For more information or photographs, contact DSO Director of Community Engagement Mark Mobley 302.656.7442, ext. 104; markm@delawaresymphony.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 5/11/09
DSO hosts Educators Night and announces winners of The Jessie Ball DuPont Educator’s Award, Beekhuis Award
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE -- May 15 and 16 at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, the Delaware Symphony Orchestra and music director David Amado perform concerts including Ravel’s Bolero and two concertos with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet.
May 15 is also Educators Night, an event that honors members of the teaching profession at a Delaware Symphony Classical Series concert. The 2009 Educators Night will be held on Friday, May 15, 2009, at 8:00 p.m. at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington.
The program features the return of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, performing Interchange for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra, a piece composed for the ensemble by Sergio Assad, as well as Rodrigo's Concierto Andaluz. Other works on the program are Falla's Three Cornered Hat Suite No. 2 and Ravel's Bolero.
Pre-performance conversations for this concert will take place at 7:00 p.m. After the concert, educators are invited to attend a dessert reception.
That night, we will present our annual Jessie Ball DuPont Educator's Award, given to an individual who has made a significant impact in the field of music education. This year’s winner is Suzanne L. Burton, Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Delaware. Dr. Brian Stone of the University of Delaware and Ms. Martha Burke of the Tatnall Preschool were co-winners of the 2008 Award.
The Delaware Symphony Orchestra offers $12 tickets ($9 ticket plus $3 box office charge) to all educators for this very special night. Tickets are available by calling the box office at 302.652.5577 or 1.800.374.7263. $10 student rush tickets are also available one-half hour before curtain in person at the box office.
On Friday and Saturday, the orchestra will recognize cellist Karen Ahramjian as winner of the 2009 Albert Beekhuis Award. A cash gift and crystal vase are given each year to a veteran member of the orchestra who consistently demonstrates a commitment to the symphony that exceeds expectations, and who mentors younger players. The award is made possible by the Beekhuis Wilmington Community Fund through the Delaware Community Foundation. The 2008 winner was principal tubist Brian Brown.
Tickets for the general public are still available for the concerts Friday, May 16 and Saturday, May 17 at 8 p.m. Call the box office at 800.37.GRAND or order on-line at www.ticketsatthegrand.org
Friday, May 15, 2009 and Saturday, May 16, 2009
8 PM The Grand Opera House, Wilmington
David Amado, conductor
LA Guitar Quartet
FALLA Three Cornered Hat Suite No. 2
RODRIGO Concierto Andaluz for Four Guitars and Orchestra
ASSAD Interchange for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra
RAVEL Bolero
The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (LAGQ) did a smashing job performing a new, ink-still-wet concerto by Sérgio Assad, Interchange for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra . . . LAGQ, for whom the piece was specifically written and tailored, trafficked in festive virtuosity with an orchestra up to the challenge of navigating Assad's swinging, Brazilian-esque phraseology.--The Santa Barbara Independent, April 2, 2009
About Suzanne L. Burton
Suzanne L. Burton is Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Delaware, where she coordinates the music education program and teaches undergraduate music methods courses and graduate level courses. Dr. Burton’s research interests are music literacy acquisition and music teacher development. A sought-after clinician on early childhood music, K-12 general music, music literacy and curriculum development, Dr. Burton is well-published in music education journals and books. She is also editor of the ECMMA publication Perspectives and is on the editorial board of Visions of Research in Music Education. Dr. Burton holds degrees from Spring Arbor University and Michigan State University.
About Karen Ahramjian
As Karen Stevens, Karen Ahramjian was granted a full scholarship to Northwestern University. She was Associate Principal Cellist of the Northwestern University Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, Principal Cellist of the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and studied with Dudley Powers, Carl Fruh and Janos Starker. While at Northwestern, Karen met Leo Ahramjian, a PhD candidate in chemistry who served as concertmaster of her three orchestras. She and Leo married and moved to Wilmington in 1959, when Leo became a chemist for the DuPont Company.
