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On The Upbeat
January 2015 • Volume 8, Edition 3
2014-2015 Subscription Series
JANUARY 17 & 18, 2015
DIRK BROSSÉ
From the Board President
JESSICA GUIDERI
Dirk Brossé, Conductor
Jessica Guideri, Violin
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the Symphony’s first concert of 2015! We are
thrilled to welcome conductor Sir Dirk Brossé to share the
magic of Charlie Chaplin with you. We are grateful to the
Granada Theater for providing a wonderful movie screen for
this innovative collaboration.
The past month has been action packed for the Symphony
family, beginning with the appointment of our new
concertmaster, Jessica Guideri. Jessica is a New York native
and graduate of the Juilliard School. She has worked her way
west and won her post after an extensive audition process,
including performances with the Symphony last year. Her
warmth, intelligence and musicianship have already resulted
in positive steps forward for the Symphony’s violins. Please
welcome Jessica to the Symphony family!
On December 18th, after a thorough search process, the
Symphony announced the appointment of our new Executive
Director, David Pratt. A native of Australia and coming to us
from his current post as the successful Executive Director of
the Savannah Philharmonic, Mr. Pratt will begin his duties
on March 2. His appointment enhances the artistic and
operational excellence the Symphony has achieved to date.
On a sad note, we mourn the passing of Léni Fé Bland
last month. She was a tireless and generous supporter of the
Symphony, and the entire arts and education community.
The Symphony will dedicate our April concert to her
memory. She will be dearly missed.
WINTORY “Apotheosis” from Journey
YARED Suite from Camille Claudel
BROSSÉ Black, White and In Between for Violin and
String Orchestra
— INTERMISSION —
CHAPLIN City Lights
arr. Davis Produced, Written and Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Original Film accompanied by the Santa Barbara Symphony
THE CAST
A Blind Girl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Virginia Cherrill
Her Grandmother. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Florence Lee
An Eccentric Millionaire . . . . . . . . . . Harry Myers
His Butler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Al Ernest Garcia
A Prizefighter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hank Mann
A Tramp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charlie Chaplin
sponsored by
CHRIS AND DAVID CHERNOF
Principal Concert Sponsors
ROBERT WEBER
Concert Sponsor
Have a musical New Year!
Artist Sponsor
CHRIS LANCASHIRE
AND CATHERINE GEE
Selection Sponsors
Join Ramón Araïza for “Behind the Music”
beginning one hour before each concert!
Arthur Swalley
President, Santa Barbara Symphony Board of Directors
Sponsored by Marilynn L. Sullivan & Marlyn Bernard Bernstein
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Dirk Brossé conductor
Dirk Brossé, born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1960, is a multi-faceted composer and a
respected conductor on the international music scene. He is currently Music Director
of ‘The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia’, Music Director of the Filmfestival Ghent
and Music Director and principal conductor of the ‘Star Wars in Concert World Tour’.
He began his music studies at the Music Conservatories of Ghent and Brussels.
He subsequently specialised in conducting, which he studied in Maastricht, Vienna
and Cologne. Alongside his many guest professorships, he is currently Professor of
composition and conducting at the School of Arts / Royal Conservatory of Music
in Ghent.
Dirk Brossé has conducted all the leading Belgian orchestras, among them,
the Brussels Philharmonic, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the
Flemish Opera and the National Orchestra of Belgium.
Outside his native Belgium, he has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic
Orchestra, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Philharmonic
Orchestra of Shanghai, the Vancouver Opera, the KBS Symphony Orchestra of South Korea, l’ Orchestra de
l’Opéra de Lyon, the World Symphony Orchestra (Japan), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Ulster
Symphony Orchestra of Northern Ireland, the Camerata St Petersburg, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Orchestras of Venezuela and Ecuador.
Dirk Brossé is a versatile and prolific composer. He has written some 200 works, including concerti, oratorios,
lieder, chamber music and symphonic works, that have been performed all over the world and have been recorded
in more than 40 countries. His most important works are ‘La Soledad de América Latina’, written in collaboration
with the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ‘Artesia’, a universal symphony for orchestra and ethnic
instruments, the ethno-classical symphony ‘The Birth of Music’, the oratorio ‘Juanelo’, the lieder cycles ‘Landuyt
Cycle’ and ‘La vida es un Sueño’, the ‘War Concerto’ for clarinet and orchestra, and the violin concertos ‘Black,
White & Between’, ‘Sophia’ and ‘Echoes of Silent Voices’.
