gentilhombre

I. Villano y Ricercare

II. Españoleta y Fanfare de la caballeria de Nápoles

III. Danza de las hachas

IV. Canario

Sharon Isbin, guitar

Intermission Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony no. 7 in A Major, Op. 92

I. Poco sostenuto - Vivace

II. Allegretto

III. Presto

IV. Allegro con brio

CONCERT SPONSOR Howmet Community Fund

Aaron Copland, the so-called “Dean of American Music,” is best know for his compositions of the 1930s and 1940s. Works such as Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Fanfare for the Common Man and the Third Symphony sonically captured the American landscape.

Their open, slowly changing harmonies became to many listeners the sound of American classical music. But it wasn’t only the sound of the American West that inspired Copland’s imagination. In the 1930s, while many Americans were suffering through the Great Depression, Copland traveled broadly through Europe, Africa and Mexico. He befriended the Mexican composer Carlos Chavez and returned to Mexico many times throughout his life. Vivian Perlis, who collaborated with Copland on his autobiography, wrote that “Copland’s method of composing was to write down fragments of musical ideas as they came to him. When he needed a piece, he would turn to these ideas (his ‘gold nuggets’).” Copland must have recorded many “gold nuggets” during his travels in Mexico, and turned to them to compose his popular orchestral piece El Salon Mexico (1936) and his less wellknown Three Latin American Sketches (1971).

Copland composed what would become the second and third Sketches while in Acapulco in 1959, for the the composer Gian Carlo Menotti’s Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. Copland revisited those two movements and added the first, “Estribillo,” at the request of conductor Andre Kostelanetz. The Three Sketches were first performed in their entirety by the New York Philharmonic in 1972. Copland wrote of the piece: “The tunes, the rhythms, and the temperament of the pieces are folksy, while the orchestration is bright and snappy and the music sizzles along—or at least it seems to me that it does.”

The first movement, Estribillo, is based on a Venezuelan tune. In Copland’s hands, the melody becomes highly syncopated with complex cross rhythms. With its languid character and limping rhythms, the second movement, Paisaje Mexicano (Mexican Countryside) is reminiscent of Copland’s famous American landscapes. Tension builds throughout the movement as Copland avoids resolving to the tonic (or home key), even as he reaches the final chord of the movement.

Danza de Jalisco is a dance movement that alternates between 6/8 and 3/4, a meter shift characteristic of many Mexican dance styles.

Copland makes use of a large percussion section (clave, wood block, xylophone, ratchet, slap-stick, triangle, suspended cymbal, conga drum) to add Latin color to a traditional Western chamber orchestra.

For all their Latin American elements, these three short sketches still sound like Copland in many of their rhythmic aspects and in their open harmonies.

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During the time Three Latin American Sketches was coming into its final form, Copland had shifted his attention from composing to conducting. He composed very little after these Three Sketches, writing, “It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet.”

Copland, who suffered from memory loss beginning in the 1970s and was later diagnosed with Alzheimer's, wrote that he felt “lucky to have been given so long to be creative. And resigned to the fact that it appears to be over.”

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Guitar Concerto in D Major, RV 93 Antonio Vivaldi did not write a concerto for guitar, an instrument that was not commonly found outside of Spain at the time. Instead, this piece was written for the much more common lute. The European lute of the Baroque period would have sounded much like today’s classical guitar. Like the guitar, it is a plucked string instrument with a neck and a hollow body. However the lute was usually pear-shaped with a rounded back. And, compared to the guitar, it had more strings (this piece was likely written for an 11- or 13-string lute), and the strings were arranged in courses, pairs that were tuned in octaves. Today, this concerto is frequently played by guitar, though sometimes a mandolin takes the spotlight.

Vivaldi wrote four pieces for lute. Three of these—this concerto plus two Trios for violin and lute—were composed in the 1730s.

The timeline suggests that he did not write these pieces for the girls at the orphanage where he was employed during most of his life.

Between 1729 and 1733 Vivaldi traveled widely. It is likely that he went to Vienna and Prague where he probably oversaw productions of two of his operas. He likely met the Bohemian Count Johann Joseph von Wrtby. These three pieces for lute were dedicated to the Count and he is known to have owned a lute.

Vivaldi composed more than 500 concertos during the course of his life, 230 of which were for solo violin (including the Four Seasons).

He is credited with standardizing the form of the Baroque concerto.

He established it as a three-movement (fast, slow, fast) work. And he formalized the ritornello form for fast movements, in which a recurring theme—the ritornello—played by the full orchestra, alternates with more elaborate and varied passages for the soloist.

You will hear the ritornello in the outer movements of this concerto; it is played at the outset of each movement by the violins. In contrast to the lively first and third movement, the second movement is slow and reflective. The guitar plays a lyrical, aria-like melody that alternates between dotted rhythms (long-short-long-short...) and even ones. It is accompanied by sustained chords in the violins.

Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) Fantasía para un gentilhombre Though he was not a guitarist himself, Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo is best known for bringing the Spanish guitar into the orchestral concert hall through two concertos: Concierto de Aranjuez (1939) and Fantasía para un Gentilhombre (1954). Rodrigo, who was

blinded at age three after contracting diphtheria, showed an early aptitude for music. At a young age he began studying piano and harmony, eventually completing studies in composition in Paris. He composed using a special braille typewriter, then had to dictate to a copyist who would transcribe works for publication.

The popularity of his first guitar concerto in 1939 led to commissions from many soloists for various instruments. He followed it with concertos for cello, flute, harp, piano and violin. In the early 1950s, the classical guitarist Andrés Segovia approached Rodrigo about writing a second guitar concerto. According to the writings of Rodrigo and his wife, Victoria, the composer was at first hesitant.

But his hesitancy faded when he came up with the idea of basing the concerto on melodies composed by the 17th-century guitarist, composer and priest, Gaspar Sanz. Rodrigo wrote: “I thought that the only thing worthy of Segovia would be to place him together with another great guitarist and composer, born in the 17th century, a gentleman in the court of Felipe IV, Gaspar Sanz.” So for the Fantasía he wrote for the gentleman Segovia, Rodrigo borrowed six short dances from Sanz’s three-volume guitar method: Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española. The work therefore belongs to the category of orchestral compositions that are Renaissance or Baroque dances reimagined by modern composers, like Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances or Britten’s “Courtly Dances” from Gloriana. In these works, the forms are traditional and the musical language is classical and conservative (Rodrigo called it “faithful to tradition”).

Rodrigo used two of Sanz’s dances in the first movement. The villano is a sung dance with a stately character. This is followed by an imitative ricercar, the most important predecessor to the Baroque fugue. The second movement also contains two dances, presented in a ternary form. You’ll hear the españoleta at the beginning and the end of the movement. Originally a courtly dance, it contains a haunting melody that Rodrigo makes more and more ornate through successive variations. The Fanfare for the Cavalry of Naples makes up the middle of the movement. Strummed guitar and col legno strings (played with the wood of the bow, rather than the horse hair) mimic the drumming and marching of the approaching cavalry.

The energetic third movement is a Dance of the Axes. In its original form it would have accompanied a dangerous dance in which a torch or an ax was passed. Finally, the fourth movement is a dance from the Canary Islands similar to an Irish jig or a French gigue. Despite the fact that the islands were named for wild dogs (canis) and not canaries, Rodrigo takes the opportunity to imitate bird calls.

The Fantasía was Rodrigo’s last piece for solo instrument and orchestra. His career as a composer continued into the 1980s and he was much lauded in his last decade, including being raised to the rank of nobility by King Juan Carlos.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Symphony no. 7 in A Majr, Op. 92 On December 8, 1813, in Vienna, Beethoven had one of the most successful concerts of his career. It was presented as a charity concert for the benefit of the Austrian and Bavarian soldiers who had been

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wounded in the Battle of Hanau a few months earlier. Viennese audiences, who had suffered through Napoleon’s occupation of their city in 1805 and 1809, were eager to support the troops and celebrate the impending victory over Napoleon in the War of the Sixth Coalition.

In addition to marches by Dusek and Pleyel performed by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel’s newest invention, the “mechanical trumpeter,” Beethoven’s short symphony Wellington’s Victory and his Seventh Symphony were premiered. (The “mechanical trumpeter” made no lasting impression, but Maelzel’s penchant for musical gadgetry did make an enduring contribution when he came up with the metronome in 1816).

It may be surprising to learn that many of Beethoven's works revered by audiences today were not popular during the composer’s lifetime. Instead, works like Wellington’s Victory drew crowds.

Originally a collaboration with Maelzel to be performed on his “panharmonicon”—a mechanical organ that could play military band instruments—it outgrew Maelzel’s trendy gadget and was performed frequently by large orchestras that included an expanded brass section and a huge percussion section that was comprised of muskets, artillery sound effects, and pairs of drums placed on opposite sides of the orchestra. Wellington’s Victory celebrated the victory of the British (led by Duke Wellington) over the French (led

by Joseph Bonaparte) at the Battle of Vittoria in June of 1813. In its overt musical description of battle it pitted “Rule Brittania” against the French song “Marlborough s’en va-t’en guerre,” which you might know as “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” In an unsubtle depiction of victory, it ends with “God Save the King.”

The Seventh Symphony, premiered at the same concert, presents the same optimism that Viennese audiences were craving, but far more subtly, giving the piece a staying power that Wellington’s Victory lacked. The Symphony is known for its dance-like rhythms and repeated rhythmic figures, which give it an intense forward motion. Following the longest introduction of Beethoven’s output (and, at about four minutes, the longest introduction in the history of the symphony), the first movement proceeds energetically with dotted rhythms and sudden dynamic changes. The famous second movement, an Allegretto, is only “slow” in comparison to the other three movements. Prolonged crescendos intensify the simple melody that gradually makes its way to the high winds and strings.

A persistent repeated accompaniment figure propels the movement forward, even as a more tender melody is introduced in the middle section. The movement ends with the theme breaking down into two-bar units that are passed around the orchestra until it comes to a quiet close. This “slow” movement is followed by a breathless Presto third movement and a relentless Allegro fourth movement.

The latter contains a rarity for Beethoven: a triple-forte dynamic marking in the coda.

Though Friedrich Wieck—the German music critic, pianist, and father to Clara Wieck Schumann—reported that the musicians of the orchestra felt that Beethoven must have composed the work while drunk, the Symphony was an immediate success. One German newspaper reported that at its premiere, “applause rose to the point of ecstasy.” And Beethoven himself remarked that it was “one of the happiest products of my poor talents.” Richard

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Wagner weighed in on the work, noting the pervading dance-like energy that has captivated musicologists and music critics for two centuries now: “The Symphony is the Apotheosis of the Dance itself: it is Dance in its highest aspect, the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated into an ideal mold of tone.” ••

Program notes by Sarah A Ruddy, PhD

SHARON ISBIN Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique and versatility, multiple GRAMMY Award winner Sharon Isbin has been hailed as the pre-eminent guitarist of our time. Winner of Guitar Player magazine’s Best Classical Guitarist award, Germany’s Echo Klassik, Concert Artists Guild’s Virtuoso Award, and the Toronto and Madrid Queen Sofia competitions, she was the first guitarist ever to win the Munich Competition. She has appeared as soloist with nearly 200 orchestras and given sold-out performances in many of the world’s finest halls, including New York’s Carnegie and Geffen Halls, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, London’s Barbican and Wigmore Halls, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Paris’ Châtelet, Vienna’s Musikverein, Munich’s Herkulessaal, and Madrid’s Teatro Real. She has served as Artistic Director/Soloist of festivals she created for Carnegie Hall and the Ordway Music Theatre (St. Paul), New York’s 92nd Street Y, and the national radio series Guitarjam.

American Public Television’s presentation of the acclaimed one-hour documentary Sharon Isbin: Troubadour has been seen by millions on over 200 PBS stations across the U.S. and abroad including Europe, Japan and Mexico. Winner of the 2015 ASCAP Television Broadcast Award, the film is available with bonus performances on DVD and Blu-ray. Other recent national television performances on PBS include the Billy Joel Gershwin Prize with Josh Groban, and Tavis Smiley. A frequent guest on NPR’s All Things Considered and A Prairie Home Companion, Ms. Isbin has been featured on television throughout the world, including CBS Sunday Morning, Showtime’s The L Word, and as soloist on the GRAMMY-nominated soundtrack of Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed. She performed at Ground Zero for the first internationally televised 9/11 memorial, in concert at the White House by invitation of President Obama, and as the only classical artist to perform in the 2010 GRAMMY Awards. She has been profiled in periodicals from People to Elle, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, as well as appearing on the cover of more than 45 magazines.

Ms. Isbin’s catalogue of over 25 recordings—from Baroque, Spanish/ Latin and 20th Century to crossover and jazz-fusion—reflects remarkable versatility. Her latest release, Alma Española with Argentinian-American opera star Isabel Leonard, has been a No. 1 best seller, and is the first Spanish art song album with guitar of its kind in 40 years, including twelve world premiere arrangements by

Isbin. It was honored by a 2018 GRAMMY Award for Producer of the Year, Classical in recordings by David Frost. Other recent #1 bestselling titles include Sharon Isbin: 5 Classic Albums and Sharon Isbin & Friends: Guitar Passions with rock and jazz guests Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo. Her recordings have received many other honors, including Recording of the Year in Gramophone and CD Review, Recording of the Month in Stereo Review, and Album of the Year in Guitar Player.

Sharon Isbin has been acclaimed for expanding the guitar repertoire with some of the finest new works of our time and has commissioned and premiered more concerti than any other guitarist, as well as numerous solo and chamber works. Works written for her by John

Corigliano, Joseph Schwantner and Lukas Foss are featured on her American Landscapes, the first-ever recording of American guitar concerti. (In November 1995, it was launched in the space shuttle Atlantis and presented to Russian cosmonauts during a rendezvous with Mir.) She premiered Concert de Gaudí by Christopher Rouse with Christoph Eschenbach and the NDR Symphony, followed by the U.S. premiere with the Dallas Symphony. Among many other composers who have written for her are Joan Tower, David Diamond, Aaron Jay Kernis, Leo Brouwer, Howard Shore, Ned Rorem and Ami Maayani, with highlights including John Duarte’s Joan Baez Suite, and a duo by rock guitarist Steve Vai which they performed in Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet. Recent premieres of works written for her include the acclaimed Affinity: Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra by Chris Brubeck, and a work by Richard Danielpour co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its 125th anniversary and Chicago’s Harris Theater.

Ms. Isbin has toured Europe annually since she was 17, and appears as soloist with orchestras throughout the world, including the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Montreal, St. Louis, Nashville, New Jersey, Louisville, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Buffalo and Utah symphonies; the London Symphony, Orchestre National de France; and BBC Scottish, Lisbon Gulbenkian, Prague, Milan Verdi, Belgrade, Mexico City, Jerusalem and Tokyo symphonies; and chamber orchestras including Saint Paul, Los Angeles, Zurich, Scottish and Lausanne. Her festival appearances include Mostly Mozart, Aspen, Ravinia, Grant Park, Interlochen, Santa Fe, Mexico City, Bermuda, Hong Kong, Montreux, Strasbourg, Paris, Athens, Istanbul, Ravenna, Prague and Budapest International Festivals.

As a chamber musician, Ms. Isbin has also performed with the Emerson String Quartet and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Guitar Summit tour with jazz greats Herb Ellis, Stanley Jordan and Michael Hedges, trio recordings with Larry Coryell and Laurindo Almeida, and duo recordings with Carlos Barbosa-Lima.

She collaborated with Antonio Carlos Jobim, and has shared the stage with luminaries from Aretha Franklin to Muhammad Ali. Born in Minneapolis, Sharon Isbin began her guitar studies at age nine in Italy, and later studied with Andrès Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, and for ten years with noted Bach scholar and keyboardist Rosalyn Tureck with whom she collaborated on landmark editions/ recordings of the Bach lute suites for guitar (Warner Classics/G. Schirmer). She received a B.A. cum laude from Yale University and a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music. She authored the Classical Guitar Answer Book, and is Director of guitar departments at the Aspen Music Festival and The Juilliard School (which she created in 1989 becoming the first and only guitar instructor in the institution’s 100-year history).

Sharon Isbin has been practicing Transcendental Meditation since age 17 and donates her time to perform benefits for the David Lynch Foundation, along with Katy Perry, Sting, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno, to bring TM to at-risk communities. In her spare time, she enjoys trekking in the jungles of Latin America, crosscountry skiing, snorkeling and mountain hiking. ••

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 35

Slavic Fire

in search of a suitably Russian subject. What he found was a recently discovered supposedly 12th-century epic poem: The Tale of the Army of Igor. Though the authenticity of the poem has been questioned, this epic story of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich’s battle against invading nomadic Polovtsian tribes had the makings of a great opera: love stories, political intrigue, “exotic” color, and dancing girls.

Scott Speck conductor Natasha Paremski piano

When Borodin died of heart failure at age 53, he left his opera, Prince Igor, unfinished. Thankfully, he had completed the ballet sequence, Polovtsian Dances, and even allowed a concert performance of this portion of his work-in-progress in 1879. Borodin’s colleagues Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov completed the opera and ushered it through its premiere in 1890.

Friday, June 7, 7:30 pm Frauenthal Theater

Alexander Borodin

Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor I. Dance of the Polovtsian Maidens II. Polovtsian Dance

Frédéric Chopin

Piano Concerto no. 2 in F minor, op. 21 I. Maestoso II. Larghetto III. Allegro vivace

Natasha Paremski, piano

Intermission Dmitri Shostakovich

Prince Igor was never a blockbuster hit. But ever since impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s production of the Polovtsian Dances as a ballet in Paris in 1909, this portion of the opera has been a perennial favorite in the orchestral repertoire. Furthermore, Polovtsian Dances have surely outlived what the “Sunday composer” Borodin ever could have imagined for them. In 1953, the music was adapted by George Forrest and Robert Wright into the hit Broadway musical Kismet, becoming, most notably, the song “Stranger in Paradise.” Though he had been dead for 67 years, Alexander Borodin received a Tony Award for his music in 1954.

Symphony no. 5 in D minor, op. 47 I. Moderato II. Allegretto III. Largo IV. Allegro non troppo

PROGRAM NOTES

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) Piano Concerto no. 2 in F minor, op. 21

Alexander Borodin (1833 -1887) Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor Russian composer Alexander Borodin described himself as a “Sunday composer.” Throughout his life he worked as a chemist and educator, even opening a medical school for women in St. Petersburg in 1872.

His musical colleagues, recognizing his talent, were dismayed that he did not spend more time on composition. Despite the little time he had to dedicate to musical pursuits, Borodin set out to write an opera in 1869. A member of the “Russian Five” or “Mighty Handful”—a group of composers intent on forming a Russian style of music distinct from the Western Classical tradition—Borodin went

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The Polovtsian Dances come at the end of Act 2 of the opera. A solar eclipse blinds Prince Igor, allowing him and his son Vladimir to be captured. The Polovtsian leader, Khan Konchak, tries to persuade Igor to join his side by seducing him with slave women’s exuberant dancing. The music is given an exotic color by the use of modal harmonies (deriving from scales other than the Major-minor system that dominates Classical music) and a variety of percussion instruments including tambourines and finger cymbals.

The 19th-century Polish composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin embodied the spirit of musical romanticism: he had a high-profile love life, was a musical prodigy and piano virtuoso, was associated (though indirectly) with political insurrection in his home country, and died young. Much of this is wrapped up in his Piano Concerto no. 2 (1830), which was actually the first of his two piano concertos to be composed, though it was published second.

Chopin had a number of failed romantic relationships. In 1836-37, he was briefly engaged to a young Polish artist; her mother called it off, likely because of Chopin’s association with certain other women

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36 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

like the cigar-smoking, cross-dressing French author, George Sand.

Chopin and Sand then had a nearly decade-long relationship, which ended around 1847. Yet when he was writing this concerto at age 19, it was a young soprano named Konstancja Gładkowska that caught the composer’s attention. They were both students at the Warsaw Conservatory. She admired his works, and he admired her from afar. In letters to friends, Chopin wrote of his love for her and intimated which of his pieces—and even which specific passages—were inspired by her. One such piece was the second movement of the Second Piano Concerto. This movement, which some have described as Chopin’s first Nocturne, contrasts the quick brilliant virtuosity of the maestoso first movement with a romantic, expressive larghetto in the relative major key. After the orchestral introduction, the piano plays the main theme: a tender melody that becomes increasingly embroidered with quick passagework in the right hand. When the theme returns in the coda, the bassoon joins in like a long-awaited duet partner, first in canon and then providing a beautiful countermelody.

Chopin the piano virtuoso composed in order to have pieces to perform. The vast majority of his works are for solo piano, though he also wrote a few chamber pieces, a handful of songs with Polish lyrics, and two piano concertos. The two concertos, both premiered in 1830, helped launch his career in Poland. And the attention they received opened up the possibility for success in the cultural capitals of Europe.

