Season 201220- 13 - philorch.org Year's Eve_0.pdf · “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” Waltz, Op....

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The Philadelphia Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Todd Burnsed Dancer Michele Camaya Dancer Mark Stuart Dancer Ron Todorowski Dancer Jaime Verazin Dancer R. Strauss Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59 Haydn Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp minor (“Farewell”) I. Allegro assai II. Adagio III. Menuet: Allegretto IV. Presto—Adagio Intermission J. Strauss, Jr. “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” Waltz, Op. 314 Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor Shostakovich Waltz 2, from Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 Satie/orch. Debussy Gymnopédie No. 3 Falla “Ritual Fire Dance,” from El amor brujo J. Strauss, Jr. “Champagne” Polka, Op. 211 Bernstein/orch. Ramin & Kostal “Mambo,” from West Side Story This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. The dancers on tonight’s program appear under the auspices of Dance Affiliates, Randy Swartz, artistic director. 27 Season 2012-2013 Monday, December 31, at 7:30

Transcript of Season 201220- 13 - philorch.org Year's Eve_0.pdf · “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” Waltz, Op....

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The Philadelphia Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin ConductorTodd Burnsed DancerMichele Camaya DancerMark Stuart DancerRon Todorowski DancerJaime Verazin Dancer

R. Strauss Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59

Haydn Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp minor (“Farewell”) I. Allegro assai II. Adagio III. Menuet: Allegretto IV. Presto—Adagio

Intermission

J. Strauss, Jr. “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” Waltz, Op. 314

Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor

Shostakovich Waltz 2, from Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1

Satie/orch. Debussy Gymnopédie No. 3

Falla “Ritual Fire Dance,” from El amor brujo

J. Strauss, Jr. “Champagne” Polka, Op. 211

Bernstein/orch. Ramin & Kostal “Mambo,” from West Side Story

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes.

The dancers on tonight’s program appear under the auspices of Dance Affiliates, Randy Swartz, artistic director.

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Season 2012-2013Monday, December 31, at 7:30

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2 Story Title

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Renowned for its distinctive sound, beloved for its keen ability to capture the hearts and imaginations of audiences, and admired for an unrivaled legacy of “firsts” in music-making, The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has cultivated an extraordinary history of artistic leaders in its 112 seasons, including music directors Fritz Scheel, Carl Pohlig, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Christoph Eschenbach, and Charles Dutoit, who served as chief conductor from 2008 to 2012. With the 2012-13 season, Yannick Nézet-Séguin becomes the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Named music director designate in 2010, Nézet-Séguin brings a vision that extends beyond symphonic music into the

vivid world of opera and choral music.

Philadelphia is home and the Orchestra nurtures an important relationship not only with patrons who support the main season at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts but also those who enjoy the Orchestra’s other area performances at the Mann Center, Penn’s Landing, and other venues. The Philadelphia Orchestra Association also continues to own the Academy of Music—a National Historic Landmark—as it has since 1957.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, presentations, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador for Philadelphia and for the United States. Having been the first American orchestra to perform in China, in 1973 at the request of President Nixon, today The Philadelphia

Orchestra boasts a new partnership with the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The Orchestra annually performs at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center while also enjoying a three-week residency in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a strong partnership with the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.

The ensemble maintains an important Philadelphia tradition of presenting educational programs for students of all ages. Today the Orchestra executes a myriad of education and community partnership programs serving nearly 50,000 annually, including its Neighborhood Concert Series, Sound All Around and Family Concerts, and eZseatU.

For more information on The Philadelphia Orchestra, please visit www.philorch.org.

Jessica Griffin

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DancersTodd Burnsed, an Atlanta area native, graduated from the Juilliard School. He has toured with Moses Pendleton’s MOMIX, the Next Stage Project, and Twyla Tharp’s Movin’ Out. Other credits include Come Fly Away on Broadway, Dirty Dancing in Toronto, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, and the Metropolitan Opera. As a freelance artist he has also worked with Paul Taylor, Hans van Manen, Katherine Helen Fisher, Daniel Ezralow, Igal Perry, and Doug Varone.

Michele Camaya has toured in Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away, Fame (first national tour), Swing! (first national and Japan), and The Lion King (first national, Broadway, and Las Vegas). She can be seen dancing in the Disney movie Enchanted and Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of Geisha. She was the runner up on Bravo’s Step It Up & Dance. She is a founding member of Mark Stuart Dance Theatre.

