By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily
News
This article was first published today in Pasadena Scene magazine.
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The Colburn
Orchestra; Yehuda Gilad, music director and conductor
Saturday,
September 24, 7:30 p.m.
Ambassador
Auditorium, 300 W. Green St, Pasadena
Free
admission (tickets are required; download from Web site– or call 213/621-1050)
NOTE: As of today,
the orchestra had announced a sellout although a standby line will be
available on the Web site.
Information:
www.colburnschool.edu
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After
years of wandering from one home to another, The Colburn Orchestra will play
all five free concerts of its upcoming season in the acoustically friendly
confines of Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium.
Music
Director Yehuda Gilad (pictured right), who founded the orchestra when Colburn’s
Conservatory of Music was formed in 2003, will lead the opening concert on
Sept. 24 at 7:30 p.m. with a program that includes Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture, the
Mussorsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition
and Dvorak’s Violin Concerto, with Colburn student Francesca dePasquale, winner
of the 24th Irving M. Klein String Competition in 2010, as soloist.
The
Colburn Conservatory is the West Coast equivalent to such prestigious East
Coast institutions as The Juilliard School in New York City and Curtis Institute
of Music in Philadelphia. As many
as 100 students, ages 17-26, play in the orchestra with approximately 30
percent of the ensemble turning over each year.
“It’s
a fascinating dynamic and each year is different,” says Gilad, also a fine
clarinetist who teaches at both The Colburn School and the University of
Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. “All the students all come in
with fine technical ability — they can all play the notes and play in tune. My
job is to find ways to meld them into a cohesive, beautiful whole, to mold them
rather than changing them.”
Even
the orchestra’s principals (i.e., first-chair players) change from year to
year. “We hold auditions every year and my staff and I then choose a leadership
pool to help guide the entire ensemble,” explains Gilad, who was born and
raised on a kibbutz in Israel. “Some principals are new; others remain from
previous years. The ones who have been here before know what sort of color and
timbre I want and they help the others. For example, this year, we’ll have
different wind principals for every concert, which does present a unique set of
challenges.”
Gilad
will lead three of the five concerts, including programs on Oct. 22 and Feb. 4,
2012. Gerard Schwarz, who recently completed a 25-year tenure as music director
of the Seattle Symphony, will conduct on Dec. 3. Bramwell Tovey (pictured right), music director
of the Vancouver Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles
Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl, will lead the season’s final concert on March
3.
“I
love having two or three guest conductors a year,” says Gilad. “They bring a
different flavor, another point of view to the orchestra and that provides
great experience for the students who, after all, will experience just that
sort of thing routinely when they move on to professional orchestras.”
One
of the issues that Gilad won’t face this year is adjusting to five different
halls. The Colburn School’s main performing space, Zipper Hall (which is
located across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall) is an excellent locale
for chamber music but neither the size of the stage nor the hall’s capacity are
appropriate for orchestral concerts.
“It
would be wonderful to have our own hall on campus where we could both practice
and rehearse all the time,” says Gilad. “However, Ambassador Auditorium is a
wonderful hall and I always look forward to working there. Each hall has a
completely different sound and it always takes a while to adjust. My staff and
I have to listen very closely to get the right balances and quality of sound;
eventually we find what we want. As the season goes on, we’ll come to think of
Ambassador as home — there’s a real sense of excitement and expectation for all
of us. We’ll be up to it — I know I am!
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved.
Portions may be quoted with attribution.