So Chopin was in a fine position when he received news of the Warsaw Uprising while visiting Vienna in 1830. He chose to continue his travels rather than return home, eventually settling in Paris and never returning to Poland. Though he spent the majority of his life in Paris and became a French citizen in 1835, Chopin never shed his Polish identity. And Polish music inspired him throughout his career.

It can be heard in the last movement of the Piano Concerto, where Chopin contrasts an elegant waltz theme with the more energetic dance rhythms of the Mazurka, the national dance of Poland.

Unlike the famous piano concertos of Mozart and Beethoven, Chopin’s concertos are written in the stile brillante: they focus less on thematic development and more on showcasing the virtuosity of the performer. The witty dialogue between orchestra and soloist found in his predecessors is mostly gone; instead the orchestra serves mainly to introduce the audience to the soloist’s brilliance. The composer Robert Schumann forgave Chopin this departure from the Classical ideal, writing, “If a genius such as Mozart were to appear today, he would write Chopin concertos rather than Mozart ones.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Symphony no. 5 in D minor, op. 47 In 1926, Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich premiered his First Symphony. With the overwhelming success of this work 19-yearold Shostakovich became a composer to watch both at home and abroad. His career sailed on without many problems for nearly a decade. His opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District premiered in 1934 with both popular and official Soviet success, despite its racy plot and avant-garde music. It received nearly 200 performances before Joseph Stalin himself decided to attend a performance in 1936. Shostakovich observed the Soviet ruler’s reactions during the

opera, becoming more and more nervous as Stalin shuddered at the louder bits and laughed at the love scenes. Sure enough, two days later the official Soviet newspaper Pravda published a review of the work titled “Muddle Instead of Music.” It attacked the work as bourgeois, coarse and vulgar, calling it “deliberately dissonant, muddled streams of sound.” Previously positive reviewers of the opera were forced to recant their reviews, saying that they had “failed to detect the shortcomings of Lady Macbeth as pointed out by Pravda.”

Thus Stalin set off a widespread anti-Shostakovich campaign.

Following the Pravda review, many of the composer’s friends and colleagues turned against him. Lady Macbeth was suppressed and the premiere of his Fourth Symphony was canceled; it would not receive its first performance for 25 years, after the death of Stalin.

Shostakovich lived in fear, sleeping in the stairwell of his apartment to spare his family the experience of his imminent arrest. Yet by luck or fate, Shostakovich was never arrested or killed, even during the Great Terror of 1936 that took the lives of many of his friends and relatives.

In November of 1937 Shostakovich braved the concert hall again with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony. The Symphony appeared with the subtitle “A Soviet Artist’s Practical Reply to Just Criticism.” It is still unclear the source of this description. It is possible it was the composer himself who added this tag, or was compelled to do so, to assist with the reception of the work. In any case, it worked. Members of the audience wept openly during the third movement and the final chords of the piece prompted over thirty minutes of applause.

It was a success, both by popular and official standards.

The Soviets rejoiced that the fallen composer had been rehabilitated.

They saw him bowing to their demands and interpreted the Fifth Symphony as portraying the formation of a Soviet personality: from a psychological crisis in the first movement, through the formation of personality in the third, to a victory in the optimistic final movement.

But the general audience may have heard something very different. In the third movement, Shostakovich references the Russian Orthodox Requiem, thus providing an opportunity to grieve for all those lost during the Great Terror. Moreover, the final movement quotes from Shostakovich’s own setting of Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Rebirth,” which describes the permanence of art even under the destructive hands of a “barbarian.”

An artist-barbarian with his lazy brush Blackens the painting of a genius And senselessly he covers it with His own illegitimate drawing.

But with passing years, the alien colors Fall off like threadbare scales; The creation of the genius emerges Before us in its former beauty.

Thus vanish the illusions From my tormented soul And in it appear visions Of original and innocent times.

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 37

Any attempt to ascertain Shostakovich’s real intentions is problematic: he often spoke and wrote under duress, and his correspondence would have been read by censors. But there is something about his description of this Symphony in Testimony—a published memoir supposedly dictated by the composer to the young musicologist Solomon Volkov in 1979—that resonates upon hearing the Fifth Symphony:

I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat... It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,’ and you rise, and go marching off, muttering, ‘Our business is rejoicing, our business rejoicing.’ What kind of apotheosis is that?

You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that. ••

Program notes by Sarah A Ruddy, PhD

NATASHA PAREMSKI With her consistently striking and dynamic performances, pianist Natasha Paremski reveals astounding virtuosity and voracious interpretive abilities. She continues to generate excitement from all corners as she wins over audiences with her musical sensibility and flawless technique. Born in Moscow, Natasha moved to the United States at the age of eight and became a US citizen shortly thereafter.

She was awarded several prestigious prizes at a young age, including the Gilmore Young Artists prize in 2006 at the age of 18; the Prix Montblanc in 2007; and the Orpheum Stiftung Prize in Switzerland.

In September 2010, she was awarded the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year.

Her first recital album was released in 2011 and it debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart. In 2012 she recorded Tchaikovsky’s first concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Fabien Gabel on the orchestra’s label distributed by Naxos.

