Concerts will focus on specific country
By Mary Barber, Jackson
Citizen Patroit, Staff Writer
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Joel Shaner will be a soloist at the upcoming concert.
- Who: Jackson Symphony Orchestra, "Destination: England"
- When: 8:00 p.m. Saturday, October 2, 2004
- Where: Sheffer Music Hall, Potter Center, Jackson Community College, 2111 Emmons Road.
- Tickets: $15-$26 Call 517-782-4133
King Henry V's call to war is one of the most stirring speeches from William Shakespeare's work, and it's a sobering note in these times to the opening, concert of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra's season.
The orchestra will focus on composers from a specific country or region for each of its concerts, beginning' with "Destination: England" at 8 P.M. Saturday at the Jackson Community College's Potter Center.
John Neville-Andrews, artistic director of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, will narrate the "St. Crispin's Day" section of the film score to "Henry V." William Walton wrote the score for the 1944 movie, which Laurence Olivier starred in and directed in the midst of World War II.
"The way we're grouping it together, it really becomes very dramatic," said JSO conductor Stephen Osmond.
He said the 15-minute piece sometimes seems like a dialogue between Shakespeare's lines and Walton's music, and Neville-Andrew's performance will be impressive.
"It's like a verbal concerto," Osmond said, "with that big, booming voice."
The Olivier film will be shown at 7 p.m. Monday at the Michigan Theatre; those with JSO tickets will get in free.
The JSO concert also will include a short trumpet sonata written by the baroque composer Henry Purcell in about 1694. Joel Shaner, who teaches music at Jackson High School, will be the soloist, and he said it's a privilege to play it with the JSO.
"It's one of the many pieces trumpeters study," Shaner said, but it's not performed in concert very often. And when it is played, he said, it's usually with piano accompaniment. He said it's "really special" to be able to play it with the orchestra's string section.
"It's a marvelously crafted piece of music," he said.
Benjamin Britten's "Simple Symphony" is replacing the selection from "Peter Grimes" that Osmond had originally scheduled. Osmond said this 15-minute symphony, which is' for strings only, is made up of themes and sections that Britten wrote between the ages of 9 and 12.
He rewrote it in his 30s, and it's become one of his most often played works.
"It has a lot of interesting string effects," Osmond said.
The major piece for !he evening will be Edward Elgar's "Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma)," written in 1899. The 32-minute piece, more commonly known as-the "Enigma Variations," features 15 short sections that apparently refer to the composer's family, friends and dog.
"It goes in so many different directions," Osmond said.
And so does the evening's music, he said - the "Hollywood" of the Walton piece the refined nature of the well known Elgar variations,, the boisterous Britten symphony, and the wedding-style sonata of Purcell.
"It's all over the map," Osmond said.
And so will be the rest of the season. The concerts and corresponding movies include: "Destination: France" on Nov. 13, with "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" shown Nov. 8; "Destination: South of the Border" on Feb. 5, with "The Magnificent Seven" on Jan. 31; and "Destination: Scandinavia" on March 12, with Ingmar Bergman's "The Magic Flute" on March 7.
The symphony also will perform Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" with the Grand Rapids Ballet on Dec. 18,19, and close the season with "Jackson Proms" on April 23.
- Reach reporter Mary Barber at 768-4971 or mbarber@citpat.com.
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Patriot.
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