Program Notes - Béla Fleck: Return of the Banjo

SOUNDINGS 2015-2016 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1

MASTERWORKS • 2015-2016

BÉLA FLECK: RETURN OF THE BANJO

COLORADO SYMPHONY JOSÉ LUIS GOMEZ, conductor

BÉLA FLECK, banjo

Friday, April 1, 2016 at 7:30 pmSaturday, April 2, 2016 at 7:30 pmBoettcher Concert Hall

JOHN ADAMS The Chairman Dances

VILLA-LOBOS Chôros No. 6

— INTERMISSION —

BÉLA FLECK Juno Concerto

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MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIESJOSÉ LUIS GOMEZ, conductor

José Luis Gomez started his musical career as a violinist, and by the age of 11 he was Concertmaster of the Youth Orchestra of Zulia State — part of El Sistema de Orquestas Juveniles de Venezuela. He graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in New York before embarking on a European orchestral career. Deciding to follow his dream to have more creative input and influence on musical direction he took conducting lessons from Lu Jia, Muhai Tang and John Nelson. After just six months of studying conducting he went on to win First Prize at the International Sir Georg Solti Conductor’s Competition, securing a sensational and rare unanimous decision

from the jury. Gomez’s electrifying energy, talent and creativity earned him immediate acclaim from the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra where he was appointed to the position of Assistant Conductor, a post created especially for him by Paavo Jarvi and the orchestra directly upon the conclusion of the competition. Recent symphonic highlights included debuts with Royal Liverpool and Rochester Philharmonic; Frankfurt Radio, Colorado, Vancouver, Edmonton, Pasadena, Tucson, New Zealand and the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestras; and Sinfonia Varsovia; as well as invitations to Orquesta Sinfonica de Castilla y Leon and Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira This season sees Gomez make his Carnegie Hall debut conducting the YPhil International Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as his Moscow State Conservatory debut. He also returns for much anticipated concerts with the Tucson and Colorado Symphony Orchestras and conducting the widely televised New Years Eve concert in Sofia with soprano Federica Lombardi. Gomez will become Music Director Designate of the Tucson Symphony beginning in the 2016-17 season.

BELA FLECK, banjo

Béla Anton Leoš Fleck was born in New York and named after Béla Bartók, Leoš Janáček and Anton Webern. Fleck has been nominated for 32 Grammys® in more unique categories than any artist in Grammy® history, winning 16 of them. Widely considered the world’s premier banjo, Fleck is an artist who has completely redefined the limits of the instrument. First making his name in the seminal bluegrass ensemble New Grass Revival with Sam Bush, Fleck then formed The Flecktones which combined elements of jazz, jam-band and folk music and has become wildly popular for its brilliant genre-defying live concerts. In 2001 Fleck delivered Perpetual Motion, his

acclaimed foray into the classical world, which picked up two Grammys.® Since writing and performing concerti with double bassist, Edgar Meyer and tabla master Zakir Hussain, Fleck made his Deutsche Grammophon debut in 2013 with his concerto for solo banjo, The Imposter, commissioned by and recorded with The Nashville Symphony.


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PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2015-2016 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

JOHN ADAMS (born in 1947): The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra)John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on February 15, 1947. The Chairman Dances, from the opera Nixon in China, composed in 1985, was premiered on January 31, 1986 by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lukas Foss. The opera was premiered in Houston in October 1987. The score calls for two piccolos, calls for two flutes (both doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, harp and strings. Duration is about 12 minutes. The last performance by the orchestra was on January 30 and February 1, 1992.