Ms. Paremski has performed with major orchestras in North America including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the symphonies of Dallas, San Francisco, San Diego, Toronto, Baltimore, Oregon, Colorado, Nashville and Houston. She tours extensively in Europe with such orchestras as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchester, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester in Zurich, and the Moscow Philharmonic, among others. She has collaborated with such illustrious conductors as Peter Oundjian, Andres Orozco-Estrada, Jeffrey Kahane, James Gaffigan, Dmitri Yablonski, Tomas Netopil, JoAnn Falletta, Fabien Gabel, and Andrew Litton. Natasha has toured with Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica in Latvia, Benelux, the UK and Austria and performed with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra in Taipei.

38 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

Ms. Paremski continues to extend her performance activity and range beyond the traditional concert hall. In December 2008, she was the featured pianist in choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s Danse Concertantes at New York’s Joyce Theater. She was featured in a major two-part film for BBC Television on the life and work of Tchaikovsky, shot on location in St. Petersburg, performing excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and other works. In the winter of 2007, Ms. Paremski participated along with Simon Keenlyside and Maxim Vengerov in the filming of Twin Spirits, a project starring Sting and Trudie Styler that explores the music and writing of Robert and Clara Schumann, which was released on DVD. She has performed in the project live several times with the co-creators in New York and the UK, directed by John Caird, the original director/adaptor of the musical Les Misérables.

Beginning piano studies at age four with Nina Malikova at Moscow’s Andreyev School of Music, Ms. Paremski went on to the San Francisco Conservatory before moving to New York to study with Pavlina Dokovska at Mannes College of Music. She made her professional debut at age nine with the El Camino Youth Symphony in California.

At 15 she debuted with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and recorded two discs with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Dmitry Yablonsky. The first CD consisted of Rubinstein’s Piano Concerto no. 4 and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; the second featured all of Chopin’s shorter works for piano and orchestra. ••

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About: West Michigan Symphony Now in its 79th season, West Michigan Symphony (WMS) is a widely recognized professional orchestra and leader in West Michigan’s cultural community. Mr. A. M. Courtright and Mr. Palmer Quackenbush are credited with early pioneering efforts to provide Muskegon with a symphony orchestra. In November 1939 a musical group of 50 members presented its first concert with Mr. Quackenbush conducting and Mr. Courtright assisting. Performances were initially held in area schools and later moved to the historic Frauenthal Theater. Built in 1929, the 1724 seat Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts is praised by artists and audiences alike for its extraordinary beauty, excellent acoustics and broad sight lines.

WMS is comprised of professional musicians of the highest caliber playing the great classical repertoire and presenting the world’s most acclaimed guest artists. Its core season includes eight subscription concerts (five classical and three pops). During its history, WMS has been led by nine conductors including Palmer Quackenbush, Tauno Hannikainen, Hugo Kolberg, Wayne Dunlap, Lyman Starr, John Wheeler, Philip Greenberg, Murray Gross, and (since 2002) Music Director Scott Speck.

OUR MUSICIANS Our musicians are the bricks and mortar of WMS. For the majority of them, music is their livelihood. When not practicing, rehearsing or performing with WMS, many of them are working with orchestras throughout West Michigan and beyond, including those in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Midland, Battle Creek, Holland and Traverse City. Last season the WMS roster included more than 71 professional core musicians and an additional 83 substitute players.

The roster is continually changing as the organization attracts musicians from across the country.

With advanced degrees in performance and a commitment to symphonic music, our players serve on the faculties of major Michigan universities as well as teaching privately and performing as recitalists and chamber musicians across the Midwest. Together, they comprise a vital community resource serving our organization and the entire West Michigan region. ••

40 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

About: Scott Speck With the 2018-19 season, Scott Speck enters his 16th full season as Music Director of the West Michigan Symphony. Over this period he is proud to have helped the WMS enter the ranks of the nation's finest regional orchestras.

Scott Speck also holds leadership positions with the Mobile Symphony (AL), Joffrey Ballet (IL), and Chicago Philharmonic. His recent concerts with the Moscow RTV Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky Hall garnered unanimous praise. His gala performances with Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Renée Fleming, Midori, Evelyn Glennie and Olga Kern have highlighted his recent and current seasons; and he was invited to the White House as Music Director of the Washington Ballet.

In recent seasons Scott Speck has conducted performances in London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, the Paris Opera, Washington’s Kennedy Center, San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, and the Los Angeles Music Center. He has led numerous performances with the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Houston, Chicago (Sinfonietta), Paris, Moscow, Shanghai, Beijing, Vancouver, Romania, Slovakia, Buffalo, Columbus (OH), Honolulu, Louisville, New Orleans, Oregon, Rochester, Florida, and Virginia, among many others.

Previously he held positions as Conductor of the San Francisco Ballet; Music Advisor and Conductor of the Honolulu Symphony; and Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Opera. During a recent tour of Asia he was named Principal Guest Conductor of the China Film Philharmonic in Beijing.

Scott Speck is the co-author of two of the world’s best-selling books on classical music for a popular audience, Classical Music for Dummies and Opera for Dummies. These books have received stellar reviews in both the national and international press and have garnered enthusiastic endorsements from major American orchestras. They have been translated into over fifteen languages and are available around the world. His third book in the series, Ballet for Dummies, was released in September 2003.

Scott Speck has been a regular commentator on National Public Radio, the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Voice of Russia, broadcast throughout the world. His writing has been featured in numerous magazines and journals.

Born in Boston, Scott Speck is a Fulbright Scholar, a summa cum laude graduate of Yale University, and an Aspen Conducting Fellow.

