Concert Program: Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall

Missouri State University Symphony Orchestra

MUSIC DIRECTOR

Dr. Christopher Kelts

FLUTE

Jessica Baird, principal
Emily Edwards
Kaitlyn Kelly Gonzalez
Chris Meyers

PICCOLO

Emily Edwards
Kaitlyn Kelly Conzalez

OBOE

Austin Edwards, principal
Autumn Shotwell

CLARINET

Delaney Sloan, principal
Maddi Irvin
Bryden Paat
Shelby Bybee

BASS CLARINET

Bryden Paat, principal

BASSOON

Aaron Tomczyk, principal

HORN

Charles Wolfe, principal
Nathan Lovelace
Jerry Brown

TRUMPET

Emmitt Rieffer, principal
Samantha Record
Emily Schmidt
Eric Schrantz

TROMBONE

Alex Ryan, principal
Max Brower

BASS TROMBONE

Christopher Kemp, principal

TUBA

Zane Price, principal

TIMPANI

Lyndon Wilson, principal

PERCUSSION

Anthony Ragusa, principal
Nevaeh Diaz
Alex Sharkey
Kadesh Clouden

FIRST VIOLIN

Joelle Manns, concertmaster
Nathan Price, associate
Santiago Posada, assistant
Elijah Hertzog
Eli Price
Lauren Jackson
Layna Mangiapanello
Charley Bennight
Olga Tatar
Roman Thomas
Kaylea Bryan

SECOND VIOLIN

Leianna Pavon, principal
Jessica Jarosz
Anna Bracciano
Aurora Smith
Devin Kascsak-Hoaglin
Aidan Benker
Zelda Okeson-Haberman
Megan Gerbrandt
Nathan Fender

VIOLA

Samantha Silver, principal
Megan Skala
Winston Reid
Susie Thierbach
Lisa Sinden-Gottfried

CELLO

Elise Thierbach, principal
Adonis Garcia
Micah Bounds
Kendra Gutierrez

DOUBLEBASS

Julian W. Pacheco, principal
Lydia Bush
Blaise Vaughn

HARP

Dr. Jeremy Chesman

Visit the Orchestra website for more information and upcoming events.

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Artist Biographies

John Prescott

Dr. John Prescott, composer, has been a member of the Music faculty at Missouri State University where he has taught theory and composition since 1986. During his time at MSU, he has also served as Graduate Coordinator, and has twice served as Music Department Head. His compositions include works for band, orchestra, chorus, solo and chamber works, and have been performed nationally and internationally. Prescott has degrees in music theory and composition from Florida State University and from the University of Kansas where he studied composition with John Pozdro and James Barnes. Prescott is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the Missouri Music Educators Association (MMEA), and the National Association for Music Education (NAfME).

Tonight’s performance of Adagio from Baroque Concerto, Op. 77a, is a premier in the esteemed Carnegie Hall.

Jiyeon Lee

Jiyeon Lee, pianist, has won numerous top awards at prestigious competitions, including the Memphis International Piano Competition, IPPA Conero International Piano Competition, Naftzger Young Artists Piano Competition, Delta Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competition, Missouri State University Concerto & Aria Competition, and the Missouri Music Teachers Association Honors Auditions (MMTA). She also has received Ben I. Gomez Award at the Texas State International Piano Festival, the Musicianship award, and Brisch Center-Bach Interpretation Award at the Kuleshov International Piano Competition, as well as the distinguished Best Baroque & Best Contemporary Award at the Spotlight International Piano Competition. Jiyeon has secured her position as a national finalist at the Music Teachers National Association Competition (MTNA) and the Weatherford College International Piano Competition, while also claiming semi-finalist honors at the Seattle Piano International Competition. She showcased her artistry with a solo performance at the Carnegie Hall in 2022 as a winner of the Golden Classical Music Awards International Competition and gave a concerto performance with the Central Texas Philharmonic as a winner of the 12th Texas State International Piano Festival Concerto Competition.

Jiyeon, a recent graduate of Missouri State University in Springfield, completed her undergraduate studies under the guidance of Dr. Hye-Jung Hong. Prior to her time at Missouri State, she cultivated her musical talents at Yewon School and Seoul Arts High School in Korea, where she was mentored by Eun Jung Shon and Ji Yoon Kim. She has now been accepted into the University of Michigan's master's program with a full scholarship, marking the next chapter in her musical career.

Ms. Lee will be making her Carnegie Hall / Stern Auditorium debut tonight, performing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. She will enjoy an encore performance of this work with the Gateway Festival Orchestra, St. Louis, in July 2024.

Christopher Kelts

Dr. Christopher Kelts, conductor, serves the as Director of Orchestral Studies at Missouri State University. Concurrently he is music director and conductor of the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, Kinnor Philharmonic and Saint Joseph Symphony. Kelts is a sought-after guest conductor and clinician, performing and teaching on national and international stages.

