Huey 5: Orchestra Iowa

ORCHESTRA IOWA: "Outstanding" (they'd better be!)
Office: 119 Third Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
http://www.artsiowa.com/orchestra/
Performance Sites: Paramount Theater (Cedar Rapids), Coralville Center for the Arts, Brucemore Mansion Lawn (Cedar Rapids), West High School (Iowa City), Independence (IA) High School, Voxman Concert Hall (University of Iowa), Opus Concert Cafe (Cedar Rapids), Old Capitol Senate Chamber (Iowa City).
Conductor: Timothy Hankewich (11 seasons)

Concert night at the renovated Paramount Theater.

Old Capitol Building, Iowa City

Since the 500-year flood of Cedar Rapids in 2008, an act of nature that reeked untold damage to that city as well as the arts complex at the University of Iowa. Built within a flood plain near the Iowa River, flooding leashed its wrath on the music facilities and the university's main concert site, Hancher Auditorium. Both were finally replaced eight years after the onslaught. In Cedar Rapids, the beautiful Paramount Theater was filled with water, damaging the auditorium itself, anything stored in the lower level dressing rooms and basically destroying the theater's "Mighty Wurlitzer" organ.

Downtown Cedar Rapids, Summer 2008

The remains of the Mighty Wurlitzer

Finding itself homeless for an extended period of time, the (then) Cedar Rapids Symphony embarked on a nomadic journey. Without a home in Cedar Rapids, the orchestra set out to refine itself and expand its outreach beyond the environs of the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City corridor. The result was a reimagined ensemble: Orchestra Iowa. Personally, I thought the name was presumptuous; this wasn't "my" orchestra; why make the not-so-subtle claim that it was "Iowa's" orchestra. In all honesty, I may be coming around.

The concert programs of Orchestra Iowa are a mixed bag; some follow the "formula," while others deviate significantly. What is of particular interest to me are those that include lesser known works such as:

• Alberto Ginastera: Variaciones Concertantes (Having written a dissertation on the piece, I'll admit my bias. Still, this piece needs to be played much more.)
• Jean Sibelius: A symphony? Nope; Swan of Tuonela.
• William Bolcom: Orphee Serenade
• And yes, a bit of silliness: Dmitri Shostakovich: Tahiti Trot

A number of "traditional" concertos appear (Shostakovich: Cello Concerto 1, Mozart: Piano Concerto 21, Rachmaninoff: Paganini Rhapsody.) The orchestra is presenting the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2, but they've brought in Emmanuel Ax as the soloist; this concert is in April and is well worth the trip.

The concert season ends in June with the monumental Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler, a major undertaking for any ensemble. But that's not all, Orchestra Iowa also presents opera (Turandot, with the Cedar Rapids Opera Theater) and ballet (Alice in Wonderland, with the Quad City Ballet.) Orchestra Iowa jumps on the pops bandwagon but offers a live performance--with the film--of the classic Casablanca.

But again, that's not all. There is also a chamber series, presented at the Opus Cafe and other sites. With each program centering around different repertoire and instrumental combinations, these excursions into true "chamber" music promise an authentic experience of this genre.

I probably sound like I'm gushing, and I suppose I am. Orchestra Iowa has become the major player in classical music in this part of the Midwest. While I am a fan of the Chicago Symphony, there are plenty of reasons to skip the drive, the traffic, the hotels, and simply stay close to home.

THIRTY-ONE SEASONS AND COUNTING

Since 2007, I have been the extremely proud Music Director of the Quad City Wind Ensemble, an outstanding group of professional musicians, educators, and others for whom musical performance is a valued avocation. Members also include attorneys, business executives, and retirees. During the past four years, in particular, the quality of the ensemble has grown and the size of our audience has more than doubled.

The ensemble won the American Prize for Outstanding Performance in 2012, its conductor the award as Outstanding Wind Conductor in 2015. In 2014, the QCWE appeared in concert at the prestigious Iowa Bandmasters Association Conference. One audience member responded, "I've never before liked a Karl King march until today."

Here is our concert season (all concerts take place at Allaert Auditorium in the Galvin Fine Arts Center on the campus of St. Ambrose University).

October 23, 3:00 PM: Sweet Sixteen

We presented our first concert of "anniversaries" in 2013 and this year's program is a continuation of that idea. We celebrate the birth and passing of composers as well as those pieces having their own "birthdays" during 2016

Clifton Williams: Caccia and Chorale (1976) This piece (the composer's last) proves that Clifton Williams at the age of 53 was hitting his stride and remains (to me) his most profound work.

Vittorio Giannini (1903 - 1966): Symphony No. 3, his only work for the wind band. Great stuff. Not performed enough in the contemporary band world where there is too much focus on the new, instead of the tried and true. We'll try to rectify that.

          

Julius Fucik (1872 - 1916): Gigantic March. Many call Fucik the "Czech Sousa". I might have to argue that it's the other way around, given the fact that Gigantic is his opus 311! You know Fucik, in the rambunctious version of his Entry of the Gladiators (stolen by the circus). 

Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983): Pampeana No. 3, 
II. Impetuosamente. Celebrating the Argentine great in this, the centennial of his birth, a wild depiction of dancing "competitions" among the gauchos of the plains.

John Philip Sousa: Willow Blossoms (1916) A much different kind of Sousa, bucolic in nature.

