It’s a little before 6 a.m. and I’m looking out from the balcony of a 10th floor apartment in Victoria, B.C., enjoying my Starbucks coffee. I love this time of day; it’s a fresh, new start and the world isn’t yet cluttered with traffic lights, deadlines, and the general “hurry-up” attitude of our society.
This is the time of day when I get most of my work done, learn the scores for the next concert, discover new repertoire, and listen to some of my favourites.
I hope that every single audience member leaves our concerts feeling uplifted and even perhaps a little anointed – that these emotions will filter through from the notes on the page to the hands and hearts of our musicians, and out through their instruments to touch everyone in the audience.
I’m out on the west coast visiting family, and thinking ahead to our 2011-2012 concert season. We’ve got leads on some amazing guest performers who will join the Kingston Symphony for a variety of concerts. But it’s difficult to think of next year when we still have some amazing concerts coming up in our current season.
As I mentioned in my last post, our February 6 concert Food for a Classical Soul will feature cellist Desmond Hoebig. He will be our soloist for Elgar’s Cello Concerto – full of the angst, despair, and disillusionment Elgar felt after the end of the War.
The program also includes an absolute favourite of mine – Brahms’ first symphony. This piece is as close to perfection as you can get. The composer spent 21 years completing this work, that’s almost 7,665 days of self-critical, meticulous perfectionism. Two decades of precise musicality put on paper. Almost 200,000 hours of painstaking composing to produce one of the most amazing symphonies ever written. He knowingly pays homage to Beethoven, and at the same time takes it to another level entirely, creating an entire world within the notes of the music. I get excited just thinking about it. I can’t wait for the Kingston Symphony to share this epic work.
The third piece on the February 6 program is a piece by Kingston’s own Marjan Mozetich. Calla Lilies was written in memory of his friends who died of AIDS. Not an easy topic to launch into, and yet Marjan managed to produce a wonderful tribute piece, melodically simple and harmonically austere.
Marjan is currently Adjunct Lecturer in Composition at Queen’s University. We are so lucky to have a composer of his stature and musical importance in our midst here in Kingston.
He has won numerous awards and his works have been featured on the most prominent stages of the world. He is a composer who maintains the integrity of classical music and yet writes pieces that are accessible to those making their way in our fast-paced world. His music is both traditional and modern at the same time – an amazing feat that should not go unnoticed.
In 2009, his composition Affairs of the Heart made it onto CBC Radio 2’s listener-selected list of top 49 Canadian songs that president-elect Barack Obama needed to hear. He’s on the list alongside the most varied selection of Canadian musicians, old and new. The list was compiled by Canadian listeners sending in their selections. It’s nice to know that a classical composer has “still got it” in a pop-culture world. We’re constantly bombarded with all sorts of genres of music, and classical certainly isn’t the No. 1 genre according to Billboard Magazine. And yet people are listening to Mozetich. That’s the mark of a fantastic composer.
What music resonates with you? I’d love to hear what pieces you are listening to currently, or what music has stuck with you throughout your life. It doesn’t matter what genre it is, I’d just like to know what you’re listening to and why you love it! Send me an e-mail at gfast@kingstonsymphony.on.ca.
For now, please check out my latest Youtube interview by
clicking here.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
Quite the contrast
Broadway Beauties: two words that hold so many connotations and emotions. If you’re even the slightest musical theatre fan, then you absolutely cannot miss the next Kingston Symphony concert on Friday, January 21 or Saturday, January 22.
You’ve got two chances to see this great line up featuring songs from Wicked, A Chorus Line, Funny Girl, Sweet Charity, Cats… I can’t even list them all.
For this concert I’ll be handing the baton over to guest conductor Michael Reason, the co-creator of the Broadway Beauties show. Michael had a vision: he wanted to create a musical review that not only patched together a collection of songs, but held a plot line that would put songs from all these different stories together, driven by the music and lyrics alone with no dialogue.
He painstakingly reviewed material and helped select the songs to make up the show, making sure the final selections and placements helped the audience understand the underlying plot. Broadway Beauties also features new orchestrations and arrangements written for all of the songs. This show has been performed to stellar reviews in Hamilton, Calgary, and Toronto. Now it’s time for Kingston to get a taste of Broadway.
