A Lavish Outpouring of Talent By Bryce Christensen ““If you have a talent,” said the Irish poet Brendan Francis, “use it in every which way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.” A quintet of highly talented young musicians were lavishly sharing—not hoarding—their rare talents on the stage of Cedar City’s Heritage Center on the night of April 23rd, as they performed a rich variety of classical music for an appreciative audience. As featured soloists for the Orchestra of Southern Utah’s annual Roy L. Halversen Young Artist Concert, these five musicians—Anna Sun, Aubrey Shirts, Elise, Read, Ben Bradshaw, and Mike Wallace—offered powerful evidence that the vibrant local musical tradition that Roy Halversen did so much to foster during his more than four decades of music teaching and directing is alive and well. Performing first on the program, fourteen-year-old Anna Sun played the third movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto, Op. 25. No. 1 with a poise and deftness astounding in a musician so young. Dancing skillfully over the keys, her fingers produced an irresistible cascade of radiant beauty. Always an inspiring presence, OSU director Xun Sun beamed with quite visible and well-justified pride as he directed the Orchestra in accompanying his gifted daughter. As Sun yielded the orchestra baton to guest conductor Alec Mariana, clarinetist Aubrey Shirts, a junior in music education at SUU, moved into the soloist’s limelight as she played the third movement of Carl Maria von Weber’s Concerto, Op. 74. Ms. Shirts fully captured the restless energy pervading most of this spritely number, yet still handled with perfect grace the short passages of liquid serenity. The spotlight next shifted to vocalist Elise Renee Read, another music major at SUU, who performed “Oh Mio Babbino Caro” from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and “Addio Donde Lieta Usci” from Puccini’s La Boheme. Ms. Read’s marvelously resonant soprano voice rendered both numbers with an impassioned fervor, soaring effortlessly into empyreal heights. As the final youth soloists of the evening, bassoonists Ben Bradshaw and Michael Wallace, both music students at SUU, joined their woodwind talents as a duet to play Johan Baptist Wanhal’s Concerto in F Major. Pouring forth a wealth of mellow and elegant harmonies, this duo together plumbed the majestic profundity of their deep-toned instrument. After the intermission, the lavish outpouring of individual talents gave way to an equally lavish torrent of collective talent, as Xun Sun again took up the baton to lead the Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 (1st and 2nd movements with 4th movement coda). To be sure, this evocative number did feature two more memorable solos—a poignantly liquid clarinet solo, again showcasing Ms. Shirt’s exceptional talents, and a plaintive and mournful French horn solo by Pete Akins. But only the full resources of the orchestra could master the daunting challenge of a composition combining a wide range of musical effects. It was not for nothing that critic Harold C. Schonberg regarded Tchiakovsky as "a sweet, inexhaustible, supersensuous fund of melody,” and mining the inexhaustible supersensousness of the Russian composer’s work requires a complete and well-prepared orchestra. Indeed all the orchestra’s resources—the piercing summons of the brass, the stirring cadences of the drums, the hypnotic seductions of the strings, and the fluid sonority of the woodwinds—did come together, sometimes in fusion, sometimes in counterpoint, in the course of this wonderful performance. And what a musical ride the orchestra gave the audience, moving from the grave and somber opening strains into a veritable eruption of instrumental fury, and then subsiding again into brooding suspense! The audience could only marvel at how the same talents that enabled the orchestra musicians to play with courtly and regal dignity one moment could just a few minutes later enable them to overwhelm their listeners with a passage of scalding white heat. By the time the orchestra had played the final regal notes, the audience knew it had experienced something quite rare. And as listeners exited the concert hall, they were acutely and gratefully aware that remarkable musicians had shared their talents with truly lavish generosity. Podcast hostess: Sandy Hedgecock Recording by; Ken Hedgecock Graphics used by permission: Rollan Fell and the Print Shoppe, Cedar City

In their annual Easter concert, the Mastersingers perform:
Handel: Hallelujah, Amen
Because I Have Been Given Much
Come Follow Me
Easter Parade
Our Savior's Love
I Know That My Redeemer Lives
Abide With Me, 'Tis Eventide
The Lord Is My Shepherd
Panis Angelicus
Thou Art Repose
God Bless America

