Orchestra to debut ‘Alaskan Symphony’
Just for us
Who, what, where and when ...
Kenai Peninsula Orchestra presents its 2007 spring concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Renee C. Henderson Auditorium in Kenai and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Mariner Theater in Homer. There will be an accompanying lecture 45 minutes before the show. Tickets are $18, $15 for Raven’s Club members (Pier One Theater), $16 for seniors, $10 for youth or $52 for families, and available at River City Books in Soldotna, Charlotte’s in Kenai and the Homer Bookstore and Etude Studio in Homer.
Los Angeles composer Adrienne Albert speaks to an audience gathered at Tutka Bay for Champagne, Chocolate and Chopin a la Tutka last August before the DeVere Quartet performed a movement from her three-part symphonic work based on the Kenai Peninsula titled "Facing the Elements." The entire work will be performed Saturday in Kenai.
Photos by M. Scott Moon
What would it look like if you put about 200 musicians and choral singers on a high school auditorium stage?
The Kenai Peninsula will find out Saturday when the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra, the Peninsula Community Chorus and the Homer High School Concert Choir step into the spotlights Saturday and Sunday.
The two choirs will join the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra for its spring concert in Kenai and Homer, as part of the orchestra’s 25th anniversary season. The concert will include a world premiere of composer Adrienne Albert’s “An Alaskan Symphony,” under the direction of conductor Mark Robinson.
“We wrote a grant for the Continental Harmony Project through the American Composers Forum, which is an organization funded by the NEA. They send composers-in-residence -- not really living there the whole time, but going to visit -- and then composing in communities in all 50 states and so we got the Alaska grant,” said Robinson of the origin of the brand new symphony.
“The first two movements have been premiered, but on Saturday, we will world premiere all of them as one unit called ‘An Alaskan Symphony,’” he said.
Albert helped KPO find the grant, and the orchestra applied. Robinson was familiar with Albert’s work as a composer and thought she would be the perfect collaborator on the project.
“She’s been up here a number of times, and we tried to give her the experience of the entire Kenai Peninsula. What’s really cool about this composition is that not only is it written for us, as a world premiere commissioned for us, but it’s written about us,” Robinson said.
Albert said she enjoyed the process, which took place over a period of two years. The orchestra arranged for her to experience the full breadth of life on the peninsula.
“I was born in Southern California. I moved to Manhattan for about 20 years, and then I moved back to Los Angeles. Both of those places are extremely urban, and so coming to Alaska and getting an opportunity to just go out and go setnetting and seining and sort of tromping through the woods and looking at bear, moose and all the amazing wildlife that you have here, in addition to taking flights over to Nanwalek and going on the oil rig up around Kenai and Soldotna,” Albert said. “Oh my gosh, I just had so many unique experiences for a city girl.”
Albert attended writers’ groups, spoke at chambers of commerce and stayed in peninsula villages. She visited art galleries and homesteaders, fishermen and oil workers. The spirit of the people developed into the third movement of the symphony.
“This is the thing that pleases me the most: What wowed her the most was the people, and that’s reflected in the composition. The composition is in three movements. The first movement is about the land. And the second
movement is a kind of whimsical movement about the animals of the peninsula. The third movement is about the people,” Robinson said.
There were many experiences to inspire her work, she said, and Albert had to sort through a great wealth of possibilities as she distilled the possibilities into “An Alaskan Symphony.”
“Everything, you know, is in its own time. I couldn’t possibly put into this piece all of the information that I gleaned from my experience there. I just kind of chose what I wanted to write about. I think if I reflected on it at a different time, I would write something quite different. I hope I have that opportunity some day,” she said.
Not only will the orchestra present this world premiere symphony, but also offer Schubert’s “Mass in G” and Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto” with which to bookend the new symphony.
The “Mass in G” will include the full complement of performers, in the tradition of such other collaborative performances from the organization as Mozart’s “Requiem” and Karl Orff’s “Carmina Burana.”
The Beethoven “Triple Concerto” gave longtime orchestra member Maria Allison a chance to include artists she has worked with over the orchestra’s history. Allison will perform the piano solo, Andrew Cook of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will take the cello solo, and Linda Rosenthal of the Sitka Music Festival will solo on violin.
Allison first heard the “Triple Concerto” when she was at the Fairbanks Music Festival.
“I came back to Mark and said, ‘We’ve got to do it sometime,’” she said.
“First of all, the orchestral part, I knew it was something that our orchestra could do well.”
Robinson gave her the go-ahead to find the other two soloists.
“It was kind of like a little reunion,” Allison said.
She looks forward to the concert as having “so much variety and great music for our 25th celebration.”
For more information on Adrienne Albert, or to hear a clip of “Animalogy,” visit www.adriennealbert.com.