california symphony
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California Symphony to rock with West Coast premiere of the ‘Dead Symphony’ Grateful Dead tribute to
include exhibit of Herb Greene photography and signings with
official biographer Dennis McNally and composer Lee Johnson
The West Coast premiere of Lee Johnson’s Dead Symphony: An Orchestral Tribute to the Music
of the Grateful Dead will be presented on January 25 and 27 by Music Director Barry Jekowsky
and the award-winning California Symphony.
As part of the California Symphony’s own Grateful Dead tribute, an exhibition of images of the
band taken by noted photographer Herb Greene will be on display at the Bedford Gallery in the
Lesher Center for the Arts from January 15 – 31. The featured guests at each concert will be
composer Lee Johnson, who will be visiting from Atlanta, and official Grateful Dead biographer
Dennis McNally. Johnson will sign CDs of the Dead Symphony, released by Omi Records in
2007, and McNally will sign out-of-print hard copies of his New York Times bestselling book, A
Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead. Both will also participate in a panel
discussion to be moderated by Jekowsky following each performance.
Live performances of the Dead Symphony, along with Stravkinsky's Firebird Suite, are scheduled for
Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 4 pm and Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 7:30 pm. Both concerts will take
place at the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, CA 94596. Tickets are $39 -
$59, and can be purchased online at www.LesherArtsCenter.org or by calling (925) 943-SHOW. For
more information: www.CaliforniaSymphony.org.
Among the most enthusiastic supporters of the Dead Symphony have been Deadheads (as the
band’s legion of passionate fans are known). Many attended the world premiere in Baltimore in
August. “The audience was electric. For an orchestral premiere, I’ve never seen anything like it.
There were ovations between the movements!” Johnson says.
Calling it an “extraordinary work,” Blair Jackson of www.Dead.net wrote in 2007: “To say that I
was skeptical when I heard that there was a new CD with the imposing title of Dead Symphony:
An Orchestral Tribute to the Music of the Grateful Dead would be an understatement. After all,
there is a long and ignoble tradition of butchering rock songs by rearranging them in lame and
unimaginative ‘classical’ settings….So what a delightful and unexpected treat it was when I finally
popped Lee Johnson’s Dead Symphony #6 into my CD player and discovered that the Georgia-
based composer and educator had succeeded in creating a work of great passion, depth, subtlety
and imagination. Rather than merely being straight orchestral transcriptions of famous pop
tunes, Johnson has used ten Grateful Dead songs (dubbed “movements”) as jumping-off points
for an imaginative and emotional journey through both obvious and suggested melodies,
harmonies and motifs in the various tunes.”
"I think what the Grateful Dead did is such a part of more than one generation,” Johnson says.
“It's long overdue to be taken as a phenomenon beyond the music itself, and in my case, out came
a symphony.” The work is comprised of twelve movements dedicated to the band’s hits “Saint
Stephen,” “Here Comes Sunshine,” “Mountains of the Moon,” “Blues for Allah,” “Sugar
Magnolia,” “To Lay Me Down,” “If I Had the World to Give,” “Stella Blue,” “Bird Song,” and
“China Doll.”
Commissioned by Atlanta producer Mike Adams shortly after Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995, the
piece ultimately took ten years to complete – in part because Johnson first had to familiarize
himself with the Dead’s extensive, ever-evolving repertoire. “This is a band that was in perpetual,
spontaneous creation all the time,” he says. Johnson was also only four years old when Garcia,
Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Ron McKerenan, and Bill Kreutzmann formed the Grateful Dead in 1965.
Even later, the award-winning composer, conductor and full-time college professor wasn’t paying
that much attention to popular music. “I grew up studying 'dead' composers, but the other kinds
– the Stravinskys, the Beethovens and all those,” he says with a laugh.
“Although a basic five-chord rock 'n' roll band, the Grateful Dead 's multiple-time signatures,
harmonies and rhythms have had its fans swearing for decades that they could hear the sounds of
Beethoven and other classical composers echoing throughout the music,” John Rogers of the
Associated Press noted in 2007. “No one took them very seriously, apparently, until Johnson;
perhaps, he says, because adapting the music to a classical format was no simple task. If there was
one constant in the Grateful Dead 's approximately 2,500 concerts, it was that the band - partial
to long, experimental jams - rarely played the same song the same way twice.”
When asked how he feels about the Dead Symphony’s long-awaited Bay Area debut, Johnson
enthused: “This is huge! This is the soil from which it sprang. It’s a big deal!” Of the selection of
the California Symphony to present it, he adds: “They have a great music director. Barry saw it,
wanted it, and asked for it.”
The Dead Symphony is the second of four out-of-the-box subscription programs being presented
this season by Jekowsky, known for his innovative way of fusing classical music with pop culture
to create ‘event’ programs. Later this season, the California Symphony will perform the world’s
first live symphony in 3-D, as well as the world premiere of a second cutting-edge score from
electronica d.j. and classical composer Mason Bates. Last October, CSO presented Samuel’s
Barber’s Adagio for Stings visually interpreted by Russian handstand acrobats at standing-room
only performances.
