| Saturday Apr 30, 2016 8:00 PM - Sunday May 01, 2016 6:00 PM | Free - $2500.00 |
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Event
YPSO Spring Concerts 2016
YOUNG PEOPLE'S SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
David Ramadanoff, Music Director/Conductor
PROGRAM
Leonard Bernstein - Overture to Candide
Carl Orff - Carmina Burana, featuring:
Zachary Gordin, baritone
Shawnette Sulker, soprano
J. Raymond Meyers, tenor
Solano Choral Society
Piedmont East Bay Children's Concert Choir
Sunday, May 1, will include a Silent Auction from 5-7pm
We have a voluntary admission policy which does not require a contribution for admittance but pre-registration for a ticket is highly recommended.
We suggest a minimum donation of $15 to help offset our venue costs and further the mission of the orchestra.
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Young Peoples Symphony Orchestra Spring Concert will feature music director/conductor David Ramadanoff, and 95 young musicians in a program of Bernstein's Candide Overture and Orff's cantata Carmina Burana, with baritone Zachary Gordin, soprano Shawnette Sulker, tenor J. Raymond Meyers, the Solano Choral Society and the Piedmont East Bay Children's Concert Choir.
The concert will open with Leonard Bernstein's Candide Overture. Composed for the opera Candide in 1956, the overture was an instant success with its mix of bubbly spirit and skepticism that captured the personality of the operas title character. In 1957, Bernstein expanded and adapted the piece for full orchestra and debuted it with the New York Philharmonic, and within two years it became his most played symphonic work. Its got so many musical ideas, says Ramadanoff of Bernstein's glittering score.
Bernstein wasn't just a famous American composer and conductor, but he was an important musical educator for several generations of young conductors, including San Francisco Symphony's music director, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Ramadanoff, a former Assistant and Associate Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony from 1975-1981, too. Ramadanoff worked with Bernstein in 1975 at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony, on Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony.
Carl Orff's dramatic cantata Carmina Burana will be the featured piece on the program. Debuted in 1937, its one of the most frequently performed works of the choral repertoire. Translated from the Latin, its name means songs of Beuern, the German town where the collection of 254 medieval poems was hidden away in a Bavarian Monastery until their rediscovery in the early 19th century. Written by goliards (clerical students) who enjoyed writing bawdy and satirical verse in praise of earthly delights, the original text is in Medieval Latin, vernacular Middle High German as well as Old Provençal and mixtures of German and French.
For Carmina Burana, Orff assembled his selection of medieval poems into a structure of 25 numbers, repeating the opening address to Fortuna so as to frame the whole with the iconic image of the Wheel of Fortune. Part of Orff's musical style is the rejection of thematic development or complex polyphony. Orff draws on his massive battery of performers to use timbres and colors---instrumental as well as choral and solo vocal---as essential compositional elements. He also builds his composition with separate blocks of orchestral sound that supplement mostly choral vocal parts.
The baritone role in Carmina Burana is a pivotal one since it requires a range of emotion and expression in seven songs. Baritone Zachary Gordin will bring his experience of nine performances in the role with various ensembles, including the Oakland East Bay Symphony, YOSA Philharmonic and San Antonio Choral Society, Pacific Shores Philharmonic, Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Clara Chorale, and the UC Berkeley Choruses.
Gordin has come to love the most demanding vocal role in Carmina. I've gone from being intimidated by it as a young singer, to really loving and enjoying the rehearsal and performance process. It's an especially taxing sing for the baritone, who has seven numbers to sing that run the gamut from heavy and dramatic, to sweet and very high. There are lots of shades of character and vocal colors, which makes it an exciting and rewarding assignment, he says.
Acclaimed for her heart-breaking poignancy and beautifully tuned soprano by the San Francisco Chronicle and for her enchanting vocal splendor by the Leipziger Volkszeitung, soprano Shawnette Sulker. She has sung Carmina Burana with the UC Davis Symphony Chorus & Orchestra, the Mendocino Music Festival and Livermore Valley Chorale. A native of Guyana, Sulker has sung with many companies in the U.S. and in Europe, including San Francisco Opera, Hawaii Opera Theatre, Internationale Opera Producties, Mark Morris Dance Group, American Bach Soloists, Eugene Symphony, Mendocino Music Festival, and West Bay Opera.
J. Raymond Meyers, tenor, has sung with the opera companies of San Francisco, Portland, Anchorage, Tampa, Grand Rapids, Utah Festival, Toledo and many others. His many roles include, in 2009, Rodolfo in La Boheme with Oregon's Rogue Opera and the opera singer in the movie "Milk"; in 2010, Andres in Wozzeck with Opera Parallèle and the Astoria Music Festival, Prunier in La Rondine at OSJ. His recent roles: soloist in West Side Story Suite with San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, Carmina Burana with the Kalamazoo Symphony, Carmina Burana and Beethoven's Ninth with the Spokane Symphony, Four Saints in Three Acts with Opera Parallèle, title roles in Romeo et Juliet and Hoffmann with SFs Pocket Opera, Seven Deadly Sins and Carmina Burana with Symphony Silicon Valley. Most recently, hes sung the roles of Howard Boucher in Dead Man Walking with Opera Parallèle, The Governor in Candide with Oakland East Bay Symphony, Marquis/Prince.
Under leadership of music director Kristy Juliano since 2011, The Solano Choral Society, which includes 45 adult singers, will join YPSO for these performances of Carmina Burana. The Solano Choral Society was established in 1969. In 1973, under the direction of Chris Christianson, the Solano Choral Society became affiliated with Solano Community College as a college credit class and nonprofit organization attracting members and students from all parts of Solano and adjoining counties. Today, the Choral Society continues to be a shining, highly acclaimed cultural asset to Solano Community College and the surrounding communities of Solano County.
The internationally-acclaimed Piedmont East Bay Childrens Choir (PEBCC) has offered children throughout San Franciscos East Bay an outstanding program of choral training and performance since 1982. Under the direction of Andrew Brown, the 49 member Concert Choir of PEBCC will join YPSO for Carmina Burana. Concert Choir is the youngest of the PEBCC Performing Department choirs whose girls and treble-voiced boys demonstrate musical proficiency by audition and are under the age of 16. Concert Choir attracts students who demonstrate a high level of musicianship, dedication and passion for the increased commitment and more challenging music; these singers learn that deeper investment yields greater rewards. Most students sing with Concert Choir for two to three seasons as they build the skills needed to successfully audition for admission to PEBCC's most advanced choirs.
Ramadanoff last conducted Carmina Burana on YPSO's 2008 summer tour of Australia and New Zealand at the Sydney Opera House, and selected it again this season so the orchestra can perform it with the University of Warwick Chorus during its June 2016 performance tour of the United Kingdom.
Celebrating his 27th season as Music Director/Conductor, David Ramadanoff conducts 95 YPSO young musicians who range in age from 12 to 18, represent 38 schools, and hail from 32 Bay Area cities in eight counties.
Founded in Berkeley in 1936, YPSO is the oldest youth orchestra in California and the second oldest in the nation. The 2015-16 season is the 79th season since violinist and conductor Jessica Marcelli founded YSPO at the suggestion of Clarabelle Bell, an amateur harpist and Berkeley resident, who got the idea after hearing a youth orchestra on a trip to Portland, Oregon.
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LocationWalnut Creek Presbyterian Church (View)
1801 Lacassie Avenue
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
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