Guest performers Pete and Melody Barrie sing:
Because He Lives
accompanied by Nancy Beckstrom

Mastersingers accompanist performs:
Hymns of Nature

Podcast Hostess: Sandy Hedgecock
Recorded by: Ken Hedgecock

Winter Concert to Include US Premiere Performance

The Orchestra of Southern Utah will perform their annual Winter Concert on Thursday, February 26th, at 7:30 pm at the Heritage Center in Cedar City. The concert will be conducted by OSU Music Director and Conductor Xun Sun. The major sponsor is the Sterling and Shelli Gardner Foundation.

The Orchestra of Southern Utah will perform the United States premiere performance of “One World Concerto for Marimba and Strings” by Matthias Schmitt of Germany. Schmitt’s Norwegian publisher suggested he compose the concerto in 2003. “My first thought was ‘what a great challenge,’” Schmitt commented. Schmitt combined the influences of Latin, Pop, choral, classical guitar and marimba to create “One World.”

The world premiere performance of “One World” was performed in 2004 in Austria by Polish Marimba-Virtuouso Katarzyna Mycka. Schmitt conducted the orchestra for the premier.

Patrick Roulet returns to Cedar City as the marimba soloist for the “One World Concerto” on February 26th. A leading percussion educator, performer, and clinician, Roulet has appeared with many professional orgranizations, including the Seattle Symphony, the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, the Boston Civic Orchestra, and the American Sinfonietta. As a soloist, he has performed with the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet, Indian tabla virtuoso Sandip Burman, and the Dimitri Polrovsky Russian Folk Ensemble. Roulet taught as an adjunct instructor for 10 years at Western Washington University prior to joining the Music Department staff at Southern Utah University. He taught at SUU for four years before becoming Director of Percussion Studies at Towson University in Maryland.

OSU will also welcome special guests the SUU Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Lynn Vartan. The Ensemble will perform “Jug Heads” by Michael Aukofer, and “Vous avez du feu?” by Emmanual Sejourne. The Ensemble’s use of occasionally inventive instruments has delighted local audiences throughout their performance season.

The concert also includes the popular Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Dukas, Hungarian March by Berlioz, and the haunting In the Steppes of Central Asia by Borodin. The exotic English horn solo in this piece will be performed by Virginia Stitt.

Sandy and Ken also go over this week's comments after the concert.

Podcast hostess: Sandy Hedgecock
Recording Engineer: Ken Hedgecock
Graphics by: The Print Shoppe (used by permission)

This week we explore the harmonica delights of Robert Bonfiglio and the humorous anecdotes of musician/author Justin Locke of the Boston Pops.