About Lee Johnson
Johnson has composed nine symphonies, numerous chamber works, four musicals, two operas, concerti,
choral and vocal works, works for ballet theater, feature and experimental film, and hundreds of works for
multimedia and interactive technologies. He has conducted and recorded with such world class orchestras
asThe Russian National Orchestra, The London Symphony Orchestra, The Taliesin Orchestra, The London
Session Orchestra, The American Rock Orchestra, and The Cyberlin Philharmonia. His works can be found
on over ten major labels. Among his numerous accolades for original compositions,Johnson has received
an Emmy Award (1991, “It May Not Be Tara”), was named Georgia Artist of the Year (1995) and has won
ASCAP (1993) and ADDY (1996) awards. He is a full-time Callaway Professor of Music Chair at LaGrange
College in Georgia. For more information, visit www.LeeJohnsonMusic.com and
www.DeadSymphony.com.
About the California Symphony
Founded in 1986 by Music Director Barry Jekowsky, the California Symphony was named “America’s Best
Symphony Orchestra” by Reader’s Digest in 2005. Jekowsky is the recipient of numerous honors, including
the prestigious ASCAP Award for including at least one American composition on every program he
conducts with the California Symphony – a tradition now in its 22nd year, and the BMI Foundation Award for
creating the Young American Composer-in-Residence Program (YACR), the first and only program of its
kind anywhere in the world to nurture new talent through unparalleled access to the orchestra as a
laboratory to hone their craft. Notably, YACRs have gone on to win two of the three BBC International
Masterprizes to date in the world’s leading competition for composers. Long before it became a national
trend, Jekowsky began presenting gifted young musicians in their professional concert debuts in the United
States. Among those who have gone on to international acclaim have been violinist Sarah Chang and
pianist Joyce Yang. In 1997, he led the California Symphony to critical acclaim with the recording of its first
CD – Lou Harrison: A Portrait, featuring Al Jarreau (DECCA/ARGO) – which garnered rave national and
international reviews and was named “CD of the Month” in Gramophone magazine. For more information:
www.CaliforniaSymphony.org.
About Herb Greene
Herb Greene photographed the rock musicians and other members of San Francisco's cultural milieu during
the height of its creative productivity. Greene, a friend of many of San Francisco's most influential
musicians, worked as few photographers have: not as a documenter from the outside, but as a participant
within the music scene he was photographing. Many of his images have become signature portraits of these
musicians. His revealing portraits of The Jefferson Airplane, Jeff Beck, The Pointer Sisters, The Grateful
Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Carlos Santana, Sly Stone, Rod Stewart and many others helped create
astonishing family album for an entire generation. To view his collection, visit
www.HerbGreeneFoto.com. Signed open edition prints can be ordered by calling 978-897-4923, or
email [email protected].
About Dennis McNally
McNally received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1977 for
a biography of Jack Kerouac, published by Random House in 1979 under the title Desolate Angel: Jack
Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America. After settling in San Francisco in 1976, he became a
freelance journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications, and the first archivist for Bill
Graham Presents. In 1980, McNally was selected as the Grateful Dead’s authorized biographer and
became the band’s publicist a year later. From 1984 to 1995, he toured with the band, in the process
working on its behalf at the United Nations, the White House, and Congress.
About the Bedford Gallery
Established in 1968, the Bedford Gallery – under Curator Carrie Lederer – is a program of the City of Walnut
Creek’s Department of Arts, Recreation, and Community Services. The Gallery organizes and presents five
to six exhibitions each year, and offers lectures, workshops, panel discussions, and many other kinds of
public programs. For more information, visit www.BedfordGallery.org or call (925) 295-1417
MEDIA CONTACT:
Lyla Foggia
Foggia Public Relations LLC
(503) 622-0232
California Symphony to present ‘out
of this world’ season debut on
October 14 & 16
Unique program to include HD video suite from the Adler
Planetarium and narration by award-winning Bay Area
astronomer Dr. Andrew Fraknoi
Calling its October 14 and 16 season debut program “Reaching the Outer Limits,” Music Director Barry
Jekowsky and the California Symphony will be going where few orchestras have ever ventured before:
taking concert-goers on an awe-inspiring journey into outer space, piloted by the artistic vision of Adler
Planetarium astronomer and graphics artist Dr. José Francisco Salgado and narrated by award-winning
Bay Area science educator and author Dr. Andrew Fraknoi.
The unprecedented classical music event will feature a soaring presentation of Gustav Holst’s The
Planets Op. 32 performed live to the critically-acclaimed "Gustav Holst's The Planets” suite of seven high-
definition videos conceived and directed by Salgado of the nation’s oldest planetarium, located in Chicago.
Each video contains mesmerizing images of the featured planet, consisting of actual footage taken
by space probes; animations created by NASA, the European Space Agency, and Salgado; and historical
illustrations from the Adler Collection of Works on Paper (some of them hundreds of years old) – all
seamlessly edited together in sync with the seven individual movements written by the great English
California Symphony to present ‘out of this’ world concert - 2 -
composer between 1914 and 1916. “Everything you see was based on successful missions. It’s a great
summary of the things we have achieved in planetary exploration,” says Salgado.
