Night After Night

Program note: Gabriella Smith, Breathing Forests

Gabriella Smith (Photograph courtesy of the artist)

 

Gabriella Smith
Breathing Forests
Cleveland Orchestra, Apr. 4 & 6, 2024
Program note

“For a while I felt like, how do I write music about the climate crisis when I want to write music that’s uplifting? And I realized, that’s the kind of music we need. It needs to feel real and profound. We need to feel our grief, and we need to feel the loss. But we also need to feel the joy in getting to work.”—Gabriella Smith

I've greatly appreciated recent opportunities to do some out-of-town program notes writing, none more so than the brief essay I provided for tonight's Cleveland Orchestra premiere of Breathing Forests by Gabriella Smith. I enjoyed speaking with Gabriella, a composer whose works I've admired greatly and consistently, and envy audience members who'll hear the two performances John Adams will conduct tonight and Saturday.

The brief concert overview essay is also mine. My thanks to former Cleveland Orchestra managing editor of content Amanda Angel, a longtime friend and colleague, for the initial engagement, and to current Cleveland Orchestra publications manager Kevin McBrien, to whom Amanda passed the baton when she decamped to Los Angeles for her new role as editorial director at the LA Phil.

Program note: Julian Anderson, Symphony No. 2

Julian Anderson (Photograph: John Batten Photography)

Julian Anderson
Symphony No. 2 ("Prague Panoramas") (2019-21)
Cleveland Orchestra, Dec. 7 & 9, 2023
Program note

My first program note for the venerable Cleveland Orchestra, for the U.S. premiere of Symphony No. 2, "Prague Panoramas," by English composer Julian Anderson. The program, conducted by Semyon Bychkov, also includes Bohuslav Martinů's Concerto for Two Pianos, featuring Katia and Marielle Labèque, and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy.

I'm grateful to Amanda Angel, Cleveland Orchestra managing editor of content and a longtime friend and colleague, for the engagement.

Program note: Missy Mazzoli at the BBC Proms, August 14, 2022.

Missy Mazzoli and Jennifer Koh (center) with Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Philharmonia Orchestra. (Photograph: Missy Mazzoli's Instagram)

On Sunday, August 14, the brilliant violinist Jennifer Koh joined the Philharmonia Orchestra and its principal conductor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, in the European premiere of a new composition by Missy Mazzoli, Violin Concerto ("Procession"), during the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.

Audio for the entire program – which also included ballet music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Sergei Prokofiev – is streaming on-demand now on the BBC website.

The concerto was jointly commissioned by the BBC along with the National Symphony Orchestra, which presented the work's world premiere in February with Koh as soloist and Gemma New conducting, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which performed, livestreamed, and broadcast a performance of the concerto in March.

One movement from the streamed performance is still available online, as is a brief interview with Mazzoli.

Anyone who's followed me for any time at all knows that I'm a longtime follower of Koh and Mazzoli, individually and together, so it was a real joy to be asked by the BBC to provide a brief essay for the program book. You bet I pulled out The Great Twitter Prophecy of 2009 for the occasion.

This was my second time to write about Mazzoli for the Proms; the first was in 2017, when Karina Canellakis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra presented Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres). I'm deeply grateful to the BBC for both opportunities.

The new essay is not available online, so these screenshots will have to suffice.