Ensemble and Guest Artist Concert:
2010-02-17 -- University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra, Scott Conklin, violin, and Jim Leach, narrator
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The University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra
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Wednesday, Feb ruar y 17, 2010 at 7: 30 pm Iowa Memorial Union
The University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra
William LaRue Jones, conductor
West Side Story: Symphonic Dances
In Memoriam:
The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy
T zigane, rapsodie de concert, for Violin & Orchestra Scott Conklin, violin
I N TER M ISS IO N
Lincoln Portrait
J im Leach , narrator
Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)
William Grant Still (1895 - 1978)
Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)
Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)
The University of Iowa prohibits discrimination in employment and its educational programs and activities on the basis of race, national origin, color, creed, religion, sex, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or associational preference. The University also affirms its committment to providing equal opportunities and equal access to University facilities. For additional information contact the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at (319) 335-0705.
Please remember to turn off all cell phones and pagers before entering the concert hall.
Photographs and recordings may not be taken during a performance.
Division of Performing Arts 2009-201 O Season
As one of the most active and versatile symphonic conductors in America today, critics praise WILLIAM LARUE JONES for possessing a unique ability to work effectively with musicians at all levels. His engagements for 2009 / 10 season include return performances in Kuala Lumpur and Penang (Malaysia), Singapore, Lioning Symphony (China), plus concerts in Wisconsin, Minnesota, lov1a, Kentucky, Arizona, and Illinois. He is presently serving a three term as Honorable Visiting Professor and guest conductor at Shenyang Normal University (China). Jones served as conductor of the International String Orchestra and is the founding artistic director of the critically acclaimed Conductors Workshop of America. In addition, Jones serves as a guest clinician for numerous conducting seminars for professional and educational associations internationally. Jones is currently Director of Orchestral Studies and Graduate Conducting at The University of Iowa and the Artistic Director of the Conductors Workshop of America.
A Texas native, Dr. Jones holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin, University of Iowa and Kansas State University, with additional studies at The Juilliard School of Music and the University of North Texas.
JIM LEACH is the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Nominated by President Barack Obama on July 9, 2009, and confirmed by the Senate in early August, Leach began his four-year term as NEH Chairman on August 1 2, 2009. Leach previously served 30 years representing southeastern Iowa in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he chaired the Banking and Financial Services Committee, the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and founded and co-chaired the Congressional Humanities Caucus. After leaving Congress in 2007, Leach joined the faculty at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, where he was the John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs until his confirmation as NEH chairman. In September 2007, Leach took a year's leave of absence from Princeton to serve as interim director of the Institute of Politics and lecturer at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Leach graduated from Princeton University, received a Master of Arts degree in Soviet politics from the School of Advanced International Studies at The John Hopkins University, and did additional graduate studies at the London School of Economics.
SCOTT CONKLIN regularly appears as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player, and clinician throughout the United States and Europe. He is assistant professor of violin at The University of Iowa and a violin teacher at the Preucil School of Music.
Conklin has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Louisville, Nashville, and Berlin Symphony Orchestras. During the academic year, Conklin teaches at many clinics, conferences, and workshops throughout the country and serves on the Editorial Board of the American Music Teacher Magazine. A champion of new music, Conklin recently recorded works by composers Kevin Beavers, William Bolcom, Ching-chu Hu, Joel Puckett, Kevin Puts, and Bright Sheng for an album release with pianist and UI faculty Alan Huckleberry. Conklin is the 2008 Iowa String Teachers Association Leopold LaFosse Studio Teacher of the Year and was named a "Rising Star" and featured artist at the 2004 Music Teachers National Association Conference. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from The Cleveland Institute of Music and a Master of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts degrees from The University of Michigan School of Music.
West Side Story:
Symphonic Dances
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances were assembled in 1961, four years after West Side
Storjs initial Broadway run. In the meantime the composer had, in the words of critic Brooks Atkinson, " capitulated to respectability'' and taken the post of music director of the New York Philharmonic.
The composer was involved in the movie version of West Side Story only as an advisor, and two of hi s students did much of the soundtrack's orchestration. One, Sid Ramin, suggested that Bernstein arrange a symphonic work, and so the composer dedicated the score to him.
The form of the Symphonic Dances is based on solely musical devices rather than the original plot, so the themes will seem out of order to those familiar with the musical. The tense and angular Prologue opens the Dances, followed immediately by the haunting song, " Somewhere."
While the Scherzo and Mambo seenes resemble their original forms, some of the material, such as the cha-cha treatment of "Maria," dates back to the composer's original sketches from before the show's premiere. If Bernstein does aim for compositional " respectability'' at any point, it is in the double fugue following " Cool," which uses both the creeping bass line and the more syncopated, nervous melody as its subjects. The inevitable tragic climax follows, peaking with the violence of
"Rumble" before the "Maria" and "Somewhere"
themes return for the transcendent finale.
