2015-10-03 Concert Program.Indd
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October 3, 2015 Toshiyuki Shimada Music Director program Anniversary Fanfare (World Premiere) Brian Samuel Robinson Dedicated to Toshiyuki Shimada on his 10th Anniversary as Music Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra Pomp and Circumstance No. 1 Sir Edward Elgar Thomas C. Duff y, Guest Conductor Pulcinella Suite Igor Stravinsky Sinfonia (Overture) Serenata Scherzino - Allegretto - Andantino Tarantella Tocatta Gavotta (con due variazioni) Vivo Minuetto - Finale Intermission Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Andante sostenuto — Moderato con anima — Moderato assai, quasi Andante — Allegro vivo Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco {Please silence all portable electronic devices} about the artists Toshiyuki Shimada, Music Director Toshiyuki Shimada is Music Director and Conductor of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra in New London; Music Director and Conductor of the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes; and has been Music Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra of Yale University since 2005. He is also Music Direc- tor Laureate of the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Portland, Maine, for which he served as Music Director from 1986 to 2006. Prior to his Portland engagement he was Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra for six years. Since 1998, he has also served as Principal Conductor of the Vienna Modern Masters record label in Austria. Photo by Harold Shapiro Maestro Shimada continues to be active with his three orchestras, as well as his teaching duties at Yale University. He will also be guest conducting for the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra in Ankara, Turkey; the Izmir State Orchestra in Izmir, Turkey; and the Knoxville Sym- phony Orchestra in Tennessee. In May and June of 2010, the Yale Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Shimada made a highly successful tour to the Republic of Turkey, perform- ing in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir. The trip garnered extensive media cov- erage, including CNN and Turkish National Television. In 2008 the YSO toured Italy, performing in Rome, Florence, Bologna, and Milan. This past spring Maestro Shimada was invited to conduct the United States Coast Guard Band, following guest conductor Leonard Slatkin. He has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Andre Watts, Peter Serkin, Emanuel Ax, Yefi m Bronfman, Idil Biret, Peter Frankl, Janos Starker, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Nadjia Salerno- Sonnenberg, Cho-Liang Lin, Sir James Galway, Evelyn Glennie, and Barry Tuckwell. In the Pops fi eld he has performed with Doc Severinsen, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Marvin Hamlisch, and Toni Tennille. Maestro Shimada has had the good fortune to study with many dis- tinguished conductors of the past and the present, including Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Herbert Blomstedt, Hans Swarovsky, and Michael Tilson Thomas. He was a fi nalist in the 1979 Herbert von Kara- jan conducting competition in Berlin, and a Fellow Conductor in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute in 1983. In addition, he was named Ariel Musician of the Year in 2003 by Ariel Records, and received the ASCAP award in 1989. He graduated from California State University, North- ridge, studying with David Whitwell and Lawrence Christianson, and attended the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Vienna, Austria. He records with the Vienna Modern Masters label and with the Mora- vian Philharmonic, and currently has fi ft een albums on the label. He also records for Capstone Records, Querstand-VKJK (Germany), and Albany Records. His recording of Gregory Hutter’s Skyscrapers has been released through the Naxos label, and his Hindemith CD project with pianist Idil Biret was released in 2013. His Music from the Vatican with the Prague Chamber Orchestra and Chorus is available through iTunes and Rhapsody. Maestro Shimada holds a teaching position at Yale University, as Associ- ate Professor of Conducting with Yale School of Music and Department of Music. He has a strong commitment to music education, and has been a faculty member of Rice University, Houston, Texas; the University of Southern Maine; and served as Artist Faculty at the Houston Institute of Aesthetic Study. He is a favorite guest conductor with the orchestras of Ithaca College, Purchase College, and the University of Connecticut. He has conducted All State Honor and Regional Honor Orchestras for Con- necticut, California, New York, Maine and Massachusetts. He was one of the distinguish speakers at the Chopin Symposium 2010, at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. He resides in Connecticut with his wife, concert pianist Eva Virsik. Thomas C. Duff y, Guest Conductor Thomas Duff y is Professor (Adjunct) of Music and Director of Univer- sity Bands at Yale University, where he has worked since 1982. He has established himself as a composer, a conductor, a teacher, an administrator, and a leader. His interests and research range from