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Preview Luncheon
Friday, November 13 - Noon
First Presbyterian Church
Reservations are needed
Call: Peggy Holleman at 528-4745
Success abounds for the new Bryan Symphony Orchestra Association this fall! Our participation in the Stations of imagination area of the Fall Fun Fest was greatly received. Once again, thank you's go out to all involved.
We are looking forward to not only repeating it again next year, but hope to carry out our booth and our message to other festivals all across the Upper Cumberland area in the future. This was a great opportunity for us to reach an entirely different group of citizenry that we might otherwise miss. The BSO Brass Quintet was wonderful and the instrument "petting zoo" was a big hit.
If you've not sent in your membership dues and information, you can join anytime. Our membership numbers are up and over last year's already, mostly in the family category. We are absolutely thrilled to have this many families on our roster! As we proceed with steering committee meetings, still mapping out our plans and goals for the next couple of years, those of you who marked volunteer categories will be receiving calls. We are very adamant about asking volunteers to do only what they're comfortable doing, so when you get your call, don't be shy! It seems everyone's time is short these days, and we are acutely aware of that fact.
So, tell us what your strengths are and where you want to help. After all, you, the volunteer, are essential to the existence of this association, and we want you to enjoy what you are doing, knowing that you are contributing to the support of not only the orchestra, but to the very survival of the finer arts in this community and the surrounding areas. It is a very important job, and we thank you!
Don't forget that we still have lots of orchestra T-shirts and, along with cookbooks, they will be for sale at all the concerts. There are many youth sizes available, and with the holidays approaching, they would make great stocking stuffers at only $10 each. Also, if you do not have your bumper sticker (free with your membership), let me know at 372-8616. It's a great way to show the community your support, and it's good-looking!
Jan Tate, Volunteer Coordinator
The Soiree held earlier this month was an enjoyable success, thanks to Jan Tate, Alice and Walter Derryberry, and Jan's helpers. Peggy Holleman's hors d'oeuvres were delicious.
He has also performed with the Rochester (NY) Philharmonic Orchestra, the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, the Breckenridge (CO) Festival Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and was principal oboist with the Rochester Festival Orchestra. Mr. Woodworth came to Tennessee Tech in 1988. He is currently the oboist and manager of the Cumberland Quintet, which has released three compact discs and several nationally aired television shows for PBS since 1988.
Mr. Woodworth is the principal oboist in the Bryan Symphony Orchestra at Tennessee Technological University, teaches Theory, Aural Techniques, and coaches several woodwind quintets. He is an active teacher, recitalist, adjudicator, clinician and studio musician in Nashville.
Symbolically, Bach draws a parallel between two moments of despair brought on by abandonment, and in doing so, he lends poignancy to both. The concept is ground breaking and its fulfillment waits for Wagner's music dramas when similar psychological parallels are illustrated musically. Bach's is, then, NEW music, even as it follows the stylistic characteristics of the High Baroque.
Bach has also interested me as a teacher, in that his children did not continue in his style, but were harbingers of a new period of music which we now know as Classical. Through their music, the path was cleared for Haydn and, by the time of the High Classical period, Mozart. Intuitively, Bach's children knew that the impetus which drove the Baroque had run its course; it was time for a NEW music.
It has struck me how often this is the case; a style comes into being, explores itself, fulfills itself, and totters under the energy of a new style which edges it out of the way. Often, these new styles are reactive to the recent past (Baroque against the Renaissance; Neoclassicism against the style of Impressionism and Romanticism). Sometimes, they try to fulfill implications from the past (atonality out of Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde"). Regardless, there seems to be an implied dialogue between what was, what is, and what might be: Between stasis and the search for the NEW.
In that search, there are many false starts, dead ends, and works justifiably doomed to obscurity. There is also a vibrancy throughout; a way of saying eternal things in an entirely new manner. It is this awareness that leads us to invite contemporary creativity into the concert hall. We invite artists into the dialogue with the past we are so familiar with, and we expect them to surprise us, to baffle, mystify or delight. And in the search for the last, there is a danger that we simply await the test of time. After all, no one can hope to pick each new masterpiece as it flows from the pen. Why not wait to play new music until things shake down and we can be sure about the wheat and the chaff? The question implies the answer. To await such a test is to eliminate the contemporary from the performing arts. All art would become the art of the past.
Our challenge is to listen to the music of the past as if it is new, and to perform the music of our own time as if it were already an established part of the repertoire. The dialogue is, then, fresh and much more challenging to both performer and listener.
On our next concert we will present the premiere of Scott Steidl's "October Paint", a work for melodic and non-melodic percussion, piano, celeste, harp, and strings.
Scott has juggled two careers from his first days at Brown University where he pursued a B.A. in music and a B.S. in Biochemistry. His musical studies led him to Juilliard School, where he was awarded the M.M. and D.M.A. in Composition and studied under David Diamond and Elliot Carter.
He then pursued his other love, medicine, at New York's Mt. Sinai Medical School, Beth Israel Hospital, St. Vincent's Medical School, and Harvard Medical School. Today, he is Director of Rentinal Surgery at University of Maryland and an active composer. His orchestral music includes recent performances by the Long Beach Symphony under joanne Faletta Fargo-Morehead Symphony Orchestra under Joel Revson. His catalog includes opera, chamber music, solo instrument works, and pieces for dance. The composer will be in attendance. I hope you will be there too.
The merger of the Guild with the Symphony board has made it necessary to examine the role of education in a new framework. The tradition of the Guild provides a strong base upon which the educational program will be established. The new committee will examine the community outreach offerings of orchestras the size of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra, will seek input from members of our community, and will work closely with conductor John Dodson and the Board to develop a long range mission and plan to bring orchestra awareness and appreciation to the citizens of the Upper Cumberland.
Linda Ferreira
Education Committee Chair
Sunday, November 15
3:00 p.m.
Wattenbarger Auditorium
TTU Bryan Fine Arts Building
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