|
The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony’s May 10th concert will feature five works by living Iowa composers. The concert, titled Home Cookin’, begins at 2 pm in the Great Hall of the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center and includes Jeremy Beck’s Sinfonietta; Jon Chenette’s Oh Millersville!; Michael Gilbertson’s Polovitsia; Brooke Joyce’s october skies; and Jerry Owen’s Glee.“[This] concert represents an incredibly exciting step for the future of the WCFSO and will provide a unique opportunity for our audience to broaden their horizons,” commented WCFSO Music Director Jason Weinberger. “In my opinion orchestras and orchestra musicians will become essentially irrelevant in the coming decades unless we commit to being more consistent in engaging with the music of our time and place and with the artists who create it.”
The performance will present the orchestra in a variety of configurations ranging from an intimate chamber ensemble of nine players, to a string orchestra, to a full orchestra with large brass, wind and percussion sections. Two soloists will be featured as well, soprano Susan Bender and pianist Sean Botkin.
Jerry Owen’s festive overture Glee will open the program. The Cedar Rapids composer created the work in 1984 on a commission from the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra. Owen describes the work as a “gymnastic dance for the orchestra that uses stair step melodies that vault through the orchestra as a way of expressing musical happiness.”
Mr. Chenette’s Oh Millersville! involves settings of five whimsical poems written from the perspective of a twelve-year-old girl reflecting on small town Iowa life. Chenette, a Grinnell-based composer, originally created Oh Millersville! for soprano and piano. An orchestral version of the work was later created at the request of former Dubuque Symphony Orchestra Maestro Nicholas Palmer, who premiered it in 2002.
The WCFSO concert will serve as the Iowa premiere of Michael Gilbertson’s Polovitsia. In creating the work, Gilbertson, a twenty-one-year-old composer from Dubuque and a student at the Juilliard School of Music, wanted to create an imaginary ballet, a work that was inherently suggestive of light, color, and motion.
Also receiving its Iowa premiere at this concert is Jeremy Beck’s Sinfonietta. Sinfonietta has been recorded by the Slovak Radio Symphony orchestra, and reviewers have described it as harmonically inventive, thoroughly engaging ...sinewy and gorgeous. Mr. Beck was a composer on the faculty of the University of Northern Iowa for six years and currently makes his home in Louisville, KY.
Mr. Joyce’s work earns the distinction as being the newest work on the program, completed in 2005. The composer describes october skies as “a gentle, lyrical piece, with a rather light orchestration and long, flowing melodic lines.” Joyce recently moved to Decorah, IA and is a composer on the faculty of Luther College.
The concert is a culmination of two years of planning between the Iowa Composers Forum and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony. In May of 2006, ICF Chairman Ralph Kendrick met with Maestro Weinberger to pitch the idea at a local Cedar Falls coffee house.
“I knew that Jason was an advocate of new music based on his programming choices since he took over the helm of the WCFSO. I hoped that he would go for the project if we could provide the majority of the funding,” Kendrick recalled.
In addition to funding the project, the Iowa Composers Forum was involved in selecting the pieces that would be presented on the concert. Initially, 67 pieces were submitted for consideration and culled down to the resulting five by a group of composers and conductors.
“I know the review committees had a difficult time selecting the final five pieces, due to the incredible quality of the works submitted. Therefore, I know we’re in store for some great new music,” Kendrick enthused.
Tickets to Home Cookin’ are just $10 for adults and $5 for students and will be available by calling 319-273-4849 (toll-free 877-549-SHOW) or at wcfsymphony.org. Home Cookin’ is sponsored in part by the Iowa Arts Council and the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa.
| 
