LIGHTSPEED Music for strings

March 20, 2021 7:30 PM Mesquite Arts Center • Mesquite, TX

Felix Torres Music Director

Lightspeed – 4’ Kevin Day Holberg Suite, Op. 40 – 23' Edvard Grieg 1. Praeludium – 4' 2. Sarabande – 4' 3. Gavotte – 4' 4. Air – 6' 5. Rigaudon – 5' Entra’cte for string orchestra – 13’ Caroline Shaw Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 – 33' Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky 1. Pezzo in forma di sonatina – 10' 2. Valse – 5' 3. Élégie – 10' 4. Finale (Tema russo) – 8'

This program will run approximately 75 minutes, and be performed without intermission. 2020-2021 Members

Violin I Flute Trombone Chris Mattaliano – CM Jennifer Hunter – P Justin Roth – P Ashlie Skidmore – ACM Brittney Cook Brandon Yenzer Marti Van Roy – PR Mike McDowell Melanaite Musonera Piccolo Marla Maletic Cheryl Stewart Tuba Willow Skidmore Rommel Cordovar – P Oboe Violin II Anna Peterson – P Timpani Piper Vance – P Nancy Smith Randy Taylor – P Elizabeth Graves Tracey Osborn English Horn Percussion Roxanne Turner Allison Crab – P Eric Estes Nicole Cruz Chris Lopez Bernardo Arthur Clarinet Bob Straka – P, D Piano Viola Vanessa Davis Lissa Cooke – P Diane Paul – P Brett Bagwell Bass Clarinet Harp Carl Barina Dawn Kariotakis-Perez Jessica Russell – P Robert Varnado – PR Bassoon Cello Cameron Baird CM – Concertmaster Anna Grace Hardin ACM – Assistant Kevin Torrefiel Horn Concertmaster Elizabeth Celis Stephen J. Krogh – P, FM P – Principal Brandon Wolf Ken Cooper AP – Assistant Principal Damian Macias – JHHS Juliana Moore ActP – Acting Principal Christina Null Bill Gross – L D – Band/Orchestra Director Bass Trumpet FM – Founding Member Tap McIntosh – P Chris Aucoin – P, PR L – Librarian David Macias – JHHS Mark Thompson PR – Player Gavin Clarke Representative SM – Stage Manager ASM – Assistant Stage Manager COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE

Kevin Day (b. 1996 in Charleston, WV) is an American composer, conductor, and multi- instrumentalist from Arlington, Texas. Day graduated in May 2019 from Texas Christian University with his Bachelor of M u s i c i n I n s t r u m e n t a l Performance Degree, where he studied Euphonium and Tuba with Richard Murrow, Jazz Piano with Joey Carter, Composition w i t h N e i l A n d e r s o n - Himmelspach, Blaise Ferrandino, and Till Meyn, and Conducting with Germán Guitiérrez and Eddie Airheart. He will be pursing his Master of Music in Music Composition Degree at the University of Georgia in Fall 2019, where he will study with composer Peter Van Zandt Lane and conductor Cynthia Johnston Turner.

Day has composed over 120 works for solos, concert band, orchestra, chamber, and choral groups. His works have been premiered across the United States and in South Africa. Kevin Day has received premieres and performances from the TCU Wind Symphony, Symphonic Band, Concert Band, Trombone Choir, and Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble. Kevin has also had works performed by the Dallas Winds, Cobb Wind Symphony, the Alabama All-State Band, and the wind ensembles of The University of Portland, The University of Georgia, Wayne State University, San Jóse State University, Seattle Pacific University, Texas State University, Texas A&M-Commerce (Symphonic Band), and the University of Cape Town (South Africa), to name a few. He has also had works performed by chamber groups such as the Puerto Rican Trombone Ensemble, The Hartt School Tuba-Euphonium Consortium, The Zenith Saxophone Quartet, and others.

