Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers' 20122013 season starts October 6 as we welcome the first of six candidates for OSSCS music director: Jeremy Briggs-Roberts, currently music director of the Washington Idaho Symphony in Pullman. The concert opens with Stravinsky's sparkling orchestration of a Bach organ work and continues with one of Bach's choral masterpieces, the Magnificat. After intermission comes one of the greatest symphonies of the 20th Century, the Symphony No. 10 of Dmitri Shostakovicha work filled with hidden meanings, including a demonic scherzo that purportedly provides a musical portrait of Joseph Stalin, a secretly encoded love letter to the composer's muse, and the Russian master's own melodic signature (DSCH).
In November, we welcome the second of our six candidates for OSSCS music director to the podium: Paul Polvinick, music director emeritus of the New Hampshire Music Festival and former music director of the Alabama Symphony and Oberlin Conservatory Orchestras. The program opens with a suite of dances by Bach (featuring the famous "Air on the G String") and continues with John Adams' The Chairman Dances, a "foxtrot for orchestra" inspired by his opera Nixon in China. The concert concludes with a great, unfinished, minor-key choral work by Mozartno, not the Requiem, but his other masterpiece fitting that description, the Mass in C Minor.
Celebrate the season with us on December 16 as we welcome our third candidate for OSSCS music director to the podium: Huw Edwards, currently music director of the Olympia Symphony and director of orchestral activities at the University of Puget Sound, and previously conductor of the Portland Columbia Orchestra and Seattle Youth Symphony. Local violin prodigy Simone Porter solos in Vivaldi's "Winter" concerto from The Four Seasons, and we celebrate Beethoven's birthday with a performance of his witty first symphony. After intermission, Christmas music from Bach (a cantata featuring material that would resurface in his B Minor Mass) and Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas Carols set the stage for a festive holiday sing-along.
On Feb 9, 2013, we meet the fourth candidate for OSSCS music director: Johan Louwersheimer, currently music director of the Octava Chamber Orchestra and artistic director of the Handel Society in White Rock, British Columbia, and the Chilliwack Metropolitan Orchestra. The program opens with an a cappella Bach motet, followed by a rarely heard mass by Giacomo Puccini, a youthful work he composed as a graduation exercise, which then languished in obscurity for over 70 years. After intermission, a dramatic Weber opera overture leads to the Haydnesque ninth symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich.
Haydn's great "Lord Nelson" Mass (which the composer actually dubbed Missa in Angustiis, having composed it before news of Nelson's victory over Napoleon reached him) takes center stage as we welcome the fifth candidate for OSSCS music director: Clinton Smith, currently music director of the St. Cloud Symphony and previously assistant conductor at Minnesota Opera. The concert opens with a fiery orchestral dance by Gluck, and after intermission we visit the opera and the ballet: a selection of Bizet's beloved melodies from Carmen is followed by Aaron Copland's famous "cowboy ballet" that references songs from the Old West.
One of the greatest choral works of the 20th century is the centerpiece of a program conducted by the last of our six candidates for OSSCS music director: Eric Garcia, formerly assistant conductor of the Seattle Symphony and the Eastern Music Festival. Igor Stravinsky called the Biblical verses at the heart of his Symphony of Psalms "poems of exaltation, but also of anger and judgment, and even of curses." Employing a highly unusual orchestration, the work runs the gamut from violent rhythms to exalted "alleluias." The concert opens with a dramatic overture by Weber and closes with Beethoven's seventh symphony, which Richard Wagner called "the apotheosis of the dance."
OSSCS welcomes back Hoquiam native Jayce Ogren, former assistant conductor the Cleveland Orchestra and a rising star on podiums around the globe, from London's Royal Albert Hall to New York's Mostly Mozart Festival and New York City Opera. His exciting interpretation of Sibelius' second symphony with Orchestra Seattle in October 2011 thrilled audience members and performers alike. To close the 20122013 season, Mr. Ogren will conduct Sibelius' majestic Symphony No. 5 along with Giuseppe Verdi's Four Sacred Pieces, a quartet of alternately serene and powerful choral works.
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LocationFirst Free Methodist Church (View)
3200 Third Ave W
Seattle, WA 98119
United States
Categories
| Minimum Age: 7 |
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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