The three soloists for the evening – June Crowley, Louise St. Cyr, and Amy Wallis – are all great singers and actresses. Coming from three different corners of the musical-theatre world in Canada, these women are sure to blow the audience away with their interpretations of these songs. There’s so much in this program, I can’t even begin to describe it!
So come escape to Broadway for a few hours; experience the drama and wonderful music that spans several decades of the greatest stage in the world.
Our February 6 concert, Food for a Classical Soul, is exactly the opposite of Broadway. It will feature cellist Desmond Hoebig, whom I’ve known for quite a while, and who’s so hard to put into words. To put him in perspective, he has studied at the Julliard School of Music, won first prize at several music competitions worldwide, been a guest soloist with orchestras throughout North America as well as in Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Japan and currently is professor at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, TX. I could go on and on and on.
Desmond will join the Kingston Symphony for Elgar’s Cello Concerto in e minor. This concerto is Elgar’s last notable work. He composed it following the First World War, when his music was considered "out of fashion" with the concert-goers. It wasn’t until almost 50 years later that this piece gained popularity, and is still today a well-known best-seller.
As I mentioned this piece is the complete contradiction of Broadway. It represents the angst, despair, and disillusionment Elgar felt after the end of the War, and is his introspective look at death and mortality – a big change from the optimism Elgar expressed in his previous works.
This poignant and moving piece will be played along-side Mozetich’s Calla Lilies and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in c minor. It’s a fabulously rich program that’s food for any soul, but particularly those who have a thirst for classical music.
Be sure to check out the line-up of concerts in the coming months, which includes a classical variety show with CBC’s Tom Allen, a tribute to Hollywood soundtracks, and a couple others you won’t want to miss.
Happy New Year, Auld Lang Syne, and all the rest!
You’ve got two chances to see this great line up featuring songs from Wicked, A Chorus Line, Funny Girl, Sweet Charity, Cats… I can’t even list them all.
For this concert I’ll be handing the baton over to guest conductor Michael Reason, the co-creator of the Broadway Beauties show. Michael had a vision: he wanted to create a musical review that not only patched together a collection of songs, but held a plot line that would put songs from all these different stories together, driven by the music and lyrics alone with no dialogue.
He painstakingly reviewed material and helped select the songs to make up the show, making sure the final selections and placements helped the audience understand the underlying plot. Broadway Beauties also features new orchestrations and arrangements written for all of the songs. This show has been performed to stellar reviews in Hamilton, Calgary, and Toronto. Now it’s time for Kingston to get a taste of Broadway.
The three soloists for the evening – June Crowley, Louise St. Cyr, and Amy Wallis – are all great singers and actresses. Coming from three different corners of the musical-theatre world in Canada, these women are sure to blow the audience away with their interpretations of these songs. There’s so much in this program, I can’t even begin to describe it!
So come escape to Broadway for a few hours; experience the drama and wonderful music that spans several decades of the greatest stage in the world.
Our February 6 concert, Food for a Classical Soul, is exactly the opposite of Broadway. It will feature cellist Desmond Hoebig, whom I’ve known for quite a while, and who’s so hard to put into words. To put him in perspective, he has studied at the Julliard School of Music, won first prize at several music competitions worldwide, been a guest soloist with orchestras throughout North America as well as in Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Japan and currently is professor at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, TX. I could go on and on and on.
Desmond will join the Kingston Symphony for Elgar’s Cello Concerto in e minor. This concerto is Elgar’s last notable work. He composed it following the First World War, when his music was considered "out of fashion" with the concert-goers. It wasn’t until almost 50 years later that this piece gained popularity, and is still today a well-known best-seller.
As I mentioned this piece is the complete contradiction of Broadway. It represents the angst, despair, and disillusionment Elgar felt after the end of the War, and is his introspective look at death and mortality – a big change from the optimism Elgar expressed in his previous works.
This poignant and moving piece will be played along-side Mozetich’s Calla Lilies and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in c minor. It’s a fabulously rich program that’s food for any soul, but particularly those who have a thirst for classical music.
Be sure to check out the line-up of concerts in the coming months, which includes a classical variety show with CBC’s Tom Allen, a tribute to Hollywood soundtracks, and a couple others you won’t want to miss.
Happy New Year, Auld Lang Syne, and all the rest!
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