02/13/2022

Black History Month Celebration

Joan Tower: Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman

J.S. Bach: Praeludium and Fugue

Adam Maness: Closing and Opening Doors

Maria Schneider: Sky Blue

Scott Joplin: Peacherine Rag

W.C. Handy: St Louis Blues

Joseph Bologne: Chevalier de Saint-Georges String Quartet Op.1, No.3

George Walker: Lyric For Strings

Adolphus Hailstork: String Quartet No.1
III. Vivace

About the Program

Joan Tower: Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman
Joan Tower is an American composer born in New York in 1938. She began composing during the 1960’s when the field of composition was still mostly dominated by men. Joan Tower earned her doctorate in composition from Columbia University in 1968. Tower has had an extremely successful career, written a huge and varied repertoire of compositions, and has been a recipient of many awards. In 2008, Tower was awarded a Grammy for best classical contemporary composition for her album Made In America. From 1985 until 1988 Tower was composer in residence of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra! Currently she is a composition professor at Bard College, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and serves on the Artistic Advisory panel of the BMI Foundation.

The Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman is a series of six short fanfares written over the span of 29 years! Each is dedicated to an inspiring woman in music. The first fanfare, written in 1987, was influenced by Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. The sixth was written in 2016 for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The fifth fanfare, originally composed for four trumpets and also arranged for four trombones will be performed on this program. This fanfare was commissioned by Aspen Music Festival in 1993 and dedicated to conductor JoAnn Falletta.

J.S. Bach: Praeludium and Fugue
Johann Sebastian Bach, a German composer and organist lived from 1685 until 1750. Among Bach’s most famous compositions is a collection of 48 preludes and fugues compiled in The Well - Tempered Clavier, Books 1 and 2. In Bach’s time the word clavier implied a keyboard instrument such as the harpsichord, clavichord, or organ.The Well-Tempered Clavier was an innovative composition for it’s time. Bach used all 24 keys of modern tonality, included an immense variety of musical styles and composed with a contrapuntal complexity that had not been seen before. Although the preludes and fugues of The Well - Tempered Clavier were written with a keyboard in mind, they have since been arranged for many different instruments. On this program you will hear the four trombones of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra perform one of these preludes and fugues arranged by bass trombonist, Gerard Pagano.

Adam Maness: Closing and Opening Doors
Adam Maness is a St. Louis born composer, arranger, and pianist. He’s fluent in both classical and jazz genres and has composed and performed with numerous musical groups in St. Louis including the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Project St. Louis, Jazz St. Louis, the Adam Maness Trio, and the 442’s! On this program you will hear his arrangement of Closing and Opening Doors for trombone quartet. Maness is the Creative Director of Open Studio where you can find multiple online musical courses developed by Maness himself. Visit the Open Studio website at https://www.openstudiojazz.com to find out more!

Maria Schneider: Sky Blue
Maria Schneider is an American composer born in Minnesota in 1960. She is known as one of the best jazz composers, musicians, and band leaders of her generation. Schneider has won seven Grammy Awards and was awarded an honorary doctorate from University of Minnesota. She is an advocate for the recording rights of musicians and has spoken out against free streaming services. She is currently involved in a class action lawsuit against YouTube. In her spare time Schneider is a bird watcher! For her album entitled Sky Blue (2007) from which the piece on this program is from, Schneider asked her band members to add bird calls to multiple songs on her album. For more information on Maria Schneider and her album Sky Blue, visit her webpage athttps://www.mariaschneider.com.

Scott Joplin: Peacherine Rag
Scott Joplin is known as the “King of Ragtime”. Ragtime music gets its name because it uses syncopated or “ragged” rhythms. Joplin was an African American composer who lived from 1868 until 1917. Joplin was born and raised in Texarkana, Texas. When he was around twenty years old he left his job as a railroad worker and began a career as a freelance musician along the Mississippi River and parts of the South. Joplin lived briefly in Missouri, first in Sedalia where he taught piano lessons and eventually in St. Louis where he continued to teach, perform and compose. Eventually he settled in New York City where he lived the remainder of his life. Sadly, Joplin spent the last year of his life in the Manhattan State Hospital suffering from dementia brought on by syphilis. He died in 1917 at the age of 48. His music experienced a revival in the 1970’s. The movie, The Sting, featured many of Joplin's compositions including the extremely famous song The Entertainer. His opera, Treemonisha, was performed for the first time in its entirety in 1972! In 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize. In recent years his rags can be heard on the soundtrack of the show Westworld! The Peacherine Rag was written in 1901 for piano. A peacherine is a hybrid between a peach and a nectarine. Our talented St. Louis Symphony trombonists will play an arranged version for trombone quartet.

