2023-2024 SEASON

VENTANA
View Map

Jayce Ogren, Music Director and Conductor

Joshua Roman, cello

The season opens with Ventana. The Ventana Wilderness, part of the Santa Lucia Range in the Los Padres National Forest, was established as part of the Endangered American Wilderness Act in 1978. It is named for the Ventana Double Cone peak which is said to have once had an arch that looked like a ventana (Spanish for "window").

Like that geological ventana, this program provides not only a window into our season but also into composers' use of folk melodies endemic to their country of origin, like in Copland's Variations on a Shaker Melody and Glinka's Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla. As well as the imagined folk music of their homeland, in Grainger's Colonial Song. A 21st-century folk vocabulary is found in the music of Mason Bates, who incorporates elements of American vernacular music, such as blues, jazz and techno in his lively Cello Concerto featuring Joshua Roman who was the soloist for this piece when it premiered in 2014. The concert concludes with Bartók's lively Concerto for Orchestra.

GLINKA Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla [Running Time 5']

Percy GRAINGER Colonial Song [6']

Mason BATES Cello Concerto [25']
Joshua Roman, cello

—intermission [20']—

COPLAND Variations on a Shaker Melody [5']

BARTÓK Concerto for Orchestra [30']

Image of Romanlogo(2)

JOSHUA ROMAN

Joshua Roman is a cellist, accomplished composer and curator whose performances embrace musical styles from Bach to Radiohead. Before setting off on his unique path as a soloist, Roman was the Seattle Symphony's principal cellist - a job he began at just 22 years of age and left only two years later. He has since become renowned for his genre-bending repertoire and wide-ranging collaborations. Roman was named a TED Senior Fellow in 2015. His live performance of the complete Six Suites for Solo Cello by J.S. Bach on TED's Facebook Page garnered nearly one million live viewers, with millions more for his Main Stage TED Talks/Performances, including an improvisational performance with Tony-winner/MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Bill T. Jones and East African vocalist Somi.

A Gramophone review of his 2017 recording of Aaron Jay Kernis's Cello Concerto (written for Roman) proclaimed that "Roman's extraordinary performance combines the expressive control of Casals with the creative individuality and virtuoso flair of Hendrix himself." Recent highlights include performing standard and new concertos with the Colorado, Detroit, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, and San Francisco Symphonies. In addition to his other orchestral appearances Roman has collaborated with the JACK, St. Lawrence, and Verona Quartets and brings the same fresh approach to chamber music projects to his own series, Town Music at Town Hall Seattle.

Joshua Roman's adventurous spirit has led to collaborations with artists outside the music community, including creating "On Grace" with Tony-nominated actor Anna Deavere Smith. His compositions are inspired by sources such as the poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith, and the musicians he writes for, such as the JACK Quartet, violinist Vadim Gluzman, and conductor David Danzmayr. Roman's endeavors outside the concert hall have taken him to Uganda with his violin-playing siblings, where they played chamber music in schools, HIV/AIDS centers and displacement camps.

Image of Bateslogo(2)

MASON BATES

Composer of the Grammy-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, Mason Bates is imaginatively transforming the way classical music is created and experienced as a composer, DJ, and curator. As the first composer-in-residence appointed by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he presented a diverse array of artists on his series KC Jukebox using immersive production and stagecraft. Championed by legendary conductors from Riccardo Muti, Michael Tilson Thomas and Marin Alsop, his symphonic music is the first to receive widespread acceptance for its unique integration of electronic sounds. Named as the most-performed composer of his generation in a recent survey of American music, Bates has also composed for feature film including Gus Van Sant's The Sea of Trees starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts.

Appearing on international stages this season is Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, for animated film and live orchestra. A collaboration with multi-Oscar-winning Gary Rydstrom of Lucasfilm and Jim Capobianco of Aerial Contrivance, the work explores the connection between creativity and technology with the help of a magical Sprite, who flies through instruments as they are played. The soundtrack was recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edwin Outwater for Sony Classical, and the film will soon be available on a major streaming platform.

Recent and upcoming premieres include Whalesong, conducted by Kwamé Ryan and commissioned by the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall London for radio and television broadcast, and a new work for period instruments for Philharmonia Baroque. Acclaimed pianist Daniil Trifonov continues his worldwide tour of Bates' Piano Concerto, with performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France.

Now in its second production, his hit opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which one the 2019 Grammy for Best Opera, goes to Calgary Opera and Utah Opera this season. The concert opener Rhapsody of Steve Jobs, based on the opera, will be heard at Atlanta Symphony after its premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra. A new opera is in the works based on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for the Metropolitan Opera.
    
Highly informed by his work as a DJ, his curatorial approach integrates adventurous music, ambient information, and social platforms in a fluid and immersive way. Working in clubs under the name DJ Masonic, Bates has developed Mercury Soul, a show combining DJing and classical music, to packed crowds with clubs and orchestras around the country. A diverse artist exploring the ways classical music integrates into contemporary cultures, he serves on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.