-notes by Andrew Hanson-Dvoracek
T zigane, rapsodie de concert, for violin and orchestra
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Maurice Ravel conceived the idea for a gypsy-inspired rhapsody in 1922 at the private recital of Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Arany. The composer was so taken by d'Arany's acerbic, fiery gypsy melodies that she continued to play for him until five o'clock in the morning. Ravel ruminated over a suitably virtuosic showpiece for the violinist over the next two years. He wrote to her, "Certain passages can produce brilliant effects, provided that it is possible to perform them-which I'm not always sure of." Ravel's musical models for Tzigane included Liszt's exotic Hungarian rhapsodies and Paganini's demanding twenty-four caprices. He also experimented with the lutheal, a type of prepared piano with extended timbres. D'Aranyi and pianist Henri Gil-Marchex premiered the work in 1924; d'Aranyi also premiered the orchestral version with the Colonne Orchestra in Paris.
Tzigane begins with improvisatory-sounding violin passages in which alluring Roma-inspired melodic lines indulge in rapid shifts of tempo and expression. Following the first entrance of the orchestra, a playful, animated theme is introduced. It is soon transformed through virtuosic string techniques- quadruple stops, pizzicati, and rapid rhythmic figurations- that permeate the work, a testament to Ravel's fascination with the exotic figure of the gypsy.
-Notes by Michael Accinno
In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy
William Grant Still ( 1895-1 978)
In 1941, President Roosevelt signed the Fair Employment Practice
Committee into law, barring defense industries from discriminatory hiring procedures. However, by 1942 the FEPC had all but disintegrated, and African Americans struggled
to find employment; several black organizations prepared to organize a massive march on Washington to pressure the president. Although Roosevelt strengthened the FEPC in May
1943, military units remained segregated until 1948, creating an uncomfortable paradox for patriotic African Americans.
The struggle for civil rights in the defense industries occurred just before the League of Composers invited African-American composer William Grant Still to submit a work on a patriotic theme to be premiered by the New York Philharmonic. Still's response was In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy. In his notes for the 1944 premiere, Still struck a proud note, recollecting
"the press release which announced that the first American soldier to be killed in World War II was a Negro soldier.
Then my thoughts turned to the colored soldiers all over the world, fighting under our flag and under the flags of the countries allied with us." In Memoriam utilizes Still's trademark blend of sonorous orchestration, blues idioms, folksong-like melodies, and vernacular tone colors- muted brass and bright woodwind timbres. After richly harmonized variations on a few mournful melodies recalling spirituals, brooding fanfares for full orchestra end the brief work in a noble, militaristic mood.
-Notes by Peter Gillette
Linc oln Portrait
Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, conductor Andre Kostelanetz commissioned "a
musical portrait gallery of great Americans."
Aaron Copland chose Abraham Lincoln, selecting quotations from the Gettysburg address, Lincoln's final debate with Stephen Douglas and his 1862 Congressional
address. Copland wanted texts that seemed "true not only for his own time, but for ours as well," so the narration speaks not only to the evils of slavery but also to the need for those in power to insure social justice and freedom from tyranny.
This evening's distinguished speaker for Lincoln Portrait
joins a list of previous narrators that reads like a "who's
who" of American artistic and political life: the actors Henry
Fonda, Gregory Peck, and James Earl Jones; poet Carl
Sandburg and anchorman Walter Cronkite; and political
figures Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Coretta Scott King, and Ted Kennedy. Copland himself narrated the piece for over twenty thousand people on the Capitol mall for a 1979 Memorial Day concert.
Lincoln Portrait, based on two traditional melodies, opens with the wide-spaced textures that have come to evoke an American landscape. The ballad "Springfield Mountain" is quoted in strings and winds; in the brass, the tune's open intervals evoke the military bugle call,
"Taps." Rhythmically sparkling music follows, based on Stephen Foster's "Camptown Races." The lyrical music of the folk tune re-emerges as this section climaxes, before the speaker's dramatic entrance.
In 1953, Lincoln Portrait was removed from a concert for Eisenhower's inauguration, because an Illinois Congressman complained about Copland's supposed Communist political affiliations. Copland responded that his activities had been "dedicated to the cultural fulfillment of America," adding, "I cannot for the life of me see how the cause of the free countries of the world will be advanced by the banning of my works." Copland was subsequently subjected to questioning during the McCarthy hearings. Ironically, the words the composer had chosen to open Lincoln Portrait were perhaps all too appropriate: Copland, like Lincoln, could not escape the darker forces of history.
-Notes by Marian Wilson Kimber
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history."
THAT IS WHAT HE SAID. THAT IS WHAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN SAID.
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility." [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]
HE WAS BORN IN KENTUCKY, RAISED IN INDIANA, AND LIVED IN ILLINOIS. AND THIS IS WHAT HE SAID. THIS IS WHAT ABE LINCOLN SAID.
