BRATTLEBORO — The Windham Orchestra will present Rhapsody in Blue in its first concert of the 2010-11 season, on Friday, Nov. 19, at Vermont Academy in Saxtons River and Sunday, Nov. 21, at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro.
Hugh Keelan is the Music Director for the Windham Orchestra's 41st concert season. He has created a series of concerts that combine great symphonic works with intriguing, out of the mainstream, orchestral gems that are sure to please this season's concertgoers.
Opening concerts in November feature Keelan as both conductor and pianist.The program combines a pair of works by American composer George Gershwin, the Cuban Overture and Rhapsody in Blue with Keelan as soloist; with the Symphony in D minor by Romantic Belgian composer César Franck.
Born on Kingston-upon-Thames in England, Keelan has been a pianist since age 8, later also a violist. At the age of 16, he conducted Beethoven's Emperor Concerto in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
He went on to study Music at Cambridge, his primary mentor being Robin Holloway, graduating with a Double First, the Hughes Prize “for outstanding excellence,” and the award of a coveted Harkness Fellowship (comparable to a Rhodes Scholarship) that allowed him to study conducting at Indiana University and Mannes College.
Remaining in New York for private study with Vladimir Kin (from the Leningrad school of Mravinsky and Rabinovich,) he worked at the American Opera Center at the Juilliard School. Keelan is admired as an arranger and composer; and is known for his ability to connect deeply with the performers with whom he works, and through them communicating an extraordinary power and enthusiasm to the audience.
The Symphony in D minor (1888) is the most famous orchestral work and the only symphony written by the 19th-century Belgian composer César Franck.
“In my first season as Music Director of the Windham Orchestra, I want to bring the orchestra's musical center of gravity a little further into the 19th century, and Franck's Symphony seems an ideal opening move,” explained Keelan.
George Gershwin's Cuban Overture, originally titled Rumba, was the result of a two-week holiday in Havana, Cuba in 1932. Caribbean rhythms and Cuban native percussion, with a wide spectrum of instrumental color and technique, dominate the overture. It is a rich and exciting work with complexity and sophistication, illustrating the influence of Cuban music and dance.
“This is a highly advanced work, though the form is simple: a fast rumba, a slow central section suggestive of nighttime, an excited return or coda incorporating a mosaic of the opening ideas, a final chord pyramid and blaze-up after a brief cadenza,” explains Keelan.
Gershwin had a lot of fun with the solo quartet of Cuban percussion, so much so that he hand-sketched the “Cuban Sticks, Bongo, Gourd, Maracas” in his autograph score with a diagram explaining their prominent placement close to the conductor. The Windham Orchestra's performances honor Gershwin's demands in this regard, and incorporate some significant elements from the composer's final wishes that do not appear in the standard printed performing materials.
George Gershwin originally composed Rhapsody in Blue in 1924 for solo piano and jazz band – combining elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. Ferde Grofé later orchestrated the composition.
“This work, particularly in Grofé's final reworking, holds the essence of the concept of 'crossover', and it is surely one of the most important,” explains Keelan. “Tin Pan Alley comes to Aeolian Hall; the Symphony Orchestra 'plays' the Hollywood Bowl; Classical musicians embrace jazz, ragtime and stride; a popular song writer and music hall pianist dons the cape and tails of a concert virtuoso as though to play a Rachmaninoff concerto. There is something endlessly delicious and thoroughly crossed-over about the crazy energy of the orchestra against the languid glance and gaze of Gershwin's carefully notated, thoughtful episodes and commentaries for solo piano.”
Tickets are $15 for adults and $7 for seniors and students. Purchase tickets by calling the Brattleboro Music Center at 802-257-4523 or by visiting www.bmcvt.org. For more information, about the Windham Orchestra, visit www.windhamorchestra.org.