The California Symphony’s concerts in October mark the first time the video suite – which took
over a year to research and produce – has been accompanied by a live orchestra since its world premiere
in May 2006 by the Chicago Sinfonietta, which commissioned the new digital work from the Adler in
association with Vectors & Pixels Unlimited. Otherwise, Salgado’s piece has only been seen publicly
twice: by the staff at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and at the biennial meeting of the
International Planetarium Society in Melbourne, Australia.
From the beginning, Salgado says, his intention was that the videos “would not be seen as
documentaries but as art pieces designed to inspire audiences and encourage them to learn more about
our solar system and the universe.” The Chicago Sun-Times and Wednesday Journal have both called the
images “captivating,” with the Journal describing the work’s debut as a “mind-grabbing concert.”
“Salgado assembled everything from meticulously detailed 17th century charts and maps on aged, sepia-
tinged paper to contemporary photos of impossibly round, color-striped orbs floating against the black
sky like austerely modern art objects,” notes the Sun-Times. The Journal added that it was “a fascinating
parade of images.”
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Salgado wanted to be an astronomer since the third grade and
earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan. He began seriously listening to classical music
while in college studying physics, and Holst’s The Planets was only the second recording that he acquired.
Salgado currently works as an astronomer and data visualizer at the Adler and is also the Emmy-
nominated host of the “Nuestra Galaxia” astronomy news segment that airs weekly on Univision Chicago.
Award-winning science educator and prolific author Andrew Fraknoi is the Chair of the
Astronomy Program at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills; former Executive Director of the Astronomical
Society of the Pacific; lead author of one of the most widely-used astronomy textbooks in the world,
Voyages through the Universe; author of the just-published Disney children’s book on astronomy,
Wonderful World of Space; and a frequent television and radio guest (The Today Show, CBS Morning
News, Larry King Live, NPR’s Science Friday and Weekend All Things Considered, KQED’s Forum with
Michael Krasney, the syndicated Mark & Brian Show, and KGO-AM.) To honor his work in sharing the
excitement of modern astronomy, Asteroid 4859 was named Asteroid Fraknoi by the International
Astronomical Union.
Gustav Holst, one of the finest English composers of the first half of the 20th century, let nature
and history and even astrology inspire his writing of music. Introduced to astrology in 1913 by a friend, it
California Symphony to present ‘out of this’ world concert - 3 -
was astrology, not astronomy that attracted him to this subject. “Holst was very into religion and
mythology. It was the personalities of these figures and what they represented, not scientific fact, that
influenced his composition. As an example, Venus is the goddess of love and this particular movement is
peaceful. In reality, though, Venus is an inferno! Although it’s not the closest planet to the sun, it’s
actually hotter than Mercury because of greenhouse gases in its thick atmosphere,” Salgado explains.
Notably, The Planets Op. 32 is the most-performed classical work by an English composer. The
orchestral suite, which premiered in 1918, features a separate movement for each of the seven planets
(other than Earth) that were known at the time. The work had its first complete, public performance on
November 15, 1920, in London, under the direction of Albert Coates.
The October 14 and 16 program will also feature noted violin soloist Roy Malan
performing the West Coast premiere of Phantasy for Violin and Orchestra on Rimsky-
Korskakov’s Le Coq d’or by his former mentor, American composer Efrem Zimbalist, and
Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story on the occasion of the 50th
anniversary of its Broadway debut and the composer’s 90th birthday.
Zimbalist was a well known concert violinist, composer, teacher and conductor who came from a
musical family. By the age of nine, he performed in the orchestra his father conducted. At 12, he entered
the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied under Leopold Auer, made his performing debut in
Berlin and London in 1907, and appeared with the Boston Symphony in 1911, after which he moved to the
U.S. In 1928, he joined the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he was
appointed its director in 1941.
Roy Malan – who serves as the concert master for both the California Symphony and San
Francisco Ballet Orchestra (the latter for over three decades) – studied with Zimbalist at the Curtis
Institute of Music in Philadelphia. They became so close that it was at the request of the composer that
Malan wrote Zimbalist’s only authorized biography, published in 2004 by Amadeus Press. As a solo
violinist, Malan has recorded widely and toured throughout the world.
“Efrem Zimbalist was a great violinist and a great composer who has been largely overlooked,”
says conductor Jekowsky. “Phantasy for Violin and Orchestra on Rimsky-Korskakov’s Le Coq d’or is a
very important work that has been rarely performed and never recorded. Its virtuosity is most demanding
for the soloist, so we’re thrilled to be the first orchestra on the West Coast to present it – particularly with
as accomplished a violinist as Roy to perform it.”
Rounding out the program, Jekowsky will honor his former mentor, Leonard Bernstein, on what
would have been his 90th birthday. The occasion also marks the 50th anniversary of Bernstein’s
California Symphony to present ‘out of this’ world concert - 4 -
incomparable musical score for the 1957 Broadway hit, West Side Story, which later became the Oscar-
winning film musical against which all others have since been measured.
