2023-2024 SEASON

Jayce Ogren, Music Director and Conductor

Lara Downes, piano

Yamaha CFX concert grand piano provided by Yamaha Corporation of America

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PLEASE NOTE: The Sunday, February 18 Concert has very limited seats remaining.

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Concert three, Palo Corona meaning Crown Tree, is a concert about transformation, transcendence, salvation, and overcoming personal setbacks. Weber's Der Freischütz is a story about the redeeming power of love. Jennifer Higdon's Blue Cathedral represents one's travels over a lifetime and toward the afterlife. Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 embodies bacchic, dance qualities, to the extent that Richard Wagner called it "The Apotheosis of Dance."  All of these pieces reveal the deep and sometimes mystical connections between the natural and supernatural worlds. This concert also features a world premiere of a Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Monterey Symphony Composer in Residence John Wineglass with trailblazing pianist Lara Downes.

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WEBER Overture to Der Freischutz [Running Time 9']

John WINEGLASS The Great Migration: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra [20']
Lara Downes, piano

—intermission [20']—

Jennifer HIGDON blue cathedral [12']

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 [30']

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LARA DOWNES

Honored as 2022 Classical Woman of the Year by Performance Today, American pianist Lara Downes has been called "a musical ray of hope" by NBC News and "an explorer whose imagination is fired by bringing notice to the underrepresented and forgotten" (The Log Journal). An iconoclast and trailblazer, her dynamic work as a sought-after soloist, a Billboard Chart-topping recording artist, a producer, curator, arts activist and advocate positions her as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene. Lara's musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, excavating a broad landscape of music to create a series of acclaimed performance and recording projects that serve as gathering spaces for her listeners to find common ground and shared experience.

Lara's recent and upcoming onstage adventures include guest appearances with The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Pops, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, with recitals and residencies at Ravinia, the Gilmore Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, Washington Performing Arts, Caramoor, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the Cabrillo Festival, and Oregon Bach Festival, among others.

Lara enjoys creative collaborations with an eclectic range of artists including folk icon Judy Collins, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, musical multi-hyphenate Rhiannon Giddens, former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, author John McWhorter, Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell, baritone Thomas Hampson, and violinist Daniel Hope. Her close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations, with premieres and commissions coming from Adolphus Hailstork, Jennifer Higdon, Billy Childs, Paola Prestini, Arturo O'Farrill, Gerald Clayton, Jimmy Lopez-Bellido, Teddy Abrams, Clarice Assad, and many others.

Lara's adventurous approach to concept and curation have created a unique series of acclaimed recordings, including her 2023 release Love at Last on the Pentatone label, which reached #1 on the Billboard Classical Chart and was featured as an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. In 2022, Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered, also reached the top of the Billboard chart and was featured in the New York Times and on NPR's Morning Edition.

Other recent albums include Florence Price: Piano Discoveries, a world-premiere recording of recently discovered piano works by that groundbreaking composer; and Some of These Days, a collection of freedom songs and spirituals reflecting on social justice, progress and equality. In 2019 For Love Of You marked Lara's concerto recording debut, celebrating the 200th birthday of the great pianist and composer Clara Schumann. In 2017, her Sony Classical release For Lenny was awarded the Classical Recording Foundation Award, and America Again was selected by NPR as one of "10 Albums that Saved 2016."  

Lara is a highly visible media presence in her role as the creator and host of AMPLIFY with Lara Downes, an NPR Music series now in its third season, featuring intimate, profoundly personal video conversations with visionary Black artists and cultural leaders who are shaping our creative present and future. She is a frequent guest on national programs including NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, City Lights and Performance Today, and she serves as Resident Artist for Classical KDFC in San Francisco and Classical KUSC in Los Angeles. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sphinx Venture Fund, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among others.

Lara is the creator and curator of Rising Sun Music, a recording series that shines light on the music and stories of Black composers over the past 200 years, featuring her collaborations with a wide range of leading instrumentalists and vocalists, including Davóne Tines, Will Liverman, Nicole Cabell and Regina Carter.

Lara's fierce commitment to activism and advocacy brings her working with organizations including the ACLU, Feeding America, and Headcount, a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy.

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JOHN WINEGLASS

JOHN CHRISTOPHER WINEGLASS has written several scores for shows on MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC as well as documentaries on Headliners & Legends with Matt Lauer for The Brady Bunch, Kathy Lee Gifford and Farah Fawcett.  Having scored mainly independent films, several of his nationally syndicated commercials include music for the United States Army, American Red Cross and Texaco as well. As a recipient of three (two consecutive) ®Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition for a Drama Series, and three ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards, Mr. Wineglass holds seven ®EMMY nominations.

In the classical music genre he has garnered commissions from the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music w/Maestra Marin Alsop to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, with The Washington Post describing his concert-hall work as having 'iridescent colors in the world premiere of a beautifully crafted suite' while conductor Marvin Hamlisch introduces and congratulates the occasion by commenting '… with a name like Wineglass, it had to be good.'

Wineglass's 'iridescent' (WP) compositions are inspired by the beauty of creation and the splendor of nature - as well as bringing to light social issues of the past and present. Recent commissioned works in the 2018-2019 season alone included four symphonic works – two with full SATB chorus.  He has received major commissions from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Pittsburgh Foundation, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Benjamin Harris Memorial Fund, The Heinz Foundation and the Opportunity Fund.

His latest symphonic 2019 premiere of three movements, Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice was dedicated to the lives of millions and numerous contributions of African and African-American forced laborers who cultivated the immense, expansive, and particularly wealthy rice economy in the Lowcountry. With a libretto and extensive research by historian Dr. Edda Fields-Black of Carnegie-Mellon University, this work has taken them with a team of researchers and film documentarians from the shores of South Carolina to the inner villages of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia.  A 2020-2021 (pre-COVID) world premiere of six movements with full chorus in Washington, DC in conjunction with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) where Dr. Fields-Black has an installation is planned accompanied by the moving images by LA-based filmmaker and director Julie Dash. 
  
John received his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Composition with a minor in Viola Performance at The American University and later received his master's degree in Music Composition with an emphasis in Film Scoring for Motion Pictures, Television and Multi-Media at New York University, studying primarily with Justin Dello-Joio of the Juilliard School.