Sunday, May 26, 2013

The Oakland Public Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra Announces its 4th Season Under Dr. Sandra I. Noriega

Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church - Barnett Hall - 3534 Lakeshore Avenue, Oakland, CA 94610    
   
Rehearsals are held on Tuesday evenings, 7:00 - 9:30 PM. beginning on June 4th.
Rehearsals are held at OPC,1616 Franklin St., Downtown Oakland.    
Local musicians are welcomed to join the orchestra.  Please be aware there is a $50 registration fee for participation to help cover the costs of operating expenses, sheet music, and security.        
Feel free to share this information with your circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.
For advanced high-school students, participation in the orchestra can be used for community service credit on college applications. Students should meet with the conductor to determine if their skill level is advanced enough to ensure a successful performance. 

To hear recordings of the concert repertoire and download available sheet music, please go to: 


Tuscaloosa Tango
Winner of the 2010 Alabama Orchestra Association Composition Competition, by local Bay Area composer, Daniel Leo Simpson. Simpson is described as an American Composer with a flair for creating "contagious" and engaging music, and specializes in unusual, interesting and dynamic works of every genre. From concerti and symphonies to commercials and film music, he is distinguishing himself as unique in his field.
Tuscaloosa Tango is written in the form of a DOUBLE fugue - very interesting! 

Capriccio Espagñol
by Russian composer, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who initially planned this piece as a fantasy for violin and orchestra but eventually decided on a purely orchestral scoring. Korsakov possessed an exceptional knowledge of the characteristics and capabilities of different instruments, and Capriccio Espagñol strongly supports his reputation as a master orchestrator. Rimsky-Korsakov notes this aspect of the work in his autobiography: "According to my plan, the Capriccio was to glitter with dazzling orchestral color, and clearly I was not mistaken."

Lenox Avenue
William Grant Still

by William Grant Still was originally performed as a CBS radio broadcast in 1936, and  presents a splendid panorama of life in 1930's Harlem. It was composed as a set  of musical vignettes depicting scenes and episodes one might run into on the central street of New York's Harlem, Lenox Avenue. Critics described the work as colorful, graphic, insinuating, a thrilling experience, and exceptionally praiseworthy.     
An October 31, 1937 review in the Los Angeles Times by Isabel Morse Jones states, "Life moves fast on the Lenox Avenue of William Grant Still. There is more real Negro character in it than in all  of Porgy and Bess... as it pictures a street in Harlem that is almost human in its personal characteristics."                                                   
  
Incantation and Dance
for Oboe and Piano by William Grant Still. A professional oboist himself, enthralled with the beauty of the human voice, his music permeates with fluid lyricism. In this work, the melody appears as a reflective piano solo, and the oboe proves the perfect instrument to nurture and develop its introspective qualities.  
Though the tempo picks up in the Dance, the mood remains as somber as it is beautiful. 

Old California
by William Grant Still is a symphonic tone poem, that holds thematic charm by mingling Indian, Spanish and religious motifs, depicting their influence on the historical development of California as a meeting place of racial cultures. Critic Richard Saunders of the Hollywood Citizen-News, 1941, calls it "a work of strong melodic appeal, magnificently orchestrated, worth a permanent place in orchestral repertory." A prolonged ovation was accorded William Grant Still after a fine, initial presentation of this work.
  
For more information, please contact Artistic Director Sandra I Noriega at: 

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