vcuarts vcuarts UPCOMING CONCERTS MUSIC MUSIC Thursday, October 8, 2015 at 8 p.m. FALL JAZZ FESTIVAL Join the VCU Jazz Orchestras I and II, along with the VCU Jazz Faculty for three-sets of music! Tickets are $7 in advance; $10 at the door; and free for VCU students with ID. Saturday, October 10, 2015 at 8 p.m. MARY ANNE RENNOLDS CHAMBER CONCERT SERIES IGUDESMAN & JOO: AND NOW MOZART Aleksey Igudesman and Hyung-ki Joo are two classical musicians who FACULTY RECITAL have taken the world by storm with their unique and hilarious theatrical shows, which combine comedy with classical music and popular culture. Their clips on YouTube, to date, have been viewed more than 35 million times, and the duo has appeared on television in numerous countries. ALBERT REGNI Tickets are $34 general admission, $31 for seniors/VCU Alumni SAXOPHONES Association members. and Tuesday, October 13, 2015 at 8 p.m. ALLEN FARNHAM VCU SYMPHONY and the WOMEN'S CHOIR The VCU Symphony presents a concert featuring Vivaldi's Gloria, with PIANO the VCU Women's Choir, as well as Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Gabriela Lena Frank's lllapa, a tone poem for flute with Tabatha Easley. Tickets are $7 in advance; $10 at the door; and free for VCU students with ID. Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 4 p.m. FACULTY RECITAL: SONIA VLAHCEVIC, PIANO Vlahcevic performs her annual faculty recital, with special guest Justin Alexander, percussion. Free Admission. Saturday, October 25, 2015 at 8 p.m. Monday, October 5, 2015 | 7 p.m. MARY ANNE RENNOLDS CHAMBER CONCERT SERIES JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall Founded in 1946, the Juilliard String Quartet is widely recognized as W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts the quintessential American string quartet. The quartet makes manifest 922 Park Avenue | Richmond, Virginia the credo of its founders to "play new works as if they were established masterpieces and established masterpieces as if they were new." Devoted arts.vcu.edu/music master teachers, the members of the Julliard Quartet are all sought-after members of the string and chamber music faculty at The Julliard School. Tickets are $34 general admission, $31 for seniors/VCU Alumni Association members. vcu GINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY ALLEN FARNHAM has been active in the New York City jazz scene as a pianist, composer/arranger, producer, and teacher since the early 1980s, performing and/or recording with Joe Lovano, Chris Potter, Eddie Henderson, Frank Wess, Tom Harrell, Arthur Blythe, Special EFX, the John Fedchock NY Big Band, and Charlie Byrd. He has also accompanied a wide range of vocalists, including Mel Torme, Ernestine Anderson, Mark Murphy, Liza Minnelli, Susannah McCorkle, Roseanna Vitro, and Helen Merrill. Farnham is active in the recording industry, as both a leader and side musician, and as a staff producer and arranger for the West Coast-based jazz label Concord Records, having also served as that company's director of national radio promotion. He has produced more than 50 albums for such artists as Charlie Byrd, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Lew Tabackin, Chris Potter, Buddy DeFranco, and Jack McDuff. Mr. Famham's arranging credits include recordings by Eden Atwood, Susannah McCorkle, Veronica Martell, Jesse Davis, and Monty Alexander as well as his own albums. A 1997 release by Concord Records, "Allen Farnham Meets The RIAS Big Band," features his original compositions and arrangements for the renowned RIAS Big Band of Berlin, Germany. A graduate of the Oberlin Music Conservatory, Farnham has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Meet the Composer Foundation. He also holds a Master of Music degree in Jazz Composition and Arranging from William Paterson University and has been commissioned to write works for the CUG Orchestra (Nagoya, Japan), NPO Glovill (Tokyo), the RIAS Big Band, and the Englewinds Chamber Ensemble. He is presently an adjunct faculty member of the jazz department at New Jersey City University. ABOUT THE ARTISTS ALBERT REGNI, SAXOPHONES vcuarts ALLEN FARNHAM, PIANO ALBERT REGNI has been the saxophonist for the New York Monday, October 5, 2015 | 7 p.m. Philharmonic from July 1963 to July 2013; most of those years as MUSIC Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall the principal. His work with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and New York City Ballet Orchestras utilized him as principal saxophonist for most of those years, as well. Additional appearances with major symphonies include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles PROGRAM Philharmonic, Leningrad Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Sonata For Alto Saxophone and Piano, Op. 29 Robert Muczynski Rotterdam Philharmonic, Odessa Philharmonic, Kirov Ballet Orchestra, Andante maestoso Israel Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, Richmond Symphony and Allegro energico the National Symphony of Washington, D.C. He has appeared as solo saxophonist with the National Symphony, American Symphony, New Prisoner of Love Robert Aldridge York Philharmonic, The American Composer's Orchestra and The Ballad - Presto Little Orchestra of New York under a number