Widely considered to be the most accomplished American musician/composer of the 20th century,
Bernstein was the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic and composed three symphonies and
many other concert works, but one of his great loves, persisting since his youth, was the musical theater.
He scored his first hit with his very first Broadway show, On the Town, in 1944, when Bernstein was only
26.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Lyla Foggia
Foggia Public Relations LLC
(503) 622-0232
California Symphony to Take Audiences on a 3-D Space Odyssey Unprecedented event marks world premiere of first-ever live symphonic concert in 3-D
Boldly going where no orchestra has ventured before, the California Symphony will take audiences on a virtual
space odyssey, when it presents the world’s first live symphonic concert in 3-D on May 3 and 5, 2009.
Commissioned by trailblazing Music Director Barry Jekowsky, the unprecedented event will feature Russian
composer Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition performed to a suite of high-definition videos created by
noted astronomer and visualizer Dr. José Francisco Salgado of the prestigious Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
Composed in 1874, Mussorgsky’s popular work is a suite of ten piano pieces commemorating his friend, the artist
and architect Viktor Hartmann, who died suddenly the year before. Inspired by a posthumous exhibition of over
400 of the artist’s works in St Petersburg, Mussorgsky’s creative interpretation took the form of an imaginary
musical tour around such a collection. Each movement is filled with vivid musical images to convey the moods
and feelings of a different painting, separated by interludes to create the feeling of walking through the gallery.
“Astronomical Pictures at an Exhibition,” the film, begins in a virtual gallery filled with cosmic “paintings.” As the
camera moves through the works of art, audience members, wearing polarized 3-D glasses, enter space and fly
past Earth, planets, stars, black holes, and galaxies. “Many astronomical images are so beautiful they look like
artwork. It’s like nature is creating works of art,” says Dr. Salgado, who used actual photographs, as well as
science visualizations of the cosmos and his own astronomy-inspired artwork in making it.
“The neat thing is that it’s based on scientific data. It’s not science fiction,” Salgado adds. “Basically, you’re taking
scientific data and using it to create visuals to get a better insight into how the universe looks like and behaves. As
long as you know the distance (the coordinates of those objects), you can virtually navigate through them. Then
you can see large-scale structures that are not visible from Earth, and you don’t have to physically go there to see
what the universe looks like.”
“The brilliance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition will be enhanced as the astronomical images on the
screen dance and fly through the auditorium. Never before has technology and symphony created such an
imaginative roller coaster of sight and sound,” says Jekowsky of the groundbreaking multi-media extravaganza.
The event is just the latest in a series of innovative programs in which Jekowsky and the California Symphony
have been dazzling audiences with the unexpected. At a time when classical orchestras around the country are
struggling to sell tickets, the 22-year-old East Bay orchestra has been enjoying record attendance – boosted by
Jekowky’s flair for fusing classical music and pop culture to appeal to a wider audience. “For some time, it’s been
obvious that the symphonic experience has to evolve in order to compete with the growing number of
entertainment options available today,” he says.
“Astronomical Pictures at an Exhibition” marks the second time the California Symphony has collaborated with
Dr. Salgado. In October 2007, CSO presented the West Coast premiere of his “Gustav Holst's The Planets” at two
standing-room only concerts. “It was a huge success!” says Stacey Street, the California Symphony’s Executive
Director. “We had tons of new audience members, many of whom became regular patrons or subscribers. The
interest that has already been generated by this upcoming concert is phenomenal.”
Among the unusual challenges of mounting the 3-D “Astronomical Pictures at an Exhibition” was the need for a
silver screen and high definition projectors, as well as special technicians and two extra days in the auditorium,
including for installation. “Without the support of the Diablo Regional Arts Association, we would not be able to
mount a production of this scale,” says Street of the substantial grant awarded by the DRAA to cover the
additional costs.
The world premiere of “Astronomical Pictures at an Exhibition” on May 3 and 5 coincides with the 2009
International Year of Astronomy, designated by the 62nd General Assembly of the United Nations. Among the
historic milestones being commemorated around the world this year are the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of
a telescope to study the skies, and Kepler’s publication of Astronomia Nova. For more information, visit
www.astronomy2009.us/.
About Dr. José Francisco Salgado
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Emmy-nominated host of Nuestra Galaxia, a weekly astronomy segment aired
on Univision, earned his doctorate in Astronomy from the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Adler
Planetarium Astronomy Department, where he combines Astronomy Research with Education and Graphic
Design. Through his artwork, Salgado seeks to create visually appealing images to provoke curiosity and a sense of
wonder about the Earth and the Universe. His artwork, photographs, and illustrations have been published in
magazines and science books, and shown in San Juan, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Belgrade. For more
information, visit www.AdlerPlanetarium.org.
About the California Symphony
The California Symphony, now in its 22th season, was designated “America’s Best Symphony Orchestra” by
Reader’s Digest in 2005. Its founder, the distinguished Music Director, Barry Jekowsky, is regarded as one of the
most innovative music directors today. The Juilliard-trained former Associate Conductor of the National
Symphony in Washington, D.C., and winner of a Leopold Stokowski Conducting Prize was among the first in the
nation to present at least one work by an American composer on every concert program, beginning 1986.
