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May 14, 2023

at Benaroya Hall

Additional Notes on the Program

  • Prelude String
  • Symphonette
  • Debut
  • MY Southeast
  • Junior
  • Youth

Prelude String Orchestra

The decorative sounds of Bach open today’s program by Prelude String Orchestra, directed in concert by their new conductor Wesley Hunter for the first time. Mr. Hunter picked a work full of character, play, and communication between instruments. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos feature opening themes played in unison, known as ritornellos, which return often throughout the piece’s run to bring the listener back to home base. These return sections are placed in between solo sections where smaller numbers of voices communicate lightly back and forth in conversation.

The dramatic energy of Wood Splitter Fanfare carries the middle of Prelude’s program. Right out of the gate, the feeling of Wood Splitter Fanfare is cinematic: accented, unison notes played across the orchestra set the stage for a heroic melody in the upper strings. Listen for a rhythmic motive in the middle voices—violas—that gets an interesting re-working when the piece reaches its slower, more contemplative middle section.

Francis Feese’s character-like Contrasts in E minor closes Prelude’s Spring program. As its name suggests, Contrasts features three distinct musical ideas. The orchestra will shift from a theatrical, cinematic idea, into a slower, more lyrical sound, then end in a fun, dance-like finale that lets the lower strings have their time to shine.

Symphonette Orchestra

Symphonette Orchestra, often the first symphonic orchestra many SYSO musicians perform in, has brought the heat this year: conductor Amy Stevenson’s exciting repertoire choices have kept students and audiences on the edge of their seats all season, with lots of fun contrasting works and ideas.

Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov’s dazzling Procession of the Sardar opens today’s performance. Though Ippolitov-Ivanov was of Russian nationality, he was fascinated with folk music of Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia. Procession of the Sardar is based on an Armenian folk song, but modified and developed for an orchestral setting. You’ll hear lots of melodies and a steady percussion that may remind you of that geographic region.

Then, Bach will return to the stage today for the second time, but with a much different type of sound. His Fugue in G minor is one of many works considered some of the greatest and most structurally complex musical works in Western musical history. Bach’s fugues, originally written mostly for organ, use a structure of different voices—in this case, different instruments in the orchestra—repeating the same musical concept one after the other at different times. The effect that’s created is sonically complex: voices intertwine, dance, and crash into each other. It’s hard not to marvel at the grand beauty of any of Bach’s historically massive fugues.

Scott Joplin’s jovial work The Entertainer closes Symphonette’s program. You should recognize this work instantly—though you likely have heard it on piano—and hopefully it brings a smile to your face. The Entertainer is a work known as a piano rag, a raucous and upbeat musical model from the earliest 20th century that became popularized in performance by musicians in public spaces like restaurants and saloons. The earworm melody you know and love will get lots of different treatment when the different voices in the orchestra have their chance to share it. Good luck not tapping your feet as Symphonette musicians end today’s work on a delightful and high note.

Debut Symphony Orchestra

Bryan Kolk, a seasoned SYSO conductor, returns to the podium for the Debut Symphony Orchestra—for good this time! We’re excited to welcome Mr. Kolk to lead the Debut Symphony Orchestra as their full-time conductor going forward beginning this term, and we couldn’t be more excited to hear all the incredible music they’ll create under his baton.

Debut will open their performance with a work by the classic American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990). Copland’s Appalachian Spring is a staple in the symphonic repertoire, premiering in 1944 to enduring and widespread popularity to date. Copland collaborated with ballet genius Martha Graham on the work. They aimed to tell a quintessentially American story at a time when, politically and socially, US citizens confronted daily resounding waves of patriotism while news of World War II havoc dominated the daily news cycle. Born in this environment, Appalachian Spring is equal parts escapism and nationalist celebration.

Copland’s use of a traditional Shaker song, “Simple Gifts,” in the context of the greater work of Appalachian Spring, is the second-to-last idea in the ballet. Where Copland reinvigorated the traditional Shaker melody was in its setting for orchestra: he lets the warm and uncomplicated musical idea move across the ensemble in a round-like fashion, almost as it would be sung in a choir, with re-workings and colorful pairings by different instruments and sections. Listen to the sheer uniqueness of each repetition of “Simple Gifts,” and of course, since it’s Copland, feel free to lose yourself in something purely fantastic.