W.C. Handy: St Louis Blues
W.C. Handy or William Christopher Handy was an African American composer who lived from 1873 until 1958. He considered himself Father of the Blues. Although Handy himself did not create the genre of blues music, he was the first to publish blues-style music and was an integral part of introducing blues music to mainstream society. St. Louis Blues was published in 1914. It is said that Handy was inspired to write the lyrics of the song after meeting a lonely woman on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri! She was missing her absent husband and apparently proclaimed “Ma man's got a heart like a rock cast in de sea", which became a main line of the song. The song has been arranged for all kinds of instruments and instrumental groups including a trombone quartet!

Joseph Bologne: Chevalier de Saint-Georges String Quartet Op.1, No.3
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier Saint-Georges was a renowned French composer, violinist, and conductor of the 18th century. He was born in the French colony, Gaudeloupe, on Christmas Day, 1745. His father was a wealthy plantation owner and his mother was an African slave. His father took responsibility for his illegitimate son and sent him to boarding school in Paris, France. At the age of 13, Saint-Georges was sent to an academy for fencing and horsemanship. He showed immense talent in fencing and was asked to compete against the best swordsman in France. Once Saint-Georges graduated from the fencing academy he was given the job of officer of the king’s bodyguard, knighted, and adopted his father’s title Chevalier de Saint-Georges.
Little is known about Saint-Georges early musical education. The first documentation of his musical studies is from 1764 when composer Antonio Lolli composed two violin concertos for him. He was not only a talented violinist, but a conductor and composer as well. In 1785 he commissioned Joseph Haydn’s Paris Symphonies and conducted their premiere. Haydn was a great influence on Saint-Georges and inspired his first series of six string quartets, the third of which will be performed on this program. He is the first known classical composer of African descent and often given the controversial nickname ‘Black Mozart’. It seems that Mozart may have used some of Saint-Georges musical ideas and themes in his own compositions!

George Walker: Lyric For Strings
George Walker, an African American composer, pianist, singer, and arranger, was born in 1922 in Washington D.C. He died recently in 2018 at the age of 96! Walker showed signs of musical aptitude from a young age and was admitted to Oberlin Conservatory at the age of 14. There he studied piano until being admitted to Curtis Institute of Music. Once at Curtis he continued his piano lessons but also studied composition. In 1945 he performed Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra. A few years later, he earned his doctorate from Eastman School of music. In 1996 Walker became the first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his composition Lilacs. Lilacs, a piece for voice and orchestra was premiered by the Boston Symphony with Seji Ozawa conducting.
Walker’s Lyric for Strings was written when he was only 24 years old. Originally it was titled Lament and was written as the second movement of his first string quartet. It wasn’t until 1990 that Walker arranged Lament for string orchestra and renamed the work Lyric For Strings. Walker dedicated the piece to his grandmother, a formerly enslaved person, shortly after she died.

Adolphus Hailstork: String Quartet No.1 III. Vivace
Adolphus Hailstork is a living African American composer. He was born in Rochester, New York in 1941. From a young age he studied violin, piano, organ, and voice. His interest in composition started in high school and he went on to earn his BM and MM from Manhattan School of Music. He finished his PhD in composition at Michigan State University in 1971. Hailstork has received many awards throughout his career including a Fulbright and an honorary doctorate. He currently teaches composition at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Hailstork’s String Quartet No. 1 was written in 2002 and dedicated to the Virginia Chamber Players who were the first to perform the work.
To read more about Adolphus Hailstork visit his website at https://www.adolphushailstork.com.

CONCERT ARTISTS

Timothy Myers / Trombone
Timothy Myers has held the Mr. and Mrs. William R. Orthwein Principal Trombone Chair of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra since 1997. Myers first joined the SLSO in 1983. He has performed as a soloist with the Saint Louis Symphony and the Aspen Music Festival. Mr. Myers has also performed with the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, Summit Brass, and the Bay Brass. He is a founding member of the Trombones of the Saint Louis Symphony and is co-founder of the Saint Louis Low Brass Collective. He has taught at the Aspen Music Festival, the University of Missouri at Columbia and currently teaches trombone at Washington University in Saint Louis. A graduate of Northwestern University, Mr. Myers studied with Frank Crisafulli.

