November 2011

American Portrait

  • November 12, 2011 - Cascade Theatre, Redding, 7:30 pm
  • November 13, 2011 - Laxson Auditorium, Chico, 2:00 pm
    November 13, 2011 - State Theatre, Oroville, 7:30 pm

Click the links above for program notes.

Conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett will give a free pre-concert talk
one hour before each concert begins. Pre-concert talks are
sponsored this year by Richard and Pat Macias (Chico) and
Allen & Dahl Mortuary (Redding).

Get your tickets now!

Video with Chris Brubeck
Watch a video of Kyle Pickett interviewing
Chris Brubeck about Ansel Adams: America

 

Greg ManuelGreg Manuel, piccolo

Greg Manuel is a junior at Shasta High School in Redding. He plans to study music composition and flute in college, with the hope of becoming a professional musician. Greg attended the music composition program of California State Summer School for the Arts in Valencia and is a California Arts Scholar. 

Greg enjoys many types of music, but, he writes: “I am especially interested in contemporary art music (strange music).”

Greg credits the talent and support of many music teachers in the Redding area. He started playing the flute in fourth grade at Manzanita Elementary School, where the school's music teacher, Ruth Polcari (NSS piccolo player), introduced him to the instrument. He continues to study as a private student with Mrs. Polcari. Her husband, Lou Polcari, is Greg’s high school music director. In addition, Greg has studied “standup” bass with Bruce Calin for many years.

His family includes parents, Kent and Laura Manuel, sister Tracy, a dog and two cats.

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Victory at Sea Symphonic Scenario
Richard Rodgers (1902-1979)

In Richard Rodgers’ six-decade career, his award-winning compositions reached from Broadway to Hollywood. His first collaboration, with lyricist Lorenz Hart, produced many Broadway shows including “Babes in Arms” (1937) and “Pal Joey” (1940). The two remained partners until 1943, when Hart passed away. Rodgers joined his most famous partner, lyricist and writer, Oscar Hammerstein II in writing the first Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, “Oklahoma!” The musicals the two wrote together form a list of the top award-winning  shows in American history, which continue to be popular today.

Even in this prolific time, Rodgers also composed for other genres. Victory at Sea was a television documentary series that aired from 1952-1953, about naval combat during World War II. The score earned Rodgers a commendation from the U.S. Navy as well as an Emmy and Gold Record. It was the music that made the series popular as much as its narration and historical accuracy. The score was recorded  by Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981),  conductor, composer and arranger, well known for  orchestrating over three hundred popular musicals, including several by Rodgers & Hammerstein. Bennett also worked with composers George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. Bennett had an extraordinary ability to remember scenes and scores and could orchestrate up to eighty pages in a day. Bennett studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger.

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Ansel Adams: America
Dave Brubeck and Chris Brubeck

"Photographers are in a sense composers, and the negatives are their scores."
Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984)

Notes from Chris Brubeck:

In 2006 I had lunch with Susan Carson, a dynamic patron of the Arts in California. She asked me what I thought about the idea of an orchestra performing original music while Ansel Adams´ photographic images were projected in the concert hall. I instantly thought this was a fabulous concept and wished it had been my idea! Ms. Carson…had been impressed with my innovative compositions created under the auspices of the "Meet The Composer/Music Alive" program.

She saw (and heard) that I was quite capable of thinking "out of the box" when I wrote the music and script for "Mark Twain's World" which featured actors, not singers, with the orchestra. "Ansel Adams: America" would offer a different set of challenges.

The merging of music and photography made perfect sense when we discovered that Ansel Adams was well on his way to becoming a serious concert pianist until he was seduced by the beauty of Yosemite and succumbed to the lure of photography. This fact inspired me to read the wonderful book "Ansel Adams, An Autobiography." In these pages I learned that Ansel, as a young man, yearned to practice piano while in Yosemite which led him to the old Chickering upright piano at the home of the owner of Best's Studio. While practicing there, he met, fell in love, and eventually married the proprietor's daughter, Virginia Best.

In Ansel´s autobiography… I was impressed with his philosophical views, beautiful writing, and keen analysis and comparison of musical and photographic techniques... He was an artist and thinker whose experiences were as monumental as El Capitan. Growing up in San Francisco, Ansel Adams experienced a variety of historic events that would influence his art -- the Great Earthquake of 1906; the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 (… as part of his unique home-schooling, his father requiring him to go to the Expo every day for a year!), to the building of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. I thought his story was so interesting that I didn't want to simply project his photographs, but wanted to present a glimpse of his remarkable story to the audience.

Ansel Adams evolved in the expansive currents of 20th Century America. His lifelong dedication to the Sierra Club along with his powerful photographs of the American landscape helped shape the environmental movement in our country. Because of his talent, hard work, and good fortune, he became a pioneer and icon of an emerging new art form. I couldn't help but think of my father, who grew up as a cowboy in the foothills of California near Stockton. The changes in the mid-20th century affected both Ansel and Dave, propelling them and their respective art forms, photography and jazz, into the new frontiers of American culture. Recognizing their similar histories spurred me to ask Dave to join me in this compositional endeavor. We had collaborated before and I enjoyed the process immensely. At age 88, Dave was reluctant to commit to such a big project. I gave my father and my mother, Iola, the Ansel Adams autobiography to read, and they were hooked!