Musical Magic New and Old
By Bryce Christensen
“A whole new realm of accessible and emotionally compelling classical music . . . is now being composed,” music critic Peter Gelb exclaimed recently. Gelb is indeed very excited that “after 50 years of being bludgeoned by inaccessible new music,” music lovers can now share in “classical music [that] can once again move forward boldly and creatively and acquire larger audiences than ever before.” The kind of compelling new classical music that so delights Gelb, the kind full of promise for enlarging audiences, resounded in Cedar City’s Heritage Center last Thursday night (Nov. 13th) as the Orchestra of Southern Utah (OSU) premiered a powerful new composition by composer and SUU professor Keith Bradshaw.
Entitled Mind Matters, Bradshaw’s new number reflected its composer’s fascination with the dark poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, evoking a mood of profound unease and anxiety. An opening of eerie disquiet created an atmosphere of persistent unease, with hints of a brooding threat sustained by the gravelly rumble of the Bass section. This murky gloom, however, then metamorphosed into the restless strivings of a memorable string climax. Accessible and yet anything but saccharine, such intense new classical music can only amplify OSU’s already considerable appeal for area music lovers.
Complementing the adventure of new music, OSU’s Fall Concert also delivered luminous performances of works with long-established reputations for spell-binding audiences. Indeed, the concert started with the well-known The Unanswered Question by the pioneering American composer Charles Ives. Beginning with string notes so subdued as to be almost inaudible, Ives’ masterpiece induces a mood of profound meditation on life’s deepest uncertainties, a meditation punctuated by the piercing brass notes of a solo trumpeter located not with the orchestra on the stage but rather high above in the balcony. Also unsettling the pensive contemplation fostered by Ives’ music were the fluttering notes of the featured flute section, their restive probings suggestive of the human mind’s struggle to resolve life’s mysteries. Thoughtful listeners were left wondering how such sophisticated music ever originated with a composer working in a country still regarded as a brash upstart on the global musical scene.
Much less metaphysical, the last number before intermission—Bruckner’s ‘Romantic’ Symphony Number 4--transported listeners to the age of medieval chivalry, a stirring French horn solo first articulating the theme by conjuring the heroic idealism of a bygone era. Moving gracefully from interludes of sweet sonority to passages of dramatic tension, taut with the conflict of titanic struggle, OSU musicians and director Xun Sun once again demonstrated their remarkable versatility. Though it highlighted a single French horn soloist to open and then drew on the combined talents of the entire French horn section in its magnificent finale, Bruckner’s marvelous symphony remarkably ultimately fused all the resources of the orchestra--wind and string, brass and percussion—in its majestic measures. In the enchantment of such fusion, listeners might well have recalled just why critic Ludwig Speidel once said of the work of Anton Bruckner: “It is no common mortal who speaks to us in this music.”
It was not Brucker but it was the music of more than common mortals that mesmerized listeners during the second half of the concert. As the evening’s marquee soloist, pianist Kirill Gliadkovsky delivered a truly inspiring interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number 1. An immensely gifted musician, Gliadkovsky transformed mere piano notes into an irresistible voice of lyric passion. Alive to Tchaikovsky’s every artistic nuance, Gliadovsky’s deft hands were alternately sensitively languid and thunderingly insistent: listeners thrilled now to the delicate notes of a chiming bell, and now to the overwhelming force of a cavalcade. Is it any wonder that at the conclusion of his tour de force performance, the audience immediately leaped to their feet in a prolonged standing ovation? Gliadkovsky responded to this warm ovation repaid by performing a dazzling encore rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor, a generous parting gift to very appreciate listeners.
Though nothing impressed itself upon the audience’s collective mind more forcefully than Gliadovsky’s stunning musical wizardry, the OSU musicians who accompanied this brilliant guest soloist played with a fire and artistry that wonderfully complemented his performance. Once again, conductor Xun Sun had the entire ensemble prepared to captivate their listening audience with impressive mastery of richly memorable music. Once again, listeners left the Heritage Center savoring the mental echoes of breathtaking music—new and old.

Podcast Hostess: Sandy Hedgecock
Recording/Mixing: Ken Hedgecock
Photo: Kirill Gliadkovsky

This New Year's podcast features the wonderful Master Singers (Men's choir) singing selections from their Christmas concert and ends with OSU's stunning performance of the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony (Ode to Joy) featuring the Cedar City Community Chorale. What a great way to start off 2009!

Following the concerts, Sandy and Ken go over this week's listener comments, a favorite with our listeners from week to week.

Don't miss this wonderful New Year's podcast!