Jekowsky has also provided numerous young gifted prodigies with their first-ever concert appearances in the U.S.
– including violinist Sarah Chang, cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Helen Huang, who went on to international
fame. Concerned about where the next generation of American composers would come from, Jekowsky founded
the California Symphony’s landmark Young American Composer-in-Residence Program (YACR) in 1991. The only
training ground of its kind in the world, YACR nurtures the development of new American classical works through
three-year residencies for emerging composers to hone their craft, using a professional orchestra as their
laboratory. The program has been so successful that YACR alumni have gone on to win many of the world’s top
honors and competitions – including two of the three BBC International Masterprizes awarded to date and four
Rome Prizes. For more information, visit www.CaliforniaSymphony.org.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Lyla Foggia Foggia Public Relations (503) 622-0232 [email protected]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Walnut Creek, CA – January 4, 2009
Will Durst to narrate Copland’s Lincoln Portrait for the California Symphony on January 24 & 26 When renowned political satirist Will Durst
narrates Aaron Copland’s stirring A Lincoln
Portrait for the California Symphony on January
24 & 26, he will apparently be the first
professional comedian to assume the honor.
Historically, the reader has typically come from the ranks of film stars, news anchors, generals,
politicians, heads of state and even the current President of the United States.
“I knew it would be a significant departure from tradition, possibly even controversial,” says Music
Director Barry Jekowsky, who earlier in his career conducted the National Symphony performing A
Lincoln Portrait before a live audience of 500,000. “I selected Will Durst because of his integrity and
reputation for honesty – both traits that are synonymous with Abe Lincoln. I have no doubt he will bring
a fresh, compelling interpretation to the profound words of our great 16th president.”
For an encore, Jekowsky has invited Durst to perform a selection of his trademark comedy repertory. The
five-time Emmy nominee was the first comic to perform at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He
has been nominated seven consecutive times for the American Comedy Awards’ Stand Up of the Year.
Among other critical praise, Durst has been called “quite possibly the best political satirist working in the
country today,” by the New York Times, “the natural successor to Mort Sahl” by the New York Post, and
“a modern day Will Rogers” by the Los Angeles Times.
Within days of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, A Lincoln Portrait was one of three new works
commissioned by conductor André Kostelanetz to serve as a morale-building “musical portrait gallery of
great Americans.” Unlike the others, Copland’s piece is written for both speaker and orchestra. A Lincoln
Portrait quotes from Lincoln’s own letters and speeches, as well the 18th century ballad “Springfield
Mountain” and Stephen Foster’s “Camptown Races.”
“Who reads the text, and how it is read, necessarily influences how the piece is perceived,” writes
Princeton University musicology scholar Elizabeth Bergman in her book, Music for the Common Man:
Aaron Copland during the Depression and War (2005, Oxford University Press). “The presence of
General ‘Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf enhances the image of Lincoln as a wartime leader. James Earl
Jones emphasizes the threefold repetition of ‘people’ in the final line—‘of the people, by the people, and
for the people’— and in stentorian tones exhorts the listener to action with the righteous anger of an
abolitionist. Nebraskan Henry Fonda, on the other hand, carefully measures his intonation to capture
Lincoln's humanity.
“Another notable narrator was Coretta Scott King, who read the text in May 1968 in a memorial concert
for her slain husband. In the 1950s, Copland witnessed ‘a fiery young Venezuelan actress’ narrate a
performance in her home country. After the final lines ‘the audience of six thousand rose to its feet as one
and began shouting so loudly that I couldn't hear the end of the piece.’ The military dictator Marcos Pérez
Jiménez was deposed shortly thereafter, and Copland was ‘later told by an American foreign service
officer that the Lincoln Portrait was credited with having inspired the first public demonstration against
him—that in effect, it had started a revolution.”
Also on the January 24 & 26 subscription program, the California Symphony will present Mozart’s
Symphony No.35 (the Haffner) and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 (Scottish Symphony) for the first
time in its 23-year history. “I adore both composers and have always loved performing their music,” says
Jekowsky. “Traditionally, we’ve focused on larger orchestral works. So this will be a perfect way to start
the New Year , with three extraordinary masterpieces in one concert.”
EVENT DETAILS:
WHAT: Music Director Barry Jekowsky and the California Symphony present Will Durst narrating Aaron Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait, Mozart’s Symphony No.35 (the Haffner) and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 (Scottish Symphony)
DATES: Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 4 pm; Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 7:30 pm
WHERE: Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
TICKETS: $44 - $64; students $20
PURCHASE: Online at www.LesherArtsCenter.org or by calling (925) 943-SHOW
INFORMATION: Call (925) 280-2490 or visit www.californiasymphony.org
GUEST ARTIST: www.WillDurst.com
* * *
For immediate access to high-res JPEGs of Will Durst, go to http://willdurst.com/MediaKit/default.html#pictures
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Lyla Foggia Foggia Public Relations (503) 622-0232 [email protected]
Elaina Birmbaum California Symphony (925) 280-2490
The California Symphony to present world premiere of Mason Bates’ Music From Underground Spaces On May 4 and 6, 2008, the California Symphony
under Music Director Barry Jekowsky will
present the world premiere of Music From
Underground Spaces by Mason Bates, its 2007 –
2010 Young American Composer-in-Residence
who is quickly emerging as one of America’s leading composers. The occasion marks the debut of
the first of three major works commissioned by the California Symphony from the 31-year-old
Oakland resident, who will also perform live electronica in the orchestra’s percussion section at
the upcoming May concerts.