An arrangement of Johannes Brahms’s (1833-1897) Academic Festival Overture will close today’s performance by Debut. The work has an interesting origin: Brahms, a brilliant musician who never graduated college, received a number of honorary Doctorates during the height of his fame. One, sent to him by the University of Breslau, declared Brahms a Doctor of Philosophy. Brahms sent a postcard thanking them for the honor, but was quickly informed that they expected something musical, a composition, in return. Thus was born his Academic Festival Overture, a work far more cinematic and delightful than, well, academic. Multiple college-student anthems are used across the composition, which would have given the work at the time a celebratory and almost playful tone. Brahms himself described the work as a “a very boisterous potpourri of student songs”— see for yourself if you can capture that energy as the upbeat work cycles between upbeat, bursting sound, and more lyrical, calmer ideas.

Music Youth Southeast

Music Youth Southeast (MY Southeast), SYSO’s newest orchestra, joins us during a mainstage Academic Year Orchestra concert for the very first time today. MY Southeast has had a pretty spectacular year: 60 musicians quickly enrolled to participate in the progressive new ensemble, spearheaded by SYSO conductor Kim Roy and School & Community Partnerships Manager Daniel Mullikin. Under Kim & Daniel’s direction, MY Southeast musicians performed music ranging from Bartók to The Beatles to Beethoven to Nirvana, hopping between the old and the new to both honor and push forward the image of the modern-day orchestra. They’ve performed in awesome venues like Seattle Art Museum, and have participated in multiple community events alongside other great public-serving organizations in our community. In February, MY Southeast performed side by side with members of the Seattle Symphony as part of a new partnership, making new friends and learning skills to take their music to the next level. MY Southeast is offered tuition free to all musicians grades 6-12 with one year’s experience. To learn more about MY Southeast, visit syso.org/myse. MY Southeast’s performance today is lead by SYSO Artistic Associate Gabriela Garza.

Jean Sibelius’s (1865-1957) Andante Festivo will open MY Southeast’s performance today. Sibelius, a Finnish composer, is today celebrated by his country for the profound contributions he made to the global musical landscape. (If you get a chance to go to Finland, you should check out the official Jean Sibelius monument—it’s pretty undeniably cool. Googling is good, too.) Andante Festivo was originally written for string quartet. It’s pretty different compared to a lot of Sibelius’s most famous works, a lot more lyrical and uncomplicated compared to the stacked, metallic Symphonies that remain in the orchestral repertoire today. When Sibelius premiered Andante Festivo in 1939, it was his final performance as a conductor.

MY Southeast musician Isaac Draculan will take to the podium for MY Southeast’s second work. Baila Conmigo is a dance-like work with Latin themes and a driving, decorative tambourine underscoring the work’s more upbeat sections. Listen for the dramatic flare of the orchestra, and imagine someone dancing to it—after all, it’s right there in the title!

Nirvana’s smash hit Smells Like Teen Spirit ends MY Southeast’s performance today. You almost definitely know this song, whether you blasted it from the rolled-down windows of your Honda Civic at one time or another, or you’ve heard it in passing during countless grocery-store strolls over the years. When Nirvana released Teen Spirit in 1991, it quickly shot to the top of the charts, becoming the point many music critics refer to as when grunge rock entered the musical mainstream. Its opening guitar lick is the basis for everything in the work, from the instrumentation to verses to the choruses—in a way, it kinda rocks back and forth in a way that is almost hypnotizing. Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl, Nirvana’s incomparable runners, had something pretty harsh to say about teen spirit when they created a song that was catchy, frustrated, and musically a massive departure from the delicate and naïve synth-pop which dominated radio waves in the 1980s. It’s okay if you sing along, we probably will be doing the same backstage.

Junior Symphony Orchestra

William White joined us for Term 3 studies to lead Junior Symphony Orchestra through a repertoire bursting with classic energy. Mr. White is letting Junior shine through works by Romantic-era titans Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), showcasing the emotional depth of the orchestra through two particularly dramatic works.

Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 5 is a beloved and massively famous work for orchestra. It is perhaps Brahms’s most well-known work, often being used in modern-day commercials, television shows, and other media formats as the soundtrack to something often chaotic in nature. Brahms, a piano player of worldwide renown, wrote 21 Hungarian dances for four hands on piano. The works were an immediate success, and demand for them in an orchestral setting quickly followed. Brahms tapped help from notable greats like Antonín Dvořák to arrange the works for orchestra. You’ll know the opening melody which opens Hungarian Dance No. 5 right when it exits the gate. The rhythmic motive underneath the main melody is punctuated by off-beat accents, giving the music its dance-like flare. Very quickly, the orchestra will hush itself for a contrasting lyrical section, only to burst back into the original musical idea with new flare. What makes these short Hungarian Dances so fun is their absolute upbeat nature—the middle section of the work is only contrasting in the sense that its different, not that it slows down at all. Out of nowhere, the opening musical idea will return, and the audience is swept into the dance through the work’s exciting conclusion.