John Adams is one of today’s most acclaimed composers. Audiences have responded enthusiastically to his music, and he enjoys a success not seen by an American composer since the zenith of Aaron Copland’s career: a recent survey of major orchestras conducted by the League of American Orchestras found John Adams to be the most frequently performed living American composer; he received the University of Louisville’s distinguished Grawemeyer Award in 1995 for his Violin Concerto; in 1997, he was the focus of the New York Philharmonic’s Composer Week, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and named “Composer of the Year” by Musical America Magazine; he has been made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture; in 1999, Nonesuch released The John Adams Earbox, a critically acclaimed ten-CD collection of his work; in 2003, he received the Pulitzer Prize for On the Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York Philharmonic in commemoration of the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, and was also recognized by New York’s Lincoln Center with a two-month retrospective of his work titled “John Adams: An American Master,” the most extensive festival devoted to a living composer ever mounted at Lincoln Center; from 2003 to 2007, Adams held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall; in 2004, he was awarded the Centennial Medal of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences “for contributions to society” and became the first-ever recipient of the Nemmers Prize in Music Composition, which included residencies and teaching at Northwestern University; he was a 2009 recipient of the NEA Opera Award; he has been granted honorary doctorates from the Royal Academy of Music (London), Juilliard School and Cambridge, Harvard, Yale and Northwestern universities, honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa, and the California Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) is a by-product of Adams’ 1985 opera, Nixon in China, premiered in Houston in 1987. The opera, explained Michael Steinberg in his liner notes for the recording of The Chairman Dances on Nonesuch Records, is “neither comic nor strictly historical though it contains elements of both. It is set in three days of President Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972, one act for each day. The single scene of the third act takes place in the Great Hall of the People, where there is yet another exhausting banquet, this one hosted by the Americans.”

The preface to the score gives the following description of The Chairman Dances: “Madame Mao, alias Jiang Ching, has gatecrashed the Presidential banquet. She is seen standing first where she is most in the way of the waiters. After a few minutes, she brings out a box of paper lanterns and hangs them around the hall, then strips down to a cheongsam, skin-tight from neck to ankle, and slit up to the hip. She signals the orchestra to play and begins to dance herself. Mao is becoming excited. He steps down from his portrait on the wall and they begin to foxtrot

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES


together. They are back in Yenan, the night is warm, they are dancing to the gramophone ...“Act Three, in which both reminiscing couples, the Nixons and the Maos, find themselves

contrasting the vitality and optimism of youth with their present condition of age and power, is full of shadows; Jiang Ching’s and Mao’s foxtrot in the opera is therefore more melancholy than The Chairman Dances. This is, uninhibitedly, a cabaret number, an entertainment, and a funny piece; as the Chairman and the former actress turned Deputy Head of the Cultural Revolution make their long trip back through time they turn into Fred and Ginger. The chugging music we first hear is associated with Mao; the seductive swaying-hips melody — La Valse translated across immense distances — is Jiang Ching’s. You might imagine the piano part at the end being played by Richard Nixon.”

oHEITOR VILLA-LOBOS (1887-1959): Chôros No. 6Heitor Villa-Lobos was born on March 5, 1887 in Rio de Janeiro, and died there on December 17, 1959. The Chôros No. 6 was composed in 1926, and premiered on July 18, 1942 by the Orquestra do Teatro Municipal at the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, conducted by the composer. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two piccolos, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, two harps and strings. Duration is about 25 minutes. The piece was last performed on May 29, 30, and 31, 1992, with Andreas Delfs conducting the orchestra.

The Chôros No. 6 is from a series of sixteen works by the Brazilian master Heitor Villa-Lobos bearing that title which are scored for a varied instrumentation ranging from solo guitar to full orchestra combined with mixed chorus. The term derived from the popular bands of Rio de Janeiro that originated in the mid-19th century which freely mixed winds, guitars and simple percussion instruments. Their repertory at first comprised polkas, waltzes and other European imports, but later came to be associated with such characteristic Brazilian dances as the maxixe, tango brasileiro and samba. Villa-Lobos believed that these bands epitomized Brazilian native music, and he attempted to capture their essence in his series of Chôros, as he explained in a note in the score: “The Chôros represents a new form of musical composition in which are synthesized the different modalities of Brazilian, Indian and popular music, having for principal elements Rhythm, and any typical Melody of popular character.”

Villa-Lobos composed the Chôros No. 6 in 1926, during his years in Paris, but he could not arrange for its premiere until he conducted it in Rio de Janeiro with the Orquestra do Teatro Municipal on July 18, 1942, though he performed it frequently thereafter. The composer wrote, “The climate, the color, the temperature, the light, the chirping of birds, the scent of the molasses grass among the chicken coops, and all the elements of nature in the arid and remote interior of Brazil provided inspirational motifs for this work.” The Chôros No. 6, a 25-minute span comprising several continuous, complementary sections, calls for a large orchestra supplemented a battery of percussion that includes numerous instruments traditionally used in Brazilian folk and popular music.