As a musician, Kevin is actively involved as a low brass player, jazz pianist, and also receives work in music production. Kevin is an alumnus of the 2016 Disneyland All-American College Band on Tuba under the direction of Dr. Ron McCurdy and played with artists such as John Clayton, Wayne Bergeron, Ronald Carter (saxophone), Jiggs Whigham, and Gordon Goodwin. Day’s music has been featured at conferences across the U.S. such as the SCI Region VI Conference, Western International Band Clinic, the National Association for Music Educators All-Northwest Conference, the Midwest Clinic, the American Bandmasters Association Conference, and the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) National Conference. Mr. Day has won national composition contests such as the 2nd Annual Philadelphia Youth Orchestra Young Composers Competition, the Tribeca New Music Young Composers Competition, and the Dallas Winds Fanfare Contest, as well as being a finalist twice for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and once for the Novus New Music Call for Scores Contest. Kevin Day was selected as a Composer Fellow for Cycle 8 of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music for 2019. Day is also the recipient of the W. Francis McBeth Student Musicianship Award from Kappa Kappa Psi National Honorary Band Fraternity.

In addition to classical music, Mr. Day has composed music for three short films, A Partial Heart (2015), The Broken Man (2017), and Hello Henry (2018) that have gone on to film contests and festivals. Recently, The Broken Man was broadcasted on live television on KERA's Frame of Mind Program. Mr. Day has also held a composer-in-residence position with the Next Gen Chamber Players (Now Mansfield Philharmonic) in Mansfield, TX.

Day has guest conducted the Arlington High School Symphony Orchestra, the Greater Fort Worth Community Band, the Next Gen Chamber Players, the Fort Worth Civic Orchestra, the TCU Symphonic Band, the TCU Symphony Orchestra, the TCU Concert Band, and the TCU Wind Symphony. He has also worked with and has been mentored by renowned composers Gabriela Lena Frank, Julie Giroux, John Mackey, William Owens, and Frank Ticheli. Kevin is a member of BMI, TMEA, ITEA, the Gamma Sigma chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi (alumnus), and the Delta Mu chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia (alumnus). He is also a member of the Millennium Composers Initiative.

Day's works have been recorded/distributed by Mark Records (Naxos) and are published by Murphy Music Press, LLC, Cimarron Music, and Kevin Day Music.

Visit Kevin at kevindaymusic.com. PROGRAM NOTES Lightspeed Day’s (b. 1996) music ranges from the powerfully introspective and reflective to the exuberant and celebratory. His recent composition, Lightspeed (Fanfare for Orchestra) (2019), is definitely in the latter category. This brief work for orchestra was commissioned for the Washington and Lee University Symphony Orchestra. The piece features two main contrasting ideas, the first a mercurial, heavily accented, rhythmically asymmetrical theme first played in the strings and punctuated by percussion. A second, calmer, lyrical theme in the strings, evocative of a John Williams western melody, follows and builds to a return of the throbbing opening idea. The series repeats again with a closing section based on the opening theme now heightened by a triumphant, chorale-like melody in the brass before a resoundingly syncopated percussion closing flourish.

*This performance of Lightspeed will be performed with strings only.

The Holberg Suite, Op. 40 The subtitle to Holberg Suite is “suite in the old style.” Historically, the musical structure of a suite stretches back to the 16th and 17th centuries and always consists of a prelude or overture followed by a sequence of music for a variety of dance forms. Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) chose sarabande, gavotte, air, and a rigaudon, a slight departure from the more standard selections of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue.

Grieg composed the suite in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ludvig Holberg, a Danish-Norwegian playwright born in 1864. It has been noted that Holberg was born one year before Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Domenico Scarlatti (1685 was a very big year for music). Though it is not known for sure if this historical fact influenced Grieg to write a Baroque style suite, it certainly would make sense for Grieg to have made that compositional connection. Originally written for solo piano in 1884, Holberg Suite was arranged for strings the following year.