Lost in Houston, Found in Cedar City: Handel’s Messiah Comes to the Heritage Center
By Bryce Christensen
Stuck in balmy LA, Bing Crosby famously dreamed of finding his White Christmas up north. Americans caught in culturally deprived Houston might well have been dreaming in recent days of finding their true Christmas out west—here in Cedar City. For while Houston officials responded to 2008 budget shortfalls by cancelling the city’s annual production of Handel’s masterpiece The Messiah, Cedar City’s Orchestra of Southern Utah (OSU) and Messiah chorus once again thrilled over 1600 listeners with this irreplaceable musical reminder of the reason for the season.
Part of Cedar City’s Christmas celebration now for more than six decades, Handel’s heavenly harmonies filled the Heritage Center on the nights of Sunday, December 13th, and Monday, December 14th. From the measured dignity of the opening “Overture” to the inspiring benediction of “Worthy is the Lamb That Was Slain,” this year’s OSU Messiah delighted listeners with the genius of the composer, the talent of the performers.
The scores of singers who made up the choir for the event rendered the familiar scores with remarkable feeling and intensity, their success in translating each number into memorable live music a credit to their gifted director, Adrianne J. Tawa. Particularly notable was the impressive majesty of the choir’s “For Unto Us a Child Is Born” and the irresistible strength of “Glory to God.” Also noteworthy was the innovative placement of some singers in the balcony for “Lift Up Your Voices, O Ye Gates,” so delivering a beautiful real-voice version of Surround Sound.
Moving when united, the voices of the choir were just as compelling in solo, with six individual choir members taking turns before the soloist’s microphone. Listeners were transfixed by soprano Bethany Brinton’s poised and pitch-perfect handling of Isaiah’s prophetic words in “Behold! A Virgin Shall Conceive,” and they were transported by the tremulous joy of soprano Lara Neves in “And the Angel Said Unto Them” and in “And Suddenly There Was With the Angel.” Bringing together a wonderfully complementary pair, “He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd” featured first the liquid gracefulness of soprano Sarah Maxwell and then the soaring flight of soprano Shelly Merryweather. Something almost angelically celestial sustained soprano Amy Einerson in the marvelous “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.”
The only male vocalist to solo during the performance, bass Brent Hunter brought to his text in “The Trumpet Shall Stand” a profound sobriety that forcefully underscored the stirring summons of the trumpet—played with sure mastery by Robert Carnesecca, Gary Player, and Austin Robinson. (The pleasure of hearing Hunter’s deep register may, however, have stirred in some listeners a question: Why, in a year when male membership in the choir was definitely up, was he the only male soloist?)
Though marvelous, the human voices who delivered the scriptural themes of The Messiah, drew much of their artistic force from the accompanying orchestra. String and brass, percussion and wind—the combined talents of OSU musicians came together in a magnificent outpouring of musical passion. So grateful were they for that outpouring that concert listeners were not content just to imitate the example of George II in standing during the incomparable “Hallelujah!” chorus. No, when the concert was over, they were again instantly on their feet, loud in their applause for the gifted and generous group of musicians who had so memorably enriched their holiday season.
Among the musicians—vocal and instrumental--deserving such applause, June Decker Thorley was singled out for special recognition at the concert. Currently the section leader for the Second Violins, Thorley has lent her considerable talents to the Orchestra of Southern Utah for over sixty years, during which time she has tutored many of the area’s top instrumentalists. Cedar City’s lovers of music should indeed praise Thorley for what she has done for the area’s cultural life for a very long time. They should also praise the man under whose baton Thorley currently plays: namely, OSU director Xun Sun, who demonstrated yet again in this concert that Southern Utah gained a great Chinese treasure when he arrived here a few years ago. On this particular occasion, Sun and the ensemble he directs were able to bless well over a thousand listeners through the generosity of the Leavitt Group and State Bank of Southern Utah, sponsors for this free-admission concert. May neither of these companies ever relocate to Houston!

Sandy and Ken go over this week's comments following the concert.

Podcast Hostess: Sandy Hedgecock
Recording/Mixing: Ken Hedgecock

A Cornucopia of Talent

By Bryce Christensen

“I firmly believe,” declared John Philip Sousa, “that we have more latent musical talent in America than there is in any other country. But to dig it out there must be good music throughout the land, a lot of it.” Had the famed composer been in Cedar City’s Heritage Center the evening of September 18th, he would have marveled at how much this particular part of America has been blessed with musical talent that has fully matured, and is not merely latent. He would certainly have been thrilled by a concert delivering inspiringly good music, a lot of it. For a truly impressive range of talent was on display at this year’s Talent Showcase, hosted by the Orchestra of Southern Utah.

The evening’s outpouring of talent began with Mozart’s Concerto No 2. in E flat major, with Cedar City’s own Johnny Gallis soloing on the French horn. Currently an undergraduate in math education at SUU, Gallis’s deft handling of this number’s melodic yet rousing refrains gave ample evidence that this math student understands much more than derivatives and integrals.