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PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2015-2016 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

BÉLA FLECK (born in 1958): Banjo Concerto No. 2, “Juno”Béla Fleck was born July 10, 1958 in New York City. He composed the Banjo Concerto No. 2 in 2015-2016 on a joint commission from the Colorado Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, South Carolina Philharmonic and Canton (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra, who premiered the work on March 19, 2016 under the direction of Gerhardt Zimmermann with the composer as soloist. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Duration is about 30 minutes. This is the first performance of the work by the Colorado Symphony.

For the premiere of Béla Fleck’s Banjo Concerto No. 2, “Juno” by the Canton Symphony, Tom Wachunas, that orchestra’s Program Annotator, provided the following information. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author and the CSO.

For the world premiere of Juno, Béla Fleck’s Second Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra, I was privileged to have a delightful telephone conversation with the composer himself on March 6, 2016. We began with talking about the Concerto’s title, Juno, named for his son, now 2½ years old.

“When I was searching for titles, I realized that the biggest change in my life [since the Banjo Concerto No. 1] was that I was writing as a father,” Fleck said. “The world’s not the same when you become a father, and you see things very differently. You’re a different person when you’re part of that process. It’s not so much about me, even though writing a banjo concerto is sort of a heroic effort. But this time I had a different point of view.”

This is not to say that his new Concerto is a specific narrative about Juno or parenthood as such. When Fleck began composing the piece in 2015, the reality of Juno’s presence necessitated significant adjustments in his working schedule and methods, which nonetheless enabled him to explore new and more refined interactions between banjo and orchestra. In that sense, Juno, as both a person and a process, is, as Fleck puts it, “… inevitably all over this piece.”

In the course of performing his First Banjo Concerto, The Impostor, some forty times since its premiere in 2011, Fleck gained a more inspired sense of orchestral dynamics, which he hopes will be apparent in his new work. “It’s still very much a dilettante’s concerto, just like the first one,” he says of Juno, adding, “I love classical music, but I’m not trained. I’m doing it for love and trying to do something good as an outsider. But I’m not as outside as I was for the First Concerto. I have a better idea of what can be expressed with an orchestra.”

As demonstrated in The Impostor, Fleck’s virtuosic banjo playing is nothing short of astonishing. In composing it, he looked to do unexpected things with the banjo, things that people wouldn’t think possible with that instrument. “It was like writing with a chip on my shoulder,” Fleck recalled. “I made a very difficult piece to play, which I’m proud of, and now it’s easy for me to play. But for this new piece, I really wanted to write something that fell off the banjo, like butter. I even thought I’d call it “Ripple and Flow” for a while, because I’m really trying to take advantage of the things that the banjo does that are so natural and effortless, things that other instruments would labor at and never get.… I’ve still written a pretty rhythmically complicated and adventurous piece, but I think I did a lot better at using the colors of the



orchestra and allowing them to do what they do best while hopefully allowing what the banjo can do best, maybe even more so than the First Concerto.”

Along with Fleck’s sensitivities to orchestral colors in Juno, there is also a decidedly more conscious employment of the traditional concerto format of three movements in fast–slow–fast order. “I did a better job on the slow music this time,” he notes. “Slow music is one of the really great things an orchestra can do — beautiful, open, big or relaxed sounds.” He describes the tempo of first movement as medium and as an overture-like exposition of most of the piece’s themes. The slow second movement brings back a motif foreshadowed in the first. Fleck describes it as having “…a lot of ostinato [a short, repeated figure], a lot of underlying rhythms in an odd time meter, with different kinds of harmony in an uneven flow and an old-fashioned sound.” And so on through to further developments, which Fleck calls “one long thought,” in the faster third movement. In characterizing the overarching content and energy of Juno as avoiding overtly bluegrass or Appalachian associations, Fleck strikes a lighthearted chord when he says, “Once again, I’m attempting to put the banjo into different waters and not have it play the role of the hayseed.”

A prominent element that recurs throughout the Concerto is what he calls “groups of five” — something he first explored in The Impostor — in which he presented many variations of asymmetrical sub-divisions, including groupings of five notes that “stuff” as many notes as he could into a beat. For Juno, he says, “Whenever I got the opportunity, I would stick an interesting group of five in, and I decided it was my fun number for the whole piece. I looked for places where five could be an identifying mark. You’ll find it scattered throughout, but in different ways.”

©2015 Dr. Richard E. Rodda


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Program Notes - Béla Fleck: Return of the Banjo

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