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Program Notes

Overture to Candide

Leonard Bernstein

Almost twenty years after Leonard Bernstein’s death, the critics are still arguing over the meaning and impact of his legacy. What is clear, however, is that the world rarely enjoys the genius of someone who excels supremely in so many artistic endeavors. Pianist, conductor, television personality, teacher, mentor, social gadfly, and composer of both popular musical theatre and “serious works,” Bernstein wore all hats with avidity. And he enjoyed stunning success in most. He had a passion about everything that he essayed, whether conducting the Mahler that he loved so well, or helping audiences “peel” apart the mysteries of music in his many teaching rôles. He knew so much, and could do so much, that he genuinely thought that he could do it all. His leadership of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and other orchestras is legendary, but everyone knows there were some concerts that, frankly, got away from him in his self-indulgence. He worked assiduously as a composer of “serious” music, but those works —from youthful successes to his late efforts — have enjoyed mixed success. But, all that simply says is only that he was human. Other than his epochal conducting, there is one field in which he garnered almost universal acclaim, and that is musical theatre. When all is said and done, he possessed a talent and a facility for the stage that was as deep as it was prolific. He simply understood the genre and its demands.

He plunged in early, writing for student productions at Harvard, and working with a cabaret group (that included Judy Holiday) while a student at the Curtis Institute. At the age of twenty-six his ballet Fancy Free was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera and On the Town opened on Broadway. Wonderful Town, Peter Pan, Facsimile, and Candide soon followed, as it seemed that everything, he touched became gold.

Based upon Voltaire’s well-known novella, Candide, the original Broadway musical, opened on the first of December in 1957. It was not a smashing success early on, but over the years — and through many versions, and a changing cast of writers and contributors — it has achieved an enduring place in the musical theatre repertoire. Its innate wit, sparkle, and general “cheekiness” was natural fodder for Bernstein’s own musical personality, and his songs for the production have come to personify the whole rollicking enterprise. The overture is crafted from a buoyant mélange of some of the most memorable tunes from the show and has become one of the most-performed works by an American composer on symphony concerts. The “catchy” tunes are cleverly cast into asymmetrical rhythmic patterns (a typical Bernstein trait) that keep the bouncy drive going as this brief work careens to the end. After all these years, it may seem that all of the tunes are vaguely familiar, so enduring is the work. And, indeed, some may recognize the melody of the over-the-top song for coloratura soprano (think of the young Barbara Cook or Madeline Kahn), “Glitter and Be Gay,” from its use as a theme for the Dick Cavett television show.

The overture to Candide has taken its place along with much of West Side Story as representative of one of America’s most multi-talented and influential musicians and is a perfect curtain opener that is thoroughly American. —Wm. E. Runyan

Adagio from Baroque Concerto, Op. 77a

John Prescott

Adagio (Opus 77a) is a 2023 adaptation for full orchestra of the middle movement of my Baroque Concerto for Two Oboes and Strings (2015), and it was written specifically for this concert. The ground bass over which it is constructed is inspired by that of Versus II of Bach’s cantata, Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4), and as in that work, the repeated bass line is intended to represent death.

In 2013, I was diagnosed with cancer, and as part of the treatment, I underwent chemotherapy for a period of six weeks. During the infusion sessions, I spent significant amounts of time with many other cancer patients, the majority of whom were fighting very difficult battles, and I was humbled by the courage they projected. Their faces and their stories were etched into my memories, and it was about them that this Adagio was composed. —John Prescott

Adoration

Florence B. Price
Transcription: Elaine Fine

Florence Price, a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, was a pioneer black American composer who distinguished herself early on. Most notably, she is remembered as the first black American woman to garner success as a composer of symphonic music. Her first symphony is perhaps her best-known work. Winner of a national prize, it was given its première in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — a social and cultural milestone in this country at that time.

As a young woman she journeyed north to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory, and afterwards returned to Arkansas and Georgia to teach at various small black colleges. After marriage she and her husband left a racially troubled Arkansas in 1927 for Chicago and her further study at the American Conservatory of Music. Her career blossomed, and recognition for her art led to the afore-mentioned symphony in 1931, followed by two more symphonies, concertos, and other works for orchestra. She composed in a variety of other genres: chamber works, piano music, and vocal compositions — over three hundred in all! Her songs and arrangements of spirituals were perhaps her most performed compositions, but they are not necessarily her distinguishing works. Sadly, little of her oeuvre has been published, but with her increasing popularity today, that situation is rapidly changing. Now, her renaissance is owed in large part to the discovery not long ago of a substantial treasure trove of her compositions in a derelict house, including major works for orchestra. Included in this remarkable find was the short work for organ, Adoration.

Price played the organ, and earlier in her life had spent some time playing it in church, as well as in movie theatres. Her life as a composer was understandably fraught with difficulties, so it is not surprising at all that many of her works were never registered under copyright. And thus it is with Adoration. So, today we enjoy many arrangements of the piece in great variety — from ‘cello choir to piano and solo viola. Tonight’s version is an arrangement for string orchestra.