Another Cedar City resident, vocalist Steve Downs next captured the soloist’s spotlight with his beguiling performance of a couple Western numbers. Some in the audience may have viewed it as piquantly incongruous that a guitar-strumming cowboy—complete with ten-gallon-hat--was singing to the accompaniment of a full symphony orchestra. But the unlikely fusion yielded marvelous results: Downs’ first number, “The Red Hills of Utah” by Marty Robins, transported the audience into the geographic splendors that originally inspired the song. And in his second piece, ”Grandma Took the Train,” Downs shared one of his own compositions, a poignant musical tale of how his own orphaned grandmother traveled to the valleys of Utah as part of a wagon train.

The mood changed when violinist Tracy Bu from Las Vegas took her turn as soloist. With an instrumental mastery that evoked all the drama and pathos of Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen,” Bu delivered a performance taut with passion and emotion. Soaring to celestial heights, she stirred the soul’s most ardent longing before finally dissolving in the fevered frenzy of Sarasate’s concluding freneticism.

As the evening’s second vocalist, Jackie Riddle-Jackson (choir leader and voice instructor at SUU ) invoked the magic of three folk numbers: the plaintive “Maid Who Sold Her Barley,” the mournful “Dark-Eyed Sailor,” and finally the rollicking “Mormon Boys.” In this folk triptych, Riddle-Jackson moved with impressive poise from sweet melancholy to bouncy exuberance, beguiling her audience with her interpretive range.

As the last pre-Intermission soloist, Doyle Armbrust (a welcome visitor from Chicago) rendered Bruch’s “Romanze, Op. 85” with nuanced sensitivity, invoking a mood of pensive tenderness as he lifted listeners out of a world of harried routine.

OSU director and conductor Xun Sun deserves high praise both for assembling the marvelous ensemble of soloists featured during the first half of this concert and for preparing the orchestra to accompany them in diverse styles of music. Sun also merits applause for his decision to make the second half of the concert a centenary tribute to the composing talent of American composer Leroy Anderson (1908-1975). “An American treasure, unjustly neglected,” in the eyes of music critic Henry Fogel, Anderson was not neglected this night! Indeed, under the baton of assistant conductor Joel Neves, OSU musicians delivered the buoyant music of this American master with delightful verve. Included among the nine Anderson numbers performed was the spritely and irrepressible “Bugler’s Holiday” and the captivating “Blue Tango.” Likewise memorable was “A Trumpeter’s Lullaby,” featuring the considerable talents of soloist Gary Player, whose soothing phrases gracefully transmuted the trumpet’s normally piercing tones into pacifying calm.

But for sheer fun, nothing could top the final number, Anderson’s amusing version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” alive with diverting imitations of a half-dozen farmyard creatures. An audience deeply moved a few minutes earlier by the emotive power of Mozart, Sarasate, and Bruch found itself carried away by the utter whimsy of musical horseplay.

Sousa was not there for this Thursday night concert. But somewhere his shade must have been looking on with approval, knowing that “good music, a lot of it,” not only manifests the powers of well-developed talent but also inspires the cultivation of more such talent, as yet latent.

Sandy and Ken also go over this week's comments

Also, a new friend of OSU, Victor Goldberg performs Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 5.

Your podcast hostess: Sandy Hedgecock
Recording Engineer: Jamie Bayer
Mixing: Ken Hedgecock
Program Cover: Orchestra of Southern Utah