In 2010, at the request of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, he wrote ‘The Hallow-e’en Dances’. This
Halloween-inspired work is specially written for age-old, traditional Chinese instruments. He is currently
working on a guitar concerto.
Besides this, on numerous occasions, Dirk Brossé has composed for the theatre and the cinema. His bestknown soundtracks are ‘Koko Flanel’, ‘Licht’, Stijn Coninx’s ‘de Kavijaks’ and ‘Daens’ (Academy Award Nominee,
1993), Marian Handwerker’s ‘Marie’, Martin Koolhoven’s ‘Knetter’, and Jaques Feyder’s 1925 silent film ‘Visages
d’Enfants’. He wrote the scores for the musicals ‘Sacco & Vanzetti’, ‘The Prince of Africa’, ‘Tintin – The Temple
of the Sun’ (based on Hergé’s world-famous cartoon character Tintin), ‘Rembrandt, the Musical’, and ‘Musical
Daens’, each time in close collaboration with Frank Van Laecke.
In 2007 Dirk Brossé made his debut in the Royal Albert Hall, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra
in ‘A Night of Music from the Movies’, featuring the music of Patrick Doyle, with guest appearances by such
renowned actors as Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.
Dirk Brossé has made more than 60 CD recordings and has conducted in numerous world-famous concert
halls, such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Centre and the Royal
Albert Hall in London, la Monnaie in Brussels, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Seoul Arts Center, the Tokyo
Forum and the Concert Hall Shanghai.
He has collaborated with world-class artistes such as José Van Dam, Philip Webb, Barbara Hendricks, Claron
McFadden, Julia Migenes, Derek Lee Ragin, Sabine Meyer, Julian Lloyd Webber, Daniel Blumenthal, Salvatore
Accardo and, on a broader musical platform, with John Williams, Toots Thielemans, Hans Zimmer, Elmer
Bernstein, Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh, Randy Crawford, Lisa Gerrard, Mel Brooks, Maurane, Sinead
O’Connor, Viktor Lazlo, Maurice Jarre and Youssou N’Dour.
Dirk Brossé has been awarded the title “Cultural Ambassador of Flanders”. He has received numerous prizes,
among them, the Flemish Government’s ‘Gouden Erepenning’ award for merit and the prestigious Achiel Van
Acker Award. He is an Advisory Board Member of the independent think tank ‘Itinera Institute’. Since 2010 Dirk
Brossé has been a Freeman of the town of Destelbergen.
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Jessica Guideri violin
American violinist Jessica Guideri currently serves as Associate
Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, Assistant Principal
Second Violin in the Pacific Symphony, and Associate Concertmaster
of the Eastern Music Festival. She also performs with the Los
Angeles Philharmonic, plays for recordings of major motion picture
soundtracks, and is featured on the upcoming public television series
the “All Star Orchestra,” comprised of musicians from major orchestras
around the country, led by Gerard Schwarz.
Before moving to Southern California, Jessica was Associate
Principal Second Violin of the Phoenix Symphony, and was awarded a position in the Seattle Symphony. She has
also performed as concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra in
Germany, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and was invited as guest concertmaster of the Phoenix
and Santa Barbara Symphonies.
Since her Carnegie Hall solo debut with the New York Youth Symphony, which James Oestreich of The New
York Times called “a lovely account,” Ms. Guideri has performed as soloist with several orchestras, including the
Queens Symphony, Westchester Symphony, and the Symphony Orchestra of Campinas in Brazil. She has also
given numerous solo recitals, including appearances at Lincoln Center and Steinway Hall in New York.
An accomplished chamber musician, Jessica was the first violinist of the Fry Street Quartet, artists-inresidence at Utah State University. During her four years with the ensemble, they performed numerous concerts
nationally and internationally, won prizes at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, were sponsored
by Carnegie Hall and the U.S. Department of State as cultural ambassadors to the Balkan states, and worked with
hundreds of students throughout the U.S. to promote arts education. Jessica performs each summer with the
Eastern Chamber Players in North Carolina, and has performed in various chamber ensembles in such concert
venues as Alice Tully, Merkin, and Weill Halls in New York.
Jessica has also served on the violin and chamber music faculties at San Diego State University, Utah State
University, and the Eastern Music Festival.
Jessica received both the Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in violin performance from the Juilliard
School, where her teachers included Dorothy Delay, Masao Kawasaki, and Joel Smirnoff.