Entr’acte Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) is a New York-based musician—vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer—who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming with Inon Barnatan, Dawn Upshaw with Sō Percussion and Gil Kalish, Seattle Symphony, Anne Sofie von Otter with Philharmonia Baroque, the LA Philharmonic, Juilliard 415, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with John Lithgow, the Dover Quartet, TENET, The Crossing, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the Baltimore Symphony, and Roomful of Teeth with A Far Cry.

Caroline’s film scores include Erica Fae’s To Keep the Light and Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline as well as the upcoming short 8th Year of the Emergency by Maureen Towey. She has produced for Kanye West (The Life of Pablo; Ye) and Nas (NASIR), and has contributed to records by The National, and by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Once she got to sing in three part harmony with Sara Bareilles and Ben Folds at the Kennedy Center, and that was pretty much the bees’ knees and elbows. Caroline has studied at Rice, Yale, and Princeton, currently teaches at NYU, and is a Creative Associate at the Juilliard School. She has held residencies at Dumbarton Oaks, the Banff Centre, Music on Main, and the Vail Dance Festival. Caroline loves the color yellow, otters, Beethoven opus 74, Mozart opera, Kinhaven, the smell of rosemary, and the sound of a janky mandolin. In describing tonight’s piece she writes:

“Entr’acte was written in 2011 after hearing the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77 No. 2 — with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flat major trio in the minuet. It is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further. I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.”

Serenade for Strings in C major, Op. 48 Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s (1840–1893) Serenade for Strings (1880) was composed concurrently with the most unlikely of bedfellows: the “1812” Overture. Tchaikovsky wrote of the two works, “The overture will be very showy and noisy, but will have no artistic merit because I wrote it without warmth and without love. But the Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart.” The Serenade is indeed one of the most introspective and sublime works from the composer’s output, and it owes much of its character to the influence of Mozart and other early idols. The title Serenade, the instrumentation and the nature of the material (especially the first movement) all recall a simple, elegant Classicism. The first movement’s chorale introduction is the most overtly antique feature of the piece, establishing a theme starting with the descending notes C-B-A. The Sonatina suggested by the movement title commences with a homophonic theme in C Major, although it is the later secondary theme in G Major that steals the spotlight with its scampering 16th-notes. The movement concludes with a return to the initial chorale material. The following waltz is a delightful palette-cleanser after the austere chorale, with Tchaikovsky showing off that musical facet that confirms him one of the pre-eminent dance composers of all time. The Élégie returns to the “antique” aesthetic with another chorale introduction and parallel motion between the outer voices, although a heartbreaking melody is introduced that is more native to Tchaikovsky’s own Romantic style. The Finale offers yet again a slow introduction, this time cleverly arriving at a theme of C-B-A, transformed now into the seed of a rollicking “Russian theme.” A final coda quotes the initial chorale, driving home a thematic unity among the piece, and then concluding with a last look at the fast version of the theme.

THE TOMORROW FUND Giving to the Mesquite Symphony Orchestra's Tomorrow Fund is a great way to honor someone, and help the orchestra continue building a secure future. The fund, established with a $40,000 gift from a friend of the orchestra, has just passed the $50,000 mark with a sizable donation made in December 2018. This generous gift was given by the family of Howard Scheib, a longtime member of the orchestra, as a memorial gift and tribute. Several other groups and individuals have given $1,000 or more since the fund's opening in 2015 and will be honored in a permanent way with a plaque in the Mesquite Arts Center. Individual and group gifts to this endowment fund have ranged from $50 to $2,000 each, and each gift already has a significant impact on the MSO.

Every dollar is invested at Communities Foundation of Texas, and distributions from the fund's earnings each year help support our series of concerts at the Mesquite Arts Center, and our orchestra's work in the community.

To make a gift to the orchestra, or to honor someone with a gift, send your check (payable to the Mesquite Symphony Tomorrow Fund) and a note with the name of the person you are honoring to:

Mesquite Symphony Orchestra PO Box 850192 Mesquite, TX 75183-0192

You will be honoring someone now – and tomorrow.