Amanda Stewart / Trombone
Amanda Stewart is currently Associate Principal Trombone of the St. Louis Symphony, a position she began in the Fall of 2014. Her studies started with Harold Hudnall and continued with Keith Jackson, professor of trombone and euphonium at West Virginia University. She received her bachelor of music degree from The Juilliard School in 2004, studying with Joseph Alessi.

As an orchestral musician, Ms. Stewart has played with numerous orchestras. She was Principal trombonist of the San Antonio Symphony for eight seasons and Associate Principal trombonist of the New York Philharmonic for two seasons. Ms. Stewart has also been a regular substitute and extra player with the Boston Symphony and has toured with them internationally. She has also performed with the Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, National, North Carolina, and Toronto Symphonies.

Jonathan Reycraft / Trombone
Originally from Long Island, New York, Jonathan Reycraft has held the Utility Trombone position with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra since the 2006-2007 season. He also serves as adjunct faculty at Washington University and St. Louis University. Before arriving in the symphony, he spent eight years serving as the Assistant Principal Trombone for the United States Naval Academy Band in Annapolis, Maryland. Mr. Reycraft completed his music degrees in trombone at the Indiana University School of Music in the spring of 1998, and his Master of Music degree in the same discipline from the University of Maryland in 2005. He has been featured as a soloist with the United States Naval Academy Band as well as the Atlantic Wind Symphony on Long Island. Jonathan Reycraft also has performed with the Baltimore National symphony orchestras, the Colorado Music Festival and Sun Valley Summer Symphony. Mr. Reycraft’s former teachers include Michael Canipe, M. Dee Stewart, Scott Hartman, the late Dr. Milton Stevens, and John Huling.

Gerard Pagano / Bass Trombone
Originally from Athens Georgia, Gerry studied music education at the University of Georgia, before joining Atlanta based entertainer Cody Marshall. He traveled extensively during this time, to such places as Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Saudi Arabia, playing dance/show music. The next four years were spent free lancing in Phoenix, Az. and gaining more experience, playing shows like Annie, Chorus Line, Sammy Davis Jr. and Liberace. While in Az. he started auditioning for orchestras, and determined more study was needed. His next three years were spent studying in New York, at Juilliard. While there, he had the opportunity to perform with the Met Opera, sub with the NY Philharmonic, and other regional orchestras. In 1987,he won his first job in the S.F. Ballet Orchestra. Gerry played 8 seasons there, until winning the St Louis Symphony Bass Trombone position in 1995. He is a founding member of the St Louis Low Brass Collective, and the Trombones of the St Louis Symphony, as well as a frequent clinician and recitalist around the country.

Asako Kuboki/Violin
Asako Kuboki began her violin studies at the age of five in Japan. She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, studying with Sylvia Rosenberg and Victor Danchenko. Kuboki performed extensively with the New Horizons Chamber Ensemble in Baltimore, a contemporary music group that worked in collaboration with composers, poets, and visual artists, for five seasons. She has also played with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, and the Key West Symphony Orchestra.
In 2001 Kuboki joined the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Since relocating to St. Louis she has continued performing chamber music and solo recitals throughout the U.S., and at international music festivals such as Credomatic International Music Festival in Costa Rica, American Institute for Musical Studies in Austria, and the Pacific Music Festival in her hometown, Sapporo, Japan. Kuboki’s interest in music of many different styles along with her love for chamber music has lead her to collaborate with St. Louis’ innovative jazz, world, pop, and electronica artists to release a number of CDs, and to perform at the Whitaker Jazz Festival, as well as at benefit concerts for nonprofit organizations such as Jazz St. Louis, Play It Forward, and Live Feed. In recent years, she was commissioned to compose and perform the original soundtrack for a HEC-TV documentary film, Wallace Herndon Smith: Artist Without Boundaries.

Angie Smart/Violin
Angie Smart has been a First Violinist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since 1998. Originally from England, she began violin lessons at the age of six, and at thirteen won a scholarship to attend Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. She arrived in the U.S. in 1990 to continue her studies in music, completing her master’s degree at Rice University in Houston.