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country." [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]
WHEN STANDING ERECT HE WAS SIX FEET FOUR INCHES TALL, AND THIS IS WHAT HE SAID.
He said: "It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says
'you toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."
[Lincoln-Douglas debates, 15 October 1858]
LINCOLN WAS A QUIET MAN. ABE LINCOLN WAS A QUIET AND A MELANCHOLY MAN. BUT WHEN HE SPOKE OF DEMOCRACY, THIS IS WHAT HE SAID.
He said: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.
This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, SIXTEENTH PRESrDENT OF THESE UNITED STATES, IS EVERLASTING IN THE MEMORY OF HIS COUNTRYMEN. FOR ON THE BATTLEGROUND AT GETTYSBURG, THJS IS WHAT HE SAID:
He said: "That from these honored clead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra Personnel
VIOLIN 1 Andrew Ube*
Bonnie Brown Colleen Ferguson Emily Rolka Preston Krauska Carrie Beisler Katie Klocke Matthew Bryks Lauren Trolley Samantha Hiller Rebecca Neely Joseph Chen
Kelsey Reeve Christina Blogg Catie Rinderknecht VIOLIN 2
Cameo Jong*
Kira Horel Therese Slatter Meghan Lemens Suzanne Wedeking Rachel Stevenson Nicole Gnatek Heidi Klett Haley Leach Renee Bovinette Alyssa Stormes Avery Whitis Erica Silver VIOIA
Jessica Altfillisch * Anton Jakovcic Miranda Blakeslee Diana Mayne Christopher Fashun Sarah Kaufmann Olivia Jones Kristin Rock Jesse Helgerson Max Tsai
Chealsea Burnhardt CELW
Yoo-Jung Chang*
Christina Craig Parker Stanley Amy Pirtle Jee Hyung Moon Brett Alkire Kyle Tester Matthew Gosse Rebekah Dotzel
Division of Performing Arts 2009-2010 Season
DOUBLE BASS Asli Yetisener*
Jared Fowler Christine Gehler Olivia Rose Muzzy Ian Richardson Miles Kean Kamil Anthony Benjamin Walt Jacob Stanbro
FLUTE
Jennifer Cunningham
3Rolando Hernandez'·
4Chiun-Hui Lien
2PICCOW
Jennifer Cunningham Rolando Hernandez OBOE
Angela Lickiss"
4Alan Morris
1•3Natalie Ramlow
2ENGLISH HORN
Matthew Shipp CIARINEf
Liza Nazario*
Aaron Kirschner Brian Walsh EB CIARINEf
Sarah Schwols BASS CIARINEf
Aaron Kirschner ALTO SAXOPHONE
Nathan Bogert BASSOON
Gustavo Koberstein
1•2Rachel Koeth
4Jacqueline Wilson
3CONTRABASSOON
Rachel Koeth Jacqueline Wilson
HORN
Evan Grulke
1•2·4Kelly Heidel Jessica Kizzire Nick Waymire
3TRUMPEf
Spencer Dunlap
3Ed Hong4
Katheryn Lawson
2Joshua Thompson
1TROMBONE
Jonathan Allen*
Alex Krawczyk BASS TROMBONE
Casey Thomas TUBA
Blaine Cunningham TIMPANI
Jonathan Werth PERCUSSION
Meghan Aube Adam Balling Lucas Bernier Scott J ennerjohn David Solomon HARP
Katherine Siochi PIANO/CELESIE
Seong-Sil Kim
* principal player
1
principal, Bernstein
2
principal, Ravel
3
principal, Still
4
principal, Copland
UI ORCHESTRA MANAGER Christopher Fashun
WIND LIBRARIAN Kira Horel
STRING LIBRARIAN Yuichi Ura
CONCERT MANAGER
Andrea Molina
YL Male Voice Choir
Sunday, February 21, 2 pm West High School Auditorium
"Luminous," says the International Record Review, "is precisely the word to describe the sound" of the YL Male Voice Choir. "Finland's National Treasure" has immeasurably enriched the world of music by commissioning and premiering many of Jean Sibelius' best known works and maintaining a commitment to contemporary choral music-since the 1980s the choir has premiered more than 100 works. But it is the gloriousness of the choir's sound that has enthralled audi- ences from Tokyo to New York. Save yourself a trip to Helsinki and catch this astonishing 65-voice ensemble in Iowa City.
1 tg!,~ri~[~!i Venezi an i
St. Mary's Catholic Church
When lnterpreti Veneziani made its U.S. debut at the University of Florida in January 2007, the chamber orchestra was rewarded with a resounding standing ovation-before intermission.
Positively bursting with brio, lnterpreti Veneziani specializes in baroque music and performs on period instruments for rapturous audiences at Venice's San Vidal Church and around the world. The ensemble kicks off a new tour of the United States with a perfor- mance in Iowa City that will Feature the exuberant virtuosity for which the group is known. Seating is limited so order your tickets now. At the concert, expect thunderous applause early and often.
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