He is fluent in English, German and French, has a diploma in Italian, speaks Spanish and has a reading knowledge of Russian. ••

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 41

About: The Block Located in downtown Muskegon, The Block is a modern, intimate performance space in a restored 1890 warehouse that boasts state of the art lighting, sound and electronic equipment; a beautifully restored 1971 Steinway B grand piano; and a rooftop garden terrace made with recycled materials. Its 12-concert core series includes classical chamber music by members of West Michigan Symphony; and jazz, folk and world music featuring artists from Michigan and the surrounding Midwest.

The Block’s mission is to be Muskegon’s musical third place. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third places” for venues that are anchors of community life and broader, creative interaction. We fulfill that mission through thoughtful and varied program curation that attracts a diverse audience; hands-on music education activities for young people; and by making the space available affordable to community groups.

Entering its sixth season, The Block continues to grow and innovate artistically and as a community center. Under the new brand for the musically curious, we continually look for ways to provide fresh educational and artistic programs that resonate with existing listeners while attracting a new generation of music lovers. During the summer of 2018 a series of jazz programs featuring drummer Tim Froncek and Friends was premiered to great success. New this winter is a Music & Movies series that explores the creative marriage between the two art forms through a screening of three acclaimed films. The Block is also used for music education activities and made available to community groups for meetings and other activities.

Since its inception in 2013, The Block has produced nearly 150 events serving more than 7,000 people. ••

42 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

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GREENRIDGE REALTY Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 43

About: Education West Michigan Symphony believes that a foundation in music education can give kids the tools they need to better navigate through life. We are dedicated to providing our local youth with programs that will help them develop an appreciation for music that they will carry with them their entire lives. We continually strive to provide opportunities for music enrichment and educational activities for audiences of every age, economic status and background.

WMS reaches deeply into our community to inspire the next generation of music lovers through its Block-based music programs and by extending its programs to area schools.

WEST MICHIGAN SYMPHONY CHILDREN’S CHOIR (WMSCC) The WMSCC is an audition based choir for children ages 8-13. With the goal of providing children quality music education of the highest level, we strive to enrich the lives of youth from all backgrounds and to be an integral part of the artistic community in West Michigan.

During the 2017-18 season the WMSCC experienced an exciting season of performances. This included singing on stage with the WMS orchestra for the Holiday Pops and Link Up concerts, a collaborative concert with the Grand Rapids Symphony Youth Choruses, a community concert in Whitehall, and a workshop with the Indianapolis Opera Ensemble.

WMS Children's Choir performs with the Grand Rapids Symphony Youth Choruses

CLICK CLACK MOOSIC Created by WMS, Click Clack Moosic is based on books by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin. Children and their families attend a musical storytelling event where they meet WMS musicians and learn new music skills through fun and interactive skits. In these performances, children listen to a narration of one of the Click Clack Moo series of books while Symphony musicians perform music composed specifically for the Click Clack stories. All three Click Clack stories give children a fun way to learn musical concepts and experience how music can tell a great story.

44 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

Clickity Clack Ho Ho Ho at The Block, 2017

DEBUT STRINGS Debut Strings introduces beginning and intermediate students to large ensemble performance through challenging and diverse repertoire. Students in Debut Strings have at least two years of playing experience and strong note reading skills. Debut Strings is led by Angela Corbin, Orchestra Director at North Muskegon Public Schools. Corbin earned her Master’s in Music Education from Michigan State University and has studied violin with Minghuan Xu at Grand Valley State University. As a private and class music instructor for over fifteen years, teaching music through string instruction has been one of Angela’s deepest passions. Debut Strings rehearses once a week throughout the fall and spring and performs two concerts annually at The Block.

Debut Strings Fall 2017 concert

Debut Strings Spring 2018 concert

Link Up 2018

LINK UP The largest of our education programs, WMS Link Up is beginning its 15th year of school partnerships, reaching six West Michigan counties, serving over 54 elementary schools and over 5000 children.

In collaboration with Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, WMS is the only orchestra to present the program continually since Carnegie Hall launched their national partnership. Provided free to participating schools, WMS Link Up is a beginner music education program that pairs our orchestra with local community schools, students learn to read and play music on the recorder, meet WMS professional musicians in their classroom, and gain an understanding of the orchestra and orchestral repertoire through a yearlong, hands-on music curriculum that culminates with a spring concert in the Frauenthal Theater.

Link Up 2018

MUSIC MENTOR PROGRAM The Music Mentor program places WMS professional musicians into elementary school music programs that are participating in Link Up. The Music Mentor Program travels to schools throughout the region, becoming an integral part of their classroom experience and enriching the Link Up music curriculum all year long. Kids have the opportunity to meet and learn from professional musicians and gain an understanding that music is something that everyone can learn to play, sing and enjoy. In 2017-18, six music mentors completed 90 in-school visits to area classrooms.