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JANUARY 2015
Notes on the Program
by Dr. Richard E. Rodda
Apotheosis from Journey (2012)
After returning to France, he arranged and composed for
many popular artists, and in 1980 wrote his first film score
for Jean-Luc Godard’s Sauve qui peut la vie (titled in English
Every Man for Himself). Yared has gone on to score more than
seventy French and American feature films, receiving Academy
Award nominations for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Cold
Mountain (2003) and winning both an Oscar, Golden Globe and
Grammy for Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient (1996).
Austin Wintory (born in 1985)
Denver-born Austin Wintory was inspired to become a
composer at age ten when he first heard the score of the biopic
Patton by Oscar-winner Jerry Goldsmith. Wintory started to
compose in high school and went on to study composition at
New York University and USC as preparation for a career that
has come to encompass music for concert, films and video
games. He made history in 2012 when his music for Journey
became the first video game score ever nominated for a
Grammy; he has since won an Academy of Interactive Arts and
Sciences D.I.C.E Award, two British Academy Awards, and the
IGN Entertainment Network’s Overall Music of the Year Award.
In addition to more than two dozen video games, Wintory
has scored some forty feature films and written for orchestra,
wind band, chamber ensembles and solo instruments; he was
Composer-in-Residence with the Boulder Symphony in 2011.
Camille Claudel (1989), directed by Bruno Nuytten, is
based on the troubled life of the eponymous French sculptress,
older sister of poet and diplomat Paul Claudel and student
and lover of Auguste Rodin, who struggled to establish her
own reputation under the shadow of her famous mentor and
ultimately spent her last thirty years in a psychiatric hospital.
The film, starring Isabelle Adjani as Camille and Gérard
Depardieu as Rodin, won five César Awards (the French Oscar)
and was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Foreign
Language Film and Best Actress.
Journey, released in 2012 by Thatgamecompany, is an
award-winning game in which the player controls a robed
figure in a vast desert who travels towards a mountain in the
distance, a metaphor for a life quest. Apotheosis accompanies
the visually stunning final scene.
Black, White and In Between for
Violin and String Orchestra (1998)
Dirk Brossé (born in 1960)
Suite from Camille Claudel (1989)
The Belgian pianist, critic and Leuven Conservatory
faculty member Vincent Goris wrote in his notes for six-CD
compendium of Dirk Brossé’s compositions on EMI, “The
subject of Black, White and In Between is ‘the truth.’ Or better
still: the truth that does not exist. Because the world is
constantly changing. This goes for both thoughts and matter.
Today’s truth may turn out to be tomorrow’s falsity and vice
versa. It is neither black nor white, but rather lies somewhere in
between ...” Black, White and In Between is in a single movement
in two contrasting sections, the first pensive and lyrical, the
second buoyant and virtuosic.
Gabriel Yared (born in 1949)
Gabriel Yared took piano and theory lessons as a youngster
in his native Beirut, Lebanon but largely explored the classical
music literature on his own. He first enrolled in college as a
law student but abandoned the legal profession in 1969 to
study composition at the École Normale de Musique in Paris
with Henri Dutilleux. From 1971 to 1975, Yared lived with his
uncle in Brazil, where he was influenced by the Latin musical
styles and earned his first success as a composer writing songs.
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City Lights (1931)
City Lights was an anomaly, a silent film released when the
“talkies” had made the old visuals-only process all but obsolete.
Chaplin began developing the script and the production early
in 1928 and started filming before the end of the year, just
as the major studios were committing to sound. He resolved
to complete City Lights without spoken dialogue, though he
decided that it should have a synchronized soundtrack with
the score and some sound effects, including one hilarious
gag giving an orating politician the unintelligible voice of a
kazoo. (Chaplin was dismissive of sound films at that time,
telling a reporter he would “give the talkies three years, that’s
all.” He was deeply concerned that developing a voice for his
iconic Tramp character, which would have to speak a specific
language, would adversely affect his gigantic international
audience). He worked on City Lights until September 1930,
painstakingly supervising every aspect of the production, as
he did for all his films (he shot the early scene in which the
Tramp buys a flower from the Blind Girl 342 times), and then
decided to take further advantage of the new possibilities that
sound offered and compose the score himself, his first for one
of his films. City Lights premiered at the Los Angeles Theater on
January 30, 1931 (Albert Einstein and his wife were the guests
of honor) and in New York at the George M. Cohan Theater
the following month. It was received enthusiastically by press
and public alike (“a film worked out with admirable artistry,”
New York Times; “an orgy of laughs,” Los Angeles Examiner)
and earned $5 million in its initial release, a triumphant
acclamation for Chaplin and his work in the midst of the
Great Depression.