Most recently, Bates’ acclaimed Liquid Interface received its New York premiere at
Carnegie Hall on February 7 and world premiere at the Kennedy Center last year, commissioned
and performed on both occasions by the National Symphony under Music Director Leonard
Slatkin. Calling it “cleverly constructed,” the New York Times noted that the “colorful four-
movement tone poem, which uses a vast orchestra and electronics to evoke water in both soothing
and menacing forms…. was like wandering down a road with a string quartet playing on one side
and a D.J. spinning on the other.”
Music From Underground Spaces marries orchestra and electronics in four movements –
beginning with “Tunnels,” in which we hear subways roar past kaleidoscopic orchestral figuration.
The fleeting textures of “Tunnels” morph into the surreal effects of “Infernos,” where a demonic
techno groove, paired with flickering figuration, moves the work into an what sounds like a
nightclub. The cultish tension accumulates until all the pressure forges “Crystalline Cities” — a
kind of euphoric limbo, where sudden crescendos fuse into sparkling bits of diamond and crystal.
Featuring the orchestra alone, this slow-motion, sparkling netherworld finally gives way to the
glacial textures of “Tectonic Plates.” Initially eerie, this final movement explores primarily the
beautiful possibilities of the subsonic. The lowest members of the orchestra trade sonorities like
slow-motion sea swells, with the ghostly earthquake recordings sounding like the gentle creaking
of a boat. The piece features earthquake audio recordings processed by Peggy Hellweg of the
Berkeley Seismology Laboratory and actual subway sounds captured by Bates himself.
“I wanted to do a kind of piece that gets more beautiful and mysterious as it unfolds,” says
Bates, who notes that Music From Underground Spaces was inspired by seeing California
Symphony’s season debut concert last October. Called “Reaching the Outer Limits,” the
unprecedented program featured a soaring presentation of Gustav Holst’s The Planets Op. 32
performed live to the critically-acclaimed "Gustav Holst's The Planets” suite of seven high-
definition videos conceived and directed by Adler Planetarium astronomer and graphics artist Dr.
José Francisco Salgado and narrated by award-winning Bay Area science educator and author Dr.
Andrew Fraknoi.
“As soon as Barry offered me the YACR appointment, I had begun conceiving Music From
Underground Spaces. It was when I went to the opening concert, where they had all of this
incredible video and animation of the planets that I thought, ‘Wow, if I could create a piece that
ends the season with what is the exact inverse of this concert! So instead of it being extra-
terrestrial, I would make mine sub-terrestrial. It actually solidified for me how this piece should
develop,” he relates.
What inspires him to continually merge two unlikely types of music? “There’s just
nothing really happening in the orchestral world with electronics, so it’s such fertile ground. It’s
as if a new section of the orchestra has just been invented for me to explore. Plus, I’m constantly
find compelling ideas that I want to pursue.”
“There have been composers who have tried to blend classical music with electronic pop
culture, but it has always been very obvious,” says Barry Jekowsky, who selected Bates for the
prestigious YACR position last October. “What I find remarkable about Mason’s music is the
tasteful and imaginative integration of these worlds. Through subtle blending, they become
something new and different. Mason writes fascinating and engaging music with a truly
individual voice.”
The recipient of the coveted Rome Prize and American Academy in Berlin Prize, the
Columbia-Juilliard graduate will receive his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley,
this spring. A member of the Young Concert Artists of New York, Bates was profiled in
Symphony magazine, where author Kyle Gann noted that “Mason Bates, or someone like him,
was bound to appear sooner or later…Many artists in one of these worlds have dabbled in the
other. But Bates is the first to carry on two careers in tandem, and win credibility in both
arenas….The most impressive thing is how comfortably his two idioms mix.”
The only hands-on training ground of its kind, the California Symphony’s acclaimed
Young American Composer-In-Residence program uniquely provides gifted composers with three
world premieres, up to four weeks of annual on-site residency with the California Symphony,
reading rehearsals with each commission that gives them enough time for experimentation and
revisions before a work’s public debut, direct interaction and feedback from both Jekowsky and
members of the orchestra, and help in securing future commissions and positions, among other
benefits. “We consider it a model for how an orchestra should work with young composers to
develop their talents, business acumen and music,” says Jekowsky, who also founded the award-
winning California Symphony in 1986.