INSTRUMENT PETTING ZOO Providing a hands-on experience creating sounds on musical instruments, the WMS Instrument Petting Zoo is an exciting way to show children they have the potential to play an instrument well before middle school band programs begin. Offered regionally at elementary schools, community events and as an occasional preconcert activity for youth and families attending a WMS concert, the Petting Zoo features instruments from each of the four families (strings, woodwind, brass and percussion) and children are able to handle and play them during the 45-minute program. •• Instrument Petting Zoo

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 45

FO R TH E M U S I CA L LY CU R I O U S

2018-19 SEASON

Alexander Zonjic & Friends, smooth jazz Thurs, Aug 23 7:30 pm Organissimo, organ jazz Sat, Oct 6 7:30 pm Jonathan Holden, woodwinds Sat, Nov 3 7:30 pm Goran Ivanovic & Fareed Haque, guitar duo Sat, Nov 17 7:30 pm Cabaret with the Paul Langford Quartet Sat, Dec 1 7:30 pm Matt Beck, two pianos and percussion Sat, Jan 19 7:30 pm Alessio Bax, classical piano Sat, Feb 2 7:30 pm Sybarite 5, crossover chamber Fri, Feb 8 7:30 pm Emmet Cohen Trio, jazz piano Sat, Mar 2 7:30 pm Harpeth Rising, folk grass Sat, Mar 23 7:30 pm Sharon Isbin, chamber guitar Sat, May 11 7:30 pm Natasha Paremski, classical piano Sat, June 8 7:30 pm

SERIES PACKAGES

PREMIER: 12 tickets: 1 for each show Regular Seating: $240 • Table Seating: $336 BLOCK SAMPLER: 6 tickets: 1 for each specified show Regular Seating: $128 • Table Seating: $179 WMS UNPLUGGED: 5 tickets: 1 for each specified show Regular Seating: $90 • Table Seating: $149 JAZZ/WORLD MUSIC: 4 tickets: 1 for each specified show Regular Seating: $90 • Table Seating: $126 PICK AND CHOOSE: 6 tickets: to use for any show, in any combination Regular Seating: $128 • Table Seating: $179

Single tickets $25 and up theblockwestmichigan.org | 231.726.3231 360 W Western Ave, 1st floor, Muskegon

46 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

About: Community Engagement Seasonally, WMS donates tickets to dozens of charitable organizations and those unable to afford to purchase regular tickets. We regularly partner with the MAISD to reach staff, students and families from Muskegon Area schools, giving them an opportunity to attend a West Michigan Symphony concert for free.

All WMS education programs offer needs-based scholarships so no child is denied an opportunity to participate simply because they cannot afford tuition. Grants are actively sought throughout the year and this funding allows the WMS to bring a selection of their music education programs to local schools, community events and nonprofit organizations.

Each season free “Lunch n’ Learn” sessions invite the community to bring a lunch and get better acquainted with upcoming concert repertoire; joining in conversation with Music Director Scott Speck and an invited musician. This program continues into the 2018-19 season with sessions scheduled at The Block the Wednesday afternoon prior to each Masterworks concert.

A visible presence in the community, WMS and The Block have been pleased to serve our area through a diverse array of programming and educational outreach, making Muskegon a great place to live, work and play. ••

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DEBUT STRINGS Concerts

November 10, 2018 • 3:30 & 4:30 pm March 10, 2019 • 3:30 & 4:30 pm

November 11, 2018 • 3:30 & 4:30 pm March 24, 2019 • TBD

Tickets: $5 adults • children free

Tickets: $5 adults • children free

THE BLOCK

360 W Western Ave, 2nd floor, Muskegon

THE BLOCK

360 W Western Ave, 2nd floor, Muskegon

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Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 47

Advertisers Aquastar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Baker College of Muskegon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Betten Baker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Blue Lake Public Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Chalet Floral & Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Clickity Clack Ho Ho Ho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Community Shores Bank. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Debut Strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Drip Drop Drink. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Feeding the Soul of the City. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Frauenthal Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Goodwill Industries of West Michigan. . . . . . . . . . . 27 Grand Valley State University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Greenridge Realty – Tom Knight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Harbor Steel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Hearthstone Bistro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside back cover Holiday Inn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Howmet Playhouse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 i'move. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Kent Record Management, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 The Kordecki Family. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Lakeshore Museum Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Mercy Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside front cover

Merrill Lynch – Kimberly L. Hammond . . . . . . . . . . 23 Music & Movies at The Block. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Muskegon Civic Theatre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Muskegon Community College. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Muskegon County Airport. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Muskegon Museum of Art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Next-IT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Nichols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back cover Northern Trust. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Opera Grand Rapids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 PNC Bank. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Port City Group. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Block Season . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Third Street Grille. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Wasserman's Flowers & Gifts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Warner Norcross + Judd LLP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 West Michigan Symphony Gala. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 West Michigan Symphony Lunch n' Learn. . . . . . . . 3 West Shore ENT & Allergy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 27 WMS Children's Choir. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Witt Buick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Zopa Consulting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

ART GARFUNKEL IN CLOSE-UP

September 29, 2018 | Presented with Fifth Third Bank West Michigan Youth Ballet and Frauenthal Center proudly present

THE NUTCRACKER

December 15, 2018 | Presented with Nichols

LARRY JOE CAMPBELL & FRIENDS February 9, 2019

THE MAGIC OF BILL BLAGG LIVE March 1, 2019

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May 18, 2019

For a full list of events, visit frauenthal.org 425 W. Western Ave. | 231.722.9750

your passion inspires us all.

We believe in and support everything the arts can accomplish. That’s why PNC is proud to sponsor the West Michigan Symphony.

For help with your financial well-being, stop by any PNC Bank Branch, call 888-PNC-BANK or visit us at pnc.com

©2018 The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. All rights reserved. PNC Bank, National Association. Member FDIC

Volume 7 September 2018 – June 2019 49

Celebrating the

Arts with

THE WEST MICHIGAN SYMPHONY

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50 West Michigan Symphony Concert Program

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