Script, Direction and Music by Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
Arranged by Carl Davis (born in 1936)
Charlie Chaplin—actor, producer, director, screenwriter,
composer, Hollywood icon—always had music in his life.
His father (who abandoned the family when Charlie was
still an infant) was a music hall entertainer in London, his
mother a singer; he made his stage debut in 1894, at age five,
filling in for her when she once lost her voice mid-song. His
childhood was difficult—he was placed in a series of bleak
workhouses and residential schools after his mother had to
be institutionalized—and he found much solace in what he
called in his 1922 memoir, My Trip Abroad, “the rare beauty
of music, a beauty that gladdened and haunted me.” At age
eight, he joined a clog-dancing act and later tried out acting (in
William Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes), vaudeville and pantomime,
and taught himself to play violin and cello (both left-handed),
organ and piano, on which he would improvise for hours.
The direction of his career was set in 1913, when he left the
pantomime troupe with which he was touring America to
appear in Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedy films. Chaplin had
already started writing songs by that time, and in 1916 he set
up a music publishing company in Los Angeles to issue his own
works. He made his first starring feature with The Kid in 1921,
and beginning with A Woman of Paris two years later, he created
and published accompaniments that he distributed with his
films, some music borrowed from classical sources or existing
studio libraries, some newly composed. His first complete
original score was for City Lights of 1931, and in speaking of
it he explained his straightforward collaborative process with
arranger and orchestrator Arthur Johnson: “I played it on
the piano or violin, and Arthur Johnson wrote it down.” For
the original releases of his subsequent films and for the new
scores he provided for reissues in later years, Chaplin worked
with such well-trained musicians as Arthur Kay, David Raksin,
Meredith Willson, Skitch Henderson and Eric James.
City Lights has come to be regarded as perhaps Chaplin’s
finest work, a screen classic high on countless “Best Films of
All Time” lists and a selection for preservation in the Library of
Congress’ United States National Film Registry. Orson Welles
and Woody Allen said that City Lights was their favorite film,
George Bernard Shaw (who attended the London premiere in
February 1932 at Chaplin’s invitation) called Chaplin “the only
genius to come out of the movie industry,” and critic James
Agee thought the final scene to be the “greatest single piece
of acting ever committed to celluloid.” In summation, the late
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Roger Ebert wrote, “If only one
of Charles Chaplin’s films could be preserved, City Lights would
come the closest to representing all the different notes of his
genius. It contains the slapstick, the pathos, the pantomime,
the effortless physical coordination, the melodrama, the
bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little Tramp—the
character said, at one time, to be the most famous image
on earth.”
Wrote composer, conductor and arranger Carl Davis,
who has reconstructed Chaplin’s scores for City Lights and The
Gold Rush for modern releases, written new accompaniments
for a dozen of the early Keystone comedies, and provided
the score (partly adapted from Chaplin’s own music) for the
1983 television documentary Unknown Chaplin, “I discovered
that Chaplin—though he was in the strict sense musically
illiterate—was extremely musical in his understanding of what
a score should be and should do. He had a great melodic gift,
largely shaped, I am sure, in the English music halls in which he
spent his early career. Above all, he possessed an extraordinary
sense of rightness in setting music to his films. Charlie’s music
always goes straight to the heart.”
©2014 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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Choo Save!
and
The classics you love.
A great night out.
Terrific Granada seats
start at just $25!
FEBRUARY 14-15, 2015
Valentine’s Day: Triangle of Love
Steven Sloane, guest conductor
Natasha Kislenko, piano
Theatrical Readings by
Ensemble Theatre Company
Robert Schumann • Clara Schumann • Brahms
MARCH 14-15, 2015
Impressions of Spain
Maria Rey-Joly, soprano
Massenet • Rimsky-Korsakov
APRIL 11-12, 2015
The New World
Philippe Quint, violin
Tanaka • Korngold • Dvorˇák
MAY 16-17, 2015
Porgy and Bess
Laquita Mitchell, soprano
Michael Sumuel, bass-baritone
Santa Barbara Choral Society
Dan Redfeld • Howard Hanson
• Gershwin
For Tickets, Call (805) 898-9426 or Visit www.thesymphony.org
©On the Upbeat, JANUARY 2015 VOL. 8, EDITION 3. Published for Symphony Series concert subscribers by the Santa Barbara
Symphony, 1330 State Street, Suite 102, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, (805) 898-9386 — A non-profit organization.
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