Significant of its success, YACR alumni have gone on to win two of the three BBC
International Masterprizes awarded to date and four Rome Prizes. As well, the program has
produced 21 new American works, including the Young American Composers Concerto for
Orchestra – the first known symphonic work created through a collaboration of composers (each
YACR wrote a movement emphasizing a different family of instruments.)
The May 4 and 6 concerts will also include Carmina Burana with Barry Jekowsky
conducting the California Symphony, Oakland Symphony Chorus and Contra Costa Children's
Honor Chorus with featured guest artists soprano Kiera Duffy, tenor Tyler Nelson and baritone
Keith Phares.
Sponsored by Bank of America, Chevron, and KPMG, both concerts will be held at the
Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. Dates and times: Sunday, May 4, 2008, at 4 pm.
Tuesday, May 6, at 7:30 pm. Tickets: $39 - $59. Purchase online at www.LesherArtsCenter.org
or by calling (925) 943-SHOW. For more information, visit www.CaliforniaSymphony.org or
(925) 280-2490.
CONTACT:
Lyla Foggia Foggia Public Relations LLC (503) 622-0232 [email protected]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – January 8, 2006
California Symphony
to feature conductor
Barry Jekowsky in a
solo percussion
performance on January
28 and 30, 2007
Concert marks first time the former
San Francisco Symphony principal
timpanist has played in public since
1995
The California Symphony will highlight the second concert of its 20th anniversary season with solo
performances by founding music director Barry Jekowsky and acclaimed pianist Norman
Krieger on Sunday, January 28, and Tuesday, January 30, 2007, at the Dean Lesher
Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.
The program will feature Jekowsky as soloist and conductor in American composer
Michael Torke’s Rapture: Drums and Woods, Krieger in Leonard Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety:
Symphony No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.
This concert marks the first time that Jekowsky has performed in public since leaving the
San Francisco Symphony as their principal timpanist from 1977 to 1995. While there, conductors
Edo de Waart and Erich Leinsdorf both selected Jekowsky to perform Darius Milhaud’s Concerto
for Percussion. Trained at Juilliard, which Jekowsky attended from the age of eight through
receiving his master’s degree, he studied for years with percussion masters Morris Goldenberg
and Saul Goodman, among others. Jekowsky made his professional debut at the age of 14, as a
substitute percussionist in the Tony Award-winning “Man of LaMancha.” By the time he was 16,
he was performing as a regular substitute in the New York Philharmonic, as well as keeping up a
busy schedule freelancing in the studio bands for television concerts, recording sessions for jazz
albums, and national advertising spots.
One of the most successful composers of his generation, Michael Torke’s work has been
called “some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent
years” by Gramophone. He’s been hailed as a “vitally inventive composer” by the Financial Times
of London and as “a master orchestrator whose shimmering timbral pallete makes him the Ravel
of his generation” by the New York Times. Torke composed Rapture in 2001 for the Royal
Scottish National Orchestra, with Colin Currie on percussion, while serving as their Associate
Composer.
Jekowsky has previously conducted Torke’s work at the Kennedy Center and in other
venues, while serving as the Associate Conductor for the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.
“Michael is a very important American composer. His music is thrilling, fun and very popular
with audiences world-wide,” says Jekowsky. “I look forward with excitement as I will make my
concerto debut with the California Symphony. With Bernstein’s jazzy Second Symphony and the
rhythmic drive of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, this program is one I believe Bay Area
audiences won’t want to miss.”
Jekowsky selected Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 to honor the man he considers his most
profound musical influence. It was Bernstein’s strong commitment to American music that
inspired Jekowsky’s decision to feature at least one American composition on each California
Symphony subscription program – without exception – over the last 20 years.
“Leonard Bernstein had a strong impact on my musical soul,” Jekowsky says of their
friendship that began at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 1985 and continued until the legendary
conductor’s death in 1990. At the time, Jekowsky had just won the prestigious Leopold Stokowski
Conducting Prize at Carnegie Hall and accepted an invitation to guest conduct the London
Philharmonic Orchestra. To help Jekowsky prepare, Bernstein sent him his personal orchestral
scores, containing all of his markings, for the program. “That’s the kind of teacher he was,”
Jekowsky recounts.
“Bernstein’s Second Symphony is a monumental work of 20th century music, written by
one of the greatest geniuses of the last 200 years. You don’t hear the Age of Anxiety very often.
Not many pianists will attempt to play this piece, let alone perform it at the level Norman does.
Norman Krieger is one of the few pianists who tackle this work, and he plays it in a spectacular
way. I’m sure his performance will be breathtaking.”
To complete the program’s “Rhythm and Rapture” theme, Jekowsky selected Beethoven’s
7th Symphony, popularly known as the great composer’s dance symphony.
As well as its 20th anniversary, the California Symphony is celebrating the 15th
anniversary of its prestigious Young American Composer-In-Residence Program (YACR) –
which has garnered international attention for its one-of-a-kind ‘orchestra-as-laboratory’
approach to providing emerging composers the opportunity to develop, refine and premiere a new
work each season during their three-year residency. To date, two of its five alumni – Chris
Theofanidis and Pierre Jalbert – have gone onto win the world’s leading composing competition,
The Masterprize, in London, and four of them have received the highly-regarded Rome Prize.
