MONTEREY SYMPHONY PERFORMS RACHMANINOFF’S SECOND SYMPHONY AND AMERICAN COMPOSER JOAN TOWER’S CLARINET CONCERTO FEATURING GINGER KROFT BARNETSON WITH MAX BRAGADO CONDUCTING, APRIL 19, 20, AND 21, 2008.

April 4, 2008, Carmel, California: Monterey Symphony music director Max Bragado-Darman will lead the orchestra in the area’s first performance of American composer Joan Tower’s Clarinet Concerto. The soloist will be Monterey Symphony’s principal clarinet Ginger Kroft Barnetson. Also on the program is Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No.2, arguably one of the finest, most romantic, and most popular works he composed.

Single tickets for the Saturday, April 19, 8:00 p.m. performance at Salinas’ Sherwood Hall are $38, $28, $18 and $16 students. For the Stage Door Performance at 3:00 p.m. (final rehearsal) tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door. Single tickets for the Sunday, April 20, 3:00 p.m. and Monday, April 21, 8:00 p.m. concerts at Carmel’s Sunset Theater are $60, $55, $50, $45, and $35—not including Sunset Center’s Facility Use Fee. Visa and MasterCard are accepted. Ticket buyers are urged to call immediately for tickets as the likelihood of sold-out performances is great. Call 831-624-8511 extension "0," for exact seat locations.

The Friends of the Symphony will present guest soloist Ginger Barnetson at a special luncheon held at The Inn at Spanish Bay, on Friday, April 18, from 11:30 to 1:30. The cost of the luncheon is $45.

Ginger Kroft Barnetson is the Principal Clarinet of the Monterey Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, and Carmel Bach Festival, and is a member of the Fresno Philharmonic and Santa Cruz Symphony orchestras. She has collaborated with numerous San Francisco chamber music groups, including the Adorno Ensemble, Bridge Players and the Worn Chamber Ensemble.

Ms. Barnetson is a faculty member at Santa Clara University and maintains a pre-college clarinet studio, ClarinetStudio.org. Ms. Barnetson is a music education advocate and has coached in the public schools for the past 10 years. In 2003, she joined a select few when she was added to the Vandoren International Artists list. Vandoren is a leading maker of clarinet reeds and accessories. Ms. Barnetson plays M13-lyre clarinet mouthpieces with traditional reeds.

Born in Louisville, Ohio, Ms. Barnetson began playing the clarinet in first grade. Her inspiration was her mother, a professional bassoonist. During her pre-college days, Ms. Barnetson was a winner of the Tuesday Musical Club (Akron, OH,) a finalist for the Tilden Prize of the National Arts Club (New York City,) and a featured soloist with the Canton Youth Symphony and Akron Youth Symphony. She was also a member of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra.

Ms. Barnetson attended Northwestern University, studying with Clark Brody (Chicago Symphony) and Russell Dagon (Milwaukee Symphony) and earned a Bachelor of Music degree. She pursued graduate studies at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Then, she studied with the late David Breeden (San Francisco Symphony) and earned a Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she received a departmental award for Distinction in Performance.

As a student, she was invited to lead Master Classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Duquesne University. She was also a concerto competition winner and soloist with the Pittsburgh (PA) Youth Symphony and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Ms. Barnetson began her professional career while in graduate school, winning auditions with the Erie (PA) Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh (PA) Opera.

Looking forward, Ms. Barnetson will be featured as a soloist with the Carmel Bach Festival, performing Mozart’s "Clarinet Concerto," in July 2008.

Joan Tower is among America’s preeminent composers. She was born in New Rochelle, New York on September 6, 1938. She studied music as a child and attended Bennington College in Vermont and Columbia University where she earned a PhD in 1967. She was pianist for the Da Capo Chamber Players from 1969 to 1984. Throughout the 1980's, she was closely associated with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and its then music director Leonard Slatkin. She is currently Asher Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College where she has taught since 1972.

