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Notes on the Program By James M. Keller, Program Annotator, The Leni and Peter May Chair Fire Dance Anthony DiLorenzo Street Song Michael Tilson Thomas Three American Portraits Bruce Broughton A substantial body of work for five-part brass ensemble was produced during the 16th and 17th centuries, characteristically destined for ensembles comprising two cornettos (hybrid instruments with a brass-type mouthpiece but with finger-holes resembling those of a recorder) and three sackbuts (early trombones). By the 1830s, technological advances had rendered brass instruments increasingly chromatic, and chamber works were being composed for different brass groupings. The breakthrough to what would become the dominant combination arrived from 1848 through 1850, when the French composer JeanFrançois-Victor Bellon produced 12 quintets for the combination of keyed small bugle in Eflat, piston-valved cornet (cornet à pistons) in B-flat or C, horn, trombone, and ophicléide in B-flat or C. (The ophicléide was a kind of keyed bugle, patented in 1821, whose bass form eventually ceded its role to the tuba.) The brass quintet truly began to flourish in the second half of the 20th century, thanks in large part to such groups as the New York Brass Quintet (established in 1954), American Brass Quintet, Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, and Canadian Brass. By commissioning and championing new music, these and other brass groups coaxed into existence a vast repertoire that includes entries by such notables as Leonard Bernstein, William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, Peter Maxwell Davies, and André Previn. 28 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC The first of the selections played today is Fire Dance by Anthony DiLorenzo. A trumpeter as well as a composer, DiLorenzo performs as a member of the Center City Brass Quintet and the Proteus7 chamber ensemble, and has appeared widely as a featured soloist. He graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music and worked with Bernstein at Tanglewood. DiLorenzo is also an active composer and arranger whose works have been performed by such leading orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Pops Or- IN SHORT Fire Dance Anthony DiLorenzo Born: 1967, in Stoughton, Massachusetts Work composed: 1996 Estimated duration: ca. 4 minutes Street Song Michael Tilson Thomas Born: December 21, 1944, in Los Angeles, California Work composed: 1988 Estimated duration: ca. 14 minutes Three American Portraits Bruce Broughton Born: March 8, 1945, in Los Angeles, California Work composed: 2006 Estimated duration: ca. 14 minutes chestra. He has also provided many scores for film and television; his credits include Benji: Off the Leash; music for more than 80 film trailers, including Toy Story, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Red Dragon; and music cues for a variety of television networks. His fleet and energetic Fire Dance was premiered and recorded by the Center City Brass Quintet, and it became an instant hit with brass ensembles. One can easily sense that it is the work of a composer with cinematic bona fides, but one with an element of droll wit that seems descended from Prokofiev. Michael Tilson Thomas is acclaimed internationally as a conductor as well as for his impressive abilities as a pianist. He has served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony since 1995 and is also founder and artistic director of the New World Symphony in Miami and principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. (Earlier in his career, 1971–77, he oversaw the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts.) He was born into a theatrical family — the Thomashefskys were a force in the golden age of Yiddish theater — and graduated from the University of Southern California, where he was mentored by the composer Ingolf Dahl. Tilson Thomas adopted a concentrated focus on composition in the late 1980s, when he produced three pieces that mark the start of his catalogue of mature works: the song “Grace” (1988), Street Song (1988), and From the Diary of Anne Frank (1989–90). He explained: What these three experiences did was to cause me to take my writing seriously, to care about it, and to care about wanting to have people hear what was going on inside my head. … I now understand what Aaron [Copland] and Lenny [Bernstein] said about committing oneself to writing it down and to selecting more carefully what is really essential. In the Composer’s Words Michael Tilson Thomas provided this commentary about his Street Song: Street Song is a work in three contiguous parts — and interweaving of three songs. The first song opens with a jagged downward scale suspending in the air a sweetly dissonant harmony that very slowly resolves. This moment of resolution is followed by responses of various kinds. The harmonies move between the world of the Middle Ages and the present, between East and West, and always, of course, from the perspective of 20th-century America. Overall the movement is about starting and stopping, the moments of suspension always leading somewhere else. The second song is introduced by a yodellike horn solo. It is followed by a simple trumpet duet. It is folk-like in character and also cadences with suspended moments of slowly resolving dissonance. The third song is really more of a dance. It begins when a trombone slides a step higher, bringing the work into the key of F-sharp and into a jazzier swing. The harmonies here are the stacked-up moments of suspension from the first two parts of the piece. By now I hope these “dissonant” sounds actually begin to sound “consonant.” There is a resolution, but it is in the world of a musician who after many after-hours gigs greets the dawn. Bruce Broughton, also a product of USC, has created works for motion pictures, television, and computer games, as well as concert works. His first major film score, for Lawrence Kasdan’s western, Silverado, earned him an Oscar nomination in 1986 and the sound track album for his next assignment, Barry Levinson’s Young Sherlock Holmes, was nominated for a Grammy. He went on to compose scores for such major motion pictures as Lost in Space, Tombstone, Miracle on 34th Street, and Honey, I Blew Up the Kids. His score for APRIL 2017 | 29 Heart of Darkness (1998) was the first orchestral work composed for a video game. He has received nine Emmy Awards (out of 21 nominations), most recently for his score for Eloise at Christmastime. As a composer of concert music, he has carried out commissions for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, United States Air Force Band, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as notable chamber ensembles such as the Westwind Brass, for which he wrote his Three American Portraits. Broughton is a board member of ASCAP, a governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a former governor of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and past president of The Society of Composers and Lyricists. The Work at a Glance These comments are excerpted from an interview with Bruce Broughton conducted by Barry Toombs, horn player of the Westwind Brass, prior to the premiere of Three American Portraits: The bright and bustling opening movement, full of fanfares, is named for Napoleon Hill (1883–1970), one of America’s first self-help gurus. “I associate Napoleon Hill with the power of positive thinking. In fact, the marking for the movement is ‘with a positive mental attitude,’ known to anyone who has read Hill simply as PMA. A simple tune floats over a placid chorale in the middle movement, representing the 30th president of the United States. “Whenever I think of or read about Calvin Coolidge, I’ve noted more his consistency, to the point of dullness, than any other quality. Taciturn ‘Silent Cal’ could never be caught laughing or expressing himself in any enthusiastic manner. This movement portrays, if anything, consistency, relying upon no dynamic or harmonic modulation, and depends upon the positive motive from the Hill movement as an ostinato underpinning for the entire movement.” There is an urgent, driving edge to the finale, and ominous harmonic colors. “Sherman was relentless. While reading U.S. Grant’s memoirs, it was obvious to me that Sherman was the one general that Grant could rely upon for getting a job done. Though it was Sherman who famously said, ‘War is hell,’ I made no attempt at trying to reconstruct the terror or emotional content of that statement. It was the unrelenting energy I was mostly interested in.” Portraits of the three subjects in Broughton’s work, from top: Napoleon Hill with his book, Think and Grow Rich, in 1937; Calvin Coolidge in 1918; General William Tecumseh Sherman, in an 1865 photo by Mathew Brady 30 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC