The Tender Land

January 26 at 8:00pm
Pre-concert talk at 7:00pm

January 27 at 3:00pm
Pre-concert talk at 2:00pm

JDHS Auditorium

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The Program

Tickets

Tickets on sale now at Hearthside Books, the JACC and online.

Pre-Concert Talks

One hour prior to each performance, conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett will give an informal lecture about the music, composers and multi-media project and will also answer any questions from the audience. Dubbed Concert Conversations, these talks provide audiences with a much rounder picture of the composers personalities and background stories about the music than can be found in the printed program notes.

Aaron Copland - American Composer 1900-1990

Aaron Copland was one of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century. By incorporating popular forms of American music such as jazz and folk into his compositions, he created pieces both exceptional and innovative. As a spokesman for the advancement of indigenous American music, Copland made great strides in liberating it from European influence. Today, twenty-three years after his death, Copland's life and work continue to inspire many of America's young composers.

Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900. The child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, he first learned to play the piano from his older sister. At the age of sixteen he went to Manhattan to study with Rubin Goldmark, a respected private music instructor who taught Copland the fundamentals of counterpoint and composition. During these early years he immersed himself in contemporary classical music by attending performances at the New York Symphony and Brooklyn Academy of Music. He found, however, that like many other young musicians, he was attracted to the classical history and musicians of Europe. So, at the age of twenty, he left New York for the Summer School of Music for American Students at Fountainebleau, France.

In France, Copland found a musical community unlike any he had known. It was at this time that he sold his first composition to Durand and Sons, the most respected music publisher in France. While in Europe Copland met many of the important artists of the time, including the famous composer Serge Koussevitsky. Koussevitsky requested that Copland write a piece for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The piece, "Symphony for Organ and Orchestra" (1925) was Copland's entry into the life of professional American music. He followed this with "Music for the Theater" (1925) and "Piano Concerto" (1926), both of which relied heavily on the jazz idioms of the time. For Copland, jazz was the first genuinely American major musical movement. From jazz he hoped to draw the inspiration for a new type of symphonic music, one that could distinguish itself from the music of Europe.

In the late 1920s Copland's attention turned to popular music of other countries. He had moved away from his interest in jazz and began to concern himself with expanding the audience for American classical music. He believed that classical music could eventually be as popular as jazz in America or folk music in Mexico. He worked toward this goal with both his music and a firm commitment to organizing and producing. He was an active member of many organizations, including both the American Composers' Alliance and the League of Composers. Along with his friend Roger Sessions, he began the Copland-Sessions concerts, dedicated to presenting the works of young composers. It was around this same time that his plans for an American music festival (similar to ones in Europe) materialized as the Yaddo Festival of American Music (1932). By the mid-'30s Copland had become not only one of the most popular composers in the country, but a leader of the community of American classical musicians.

It was in 1935 with "El Salón México" that Copland began his most productive and popular years. The piece presented a new sound that had its roots in Mexican folk music. Copland believed that through this music, he could find his way to a more popular symphonic music. In his search for the widest audience, Copland began composing for the movies and ballet. Among his most popular compositions for film are those for "Of Mice and Men" (1939), "Our Town" (1940), and "The Heiress" (1949), which won him an Academy Award for best score. He composed scores for a number of ballets, including two of the most popular of the time: "Agnes DeMille's Rodeo" (1942) and Martha Graham's "Appalachian Spring" (1944), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Both ballets presented views of American country life that corresponded to the folk traditions Copland was interested in. Probably the most important and successful composition from this time was his patriotic "A Lincoln Portrait" (1942). The piece for voice and orchestra presents quotes from Lincoln's writings narrated over Copland's musical composition.

Throughout the '50s, Copland slowed his work as a composer, and began to try his hand at conducting. He began to tour with his own work as well as the works of other great American musicians. Conducting was a synthesis of the work he had done as a composer and as an organizer. Over the next twenty years he traveled throughout the world, conducting live performances and creating an important collection of recorded work. By the early '70s, Copland had, with few exceptions, completely stopped writing original music. Most of his time was spent conducting and reworking older compositions. In 1983 Copland conducted his last symphony. His generous work as a teacher at Tanglewood, Harvard, and the New School for Social Research gained him a following of devoted musicians. As a scholar, he wrote more than sixty articles and essays on music, as well as five books. He traveled the world in an attempt to elevate the status of American music abroad, and to increase its popularity at home. Through these various commitments to music and to his country, Aaron Copland became one of the most important figures in twentieth-century American music. On December 2, 1990, Aaron Copland died in North Tarrytown, New York.

The Tender Land by Aaron Copland (1957)

Though he essayed any number of musical genres with remarkable results - chamber music, symphonies, ballets - Aaron Copland only rarely ventured into the realm of opera in the 50-plus years of his compositional career. Copland's first such foray, the rarely heard "school opera" The Second Hurricane (1936), is of relatively little musical interest. It wasn't until the 1950s, in fact, that Copland made his first and only important contribution to the repertory with his two-act opera (revised from three acts) The Tender Land, completed in 1954.

One of the last works Copland wrote wholly in his characteristically lyrical "American" style (epitomized by works from the previous decade like Appalachian Spring and the Symphony No. 3), The Tender Land dramatizes a story that is well complemented by the spaciousness and elegant simplicity of Copland's music. Inspired by photographs in James Agee and Walker Evans' timeless account of Depression-era America, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Copland and librettist Horace Everett fashioned a drama centered around a farm girl on the verge of womanhood. On the eve of her graduation from high school, Laurie Moss is faced with life-defining choices regarding love, family ties, and independence. The theme of outsiders - groundlessly accused of wrongdoing - invading the peaceful world of rural America mirrors certain contemporaneous social concerns, not the least of which was the witch hunt for Communists under the direction of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Copland himself had been called to testify at the notorious congressional hearings.

The Tender Land underwent much revision both before and after its initial production at the New York City Opera on April 1, 1954. Though the work has never attained the popularity of other American operas of the same period like Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956) or Carlisle Floyd's Susannah (1955), it enjoyed something of a renaissance in the 1990s with numerous productions and the first-ever recording of the entire work.

Film Project

In 2012 the Juneau Symphony distributed 180 cameras to fourth grade students in the Juneau School District. The students were asked to take pictures of people, places and things that are important to them and that they would want to share with others. The resulting photographs were collected, sorted and scanned for use in the multimedia presentation accompanying the Juneau Symphony's Tender Land performance. Local filmmaker Roald Simonson will combine the photos with historical videos of the capital city and professional photographs taken throughout the 20th century all choreographed to the live performance of The Tender Land. Simonson and conductor Kyle Pickett have collaborated on similar projects in the past, including the 2004 Juneau Symphony Our Town concert and performances with the North State Symphony in California.

Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland (1945)

Copland composed Appalachian Spring under a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in 1944; the ballet was first performed in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress on October 30 of that year, with choreography by Martha Graham, who also danced the leading role. The concert suite, arranged by the composer shortly after the ballet's premiere, was introduced by the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski on October 4, 1945, and won both the Pulitzer Prize in Music and the New York Music Critics' Circle Award for that year.

Appalachian Spring was the culmination of Copland's series of "Americana" in dance, having been preceded by Billy the Kid, with choreography by Eugene Loring (1938) and Rodeo, for Agnes de Mille (1942). In Appalachian Spring the composer struck a deeper, more poignant note than in the two "Westerns"; here the music is illumined by an inner glow of greater warmth than perhaps any of his earlier works. Copland himself noted that "the music of the ballet takes as its point of departure the personality of Martha Graham," and his score bears the affectionate subtitle "Ballet for Martha," which had been the working title until Graham herself found the felicitous phrase "Appalachian spring" in a poem by Hart Crane. The scenario, created well before she and Copland began their collaborative effort, was summarized by Edwin Denby (Copland's librettist for the 1937 high school opera The Second Hurricane), reporting the New York premiere in the Herald Tribune of May 15, 1945, as a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end, the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.

In place of the Western tunes he had used so effectively in the two earlier ballets, Copland introduced in this score a hymnlike Shaker song, or spiritual, that was to prove extraordinarily effective in creating precisely the atmosphere of simple wonder, humility and faith that is the essence of this work. The song, composed in or about 1875 by Elder Joseph Brackett (1797-1882), who is said to have sung and danced it himself "with his coat tails flying," is called "Simple Gifts":

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free;
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be;
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we sha'n't be asham'd
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right.

Program note originally written for the following performance: National Symphony Orchestra: Leonard Slatkin, conductor/Gil Shaham, violin, performs Brahms Sep. 20 - 22, 2006 copyright Richard Freed

Bright Blue Music by Michael Torke (1985)

Michael Torke's music has been called some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent years. He has written works in virtually every genre, combining a restless rhythmic energy with melodic lyricism.

Torke graduated in composition and piano from the Eastman School of Music in 1984, and pursued further studies in composition at the Yale School of Music in 1984-85. He has a rare phenomenon called synesthesia, a benign neurological condition that causes people to automatically and unconsciously associate images from one of the senses to those of another. When he hears or thinks of music, he sees vivid colors or other images. As a result, many of his compositions have titles that include color names. His first orchestral work, Ecstatic Orange, was commissioned by ASCAP and the Meet the Composer program. It was premiered by Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic in 1985.

