September 20, 2023 :: IT’S NOT OFTEN YOU HEAR OF AN ORCHESTRAL COMPOSER WITH EXPERIENCE TURNING TCHAIKOVSKY SCORES INTO HEAVY METAL! WE SAT DOWN WITH MECHICANO COMPOSER JUAN PABLO CONTRERAS TO ASK HIM ABOUT HIS JOURNEY TO BECOMING A MEXICAN AMERICAN CITIZEN, HIS INTRODUCTION TO ORCHESTRAL MUSIC THROUGH FAMILY AS WELL AS THROUGH SYMPHONIC METAL, AND HOW HIS EXPERIENCES HAVE INFORMED HIS UNIQUE...
September 14, 2023 :: Former Broadway “Fiddler on the Roof” star Kelly Hall-Tompkins talks with us about performing Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto—a piece she considers to be one of the greatest violin concertos of the 21st century—and about bringing Music Kitchen: Food for the Soul to Walnut Creek. Also covered: wine-tasting in Napa, and how Warner Brothers Cartoons influenced her career choice. ...
September 13, 2023 :: Wynton Marsalis uses a drum kit, sousaphone, and other non-traditional orchestra instruments to evoke the spirit of Bourbon St and his native New Orleans in his genre-bending Violin Concerto. We got down to brass tacks with Principal Tuba Forrest Byram to understand the differences between the tuba and the sousaphone, and their less famous love-child,...
September 12, 2023 :: ACSO Press Release, Thursday, July 13, 2023 – The Association of California Symphony Orchestras (ACSO) is pleased to announce that The California Symphony Alliance Event Committee is a recipient of the 2023 Most Valuable Player (MVP) Volunteer Award. ACSO launched the MVP Volunteer Award in 1996 to recognize exemplary volunteers, volunteer projects, and volunteer organizations and...
September 5, 2023 :: Juan Pablo Contreras (b. 1987) MeChicano (2022) Juan Pablo Contreras joins a distinguished line of Mexican-born composers who have brought their sensibilities to concert audiences everywhere: consider Carlos Chavez, Silvestre Revueltas, Manuel Ponce, Arturo Marquez, and Gabriela Ortiz, and many others. Contreras brings his own particular approach to fusing Mexican folk music with the Western...
April 18, 2023 :: Composer John Williams’ collaboration with director Stephen Spielberg has produced some of his best film scores. For William Walton, it was a partnership with celebrated British actor and director Laurence Olivier that resulted in some of the composer’s most enduring and iconic works, including soundtracks to four epic film versions of plays by William Shakespeare....
April 3, 2023 :: Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 (1844) Hector Berlioz never met an applecart he didn’t want to upset, or an envelope he didn’t want to stretch. It was simply not in his nature to kowtow to prevailing fashion or to acquiesce to the dictates of the proletariat. Nor was he just some obnoxious...
March 6, 2023 :: Who knew the triangle could be so expressive? Leave it to percussionist Victor Avdienko to navigate the triangle-a-thon in Rott’s Symphony No. 1 on the upcoming MAHLER’S INNER CIRCLE concerts. We can only agree that “We gotta fever… For more triangle!” via GIPHY You performed one single, epic, cymbal crash in the 2019 season finale...
:: According to the SF Chronicle, Sara Couden once “drove the audience into convulsions of delight.” We get to know this Walnut Creek-based singer, acclaimed for her deeply soulful voice, rich tones, and warm personality. And spoiler alert, be careful on stage around bracelet beads… What’s a contralto and how’s it different from alto? AHAHAHH probably...
March 2, 2023 :: Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942) Lustspiel Overture (1891) He was the little quiet guy amidst a bunch of big loud personalities. His brother-in-law was Arnold Schoenberg. He fell in love with Alma Schindler, who rejected him—too short, too homely, she said—and married Gustav Mahler instead. One of his early boosters was Johannes Brahms. Among his students we...