Adoration, written in the early 1950s, is couched in a lush, late romantic style that defies time, place, as well as personal qualities of the composer. The twentieth century that Price lived and worked in had yielded a remarkable avalanche of newer ways of composing, playing, and hearing music — led by familiar names like Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bartók, Shostakovich, and a host of others. But, here in this little gem by Price, that contemporary world does not exist. Rather, here is an eloquent, lyrical repose of pure traditional musical beauty. Simple in its three-part form and straightforward in texture, it evidences the innate musicality of a composer who was equally gifted in the large form challenges of the symphony and the concerto.Speaking of his compositions, near the end of his life, Gustav Mahler famously said, “My time will come.” And so it is with Price. Though she achieved laudable recognition during her life, her star faded, only to resurge more luminously a half century after her death. —Wm. E. Runyan

Rhapsody in Blue

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was arguably the most successful and talented of America’s composers of popular music. His songs constitute the core of the “American Songbook,” whether composed as part of his immensely successful Broadway shows, or as standalone popular tunes. Born of Russian Jewish immigrants, he didn’t evince his formidable musical talents until about the age of ten, when a piano was purchased for his older brother and later collaborator, Ira. Much to the latter’s relief, George soon commandeered the piano, and the rest is, as they say, history. His audiences rewarded him substantially — he is estimated to have become the wealthiest composer in modern times. He earned over a quarter of a million dollars for Rhapsody in Blue during the first decade of its life, and it still is bringing in the bucks, as witnessed by the commercials for United Airlines.

Rhapsody in Blue was written in great haste for a 1924 concert in New York’s Aeolian Hall given by Paul Whiteman — billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music.” Notwithstanding the description, you wouldn’t have heard Stravinsky or Schoenberg that night, rather Irving Berlin, Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, and others of that ilk. However, Jascha Heifetz, Sergei Rachmaninov, and other luminaries of music were in the audience. The poster read that Whiteman would be “assisted by Zez Confrey and George Gershwin” — notice that the composer of “Kitten on the Keys” and “Dizzy Fingers” received top billing to the young Gershwin. Gershwin had been asked late in 1923 to write a piece for the Whiteman orchestra, but he had turned his attention to more pressing matters and was horrified to read in the New York Tribune on the 4th of January 1924 that he was to première a “jazz concerto” on February 12. Gershwin plunged in and presented his brilliant succession of “American” themes to Ferde Grofé, Whiteman’s orchestrator, to arrange for large jazz band and piano (the symphonic version came later) — Gershwin didn’t have the skill to do this at this point in his career.The composition opened the second half of the concert, with Gershwin as soloist — using no music, and probably considerably “enhancing” the solo part. The opening clarinet glissando evocative of traditional Jewish Klezmer music kicked it off, and the now-familiar tunes came rushing by. While Rhapsody in Blue really is not “jazz,” and certainly not a concerto in the traditional sense, Gershwin turned out a masterpiece that is a model of what came to be called “symphonic jazz.”

What is specifically germane to appreciating this composition is the importance of so-called “serious” or “classical” musical interests and training in Gershwin’s life that is quite unprecedented for someone who enjoyed his kind of success. He certainly was not some sort of untutored musical genius who later sought “legitimacy” after having proven himself in the popular world. Rather, early on, as a young boy he studied and performed under traditional piano teachers the music of composers such as Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy. Later, he journeyed to Paris to study under the famed teacher of composition, Nadia Boulanger, as well as Maurice Ravel. However, both rejected him, afraid to compromise the genius evident in his burgeoning success. While in Paris he met and admired the music of eminent composers such as Prokofiev, Poulenc, and Milhaud. Gershwin’s ambitions were such, that long after he had achieved the kind of success that any popular composer would have envied, he assiduously studied formal composition with established teachers. And he was successful. His Rhapsody in Blue, the Concerto in F, An American in Paris, and Porgy and Bess are masterpieces of his unique bridging of the so-called gap between popular art and “high” art. —Wm. E. Runyan

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Gold Level

Ms. Judy Hellman
Department of Music, Dr. Paula Patterson
Reynolds College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Dean Shawn Wahl

Silver Level

Mr. C. Michael Minor
Mr. Brian Musgrave

Maroon Level

Dr. David Hays & Ms. Veronica Adinegara
Donna Ashworth
Kathryn Bennight
Ms. Christie Berger
Michael Dove
Ms. Sheila Evans
Ms. Peggy Jurgens
Dr. Christopher & Mrs. Maureen Kelts
Dr. Daniel Ketter
Gay Lee Ludwig-Bonney
Mr. James Manns
Dr. Ace Allen & Donna Oberstein
Mr. Zach Reece
Ms. Sara Schack
Shannon Stanton
Polly Taylor
Ms. Kylee VanHorn
Mr. Jim and Mrs. Donna Weber
Mr. Charles Wolfe