HEAR IT - Humanity's Expressive Artists Reveal & Illuminate Truth

Savage Sublimity and Sublime Savagery A quick take on Tucson Symphony Orchestra's return to the TCC Music Hall stage. Program FESTIVE OVERTURE, Grant Still, 1944 THE FOUR SEASONS OF BUENOS AIRES, Astor Piazzolla, 1970 SYMPHONY #4, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, 1878 HIGHLIGHT NOTE: Lara St. John is a complete MADWOMAN with a violin and bow in hand. The type of stage performer who goes into a trancelike state of melding with the music through her instrument, she possesses off-the-scale virtuosity and delivers full fire at furious tempi. Both the most savage and sublime passages that a composer could imagine, were sculpted under intense shut-eyed concentration, with complete technical ease. This sublimely crazed virtuoso, Ms. St. John, occasionally glanced out to the audience while performing, toying us slightly with a devil's knowing look of the unknowably advanced and savage artistry she was laying down. Absolutely SPECTACULAR. >>> A recording link of Lara's insane encore...

"As long as the Austrians have their brown beer and little sausages, they will never revolt."   ~ Ludwig van Beethoven Tuscon Symphony Orchestra Classic Series Concert - 6 & 8 December 2019 José Luis Gomez , conductor Sean Chen , piano PROGRAM Estévez : Mediodía en el Llano Saint-Saëns : Piano Concerto No. 2 Beethoven : Symphony No. 5 in C Minor REVOLUTIONARY Ludwig van Beethoven is arguably the single most influential and inspirational composer in Western music history. He set fire to art music as courtly entertainment, in favor of expression of individual and societal struggles and triumphs. He helped ignite the search for new meaning to the most fundamental questions of human existence, during a time of political revolt. Powerfully moved by the Enlightenment principles of reason over dogma, and democracy over oligarchy, Beethoven celebrated the triumph of the French Revolution, initially dedicating his Third Symphony to the Emperor Napo...

Sharon Isbin, Guitar Case Scaglione, Guest Conductor Tucson Symphony Orchestra, 15 November 2019 Case Scaglione, guest conductor Sharon Isbin, guitar Sharon Isbin, Corigliano's Troubadour John Corigliano's 'Troubadour', is a dream-like vision of the hard-working 12th Century musicians and poets, whose stories and songs helped define the meaning and range of Medieval chivalry and courtly love. As a composition, 'Troubadour' is a complete work of art and artifice; a very modern and reflective soundscape is engaged to imagine and to emulate, rather than whimsically imitate, a powerful musical tradition; one which left us almost no notation of the music they wrote and performed. The most striking aspect of 'Troubadour' is the series of delicately assembled ethereal sonorities, including micro-tones and slow, harmonized tone-bending by woodwind instruments, all culled from a chamber-like ensemble of about thirty players. Some of these, ...

José Luis Gomez , conductor Homero Cerón , marimba Chris Herman , marimba Fred Morgan , marimba Matthew Timman , marimba -------------------------------------------- Séjourné : Concerto for Four Marimbas and Strings, “Gotan” Beethoven : Symphony No. 4 in B♭ Major REVIEW:  Tucson Symphony Orchestra  Masterworks  Saturday, 5 October 2019 'War and Peace' , Leo Tolstoy's mammoth, multi-faceted representation, reflection and philosophical analysis of Russian society in the face of the slogging Napoleonic Wars, was once aptly described as a "loose, baggy, monster". Celebrating the ideals of the French Revolution, and originally dedicated to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, Beethoven's 3rd Symphony is a similarly sprawling affair, written by an artist soon disgusted with Napoleon's warring ways. Beethoven's Third is his 'War and Peace'... And of course, penned only a few years later, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is a singular all...

"What is beautiful in science is the same thing that is beautiful in Beethoven. There’s a fog of events and suddenly you see a connection. It expresses a complex of human concerns that goes deeply to you, that connects things that were always in you that were never put together before." ~ Victor Weisskopf "What can you do with Beethoven's 7th Symphony? It’s like a lot of yaks jumping about."  ~  Sir Thomas Beecham Yekwon Sunwoo REVIEW:  Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Opening Night,  20 September 2019         Beethoven is the all-time most performed symphonist by American orchestras -- and still is today. He is the most performed symphonist in world history. At some point, one might think that he and his music would become 'passe'. In Tucson Arizona, 249 years after his birth, that is not happening! S uper energized by setting their sights on performing  the whole Beethoven symphony cycle  this season, the sheer rapture of the ...

A quintet of reeds! (R to L) Jackie Glazier, Charles Du Preez, Melissa Olegario, Edward Goodman, Sara Fraker 'REFRACTION' - Faculty Recital, Jackie Glazier Fred Fox University of Arizona School of Music 12 September 2019 - Crowder Hall We were tempted by a program of new music -- four compositions from living composers, and a fifth, by Karlheinz Stockhausen -- groundbreaking exploratory composer of the mid-20th Century. As well, each piece had a strong visual element, and the last work, a heavily pop-influence number. A colorful refraction indeed, of Western chamber music for clarinet! Kay He 's 'Heat It Up!' , commissioned this year by Jackie Glazier , was remarkable and memorable. For clarinet and piano, this music was being electronically manipulated with synthesized ring modulator, digital delay, and other filters and distortions, all controlled by pedals fed into a laptop on stage, and executed by the composer, He (pronounced "Hu...

Michael Stern , Guest Conductor Tucson Symphony Orchestra THE TOP NINE reasons to be @ TCC Music Hall @ 2:00 P.M. (or1:00 P.M.) on Sunday, 7 April 2019 9) TSO Guest Conductor, MICHAEL STERN, the esteemed Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra, is a dedicated, deep-thinking, passionate, and articulate proponent and practitioner of musical art at its highest level. His pre-concert talk (one hour beforehand) shows a director intimately familiar with the music, the composers' personal lives, and the concurrent social and political forces affecting the work of these great artists. He backed up his knowledge and passion with great vision and skill guiding the TSO to excellent performances of this unusual program. 8) The BRAHMS 'SCHICKSALSLIED' (Song of Destiny) is masterly symphonic choral writing; beautifully balanced, in Brahms generous, mature harmonic language, and deeply expressive. 7) You need a midday break from all of your Spring GARDENING chores ...