Known for her inventive structural forms and vivid imagery, New Yorker magazine called her "one of the most successful woman composers of all time." In 1990, Ms. Tower became the first woman to receive the Grawemeyer Award in Composition which carries with it one of the largest cash prizes given to a composer. She was inducted in 1998 into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters and into the Academy of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University in the fall of 2004.

Most recently, Joan Tower was the first composer chosen for the ambitious new Ford Made in America commissioning program, a collaboration of the League of American Orchestras and Meet the Composer. The work, entitled Made in America, went on to performances in every state in the Union during the 2005-07 seasons. The Nashville Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin recorded Made in America, Tambor, and Concerto for Orchestra for the Naxos label. The top-selling recording won three 2008 Grammy awards: Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance.

Her compositions cross many genres: Can I (2007) for youth chorus and two percussionists; Copperwave (2006), written for the American Brass Quintet and commissioned by the Juilliard School of Music; Fascinating Ribbons (2001), her foray into the world of band music, premiered at the annual conference of College Band Directors; Vast Antique Cubes/Throbbing Still (2000), a solo piano piece for John Browning; Big Sky (2000), a piano trio premiered by David Finckel, Wu Han, and Chee-Yun; Tambor (1998), for the Pittsburgh Symphony under the baton of Mariss Jansons; and Wild Purple (1998) for violist Paul Neubauer. Tower's 1990 Grawemeyer Award-winning Silver Ladders was written during her 1985-88 Saint Louis Symphony residency, and was subsequently choreographed in 1998 by Helgi Tomasson and the San Francisco Ballet.

This is the first time that the Monterey Symphony has ever presented a work by Joan Tower and only the third time a female composer has been scheduled. (The first was in January 2001 with Hilary Tann’s Here, The Cliffs and the second in November 2001 with Cecille Chaminade’s Concertino for Flute and Orchestra.) Rachmaninoff’s glorious Second Symphony has been performed by the Monterey Symphony only once before, February 1989 with Clark Suttle, conducting.

The Monterey Symphony, under the artistic leadership of Max Bragado, is the only fully-professional orchestra serving the communities of the Monterey Bay, Salinas, Salinas Valley, Big Sur, and San Benito County. It provides triple performances of a seven-concert subscription series at Carmel’s Sunset Theater and Salinas’ Sherwood Hall, annual holiday concerts, and an extensive youth activities program, including more than 200 visits to classrooms by musicians, which culminates in concerts by the full orchestra for school children.

The Monterey Symphony is a nonprofit, public benefit corporation, supported, in part, through the fundraising efforts of the Friends of the Monterey Symphony; and grants from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Harden Foundation, The Robert and Virginia Stanton Fund at the Community Foundation for Monterey County, The William and Flora Hewlitt Foundation, The Monterey Peninsula Foundation, The General Endowment Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County, The Chapman Foundation, The Communities Advancing the Arts Initiative of the Community Foundation of Monterey County, The McGraw-Hill Companies, The Nunes Company, Upjohn California Fund, and many other generous foundations and individual donors.

The next performances by the Monterey Symphony will take place on May 19, 20, and 21. For additional information, please call 831-624-8511 or visit our web site:

www.montereysymphony.org.

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MONTEREY SYMPHONY 62^nd SUBSCRIPTION SEASON 2007-2008

Max Bragado-Darman, conductor

Ginger Kroft Barnetson, clarinet

　Saturday, April 19, 2008, 8:00 p.m. Sherwood Hall, Salinas

Sunday, April 20, 2008, 3:00 p.m. Sunset Theater, Carmel

Monday, April 21, 2008, 8:00 p.m. Sunset Theater, Carmel

PROGRAM

Joan Tower Clarinet Concerto featuring Ginger Kroft Barnetson, clarinet

(1938- )

Ginger Kroft Barnetson’s appearance and all costs related to the presentation of Joan Tower’s Clarinet Concerto have been generously underwritten by Monterey Symphony president Janet McDaniel and her husband Laine McDaniel.

This program will be broadcast on KUSP 88.9 FM on Sunday, May 11, 2008, 11:00　a.m.