The Master Singers will join 10 other talented musicians to perform at the Orchestra of Southern Utah Anything Goes Recital on Tuesday, October 12th at 7:30 pm. The recital will take place at St. Jude’s Episcopal Church, located at 70 North 200 West in Cedar City.
The Master Singers, under the direction of James Harrison and accompanied by Roland Williams, will perform two pieces during the recital: “Thou Gracious God, Whose Mercy Lends” and “Bring Him Home.” The text of “Thou Gracious God, Whose Mercy Lends” was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is sung to an English Folk Tune. The Master Singers rendition of this piece was arranged by Hal Campbell. "Bring Him Home" is from the Tony award-winning musical Les Miserables. The song was composed by Claude-Michel Schoenberg, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer and Alain Boublil.
The Master Singers were first organized in 1947 under the direction of Edward Sandgren. Irene Hyatt was the first accompanist; with Virginia Larson accompanied the group later. There were seventy five men in the original chorus, and the group toured all over the state of Utah. This all-male chorus remained an active musical group in Southern Utah throughout the 1950s and 1960s and sang briefly in the early 1970s.
Then in 1997, 20 of the original members came together to sing for the SUU Centennial and the Pioneer Trek Sesquicentennial. This reorganization of the Master Singers was also a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the group. The group has been a well-loved part of the Festival City ever since.
Ten other musicians will perform at the Anything Goes Recital.
Caitlin Robbins will perform “Concerto #5 1st Movement” by Mozart and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” from the American Folk Opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. Caitlin began studying the Suzuki Method of violin at the age of four. She has toured Europe with several string ensembles and performed a solo recital in the Assembly Hall on LDS Temple Square during the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 2005, Caitlin was featured as a soloist for the OSU Roy L. Halversen Young Artist Concert and recorded two violin pieces for the CD entitled “Who Am I.” Caitlin will be accompanied by Dixie Morrell.
Kristin Mabb, Mary Fox and Laura Hailstone will sign “Anything Goes,” written by Cole Porter and arranged by Kristin. The song was originally introduced in the 1934 Broadway Musical Anything Goes.
Johnny Gallis will play “Concerto in B-flat Major, Op 91” by Reinhold Gliere. Johnny recently performed as a French horn soloist during the OSU Talent Showcase on September 18th at the Heritage Center. He will be accompanied by Mary Anne Andersen.
Fred Dunnell will sing “Memory” from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats and “Ragtime.” He will be accompanied by Teri Kenney.

Sandy and Ken go over this week's comments following the recital.

We also give you a sneak peak at the upcoming podcast of the Orchestra of Southern Utah's Fall Concert.

Your podcast hostess: Ssndy Hedgecock
Sound/Mixing: Ken Hedgecock

SARA DAVIS BUECHNER is a classical concert pianist whose performances and recordings have garnered acclaim on four continents. Career highlights include winning prizes in many of the world's most prestigious competitions, appearing with prominent orchestras world-wide, and an extensive list of recordings on major CD labels, MP-files, and Yamaha software systems.

HER EXTENSIVE CLASSICAL REPERTOIRE includes over 100 different piano concertos spanning the breadth of keyboard music from Bach to the music of prominent composers of our time. Her affinities range from Mozart (InTune magazine: "the closest thing to a perfect disc of Mozart piano music known") to Chopin to Busoni (a friend of the Busoni family, she studied with several of his important pupils) to Japanese music to Ragtime, Novelty Classics and Gershwin (Deseret News: "the greatest performance of Rhapsody in Blue I have ever heard"). She has composed several suites for piano as well as music for chamber ensemble and voice. And she is also one of the very few concert pianists today who can perform original scores to silent movies, like "Ben Hur" (150 minutes non-stop!) at New York's Lincoln Center.

MS. BUECHNER lives in beautiful Vancouver, Canada, where she is Associate Professor of Piano and Piano Literature at the University of British Columbia. She is in great demand as an adjudicator for important piano competitions and festivals, and presents lectures, workshops and masterclasses worldwide, from the Royal Academy in London to the Juilliard School to the Kobe-Yamate Gakuen in Osaka, Japan.

SARA is a dazzling pianist and witty speaker, with a gregarious personality that leaps from the stage. In informal concerts she will chat delightfully about her cosmopolitan range of interests -- from baseball and classic cartoons, to New York art deco architecture and Japanese kabuki -- to connect with her audience on an intimate level, and make her music a personal and enchanting experience for everyone.

SARA DAVIS BUECHNER in solo recital, as soloist with orchestra, in collaboration with dance or film... will be an evening of musical enchantment long remembered and treasured by audiences wherever she appears.

Following this week's highlight, Sandy and Ken go over this week's listener comments.

As an extra bonus, at the end of the Podcast, we also feature Sara performing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Podcast hostess: Sandy Hedgecock
Sound Engineer: Ken Hedgecock
Sara's notes and photos used by permission.