Vincent Persichetti: Turn Not Thy Face, Chorale Prelude (1966) Commissioned by the Frank Battisti and the great Ithaca (NY) High School Band, this work was composed in memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

John Barnes Chance: Variations on a Korean Folk Song (1966) Standard repertoire and deservedly so. Chance wrote so few works but all are classics.

December 11, 3:00 PM: Our Annual Holiday Concert
   Including many holiday treats, including a return of Minor Alterations!

February 26, 2017, 3:00 PM: South of the Border

Jose Moncayo/Osmon: Huapango

H. Owen Reed: La Fiesta Mexicana
   The composer's magnum opus was the result of his Guggenheim Fellowship-sponsored visit to Mexico during the late 1940s. While there, he heard Mexican music from the many different cultures that make up the country’s heritage, including Aztec, Roman Catholic, and mariachi music. He used these various ideas, often quoting them nearly verbatim, and stitched them together with elements of his own contemporary style in La Fiesta Mexicana‘s three movements.

Julie Giroux: Carnaval! 

Marcha Defensa Nacional Mexicana

Victoriano Valencia (Colombia): Fandanguillo 

Arturo Marquez/Nickel: Danzon No. 2

Saturday, May 13, 7:30 PM: Heroic Measures: A program focusing on those who, in the face of danger, combat adversity through impressive feats of ingenuity, bravery or strength, often sacrificing personal concerns for some greater good. Arthur Ashe once said, "True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."

William Walton/Noble: Spitfire Prelude and Fugue
   A musical chronicle of those brave young men who fought in the skies over Britain, saving their homeland from the onslaught of Nazi Germany. From the music for the 1942 film, The First of the Few.

Mark Camphouse: A Movement for Rosa
   In an act of civil disobedience, Rosa Parks demonstrated true heroism and started a movement that would change the landscape of America.

Richard Wagner/Whear: “Siegfried’s Funeral Music,” from Götterdämmerung

Miklos Rozsa/Hawkins: “Parade of the Charioteers,” from Ben-Hur

Eric Ewazen: A Hymn for the Lost and the Living
   A professor of composition at the Julliard School, Ewazen was several miles from the carnage of September 11. This hymn, more an elegy, offers homage to many who lost their lives (including first responders) as well as those families left behind.

Student soloist (TBA)

Stephen Melillo: David 
   David has many layers of meaning. True for all of the "storm" works, these layers have been extended to include the use of many new and fresh colors. David is a dramatic work, calling for a boy-soprano or soprano-actress who can depict David, the boy before battle!

Never too late to learn....

My parents taught me how to listen to everybody before I made up my own mind. When you listen, you learn. You absorb like a sponge and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time.  ~ Steven Spielberg

Anton Webern

Some time ago--thanks to my friend over at Classical Dark Arts--I discovered a work that is new to me, although it was composed in 1908 and is Anton Webern's Opus 1. The Passacaglia appeared just as Webern was completing four years of study with Arnold Schoenberg. Philip Huscher of the Chicago Symphony notes, Schoenberg’s presence is felt, too—the Schoenberg of Transfigured Night and Pelleas and Melisande, not of the later atonal pieces. The formal structure reminds us that the passacaglia finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony (scarcely twenty years old in 1908) was often performed and discussed and obviously influential. There are fleeting moments that recall the unlikely world of Bayreuth, the Wagnerian festival Webern attended as a present on graduation from the Klagenfurt Gymnasium in 1902. The Passacaglia is the work that brings them all together.

The work is amazing.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Theodor Kirchner

Thanks to my work on the annual "Huey Awards," I was reminded of a forgotten musical figure of the late Romantic era, Theodor Kirchner. He was close to both Robert and Clara Schumann; Johannes Brahms was a supporter. In fact, Kirchner made the vocal score to the German Requiem and arranged a number of his orchestral works for piano.

He was a prolific composer of solo piano pieces as well as a smaller amount of chamber music. I think I need to do some digging.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Alberto Ginastera, turning 100!
Died too soon in 1983

While working on programming for the 2016-17 season of the Quad City Wind Ensemble, I've come across some original music for winds from Venezuela and Colombia. More on that later. In the meantime, here is the line-up for the first concert:

QUAD CITY WIND ENSEMBLE

Fall Concert, 2016: Sweet Sixteen

Clifton Williams (1923 - 1976): Caccia and Chorale (1976)

Vittorio Gianinni (1903 - 1966): Symphony No. 3 (1958)

            I.  Allegro energico

            II. Adagio

            III. Allegro con brio

Julius Fucik (1872 - 1916): Gigantic March

INTERMISSION

Alberto Ginastera (1916 - 1983), arr. Greg Bimm: Pampeana No. 3 (1954)

            II. Impetuosamente

John Philip Sousa (1854 - 1932): Willow Blossoms (1916)

Vincent Persichetti (1915 - 1987): Turn Not Thy Face, Chorale Prelude (1966) 

John Barnes Chance (1932 - 1972): Variations on a Korean Folk Song (1966)

I think it's going to be darned good (even though they're all dead white guys of European extraction; I'll have to make up for that later). Looking ahead, we're going "south of the border" to play contemporary(!) wind music of Columbia, Venezuela, and elsewhere.