Smart has performed extensively in Europe and the U.S. and has appeared as a soloist with the SLSO several times, alongside conductors including Hans Vonk and Gemma New. These engagements have included Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Beethoven’s Romance No. 2, and Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, to name a few. An active chamber musician, Smart has performed works by composers including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams, as part of the SLSO: Live at the Pulitzer series. She also performs frequently with the Missouri Chamber Music Festival and the Chamber Music Society of St. Louis. Her television appearances have included master classes with Yehudi Menuhin and as the subject of a documentary profiling young musicians. Among other master classes, she has played for Midori and Zakhar Bron.

Smart competed in the 10th International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition. She has also been a prizewinner in many other competitions, including the British Violin Recital Prize, Elizabeth Harper Vaughan Concerto Competition, and the William C. Byrd Young Artists Competition. An active teacher, Smart maintains a large private studio with students ranging from 10 to 18 years old, many of whom play in the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra. Her son, Theo Bockhorst, was the Co-Concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra and is studying violin at conservatory.

XiaoXiao Qiang/Viola
Xiaoxiao Qiang has been a top prizewinner in many national and international competitions, including Second Prize in the 2011 Schmidbauer International Young Artist Competition, First Prize in the 2011 Ruth Burr String Competition, the Violin Performance Award in the 2009 Corpus Christi International String Competition, and the Third Prize of the Tuesday Musical Club String Competition in San Antonio. In 2008 she was the Grand Prize winner of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music Concerto Competition in Singapore, and in 2010 was one of only 40 violinists invited to compete in the Eighth Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis.

Originally from China, Qiang began playing the violin at the age of four under her father’s instruction. After attending the middle and high school attached to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing from 1999 to 2005, she received a full scholarship with living stipend to study in the Bachelor of Music program at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore, where she studied with the head of the string faculty, Qian Zhou. Qiang then completed a Master of Music degree in violin performance under Cho-Liang Lin at Rice University, where she receieved the Dr. Joseph A. and Ida Kirkland Mullen Scholarships, the University’s highest scholarship awarded to any student of the year.

Qiang has performed extensively as a chamber musician and soloist. She is the founding violinist of the Eon Trio, and with them toured throughout Asia. She represented the string quartet of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, which performed at the state banquet hosted in honor of H.R.H. Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn in April 2007 and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in March 2006. She has collaborated as a chamber musician with renowned artists such as the Tokyo String Quartet, Cho-Liang Lin, Kyoko Takezawa, Robert McDuffie, Augustin Hadelich, and Jian Wang. As a soloist, she recorded “La Rosée Fond” by Kawai Shui, which was released on Ablaze Records in 2008.

Qiang has also participated in many distinguished music festivals. She was invited to perform at La Jolla Summerfest , Tongyeong International Music (Korea) , and was the chamber music artist at the Texas Piano Festival, and received a fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival and School for 2009-10 and 2012. She has also performed in the Spoleto Festival. In December 2010, Qiang performed as part of the New York String Orchestra Seminar under renowned musician Jaime Laredo at Carnegie Hall.

Along with her successes as a soloist, Xiaoxiao Qiang is also an experienced and accomplished orchestral musician. She has performed with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and was a member of Singapore Festival Orchestra during her studies in Singapore. In 2011, she joined the First Violin Section of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra after winning an international audition from a field of over 100 candidates.

Alvin McCall/Cello
A member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since 1994, cellist Alvin McCall was previously Principal Cello with such ensembles as the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Prism Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Virtuosi, Jupiter Symphony, and the Naumberg Orchestra. McCall also served as Assistant Principal Cello with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra (of which he is still a member), the New York Chamber Symphony, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, and Caramoor Festival Orchestra. Besides these appointments, he was also a member of the New Jersey Symphony and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra.

An accomplished recitalist and chamber musician as well, McCall is the founding member of the McCall-Deats Duo. The Duo has recorded both the Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich sonatas. He has also performed chamber music with fellow SLSO members at the Sheldon, Piper Palm House, Summerfest, Innsbrook, and other local venues. As a soloist, he has appeared with the University City Symphony, Virginia Philharmonic, Moscow Academic Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and the SLSO.