Soon after arriving in Wilmington, Karen was appointed Associate Principal Cellist of the orchestra – a position she held for more than 30 of the 50 years she has spent in the DSO. In 1982, she founded the Wilmington String Ensemble, which today is one of the leading providers of occasional music in the region. She also contracts musicians for organizations such as Coro Allegro, Delaware Valley Chorale, Academy of the Dance Nutcracker Orchestra, the University of Delaware and ten churches in the Wilmington area. She is a member and the personnel manager of the OperaDelaware Orchestra.
In addition to her orchestral and ensemble work, Mrs. Ahramjian was a cello instructor for twenty-five years at The Wilmington Music School (now The Music School of Delaware) and in her home studio.
About Sergio Assad
Sérgio Assad is widely considered one of the most popular and virtuosic guitarists in the world. His exceptional artistry and uncanny ensemble playing come from both a family rich in Brazilian musical tradition and from studies with the best guitarists in South America. In addition to setting new performance standards, Mr. Assad, along with his brother Odair, has played a major role in creating and introducing new music for guitar. Their virtuosity has inspired a wide range of composers to write for them: Astor Piazzolla, Terry Riley, Radamés Gnatalli, Marlos Nobre, Nikita Koshin, Roland Dyens, Jorge Morel, Edino Krieger and Francisco Mignone.
Now Mr. Assad is adding to their repertory by composing music for the duo and for various musical partners both with symphony orchestra and in recitals. They have worked extensively with such renowned artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Fernando Suarez Paz, Paquito D'Rivera, Gidon Kremer and Dawn Upshaw.
About the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
About the LAGQ The world's hottest classical ensemble or its tightest pop band? However it helps you to think about the LAGQ, keep the emphasis on superlatives for its unrivaled joy, technical élan and questing spirits. — Los Angeles Times
Recognized as one of America's premier instrumental ensembles and winner of a 2005 Grammy Award, the L.A. Guitar Quartet — John Dearman, William Kanengiser, Scott Tennant and Matthew Greif — is one of the most charismatic and versatile groups performing today. Popularly known as the LAGQ, these four virtuosi bring a new energy to the concert stage with their eclectic programs and dynamic musical interplay. Their inventive, critically-acclaimed transcriptions of concert masterworks provide a fresh look at the music of the past, while their interpretations of works from the contemporary and world-music realms continually break new ground. The Quartet currently records for Telarc and their most recent release "LAGQ-Latin" received a GRAMMY® nomination in the Best Classical Crossover Album category. The above and their two records for Sony Classical have appeared on the Billboard charts. The LAGQ continues to set new standards for the guitar quartet medium.
About the Delaware Symphony
The earliest ancestor of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, the Tankopanicum Orchestra, was founded by Alfred I. du Pont. He took the name Tankopanicum from the Native American name for the Brandywine River. The small amateur orchestra was initially comprised of mill workers, a doctor, a machinist, a clerk, a millwright, a blacksmith, a contractor, laborers and several of du Pont’s relatives.
Today the Delaware Symphony is the state’s pre-eminent performing arts organization. It performs a seven-program Classical Series and a three-program pops series called DSO Plugged In at the Grand Opera House, as well as a Champagne Chamber Series at the Hotel du Pont. Its concerts are heard regularly on WHYY, one of National Public Radio’s leading member stations.
The Delaware Symphony Orchestra is devoted to bringing music to Delaware’s children. Each year more than 11,000 students are treated to in-school ensembles, youth concerts, soloist competitions, family concerts and discounted concert tickets.
About David Amado
The Delaware Symphony Orchestra thrives under the direction of one of the country's most talented young conductors.—Southern Living
David Amado has been praised by the media, audiences and fellow musicians for his deep musical insight and visceral energy. These qualities have allowed Maestro Amado to reinvigorate the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, turning it into a premier regional orchestra during his short tenure. His innovative programming, his approachable demeanor and his natural and instinctive music-making make him a formidable musical presence.