Mark Stuart’s choreography and performances have been featured in films, commercials, music videos, on Broadway, at Carnegie Hall, and at Lincoln Center. He recently served as choreographer on the Diesel: Fuel for Life television ad campaign. He currently appears in a Revlon commercial with Olivia Wilde and served as assistant choreographer for the world-premiere Broadway musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. He is the recipient of the 2011 BroadwayWorld Award for Choreography for The Wiz.

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DancersRon Todorowski was resident director on the first national tour of Come Fly Away, along with playing two principal roles. He has been a member of Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, the Parsons Dance Company, and Mia Michaels’s dance company RAW. He has appeared in the Broadway shows Come Fly Away, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Movin’ Out, Wicked, Guys and Dolls, and Footloose. He also appeared in the London and first national tour of Movin’ Out, receiving a Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor in a musical. He was the assistant choreographer for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the Lyric Theater in Oklahoma City and Celine Dion’s A New Day in Las Vegas.

Jaime Verazin danced professionally with MOMIX, performing both nationally and internationally. In commercials she can be seen representing Hanes, Revlon, and Carioca Coffee. She danced for three seasons with the Metropolitan Opera, where she performed the non-vocal lead role Love in Rossini’s Armida. She now freelances with choreographers Mark Stuart, Mark Dendy, Brice Mousset, Adam Battelstein, John Rua, and Katherine Helen Fisher.

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The MusicSuite from Der Rosenkavalier

Richard StraussBorn in Munich, June 11, 1864Died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, September 8, 1949

“Light, flowing tempi,” wrote Strauss of the manner in which one should approach the performance of his opera Der Rosenkavalier, “without compelling the singers to rattle off the text. In a word: Mozart, not Lehár.” Indeed Strauss’s incomparable opera has a uniquely lyrical quality that for many listeners is more serious than comic—perhaps the 18th-century term “semi-seria” should be called into service here, a word that was used to describe comic opera with a foundation of profundity. (Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro comes to mind.) Strauss composed Rosenkavalier during 1909 and 1910, working closely with his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal; it was the second of their six collaborations, and from an artistic standpoint the most successful. Already lionized by the German public—partly as a result of the immense popularity of his salacious shocker Salome—Strauss was surprised to see the successes of Rosenkavalier nearly surpass those of his earlier Greek tragedy. It was first performed at the Dresden Court Theater in January 1911; it was gobbled up by the public and at the same time snatched up by theaters all over Europe. To this day it remains Strauss’s most popular opera.

Set in the 18th-century Vienna of Empress Maria Theresia, Rosenkavalier is permeated with waltz (even though the waltz as genre did not come into being until the later 18th century, at the very earliest). The piece is full of wistful romance, with a serious undercurrent of sadness, and this is heard in the music. Several instrumental suites have been spawned from this glorious music, including a background score for a silent-film version of the opera that Strauss himself prepared in 1926.

In 1945 the conductor Artur Rodzinski created an orchestral suite for performance with the New York Philharmonic, which was approved by Strauss himself and which quickly became a favorite of Eugene Ormandy and of Philadelphia Orchestra audiences. The Suite includes the prelude to Act I, the presentation of the silver rose, the arrival of Baron von Ochs in Act II, the second-act waltzes, and finally the duet, trio, waltz, and the “Ist ein Traum” duet from Act III.

—Paul J. Horsley

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The MusicSymphony No. 45

Franz Joseph Haydn Born in Rohrau, Lower Austria, March 31, 1732Died in Vienna, May 31, 1809

Franz Joseph Haydn, hailed as the “Father of the Symphony,” came to the genre surprisingly late, after he had already written a great deal of other kinds of music. Yet over the course of his long career he wrote more than 100 symphonies. He did not, of course, really “invent” the symphony, but he is nonetheless its “father,” the composer who elevated the genre to a new artistic status and who established the standards and practices that Mozart, Beethoven, and later composers would both follow and break.

Not only did it take Haydn some time to begin immersing himself in symphonic writing, but there also were periods when he composed relatively few of them, concentrating instead on other music. His output at various points in his career tended to reflect the demands of his job at the time. He spent most of his professional life in the service of the exceeding rich Esterházy family. Since Prince Nikolaus Esterházy played the baryton (a cello-like instrument), Haydn wrote some 125 baryton trios, now long forgotten. The family employed its own orchestra, presented plays and operas, and was a remarkable patron of the arts.

The work we hear tonight is one of the best known of Haydn’s earlier symphonies. The Symphony in F-sharp minor was composed in November 1772 for Prince Esterházy. It is an unusual work in many respects, beginning with the key in which it was written, unheard of for any other symphony of the period. It is the extraordinary last movement that has earned the work its nickname “Farewell,” which was applied to the Symphony as early as 1794.