Torke composed Bright Blue Music in 1985. The title, like many other Torke titles, is partially a product of his synesthesia, relating music to everyday experience and concrete images that come to him during the compositional process. Synesthesia is a benign neurological condition, not that uncommon in ordinary individuals; many people unconsciously associate colors with numbers, tones or odors, letters of the alphabet or days of the week.

The composer writes: "Inspired by Wittgenstein's idea that meaning is not in words themselves but in the grammar of words used, I conceived of a parallel in musical terms: harmonies in themselves do not contain any meaning, rather, musical meaning results only in the way harmonies are used... If the choice of harmony is arbitrary, why not then use tonic and dominant chords - the simplest, most direct, and - for me - the most pleasurable? Once this decision was made and put in the back of my mind, an unexpected freedom of expression followed…The feeling of working was exuberant; I would leave my outdoor studio, and the trees and bushes seemed to dance, and the sky seemed a bright blue."

"That bright blue color contributed to the piece's title, but in conjunction with another personal association. The key of the piece, D-major… has been the color blue for me since I was five years old. Bright Blue Music continues the compositional development of my past two pieces, but does so with a newfound freedom and lyricism, and a new language: tonality."

Bright Blue Music recalls the joie de vivre of a Johann Strauss waltz, a factor that may be related to Wittgenstein's nationality. The piece opens with a little rhythmic motive that Torke employs in various contexts throughout the piece.

Program notes originally written for the following performance: Gulf Coast Symphony - January 28, 2012.

Violin Concerto No. 1 by Max Bruch (1867)

Max Bruch, widely known and respected in his day as a composer, conductor, and teacher, received his earliest music instruction from his mother, a noted singer and pianist. He began composing at 11, and by 14 had produced a symphony and a string quartet, the latter garnering a prize that allowed him to study with Karl Reinecke and Ferdinand Hiller in Cologne. His opera Die Loreley (1862) and the choral work Frithjof (1864) brought him his first public acclaim. For the next 25 years, Bruch held various posts as a choral and orchestral conductor in Cologne, Coblenz, Sondershausen, Berlin, Liverpool, and Breslau; in 1883, he visited the United States to conduct concerts of his own choral compositions. From 1890 to 1910, he taught composition at the Berlin Academy and received numerous awards for his work, including an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University. Though Bruch is known mainly for three famous compositions for string soloist and orchestra (the G minor Concerto and Scottish Fantasy for violin, and the Kol Nidrei for cello), he also composed two other violin concertos, three symphonies, a concerto for two pianos, various chamber pieces, songs, three operas, and much choral music.

The G-minor Violin Concerto is a work of lyrical beauty and emotional sincerity. The first movement, which Bruch called a Vorspiel, or "Prelude," is in the nature of an extended introduction leading without pause into the slow movement. The Concerto opens with a dialogue between soloist and orchestra followed by a wide-ranging subject played by the violinist over a pizzicato line in the basses. A contrasting theme reaches into the highest register of the violin, and is followed by scintillating passage work of scales and broken chords for the soloist. A stormy section for orchestra alone recalls the opening dialogue, which softens to usher in the lovely Adagio. Though a true showpiece for the master violinist, the G-minor Concerto also possesses a solid musicianship and a memorable lyricism that make it a continuing favorite with both performers and audiences.

Program note originally written for the following performance: National Symphony Orchestra: Kurt Masur, conductor / Sarah Chang, violin, plays Bruch Apr. 28 - 30, 2011 © Dr. Richard E. Rodda

The Soloist - David Miller

Since he was four years old David has been captivated by music, and at age five he began taking violin lessons from his teacher, Gua Hua Xia. Thirteen years after first beginning lessons, music is still one of David's greatest passions and he takes every opportunity to play in local orchestral groups including the Bach Society, the Amalga Chamber Orchestra, and the Juneau Symphony. Music has opened many experiences for David, such as travelling to China with a string ensemble when he was thirteen. David has played multiple times in the All State Music Fest and in summer he attends an intensive chamber orchestra program in Portland, Oregon.

David loves music of all genres and has picked up many other instruments including piano, guitar, bass, and drums. He plays guitar and violin, writes songs and sings in a local folk rock band with his friends.

When not playing music, David's interests include rock climbing, skiing, longboarding, fishing, and about every other outdoor activity possible. One of David's greatest passions aside from music is making coffee and you might see him pouring latte art at The Rookery Café where he works.

The Juneau Symphony Orchestra

Music Director: Kyle Wiley Pickett