April 29, 2021 :: Trevor Thompson joined the California Symphony team earlier this year to amp up focus on the Sound Minds music education program, which provides intensive music lessons at no cost to students at Downer Elementary School in San Pablo. We checked in with him at the end of his first three months on the job. Q:...
:: Anyone else looking forward to a night at the Symphony? Thanks to your support, it’s something we can soon all look forward to again, perhaps with a renewed sense of appreciation for the awe inspiring experience that is live performance. (Does today’s Symphony Gives Week campaign original poem capture some of the thrill and anticipation...
:: This poem for Symphony Gives Week was inspired by a photo of Sound Minds student Stephanie, reunited with her beautiful, blue cello. When you give during the Symphony Gives Week campaign through May 8 you give opportunity and boost the futures of at-risk local students, as well as supporting the future of the orchestra and...
April 28, 2021 :: On Saturday, May 8, Next Week’s Trees, the first commission for the resident composer Viet Cuong, receives a world premiere like no other in the 30 year history of the California Symphony’s Young American Composer-in-Residence program. Viet’s piece was inspired by a Mary Oliver poem, and so we commissioned a poem celebrating him and all...
:: We’re feeling inspired by the upcoming Poetry in Motion season finale video series, and fittingly, the first custom poem we commissioned for in our poetry-themed Symphony Gives Week fundraising sprint, is dedicated to YOU. Give $100 or more through May 8 and in addition to supporting the future of the orchestra, our acclaimed resident composer...
April 21, 2021 :: Nicholas Phan, tenor, and Meredith Brown, horn, are featured in Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, in the May 22 episode of Poetry in Motion. They talked with us about their careers as musicians, and the experience of being part of this special recording project for California Symphony. Nicholas, you made your 2009 Carnegie...
:: Benjamin Britten (1913—1976)Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings Benjamin Britten’s prodigious compositional output was not matched by an equally robust physical constitution. He suffered through any number of ailments, thus many of his finest works were conceived and composed during hospitalizations or retreats, while others were shaped by illnesses ranging from measles...
:: Arnold Schoenberg (1874—1951)Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)—Version for String Orchestra It opens with a cliché: your basic dark and stormy night. A couple is walking through the forest. The woman has a secret to impart to her new lover: she is pregnant, and not by him. He is, not surprisingly, taken aback by this...
:: Viet Cuong (b.1990)Next Week’s Trees—World Premiere “Light is an invitation to happiness,” wrote beloved poet Mary Oliver in “Poppies”. We could all use such an invitation about now. We’ve been through a period of darkness, of present dread and future fear, a time of foreboding and separation. But such things don’t last....
October 2, 2020 :: American violinist Robyn Bollinger made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut at age twelve. She came to national attention on the radio through her 2014 residency on PRI’s “Performance Today” and several appearances on NPR’s “From the Top.” In 2016, she was a recipient of a prestigious Fellowship from the Annenberg Arts Fellowship Fund. We talked with Bollinger,...