In recognition of the program’s 15-year milestone and continued success, Jekowsky has
commissioned a new composition – to be called Concerto for Orchestra – which will have its
world premiere at the Symphony’s final subscription concerts on May 6 and 8, 2007. This
particular work is an unprecedented collaboration of four of the YACR’s alumni who are each
composing an individual movement featuring a different section of the orchestra. The first
movement, by Kevin Beavers, was unveiled at the Symphony’s season opener. The second and
third movements – created by Chris Theofanidis and Kevin Puts – will debut on March 11 and 13,
2007. And the fourth movement, by Pierre Jalbert, will be presented on May 6 and 8, along with
the suite in its entirety.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Lyla Foggia
Foggia Public Relations
(503) 622-0232
California Gold: Brilliant. Bold. Exciting.
Join Maestro Barry Jekowsky and the award‐winning California Symphony for an
unprecedented musical journey through seven decades of the Bay Area’s golden
classical legacy. Discover a rich lode of extraordinary local talent. Experience the
excitement of two world premieres of new compositions, and revel in the pleasure of
hearing beloved selections from the world’s greatest symphonic works.
October 3, 2010
A Tribute to the WPA at 75 In collaboration with the Bedford Gallery’s “The American Scene: New Deal Art, 1935‐1943,” October 3 ‐ December 19, 2010
Aaron Copland’s Quiet City and John Henry
Ernst Bacon’s Remembering Ansel Adams
Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus Overture
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7
A unique phenomenon in the history of American music, the WPA’s Composers' Forum‐
Laboratory had a profound influence on the development of an American voice in
classical music. Despite its brief existence, from 1935 to 1940, this Depression‐era
program, funded by Roosevelt’s New Deal, produced an astounding 5500 new works by
some 1500 composers. Among those who thrived under its patronage were the great
composer Aaron Copland and Bay Area native treasure Ernst Bacon, as well as Bacon’s
close friend, Ansel Adams – a concert pianist, who it is said, was as adept at the
keyboard as he was behind a lens.
January 23, 2011
OdetoLouHarrison
Lou Harrison’s Suite No. 2 for Strings
Tchaikowsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 performed by Rieko Tsuchida
Brahms’ Symphony No. 2
Relive the unique sounds of renowned Bay Area composer, the late Lou Harrison, whose
often‐overlooked music was recorded by the California Symphony to critical acclaim in
1997. Conducted by Maestro Barry Jekowsky, Lou Harrison: A Portrait (DECCA/ARGO)
was named “CD of the Month” by Gramophone magazine, and praised as “a 40‐minute
beauty, deeply moving, but also deeply joyful…” by the Los Angeles Times and “superb”
by the Atlantic Monthly. Also, for the first time in its 24‐year‐history of presenting
extraordinarily‐gifted young artists from around the nation, the California Symphony will
introduce one of the Bay Area’s best kept secrets: Rieko Tsuchida, a sixteen‐year‐old
San Francisco Conservatory of Music piano student who recently dazzled viewers of
PBS’s “From the Top” at Carnegie Hall and shared the program with Placido Domingo at
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
March 6, 2011
Jekowsky conducts Dvorak
World Premiere of A New Work by Cindy Cox
Chaminade’s Flute Concertino with Monica Daniel‐Barker
Max Bruch’s Concerto for Clarinet and Viola with Jerome Simas and Marcel Gemperli
Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7
Discover the unique voice of Bay Area composer Cindy Cox, whose work has been called
“a delight to listen to” and “buoyant, puckish, rhythmically alive and crisply engaging”
by San Francisco Chronicle critic Joshua Kosman. Compositions by this internationally‐
recognized UC Berkeley professor have been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy
Center and throughout Europe. For this special program, the California Symphony
proudly showcases three of the region’s finest orchestral musicians: flutist Monica
Daniel‐Barker, a prizewinner at top competitions in Italy and Japan; award‐winning
clarinetist Jerome Simas, who can be heard on two Michael Tilson Thomas recordings
and frequently performs with motion picture studio orchestras at Skywalker Ranch; and
violist Marcel Gemperli, a Harvard graduate who continued his musical studies in
Germany and Switzerland as a Henry Russell Shaw Fellow.
May 1, 2011
World Premiere ANew Work by the California Symphony’s
2010‐2013 Young American Composer‐in‐Residence
Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez For Guitar and Orchestra with Roberto Granados
Shostakovitch’s Symphony No. 5
The California Symphony proudly presents the first of three world premieres by its soon‐
to‐ be‐announced Young American Composer‐in‐Residence – the seventh such
appointment since 1991. This groundbreaking program, which has commissioned 24
new American works to date, is the only one in the world designed to fill the gap
between formal training and the reality of writing for an actual orchestra. Through
three year residencies, emerging composers are allowed to hone their craft, using a
professional orchestra as their laboratory. For our season finale, Maestro Barry
Jekowsky will also introduce another emerging talent, eleven‐year‐old classical guitarist
Roberto Granados of Hayward, who had the honor of performing for President Obama
before he took office.