The Texas Tech University (TTU) School of Music’s first concert of the 2017-2018 academic year will feature the University Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the School of Music’s newly appointed Director of Orchestral Studies Dr. Philip Mann. The concert is at 7:30 P.M. this Sunday, September 17, 2017 in the Hemmle Recital Hall of the TTU School of Music. The performance is free and open to the public.
Titled “Love Rising,” this concert heralds new horizons of programming and collaboration for the University Orchestras thanks to the recent arrival of Dr. Mann. On this program, love in the face of nefarious wizardry ties together the two stories that bookend an exciting new world premiere with an internationally-renowned soloist.
The orchestra will take off at lightning speed with the famous overture to Russian composer Mikhail Glinka’s 1842 opera titled Ruslan and Lyudmila. Based on the poem of the same name by celebrated Russian poet and novelist Alexander Pushkin, its serpentine plot tells the tale of an evil sorcerer kidnapping Prince Vladimir the Great’s daughter Lyudmila during her wedding feast with her betrothed Ruslan. Amidst chaos and magic and dealings with Lyudmila’s unsuccessful suitors, Ruslan wins the day and successfully rescues his beloved.
After the rapidity and operatic tension of Glinka’s overture, a contemporary work in a new guise will be given its world premiere by the orchestra along with the collaboration of superstar flute virtuoso Carol Wincenc. Prominent contemporary American composer Joan Tower wrote a work for Ms. Wincenc in 2009 titled Rising for flute and string quartet. On this concert, its arrangement by Tower for flute soloist and orchestra will be premiered for the very first time. Speaking of her inspiration for Rising, Tower herself says: “I have always been interested in how music can ‘go up.’ It is a simple action, but one that can have so many variables: slow or fast tempos, accelerating, slowing down, getting louder or softer — with thick or thin surrounding textures going in the same or opposite directions.”
Hailed "Queen of the flute" by New York Magazine, Ms. Wincenc was first prize winner of the (sole) Naumburg Solo Flute Competition, as well as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Flute Association, the National Society of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Music, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Manhattan School of Music. She has appeared as soloist with such ensembles as the Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and London symphonies. A Grammy Award nominee, she has also received a Diapason d'Or Award, a Recording of Special Merit award with András Schiff, and Gramophone magazine's "Pick of the Month" with the Buffalo Philharmonic. She teaches on the faculties of The Juilliard School and Stony Brook University.
Wincenc’s featured appearance with the orchestra is the first event to take place during her four-day residency at the School of Music. Throughout her visit, she will be giving coachings and master classes to both the School of Music’s flute studio and to chamber groups comprised of students from the woodwind area of the School of Music.
If Glinka was responsible for raising the caliber of classical music within his native Russia, the household name of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was certainly responsible as both a composer and a conductor for raising international awareness and prominence of Russian classical music. Appropriately following the theme suggested by Rising, the concert will close with selections from Tchaikovsky’s timeless ballet Swan Lake.
For more information about this event and the University Orchestras, please contact Alicia Caicedo, Unit Coordinator for Choirs/Orchestras/Opera Theatre, at (806) 834-6734 or at alicia.caicedo-cavazos@ttu.edu.
