YEAR OF THE VIOLIN 2018–2019 SEASON MARKAND THAKAR MUSIC DIRECTOR president’s welcome! Welcome to Baltimore Chamber Orchestra’s 2018-2019 season: BCO’s 36th year and our Year of the Violin! We are delighted to bring you once again five outstanding concerts this season! This is a special season for BCO, one of Baltimore’s musical treasures. We are conducting a search for our next concertmaster and are privileged to have four extraordinary violinists, who will demonstrate their technical and musical mastery over the course of the year. Each violinist will perform a concerto with us and will sit first chair for part of a concert. We invite you to help us assess each of the soloists and help us choose BCO’s next great concertmaster. Share your thoughts! We provide compelling performances of outstanding music in a comfortable, beautiful setting that’s easily accessible. Our specialty is music for smaller orchestral ensembles from the extensive classical canon. In addition to providing fresh and inspiring interpretations of familiar classics, BCO plays less well-known masterpieces ignored by larger orchestras. BCO is Baltimore’s Intimate Classical Orchestra, striving to create musical intensity at every performance. Our Sunday afternoon audiences are passionate about our concerts, and our strong reviews reflect the artistry of the orchestra. Thank you for your generous financial contributions that enable BCO to present outstanding classical music each season. Ticket revenues provide a small portion of the orchestra’s operating budget. Your donations also sustain BCO’s commitment to music education of young people, including All Students Free All the Time at concerts. Live Wire String Quartet, BCO’s educational- outreach ensemble, touched the lives of more than 1,600 students last season. We are continuing our development of The Listening Lab, BCO’s second music-education project for older, elementary-school students. We are helping to create the next generation of classical music lovers! Please join us for the final nights of Music Director Markand Thakar’s exciting conducting programs each winter and summer. Aspiring young conductors come from around the world to work with BCO and hone their craft under Maestro Thakar’s tutelage. Donors and subscribers are invited to observe these revelatory sessions; we would love for you to attend the evenings with full orchestra. Our next conducting program will be in December. This is a unique experience available to BCO supporters. Share the joy! Bring your friends and neighbors and introduce them to our performances. Bring students and give them a great musical experience (free for students). If you have ideas about how we can continue to build audiences and support for the orchestra, please let us know your thoughts. On behalf of Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and its Board of Trustees, thank you for joining us. Savor the music! Kim Z. Golden, President Board of Trustees 1 Board of Trustees Kim Z. Golden / President contents Investment Manager John A. Roberts, Esq. / Vice President/ Secretary 1 President’s Welcome Attorney at Law Kim Z. Golden Justin C. Lefevre / Treasurer Pricewaterhousecoopers 3 Music Director’s Welcome Sima Blue Markand Thakar Trillium Ltd. Sponsors Douglas M. Fambrough, Ph.D. 4 Johns Hopkins University Kevin Hirano Open Society Institute Markand Thakar 5 Christine M. Hurt, CPA, MBA Ayers Saint Gross, Inc. BCO Roster Michael A. Jacobs, M.D. 9 Good Samaritan Hospital James T. McGill, Ph.D. 10 BCO History Independent Consultant Steven E. Norwitz T. Rowe Price and Associates Patron Information 12 Brooke Pollack Christine Snyder BD Life Sciences Programs / Annotation 16 Jason T. Vlosich 16 October Concert Brown Advisory 24 November Concert 32 February Concert Staff March Concert Lockwood Hoehl 40 Executive Director 48 May Concert Ken Bell Operations Manager Donors 56 Craig Teer Stage Manager David Zeit WBJC’s Jonathan Palevsky House Manager leads PRE-CONCERT CONVERSATIONS at Composer in Residence 2:15 pm before each concert Jonathan Leshnoff in Kraushaar Auditorium music director’s welcome! Welcome to Baltimore Chamber Orchestra’s 36th season: Year of the Violin! While we miss our former concertmaster Madeline Adkins, stolen so unceremoniously by Utah Symphony (and without apology, I might add), we are excited by the prospects of a new era for BCO! We welcome four stellar candidates for the concertmaster position: Netanel “Nati” Draiblate, currently concertmaster of the orchestras of Annapolis and Lake Forest (IL); Karen Johnson, currently concertmaster of The White House Chamber Orchestra; Audrey Wright, associate concertmaster of Baltimore Symphony (Madeline’s successor); and Peter Sirotin, concertmaster of Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra. We also welcome William McGregor, the eighteen- year-old, virtuoso double-bass soloist and 2017 Stulberg International String Competition gold medalist. Our programs bring violin concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn; symphonies of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and Prokofiev; popular works by Dvořák, Rossini and Mozart; plus gems by Aaron Copland, Carl Nielsen, and of course by our much-loved Composer in Residence, Jonathan Leshnoff. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on who you’d like as our next concertmaster and, by all means, stop backstage after the concerts to say hello to all of us. Markand Thakar music director 3 special thanks! BCO Baltimore’s Intimate Classical Orchestra is grateful to its sponsors and partners for their extraordinary support of BCO’s 36th season. Season Sponsors Concert Sponsors Soloist Sponsors Baltimore County BD Life Sciences Concertmaster Search Sponsors: Commission on Arts Kim Z. Golden and Jean Suda Ashworth Guest Soloist Fund and Sciences Kim Z. Golden and Jean Suda Greenspring Associates, Inc. Kim Z. Golden and Jean Suda John Roberts and Naden/Lean, LLC Susan Shaner Maryland State Arts Council Wells Fargo Advisors, LLC Mr. McGregor is sponsored by: John Roberts and Susan Shaner Lutherville Complex Stulberg International Markand Thakar and String Competition Victoria Chiang Special Partners Sponsor in honor of WBJC-FM Jonathan Leshnoff: Towson University Live Wire String Quartet The Listening Lab Baltimore Chamber Orchestra is funded by an operating grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency dedicated to cultivating a vibrant cultural community where the arts thrive. Funding for the Maryland State Arts Council is also provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. 4 about markand thakar music director A former assistant conductor of New York Philharmonic, Music Director Markand Thakar’s appearances include concerts and a national radio broadcast with that orchestra, as well as concerts with National, San Antonio, Charlotte, Wichita, Knoxville, Colorado Springs, Illinois, Maryland, National Gallery, Waterbury, and Annapolis symphony orchestras; Ulsan (South Korea) Philharmonic; Boston Pro Arte, National, and Cleveland chamber orchestras; and opera productions with Baltimore Opera Theater, Teatro Lirico d’Europa, and Duluth Festival Opera. A frequent guest conductor at Aspen Music Festival, Mr. Thakar has appeared with Yo-Yo Ma and Colorado Symphony Orchestra and with Itzhak Perlman and Boulder Philharmonic. He is a winner of Geraldine C. and Emory M. Ford Foundation Award. He is a frequent commentator for NPR’s Performance Today and has appeared on CBS This Morning and CNN conducting Colorado Symphony. With BCO, Thakar has recorded three CDs for the Naxos label, including disks of concertos by Classical Era masters Stamitz, Hoffmeister, and Pleyel and music by Jonathan Leshnoff. BCO traveled to China to perform a series of Viennese New Year’s concerts. A recent a performance in New York earned a review from The New York Times, which praised the group’s “warmth and substance.” During his 12-year’s tenure with Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, DSSO saw dramatic growth in both audience and artistic prominence to what Minnesota Public Radio called “Minnesota’s other great orchestra.” Noted internationally as a pedagogue, Maestro Thakar’s two annual, intensive conducting programs with BCO have drawn conductors from five continents. His students have won significant conducting positions across North America and internationally, including music directorships with Hartford, Winnipeg, Oklahoma continued on page 6 5 continued from page 5 City, Sioux Falls, and Grande Ronde extend – even possibly from the very first symphony orchestras; staff conducting sound of a movement through the very last. positions with The Metropolitan Opera and In such an extended ‘magic moment’ we the orchestras of Philadelphia, New York, experience a remarkable transcendence: Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Dallas, Seattle, we accept the sound; we absorb the sound; Saint Louis, Portland (OR), Phoenix, we become the sound; and in so doing we Charlotte, Kansas City; and numerous transcend everyday consciousness of time collegiate positions. and space; we touch our conscious soul in a Formerly associate conductor of most remarkable way. My driving interest Colorado Symphony Orchestra and has been an exploration of the conditions conductor of Eugene Symphony’s – from the composer, from us performers, “NightMusic” pops series, Maestro Thakar and from the listener – that allow this most was music director and conductor of profoundly exquisite, life-affirming Amadeus Chamber Orchestra in New York experience.” City, Barnard-Columbia Philharmonia,