Descended from a long line of fine musicians including his grandmother, violist Lillian Fuchs, and great-uncle, violinist Joseph Fuchs, David Amado continues his family’s tradition of making great music. He showed a predilection for music at a very early age, beginning piano lessons at age four. But it was not until his high school years that he became dedicated to a musical career, thanks to the galvanizing force of his teachers and peers in the Pre-College Division of Juilliard. David continued his college years at Juilliard, studying piano with Herbert Stessin while simultaneously exploring other facets of music, including the world of the orchestra.
Maestro Amado’s fascination with the orchestra led him to Indiana University, where he received his Master’s in Instrumental Conducting. After graduating he returned to New York to study again at Juilliard, but this time as a conductor with Otto-Werner Mueller. The following three years both reignited David’s dedication to musical excellence and groomed him for entry into the professional world.
David’s first job was an apprenticeship with the Oregon Symphony, followed by a six-year tenure with the Saint Louis Symphony in Missouri. While in Saint Louis, David was both the Music Director of the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra and staff conductor for the Saint Louis Symphony. David greatly expanded the types and number of concerts offered to young people, introducing symphonic music to 55,000 young people annually. In addition to his conducting duties, David was a producer for Arch Media, the Symphony’s own record label.
Maestro Amado is a prominent leader of the Delaware arts community. His unique and appealing programming, which blends familiar orchestral repertoire with modern pieces, has propelled the DSO to new artistic heights. With his disarming and accessible demeanor as well as his innate teaching ability, David draws new audiences to the concert hall.
Maestro Amado continues to be an enduringly popular figure in Saint Louis where he was the Associate Conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) from 2001–2004. In November, he conducted the Virginia Symphony in a program including Holst’s Planets. Other recent highlights of his career include engagements with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, the New World Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic and the Detroit Symphony.
Maestro Amado lives in Wilmington with his wife, violinist Meredith Amado, and their three children.
Program notes
Where the Elite Meet by Mark Mobley
Three of the four composers represented on tonight's concert are available to us only by the written word, archival recordings or séance. Brazilian musician Sergio Assad, one of the finest guitarists of his generation, has this to say about his new four-guitar concerto:
"It was an old dream of mine to write a substantial piece for the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (LAGQ) with orchestra. A few years ago, Bill Kanengiser, a member of the LAGQ, encouraged me to sketch a piece that was later commissioned by Matthew Dune, Director of the Southwest Guitar Festival, to be premiered by the San Antonio Symphony during the 2009 season.
"Interchange grew out of my view of the quartet's great ability to blend different music styles into a unique and novel interpretation. I used their individual taste in music as starting points for the first four movements and I end the piece with the coalescence of these four different pieces forming an Interchange.
"Since I have known Bill Kanengiser, Scott Tennant, and John Deerman for over two decades as great musicians and friends, I had many good memories to choose from for inspiration. Matthew Greff is their new partner, having recently joined the quartet. Each of the first four movements highlights one member of the quartet with a specific blend of music styles and a short solo cadenza. A larger cadenza involving the four guitars announces the final movement.
"To honor Bill in the first movement, I crossed some Renaissance-type of dances with the Jewish scale following the idea that Bill has a vast interest in different types of music while remaining the most classical of all four members. To portray Scott, a big fan and excellent performer of flamenco style, I offered a mix of Spanish buleria with another area of his interest that is Balkan music.
"For Matt, who added to the group his great skills in jazz improvisation, I wrote a slow movement reminiscent of a jazz ballad with an open section for his inventive melody lines. For John, who lately became passionate about Brazilian music, I mixed baião and blues. Baião is a rhythm from the northeast of Brazil and I had lots of fun submitting some blues phrasing to the peculiar syncopation of the baião.
"The fifth and last movement crosses all four themes and that is how I brought up the name Interchange. The word 'interchange' represents my intentions in using traditional music styles of the world blended as a whole organic unit. At the same time Interchange also suggests a casual meeting of different people on the L.A. turnpike."
The other works on the program reflect a range of cross-cultural encounters. Our first piece comes from one of the most Spanish theatrical productions imaginable - though it was first produced by a Russian company and premiered in London.
In musical terms, Spain's the Vegas of Europe -- a country where inhibitions drop and a good time's had by all. Scotland has bagpipes. Germany? Bach's pipe organ and Wagner's giant orchestra. But the sound of Spain is the echo of guitars and castanets, the clapping, stomping and wailing of flamenco dancers. And who's more fun -- Siegfried and Brunnhilde, or Carmen and Don Giovanni?
About 90 years ago, a favorite colleague of Spanish composer Manuel de Falla promised him she would plan for him "an optimistic and happy work that knows the earth, bread, and apple blossoms, and will be nonsensical." It turned out to be a vibrant comic pantomime -- kind of like a live silent movie with a pit orchestra -- called The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife.
Luckily for Falla, Ballets Russes director Serge Diaghilev and choreographer Leonid Massine saw The Magistrate and loved it. They convinced Falla to revise and expand the piece into a ballet, and they hired Picasso to design sets and costumes. He was already one of the leading artists in the world, having been through his Blue Period, his Rose Period, Primitivism and Cubism.
Picasso created costumes that rendered festive Spanish clothing in vibrant sky blues and rich browns. Falla showed up for rehearsals with 30 pairs of castanets. And Massine made the dance after what sounds like a vastly enjoyable fact-finding mission:
"We spent many late nights listening to the selected groups of singers, guitarists and dancers doing the jota, the farruca or the fandango," Massine wrote. The choreographer recalled a performance in Cordoba "in a cavern on the outskirts of the city, gathering together a group of cobblers, barbers and pastrycooks who were considered the best dancers in that part of town."
The pianist Artur Rubenstein witnessed the creation of The Three-Cornered Hat. Rubenstein remembered that because Falla "was shy and self-conscious about doing a ballet score, he put some old-fashioned minuets and gavottes into the music, but Diaghilev had no use for them. ‘I want it all Spanish and none of this outlandish trash,' Diaghilev shouted. The next day poor de Falla brought a short sketch of a jota, the classical Spanish dance. ‘This is just what we need,' said Diaghilev, and Massine nodded aprovingly, ‘and we want much more of it.'"
The result? After the 1919 premiere, the Times of London said the dancing "left one helpless with amusement and excitement" and the music was "a wonderful maze of rhythmic dexterities." This suite from the ballet is among Falla's most popular pieces. It captures the spirit of Spanish dance - big string chords sound like strumming guitars and the melodies have flamenco flavor.
Ravel was prodded to write Bolero by Ida Rubenstein, a ballerina given to playing such racy heroines as Scheherazade and Salome. He began work on it just after a trip to the United States, during which he lectured at Rice in Houston, visited the Grand Canyon and toured Harlem jazz clubs with George Gershwin. (Ravel's jazzy Piano Concerto in G is on the concert that opens our next season.)
There's no other piece quite like Bolero, a long crescendo in which a single melody repeats and repeats over and over and over and over. The ingenuity of the piece is in the instrumentation - the theme passes from instrument to instrument, color to color. (If you've ever been on the "It's A Small World" ride at a Disney property, you get the idea.)
Listeners old enough to remember the brief but intense period of Bo Derek celebrity will also remember the use of this music in the movie 10. But Bolero was a hit from the beginning. Within a decade after its 1928 premiere, it had been recorded by ensembles as varied as the Boston Symphony and Amsterdam Concertgebouw orchestras, Ray Ventura and His Collegians and an accordion duo called Les 2 Cavallis.
Oddly enough, Ravel insisted that the model for this piece was less seductress than shop steward. "I love going over factories and seeing vast machinery at work," Ravel told an English interviewer in the early thirties. "It was a factory which inspired my Bolero. I would like it always to be played with a vast factory in the background."
The Concierto Andaluz by Joaquin Rodrigo opens with a bolero that's one of the sunniest pieces you'll ever hear. This piece isn't performed as often as Rodrigo's ubiquitous Concierto de Aranjuez, which was even featured in a particularly memorable Chrysler commercial (along with Ricardo Montalban extolling the virtues of "rich Corinthian leather"). But the Concierto Andaluz is the most frequently performed work for four guitars and orchestra.