The last movement begins as a presto in what seems will be a lively finale in standard sonata form. But at the recapitulation the music suddenly slows down to a gentle adagio and the various instruments stop playing, in the end leaving only two solo violins. Already in performances in London and Paris during the 1790s it became the custom for the instrumentalists to leave the stage, although there is no such indication in the score. The idea behind the Symphony is typical of Haydn’s wit, but in the process he composed one of his most innovative and remarkable symphonies.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

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The Music“On the Beautiful Blue Danube” Waltz

Johann Strauss, Jr. Born in Vienna, October 25, 1825Died there, June 3, 1899

The world’s most famous waltz began as a commission from a Viennese men’s choral organization. The text was a simple verse in praise of the Danube River. Johann Strauss, Jr., known as the Waltz King, composed it in 1867, while living at 54 Praterstrasse with his first wife, Jetty. The house is now the site of a Strauss museum.

The premiere, in the version with men’s chorus, was greeted indifferently. But when Strauss introduced an all-orchestral version in concert later that year at the Vienna Volksgarten in the inner city, the lilting strains of this irresistible waltz shot to immediate popularity. The “Blue Danube” is now the unofficial second national anthem of Austria, and is inescapable when talking of, or thinking about, Vienna.

After a slow, dramatic introduction in A major, the piece settles down into the customary tempo di valse in gracious D major. The now-familiar melody swells from the chords of the key as naturally as waves might from the river Danube itself. The famous opening notes are nothing more than a D-major chord arpeggiated, and this gesture continues throughout the waltz’s first strain.

The rest of the waltz grows naturally out of the opening. Even the reflective slow section in F major starts by outlining an ascending F-major chord, while the brilliant coda piles arpeggiated triad upon arpeggiated triad until the end comes in an irresistible frenzy.

Almost universally praised as the greatest waltz ever composed, the “Blue Danube” is a little tone poem in waltz form, a picture of the river and of the life along the river. The distinguished music critic Eduard Hanslick called it “the definition of all that is Vienna: beautiful, pleasant, and merry.” Strauss’s friend, the great composer Johannes Brahms, once autographed a copy of the score to the “Blue Danube” with the words, “Alas, not by Johannes Brahms.”

—Kenneth LaFave

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The MusicHungarian Dance No. 1

Johannes BrahmsBorn in Hamburg, May 7, 1833Died in Vienna, April 3, 1897

The patterns of migration that are often brought about by war, famine, or social upheaval can play a vital role in the cultural cross-fertilization with which art continually renews itself. Thousands of Hungarians fled Europe after the Austrians quashed an uprising of 1848; a great many of them set sail from or stayed and lived in Brahms’s hometown, the port city of Hamburg. It was thus that the young Brahms had his first contact around 1850 with the alla zingarese (gypsy) style. The 19th-century craze for this dashing musical style of the czárdás, the lassu, and the friss pervaded all Europe.

Brahms was especially fascinated with the music’s extremes of rubato (rhythmic “give-and-take”) and its irregular, complex meters. Through his friendship with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Hoffmann (known as Reményi), with whom he toured Europe in the early 1850s as piano accompanist, the composer not only learned the zingarese style of playing but also became acquainted with a large number of the tunes—many of which were appearing in popular published collections.

Brahms began his Ungarische Tänze (Hungarian Dances) in 1852, while still in his teens and over the next 17 years he set 21 numbers for piano four-hands. Three of these were original compositions in the style of the romany music; the rest were settings of gypsy tunes in various combinations. These dances were enormously popular and not only enjoyed brisk sales but also inspired widespread imitation; even Dvorák acknowledged his debt to them when he prepared the publication of his own Slavonic Dances, also first conceived for piano duet. Brahms himself orchestrated only three of the dances, Nos. 1, 3, and 10, in 1873—the first of which is heard on this evening’s program.

—Paul J. Horsley

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The MusicWaltz 2, from Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1

Dmitri ShostakovichBorn in St. Petersburg, September 25, 1906Died in Moscow, August 9, 1975

What’s in a name? A waltz is a waltz is a waltz. But when it comes to the origin of Shostakovich’s Waltz 2, the proper name is a puzzle. For decades, the eight-part suite that contains Waltz 2 was thought to be the Jazz Suite No. 2, composed in 1938 and referred to by the composer in correspondence. But in 1999 the long-lost autograph score of Jazz Suite No. 2 was found and lo and behold, it contained no Waltz 2, nor even a Waltz 1. Jazz Suite No. 2 was actually a three-movement work of remarkably different character than the eight-part suite. Subsequently, what had formerly been Jazz Suite No. 2 was now renamed Suite for Variety Orchestra.