Tchaikovsky had the burden of living during a time of nearly endless conflict in Russia and surrounding nations. Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write Marche Slave (Slavonic March) at a charity benefit performance to buy military equipment for Russian war volunteers and to cultivate aid for victims of war. Thus, the work is steeped in nationalist intent. Marche Slave uses Serbian folk songs at multiple points throughout its 10-minute run, challenging these melodies with complicated instrumentation and bombastic interjections from the instruments at the back of the orchestra. Tchaikovsky loved to use brass and percussion in his works which often depict or evoke scenes of war, and much like his nationalist anthem the 1812 Overture, Marche Slave brings in Alexander Fyodorovich Lvov’s hymn “God Save the Tsar.”

Youth Symphony Orchestra

There’s not much we can say about Benjamin Britten’s (1913-1976) The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra that the work doesn’t already say itself. The work is, as the title suggests, a guide through the orchestra, aiming to highlight the individuality each instrument adds to the collective whole they create when placed in a symphonic setting. That’s the sterile way to describe it—the fun way is to describe it as as a live picturebook that gives deserved stage time to each and every section across the orchestra, letting us celebrate what makes them unique and loveable. It’s an incredible piece to close the final concert of our 2022-23 Academic Year Orchestra season as we celebrate 8 decades of music education in Seattle—a work which lets every instrument, every musician, bask in the glowing pride of their identity and character.

Britten is widely considered one of the UK’s greatest compositional voices. For years, Britain had lived in the shadows of compositional greats from Germany, France, Russia, and even the United States. For years the British people longed to find a quintessentially British musical sound that was new, one that the national mindset could celebrate as unequivocally representative of their homeland. Enter Benjamin Britten, a fantastically gifted musician who wrote more than 1,000 published works over his lifetime. Critics almost immediately praised Britten’s unique, non-derivative compositional voice—Britten’s works sounded new, fresh, and British audiences could attach themselves to his music as a representation of their country’s greater achievements.

In 1945, Britten was approached by the British Ministry of Education to develop a work that would excite younger generations about the orchestra and instrumental concert music. It seemed logical enough—a young, up-and-coming composer of British nationality, commissioned by the British government to help foment a love of the arts in their country’s youth. The only thing the British government probably didn’t perceive—and certainly didn’t complain about—was how much of smash hit this work would become. The Young Person’s Guide is undoubtedly Britten’s most enduring work today, frequently performed for youth and adults alike as a celebration of how our individual uniqueness is the value of our collective whole.

Britten was well aware of the political and nationalist nature of the task handed to him by his country’s government: he subtitled the work “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell,” referencing a 1695 work by historical British great Henry Purcell. The idea is simple: the orchestra starts in unison performing a re-orchestrated melody by Purcell, which is then passed to each family of instruments—woodwinds, brass, strings, then percussion. Britten then twists the lens on the microscope—the work then blooms into a colorful variation on the same theme given to each of the 13 instruments in the orchestra, allowing each section its time to shine in the spotlight. A skilled orchestrator in his own right, Britten truly gets what makes each instrument unique. You’ll have to hear for yourself how he brings that understanding to life—each instrument’s solo section just feels so quintessentially fitting, it’s hard not to fall in love with the work, and the orchestra, as a whole.

It is interesting to perform The Young Person’s Guide in 2023. The symphonic orchestra as an institution has moved enough from the mainstream eye that the age-based callout in the title has almost outgrown its right to introduce the work. Pop music and other smaller-form instrumentation is the dominant cultural musical force, but the orchestra remains an absolutely unique institution in its ability to bring so many disparate voices together to achieve greater goals. We at SYSO love the orchestra because we love how it brings students together in so many different ways, and connects people of different walks of life; we love how the 13 instruments in our orchestras attract people with completely different life experiences, but that these people find pride in their sections, their communities; we love that moments in the rehearsal hall tackling and trying to understand the music bring people together in a way that almost nothing else can.

It is safe to say that Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide really isn’t just for young people—it is a reminder to all of us, young and old, big and small, that there is no place like the symphonic orchestra, a gathering of lots of different people where anyone has the freedom and the calling to find their voice.

Founded in 1942, Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra is the largest youth orchestra training program in the United States.

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    • Work With Us
  • Programs
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      • Junior Symphony Orchestra
      • Debut Symphony Orchestra
      • Symphonette Orchestra
      • Prelude String Orchestra
      • MY Southeast
      • Cadenza
    • Conservatory
      • Seattle Conservatory of Music
    • School
      • Endangered Instruments
      • Musical Pathways Project
    • Summer Programs
      • Marrowstone Music Festival
      • SYSO Summer Music
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