of luminary conductors including Leonard Bernstein, John Williams, Leonard Slatkin, David Concerto in C minor Benedetto Marcello Gilbert, and Dennis Russell Davies. Allegro Moderato arranged and ornamented by Victor Morosco Adagio Allegro Mr. Regni's array of New York studio work includes hundreds of recordings on commercial, classical, pop, jazz, major motion pictures, Triste Antonio Carlos Jobim and more than 20 original Broadway cast albums in addition to arranged for solo piano by Allen Farnham innumerable radio and television commercials. The TV series Twin Peaks earned him a Grammy recognition for his saxophone, clarinet, Jazz Sonata (1994) Ramon Ricker and bass clarinet contributions. Leonard Bernstein's recordings Slow, very free ~ Allegro of West Side Story featuring Jose Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa Slowly also features Regni as principal clarinetist. He has had extensive Allegro - Waltz - Allegro experience with Maestro Bernstein on several New York Philharmonic world tours, the 1976 U.S. bicentennial tour of the U.S., TV Young People's Concerts, the 50th Anniversary world tour of the Israel Philharmonic, the Bernstein MASS opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971 and on Broadway as a member of the orchestra in the first revival of On the Town. More at AlbertRegni.com He has served as saxophone professor at The College of New Jersey, Brooklyn College, City College of New York, New York University, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Maryland at College Park, the Eastman School of Music and Virginia Commonwealth University. Please silence all electronic devices. Department of Music | School of the Arts | Virginia Commonwealth University 922 Park Avenue, Room 132 | PO Box 842004 | Richmond, VA 23284-2004 (804) 828-1166 I [email protected] | arts.vcu.edu/music NOTES ON THE PROGRAM composed a variety of music including considerable church music, oratorios, hundreds of solo cantatas, duets, sonatas, concertos and ROBERT MUCZYNSKI: sinfonias. Marcello was a younger contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi SONATA FOR ALTO SAXOPHONE AND PIANO, OP. 29 in Venice and his instrumental music enjoys a Vivaldian flavor. The Robert Muczynski (1929-2010) is one of the most distinguished Concerto in C minor was written originally for solo oboe and is here American neo-Classical composers of his generation. Spending most given an extended embellished treatment for soprano saxophone. of his career apart from the country's main cultural centers and working within a well-worn musical idiom, neither he nor his works ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM: TRISTE have ever developed a strong public profile. Yet his consistently high Antonio "Tom" Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim (1927-1994), also standards of taste and craftsmanship, the sincerity and authenticity of I known as Tom Jobim, was a Brazilian songwriter, composer, arranger, his expressive content, and the practical utility of much of his output singer, and pianist/guitarist. He was a primary force behind the have contributed to the gradual establishment of many of his works creation of the bossa nova style, and his songs have been performed in the active repertoire. Muczynski is an accomplished pianist as well, by many singers and instrumentalists within Brazil and internationally. and has recorded most of his music for that instrument. Widely known as the composer of Garota de Ipanema (The Girl from Ipanema), one of the most recorded songs of all time, Jobim has left a Among the more than fifty published compositions in his catalog, large number of songs that are now included in jazz and pop standard his Sonata for Flute and Piano, Op. 14 (1961), his Sonata for Alto repertoires. His Triste has been a longtime favorite from the bossa Saxophone and Piano (1970), and Time Pieces for clarinet and piano nova repertoire and is here given an extended fantasy-like treatment (1984) have entered the repertoire and remain frequently performed by Mr. Farnham's unique piano interpretation. in recitals, as has much of his solo piano music. RAMON RICKER: JAZZ SONATA ROBERT ALDRIDGE: PRISONER OF LOVE This work combines musical elements from both the contemporary Robert Aldridge (born 1954 in Richmond, Virginia) is an American "classical" and jazz traditions with the intention of inspiring the composer, professor, and current Professor and Director of Music growing interest in crossing the boundaries between the two styles. at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. He has The three movements incorporate melodic, technical, classical and written over sixty works for orchestra, opera, musical theater, dance, jazz techniques as well as extended improvisations. It was first and various chamber ensembles that have been performed in the performed by the composer/saxophonist Ramon Ricker and pianist United States, Europe, and Japan. He is widely known for his opera Bill Dobbins in Naples, Florida in May 1991. Elmer Gantry, based on Sinclair Lewis's Nobel prize-winning 1927 novel of the same name, which was completed in 2007 and won Best Engineered Album (Classical) and Best Contemporary Classical Composition in the 54th Annual Grammy Awards.