“Variety” certainly fits the feeling of the waltz more appropriately than “jazz.” There’s nothing at all jazzy about this melody, which glides sweetly about in the manner of Franz Lehár or Emil Waldteufel. The main gesture is a simple downward motion, first in C minor, then in E-flat major. The plunging line does not, however, create a sad or depressing mood, but a strangely uplifting one; the sensation is of a petal falling or birds swooping low.

The Waltz 2 was first performed in a Western country on December 1, 1988, in London’s Barbican Hall, when conductor Mstislav Rostropovich premiered the Suite then named Jazz Suite No. 2. It was an immediate success with pops audiences. Director Stanley Kubrick later used it ironically in his film Eyes Wide Shut, while the non-ironic performance by André Rieu’s band gets audiences dancing along.

In retrospect researchers might have known that the Waltz 2 did not hail from 1938, since it forms an important part of Shostakovich’s score to the 1955 film The First Echelon. Clips including the waltz can be viewed on YouTube.

—Kenneth LaFave

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The MusicGymnopédie No. 3

Erik SatieBorn in Honfleur, France, May 17, 1866Died in Paris, July 1, 1925

In December 1887, eccentric young Parisian musician Erik Satie visited the famous Chat Noir nightclub for the first time. When the club’s owner asked him his profession, the shy and self-effacing Satie declined to answer “composer” and answered instead “gymnopaedist”—a word without distinct meaning, but connoting, from roots in ancient Greek, someone who dances with “naked (gymn) feet (ped).” Three months later Satie composed a set of three leisurely piano pieces in three-four time that he called Gymnopédies, apparently in honor of his faux-profession.

An admirer of Satie’s music, Claude Debussy attempted to help his destitute friend by orchestrating two of the Gymnopédies in 1898. Pronouncing the second of them intrinsically pianistic and therefore unfit for orchestration, Debussy set the first and third, but reversed the numbering inadvertently. Thus, many amateur pianists will recognize this Gymnopédie No. 3 as Gymnopédie No. 1.

In gentle D major, the work sways back and forth between two chords as a wandering melody laces itself in and out of the harmonic texture. Debussy’s orchestration fills in many of the empty moments in Satie’s original. The piano piece is a study in bare outline, while the orchestration swells with sustained strings, horns, and harp. The orchestration helped Satie’s piano pieces achieve a certain popularity during the composer’s lifetime.

—Kenneth LaFave

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The Music“Ritual Fire Dance,” from El amor brujo

Manuel de FallaBorn in Cádiz, Spain, November 23, 1876Died in Alta Gracia, Argentina, November 14, 1946

For Manuel de Falla, a sense of regional or ethnic identity was central to one’s creative being. Born in Andalusia of a Valencian father and Catalonian mother, Falla absorbed influences not only from the Andalusian and gypsy folk music he heard around him as a boy, but also from traditional operatic and orchestral music he heard in his native town of Cádiz. Significantly, the music of Edvard Grieg fired young Falla’s imagination when he first encountered it in the 1890s—especially Grieg’s way of infusing traditional styles with the folk materials of the Norwegian peoples.

Falla experimented with the zarzuela, an informal type of Spanish comic opera prevalent in the 18th century. He also composed a number of songs in folk idioms, which were extraordinarily popular. But his crowning achievement in the area of folkloric song was the “opera-ballet” El amor brujo. The impetus for the work’s inception came from Pastora Imperio, one of the great gypsy-Andalusian dancers of her era. She approached the Spanish poet and choreographer Gregorio Martinez Sierra about a stage work to be danced and sung by her and members of her family. Imperio and her mother sang songs and told folkloric stories to Martinez and Falla; the composer carefully notated the songs and studied them.

The piece first heard in Madrid in 1915, however, differed radically from the fully-scored version that is played today. The original Amor brujo was like an opera: It contained more songs and a more elaborately spun story line. The Madrid reception was chilly and the following year Falla expanded the orchestration and cut out many of the work’s songs and recitatives. The story of Love, the Magician (or “the sorcerer”) opens as the gypsy-woman Candelas “reads the cards” to see if they augur the return of her lover, Carmelo, whom she wishes to marry. The cards and the sound of the sea foretell evil. Obsessed with the idea that the spirit of her dead husband, who was a worthless scoundrel, will return to prevent her from remarrying, she casts a spell to conjure a she-spirit to draw the husband’s attention away from her. The spell works, and Carmelo returns to marry Candelas.

