MEET MVP ANNIE RANZANI – Principal Bassoon
December 7, 2023 :: A recent addition out of USC in her rookie year with the California Symphony, her instrument would be 8.5 feet long without all those kinks… Please meet bassoonist Annie Ranzani!
Mission Minded
Play On!—Donato on Music and Sports
:: Dedication. Practice. Training. The tireless pursuit of excellence, and a commitment to a collective goal… It turns out that professional musicians and athletes have a lot in common! Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera takes us through his conducting play book.
Behind the Bow: Meet Alexandra Simpson, Assistant Principal Violist
October 5, 2023 :: Trailblazing Assistant Principal Violist Alexandra Simpson has performed and taught all over the world, from Bucaramanga, Colombia to Cornwall, England. In addition to acing her California Symphony audition last year, she’s appeared with international superstars including Kygo, Josh Groban, and Michael Bublé, and performed over 100 shows of The Queen’s Ball—A Bridgerton Experience. We sat...
Celebrating MeChicano Pride with Composer Juan Pablo Contreras
September 20, 2023 :: IT’S NOT OFTEN YOU HEAR OF AN ORCHESTRAL COMPOSER WITH EXPERIENCE TURNING TCHAIKOVSKY SCORES INTO HEAVY METAL! WE SAT DOWN WITH MECHICANO COMPOSER JUAN PABLO CONTRERAS TO ASK HIM ABOUT HIS JOURNEY TO BECOMING A MEXICAN AMERICAN CITIZEN, HIS INTRODUCTION TO ORCHESTRAL MUSIC THROUGH FAMILY AS WELL AS THROUGH SYMPHONIC METAL, AND HOW HIS EXPERIENCES HAVE INFORMED HIS UNIQUE...
Music for the Soul: Meet Soloist Kelly Hall-Tompkins
September 14, 2023 :: Former Broadway “Fiddler on the Roof” star Kelly Hall-Tompkins talks with us about performing Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto—a piece she considers to be one of the greatest violin concertos of the 21st century—and about bringing Music Kitchen: Food for the Soul to Walnut Creek. Also covered: wine-tasting in Napa, and how Warner Brothers Cartoons influenced her career choice. ...
A Tuba Family Affair
September 13, 2023 :: Wynton Marsalis uses a drum kit, sousaphone, and other non-traditional orchestra instruments to evoke the spirit of Bourbon St and his native New Orleans in his genre-bending Violin Concerto. We got down to brass tacks with Principal Tuba Forrest Byram to understand the differences between the tuba and the sousaphone, and their less famous love-child,...
CALIFORNIA SYMPHONY ALLIANCE EVENT COMMITTEE RECEIVES ACSO’S MOST VALUABLE PLAYER VOLUNTEER AWARD
September 12, 2023 :: ACSO Press Release, Thursday, July 13, 2023 – The Association of California Symphony Orchestras (ACSO) is pleased to announce that The California Symphony Alliance Event Committee is a recipient of the 2023 Most Valuable Player (MVP) Volunteer Award. ACSO launched the MVP Volunteer Award in 1996 to recognize exemplary volunteers, volunteer projects, and volunteer organizations and...
Program Notes — COPLAND—AMERICAN TRADITIONS
September 5, 2023 :: Juan Pablo Contreras (b. 1987) MeChicano (2022) Juan Pablo Contreras joins a distinguished line of Mexican-born composers who have brought their sensibilities to concert audiences everywhere: consider Carlos Chavez, Silvestre Revueltas, Manuel Ponce, Arturo Marquez, and Gabriela Ortiz, and many others. Contreras brings his own particular approach to fusing Mexican folk music with the Western...
Masterful Melodies: Exploring William Walton’s Best Movie Music
April 18, 2023 :: Composer John Williams’ collaboration with director Stephen Spielberg has produced some of his best film scores. For William Walton, it was a partnership with celebrated British actor and director Laurence Olivier that resulted in some of the composer’s most enduring and iconic works, including soundtracks to four epic film versions of plays by William Shakespeare....
Program Notes — FRESH INSPIRATIONS
April 3, 2023 :: Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 (1844) Hector Berlioz never met an applecart he didn’t want to upset, or an envelope he didn’t want to stretch. It was simply not in his nature to kowtow to prevailing fashion or to acquiesce to the dictates of the proletariat. Nor was he just some obnoxious...