non-tonal analysis to jazz, from wind band history to creativity and the brain. Under his direc- tion, the Yale Bands have performed at conferences of the College Band Directors National Association and New England College Band Associa- tion; for club audiences at NYC’s Village Vanguard and Iridium, Ronnie Scotts’s (London), and the Belmont (Bermuda); performed as part of the inau- gural ceremonies for President George H.W. Bush; and concertized in nineteen countries in the course of sixteen international tours. Duff y produced a two-year lecture/performance series, Music and the Brain, with the Yale School of Medicine; and, with the Yale School of Nursing, de- veloped a musical intervention to train nursing stu- dents to better hear and identify body sounds with the stethoscope. He combined his interests in music and science to create a genre of music for the bilateral conductor - in which a “split-brained conductor” must conduct a diff erent meter in each hand, sharing down- beats. His compositions have introduced a generation of school musicians to aleatory, the integration of spoken/sung words and “body rhythms” with instrumental performance, and the pairing of music with political, social, historical and scientifi c themes. He has been awarded the Yale Tercenten- nial Medal for Composition, the Elm/ Ivy Award, the Yale School of Music Cultural Leadership Citation and certifi cates of appreciation by the United States Attorney’s Offi ce for his Yale 4/Peace: Rap for Justice concerts – music programs designed for social impact by using the power of music to deliver a message of peace and justice to impressionable middle and high school students. From 1996 to 2006, he served as associate, deputy and acting dean of the Yale School of Music. He has served as a member of the Fulbright National Selection Committee, the Tanglewood II Symposium planning committee, the Grammy Foundation Music Educators Award Screening Committee, and completed the MLE program at the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education. He has served as: president of the Connecticut Composers Inc., the New England Col- lege Band Directors Association and the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA); editor of the CBDNA Journal, publicity chair for the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles; and chair of the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s Professional Aff airs and Government Relations committees. For nine years, he represented music education in Yale’s Teacher Preparation Program. He is a member of Ameri- can Bandmasters Association, American Composers Alliance, the Connecti- cut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Connecticut Composers Incorporated, the Social Science Club, and BMI. Duff y has conducted ensembles all over the world and most recently was selected to conduct the 2011 NAFME National Honor Band in the Kennedy Center, Washington, D. C. notes on the program Anniversary Fanfare (World Premiere) Brian Samuel Robinson This is a fanfare frought with contradiction. Where most fanfares are heralding something to arrive, this fanfare commemorates a notable career. Where most fanfares are written for brass ensembles, this is a full sym- phony orchestra with organ. Musically, most themes are introduced and then developed, while here are four minutes of development, leading to the single and fi nal pronouncement of the theme - in the cadence. Yet the unorthodox is there to convey a celebratory nature in the present-day, and any oddness is used with intent; a necessary adaptation to an old form. Written to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of Maestro Toshiyuki Shimada’s career as Music Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra, this anniversary occassion heralds Maestro Shimada as the longest-standing music director in the history of the YSO. I would like to off er my own admiration of his willingness to experiment, openness to trying the un- orthodox, and enthusiasm to include the new with the old. I have been a frequent recipient of his generosity, and I hope that admiration is refl ected in this work. Pomp and Circumstance No. 1 Sir Edward Elgar The Pomp and Circumstance Marches take their name from Act III of Shakespeare’s seminal tragedy, Othello. In the play’s third act, the titular Othello, a military hero, invokes the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war” whilst contemplating his wife’s alleged betrayal. Though the speech emerges at a point of tragedy in the play, Sir Edward Elgar evidently uses Othello’s words to inspire a giddy tone of triumph in his composi- tions. True to their title, Sir Elgar’s marches embody the pageantry and valor attributed to war in an optimistic, pre-World War I England. Sir Elgar composed six total Pomp and Circumstance marches, each of which are dedicated to a friend. In 1901, Sir Elgar premiered “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D” whilst conducting the Liverpool Orchestra Society. March No. 1 consists of an Allegro and the more famous Trio. A deeply patriotic piece, the Trio features the English tune called the “Land of Hope and Glory” and was played during the coronation of King Edward VII, the son of Queen Victoria.