—Paul Horsley

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The Music“Champagne” Polka

Johann Strauss, Jr.

It is said that Emperor Franz Joseph reigned over Austria only until Johann Strauss, Jr., died. So completely was Strauss’s music associated with the latter years of the Hapsburg Empire that it is now difficult to conceive of this era without also thinking of the music of the Waltz King. In fact, many music-lovers today know little of this period but Strauss’s music. Even during his lifetime Strauss was recognized as the master of the waltz—as the composer whose utmost mastery of this distinctly Viennese dance transformed it into something more resembling a concept than a dance.

In addition to being the Waltz King, Johann Strauss also distinguished himself with “regal” contributions to the development of the 19th-century genres of polka and quadrille, publishing almost as many works in these genres as in the waltz—some 125 polkas in all, and some 50 quadrilles, spanning the course of his entire 50-year career. The former type is represented this evening by the “Champagne” Polka.

—Kenneth LaFave

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The Music“Mambo,” from West Side Story

Leonard BernsteinBorn in Lawrence, Massachusetts, August 25, 1918Died in New York City, October 14, 1990

“Street brawls, double death—it all fits.” Thus the 30-year-old Leonard Bernstein had first mused over the idea of making Shakespeare’s classic into a Broadway musical. During the mid-1950s, when he and his collaborator, Arthur Laurents, began sketching out the piece that would become one of the most successful musicals of all time, the issue of juvenile crime was reaching epidemic proportions in America. And it was in this setting that Bernstein found the ideal backdrop for his love story—a musical that succeeded not just because of its wonderful songs, but because it dealt in a subject matter that yearned toward universality.

“The chief problem,” wrote the composer, “is to tread the fine line between opera and Broadway, between realism and poetry, ballet and ‘just dancing,’ abstract and representational … [to tell] a tragic story in musical-comedy terms.” West Side Story, which received its premiere in August 1957 in Washington’s National Theater, treads that line as effectively as any musical has. It was an enormous hit then, and it has remained a model for composers of musical theater for the entire 40 years since. “I am now convinced,” wrote the composer later, “that what we dreamed all these years is possible; because there stands that tragic love story, with a theme as profound as love versus hate.”

A sense of impending doom is palpable throughout West Side Story, as it is in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—but it doesn’t prevent the principals from singing and dancing as if their lives depended on it. The “Mambo” is heard in the dance scene from Act I, where members of the rival gangs (the Jets and the Sharks) perform a “challenge dance,” and where Tony and Maria first meet.

—Paul J. Horsley

Program notes © 2012. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Kenneth LaFave.

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Watts and BeethovenFebruary 1 & 2 8 PMRafael Frühbeck de Burgos Conductor André Watts Piano

Bach/orch. Stokowski “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) Hindemith Concert Music for Strings and Brass Liszt Les Préludes

Mozart in His TimeJanuary 10 & 12 8 PM January 11 2 PMDavid Kim Leader Imogen Cooper Piano and Leader

Mozart Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Serenade in G major Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24, K. 491 Mozart Symphony No. 25

TICKETS Call 215.893.1999 or log on to www.philorch.org PreConcert Conversations are held prior to every Philadelphia

Orchestra subscription concert, beginning 1 hour before curtain. All artists, dates, programs, and prices subject to change. All tickets subject to availability.

January/February The Philadelphia Orchestra

Tickets are disappearing fast for these amazing concerts! Order your tickets today.

Jessica Griffin

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16 Story Title

Tickets & Patron ServicesSubscriber Services:215.893.1955Call Center: 215.893.1999

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PreConcert Conversations: PreConcert Conversations are held prior to every Philadelphia Orchestra subscription concert, beginning one hour before curtain. Conversations are free to ticket-holders, feature discussions of the season’s music and music-makers, and are supported in part by the Wells Fargo Foundation.

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Ticket Turn-In: Subscribers who cannot use their tickets are invited to donate them and receive a tax-deductible credit by calling 215.893.1999. Tickets may be turned in any time up to the start of the concert. Twenty-four-hour notice is appreciated, allowing other patrons the opportunity to purchase these tickets.

Individual Tickets: Don’t assume that your favorite concert is sold out. Subscriber turn-ins and other special promotions can make last-minute tickets available. Call Ticket Philadelphia at 215.893.1999 or stop by the Kimmel Center Box Office.

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Analyst

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