Dave began to write a piano score that was driven in style by Bach and Chopin, immortal music learned and played by Adams as a young man. This music was also part of Dave's unusual environment, growing up on a ranch where his father was a cowboy, and his mother was a Classical pianist who often played Bach and Chopin. Dave's own style (in part inspired by his studies with Darius Milhaud after World War II at Mills College) evolved to be both polytonal and "jazzy." This heritage has naturally influenced my compositional language as well. Because the architecture of some of Adams´ photographs was so like the complex structure of a Fugue, I suggested to my father that he write one to be the heart of this new composition. Dave's enthusiasm and creativity inspired him far beyond the Fugue. He devised many wonderful themes and ideas which we expanded and polished together. Once the piano score was complete, my wife Tish and I began to select additional images to be shown throughout the developing score. I continued to compose and reshape the piece and orchestrate more specifically to exact images. Dave, Iola, Tish, and I had many good times together "auditioning" different photographs to be shown with various passages of music. Jeff Sugg, an award-winning visual production designer, met with us and also added his opinions and expertise regarding transitions between the images.

The beauty of Ansel Adams' photography inspired Dave and me to create this music. We hope you'll enjoy his breathtaking photographs and the way our new composition surrounds these images.

Chris Brubeck
Wilton, Connecticut

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Piccolo Concerto
Lowell Liebermann (1961- )

I. Andante comodo

One of the most celebrated living composers, Lowell Liebermann’s works cover numerous genres including solo piano, chamber music, operas, symphonies, and concertos. The North State Symphony co-commissioned his Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra for the 2009-2010 concert season. Liebermann actively performs as a pianist and has won many awards for his piano compositions, including the first American Composers Invitational Award by the 11th Van Cliburn Competition. He has also composed a number of works for flute and three have become staples of modern repertoire; Sonata for Flute and Piano, Op. 23, Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Op. 39, and Soliloquy, Op. 44 have all been selected by the National Flute Association as some of the best newly published flute works.

Piccolo Concerto was commissioned by the National Flute Association and first performed at their Convention in 1996. The piece is dedicated to and was premiered by Jan Gippo. After Gippo performed the premiere of another one of Liebermann’s works for flute, she was inspired to approach him about a concerto for the piccolo, an instrument with very limited repertoire.

The entire concerto is in three movements: the first two movements in a slower tempo and lower range of the instrument, and the final movement lively in the higher range, with quotes of famous works of the past. In the beginning of the first movement, Andante comodo, the beautiful piccolo melody soars over the luscious accompaniment of the orchestra. As the movement continues, the piccolo sparkles and dances and the orchestra develops a darker hum. Although the piccolo range is higher than the flute, the lyricism of the melody avoids any piercing quality.

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Our Town
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Until the period between the World Wars, it was thought that a quality music education could only be obtained in Europe. It is generally thought that the first outstanding entirely American composer was Aaron Copland. Even though his goal was to have his music “immediately recognized as American in character,” Copland did travel to Paris for composition studies in 1920. There, he studied with and befriended the famous teacher, Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger gave him encouragement and confidence in his ability and pushed him to establish his own, American style of music. Early on, Copland realized that Americans recognized jazz as their native musical style, and allowed that to influence his compositions. His other ideas of what defined the American style were elements of the grandiose, the dramatic, and the tragic.

In the late thirties and early forties, documentaries and films that had American themes became popular. With this came the need for American music to reflect what was being seen on the screen. Prior to Our Town (1940), Copland completed scores for the documentary The City (1939) and the feature film version of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1939). Our Town is  based on Thornton Wilder’s play, which Copland had seen performed in New York. The play’s location, Grover’s Corners, was inspired by a town in New Hampshire, so Copland employed hymn tunes from New England as the major themes for the score.

After the film release of Our Town, an orchestral suite version was created that highlights some of the major themes and scenes from the film, such as a church yard scene and glimpses of daily life. The pictures painted are those of the serenity and quiet life of a small town in America. Through his music, Copland pulls at the heart of American idealism that searches for the place where life is lived one calm day at a time.

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An American in Paris
George Gershwin (1898-1937)

When one thinks of American music, along with Aaron Copland, George Gershwin immediately comes to mind. Best known for many of the popular songs written with his brother Ira, George also excelled in musical theater and symphonic works. Although his life was tragically short (he died at age 38 of a brain tumor), George left a lasting impression on popular music, the Broadway musical, and film.

Of Gershwin’s works for orchestra, Piano Concerto in F, Rhapsody No. 1, and An American in Paris have always been immensely popular. An American in Paris is a symphonic poem composed in 1928 that evokes the romance of a big city. A “walking theme” is instantly recognizable, as are other sounds one might hear in Paris. Besides representing specific scenes, Gershwin wrote to give an impression of the sights and sounds of Paris.

Gershwin developed the beginning of the work in a traditional French style, as is evident in the lilting rhythm of the beginning theme. Many symphonic poems, including this one, have a romantic rhapsodic element in addition to a structural outline. The romantic element here is the French atmosphere.

The next section employs a more American blues style that Gershwin frequently integrated into symphonic works. Gershwin said in a 1928 interview in Musical America, “Our American friend, perhaps after strolling into a café and having a couple of drinks, has succumbed to the spasm of homesickness.” The piece concludes with the exuberant sounds of Paris as the excitement and romance of the city wins the American over.

Long after the composition of An American in Paris, MGM producer Arthur Freed created the film with the same name. The film is centered on Gershwin’s symphonic poem and includes a number of other George and Ira songs. The Gershwins also used part of An American in Paris in their Broadway musical Showgirl.

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-- Lauren Sharkey