For centuries, Andalusia has been a busy intersection of Spaniards and people from throughout the Mediterranean region, including Christians, Jews and Muslims. And like Interchange, this concerto was premiered by the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra with a high-profile quartet: Los Romeros. Rodrigo called Celedonio Romero and his sons Ángel, Celín and Pepe "grandmasters of the guitar," and wrote for them a piece that conjures both the Andalusian countryside and its passionate folk music.
The slow movement spins out winding themes over slowly descending notes in the accompaniment; a cadenza for all four soloists sounds like a fleeting flamenco jam session. The bright finale has echoes of two different types of flamenco: sevillanas (a variant of the seguidilla immortalized by Carmen) and zapateado (a solo dance that includes foot stomping).
Mark Mobley is the DSO Director of Community Engagement. While he was musical head of NPR's Performance Today, the show won it s first Peabody Award. As music critic of the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, he won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for distinguished music journalism. In June he will appear in a one-man version of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival.
Understanding the Interchange by Earl Swift
They're best seen from the air, from such heights that ramps slim to filaments and loops form delicate lacework. With altitude, highway interchanges are things of beauty, of pleasing symmetry, of order imposed on otherwise wild and untidy terrain.
Down on the ground, their visual charms are too often lost. Their snowflake perfection is blurred in the daily commute, the speed and roar of it, the whirling demands on our attention; the earthbound judge an interchange by whether it clogs in the afternoon, or its merges are smooth, or its curves tighten suddenly and force us to hit the brakes. By its capacity and condition. By whether it works.
Which brings us to Sergio Assad's inspiration, a crossroads at the edge of downtown Los Angeles: It is called the Bill Keene Memorial Interchange, in honor of a longtime traffic reporter, but it's better known as "The Stack" or, more famously, "The Four-Level." It unites the Hollywood, Pasadena and Harbor freeways, making it one of the most reliably crowded spots on the planet.
Here is a rare fusion of artistry and engineering, almost as visually arresting from its multiple decks as it is from on high, and almost as efficient as it was when it opened in 1949.
The Four-Level wasn't the first interchange, though it now ranks among the oldest. The concept dates back at least to 1916, when a Maryland engineer named Arthur Hale patented a crossroads on which a motorist could turn right or left without having to stop. The invention, which saw its U.S. debut at a busy intersection in Woodbridge, New Jersey, took its name from the shape formed by its four curving left-turn ramps: a clover leaf.
Hale's patent came along decades before America's first superhighway-came, in fact, before stop signs and traffic lights, and even predated the modern recipe for concrete. But soon enough came others hoping to increase the comfort and safety of America's suddenly crowded roads, especially where they intersected.
Benton Mackaye, best known for having conceived of the Appalachian Trail, advocated a "Townless Highway" that in virtually every respect was a modern, limited-access expressway.
Austrian expatriate Fritz Malcher unveiled his "Steadyflow System," which rethought city streets into arteries, cars into corpuscles. Drivers used turnaround loops and traffic circles to cross town without a stop. Harvard professor Miller McClintock, reputedly the first person awarded a doctorate in "traffic," likewise relied on fluid dynamics: He ascribed traffic jams and accidents to four "frictions" that could be eliminated with overpasses, medians, and exit and entrance ramps.
McClintock also served as a consultant to a brash artist and stage designer named Norman Bel Geddes, who landed the contract to develop the General Motors exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair. His "Futurama," was a vast scale model of the coming American city, crisscrossed by 14-lane freeways and graceful flyovers that curved and looped among skyscrapers. It sparked a national craze for expressways.
And in L.A., at the Four-Level Interchange, this long progression of thought and theory produced a masterpiece. Though it is sometimes overwhelmed by traffic that far surpasses anything its designers imagined, the Four-Level usually functions as it was meant to: It gathers people from different places and different pasts, braids and rearranges them without so much as a bump, and releases them to pursue their different futures.
It does this hundreds of thousands of times per day.
And has done it every day for 60 years.
Earl Swift is the author of three books, as well as a history of the Interstate highway system to be published in 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia with his daughter, Saylor.
