Awakenings | High Point University Community Orchestra

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CAROLINE SYKES, Soprano, is a Music Major with a focus in Vocal Performance at High Point University. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Caroline knew from a very young age that she wanted to pursue a career in music. After receiving unwavering support and love from her family about her artistic path and participating in music programs in middle and high school, she was accepted into the South Carolina Governor’s School For The Arts and Humanities. She spent the last 2 years of her high school career diving deep into studying music. Now in her senior year at High Point University, Caroline is currently in the application process for graduate schools and hopes to pursue a career in Vocal Performance and teaching.

Dr. Brian Meixner is an active euphonium soloist, chamber musician, conductor, and educator, currently Associate Professor of Music and Director of Instrumental Studies at High Point University. His duties at HPU include conducting the HPU Community Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, Brass Ensemble, and teaching chamber music and studio low brass. Dr. Meixner is also the Founder, Executive Director and Conductor of the North Carolina Brass Band, a professional ensemble comprised of many of the finest brass players and percussionists in North Carolina.

Dr. Meixner has a national reputation as both a conductor and performer with several professional and university ensembles, and has been a featured euphonium soloist and chamber musician at many national and international music conferences and festivals. In addition, Dr. Meixner has numerous recordings to his credit, including roles as conductor, soloist, and chamber musician.

The HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY ORCHESTRA, founded in 2016 and directed by HPU Associate Professor of Music, Dr. Brian Meixner, includes a blend of HPU faculty, staff, students, and musicians from the greater High Point community who share a passion for making great music. The HPUCO welcomes musicians of all ages and is committed to forging creative relationships between the university and surrounding community. The orchestra performs multiple concerts each academic year, ranging from pops to masterworks, and regularly features HPU faculty and student soloists. Registration is ongoing. If you are interested in joining or would like to learn more about the HPU Community Orchestra, please contact Dr. Brian Meixner, Music Director, for more information – bmeixner@highpoint.edu

“Laurie’s Song” – Aaron Copland

Once I thought I'd never grow Tall as this fence Time dragged heavy and slow And April came and August went Before I knew just what they meant And little by little I grew And as I grew I came to know How fast the time could go

Once I thought I'd never go Outside this fence This space was plenty for me But I walked down the road one day And just what happened, I can't say but little by little it came to be That line between the earth and sky Came beckoning to me.

Now the time had grown so short The world has grown so wide I'll be graduated soon Why am I strange inside?

What makes me think I'd like to try To go down all those roads Beyond that line above the earth and 'neath the sky?

Tomorrow when I sit upon That graduation platform stand In know my hand will shake When I reach out to take that paper With the ribboned band

Now that all the learning's done Oh, who knows what will now begin? Oh, it's so strange. I'm strange inside. The time has grown so short The world so wide

Program

Fanfare for Our Common Earth (2001)

John Harmon (b. 1935) from Earth Day Portrait

Laurie’s Song (1954) Aaron Copland (1900-1990) from the opera The Tender Land Caroline Sykes, soprano soloist

Awakening (1995) Joseph Curiale (b. 1955)

I) Compassion II) Forgiveness III) Joy

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. (1808)

I) Allegro con brio

II) Andante con moto

III) Scherzo: Allegro

IV) Allegro

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 1827)

First Violin

+* Matthew Kiefer v Sunny Bell # Ava Mae Gangemi # Hailee Gosart v John Harsh v Adela Havlen # Jardel Javier # Isabel Marshall v Alexander Powell # Morgen Story v Genesis Velasques

Second Violin

v*Ueli Schweizer v Mallory Atkinson v Oliver Bell # Josh Brown # Finn Gilbert # Will Holmes v Leslie Leinbach v Grace Mena v Cameron Peck v KayLyn Sayers v Savannah Taylor # Sydney Wargo

Viola v* Matthew Box v Barbara Cooke # Lila Davis v Steven Gerber v Michael Gillie # Elizabeth Joel v Liz McNeill # Annie Sellenberg v Martha Shannon # JD Williams

Personnel

(listed alphabetically below the principal in each section)

Cello +* Margaret Petty v Greg Bell # Monica Gault v Alexandra Johnston v Deb Lentz v Jack Shaver v Andrew Song v Caroline Youngdale

Double Bass +* Mara Barker ^ Steve Bingham # Noah Craddock v Virginia Masius Flute +* Lissie Shanahan v Alexia Jowers v Suzanne Kline

Oboe +* Robin Driscoll # Caroline Infinger # Gabrielle Paula Clarinet +* Carmen Eby ^ Gwenn Noel ^ Mikaela Olmsted Bass Clarinet v Matthew Libera Bassoon +* Mark Hekman v Sean Gallagher v Stephanie Tripp

Trumpet +* Rusty Smith v Sudduth Alexander v Robert Elliot v Mark Loy # Christopher Robinson

French Horn +*Robert Campbell # Maggie Brown # Irene Dutescu v Laura Hartness v Alice Skinner # Ryan Stewart

Trombone v* Clarice Sigsworth v Bernie Hall Bass Trombone v Katie Cox

Tuba v* Drew Banzhoff

Harp v Bonnie Bach

Percussion +* Steve McHugh v Nick Grapey + Louis Kolker # Drew Weisenborn

* Principal + HPU Music Faculty ^ HPU Faculty/Staff # HPU student v Community Member

“Fanfare

Program Notes

John Harmon

for Our Common Earth” from Earth Day Portrait (2001)

American composer and jazz pianist John Harmon was born in Oshkosh, WI in 1935, and graduated from that city’s Lawrence University before earning a master’s in music composition at SUNY Buffalo. He also studied jazz with pianist Oscar Peterson and composition with Belgian theorist and mentor Henri Pousseur. He has composed over 160 works in many styles and genres, and much of his music is inspired by his twin interests in environmentalism and Native American culture. Upon receiving his 2nd honorary doctorate in 2021, Harmon remarked that “the world without music would be a pretty dark and bland world. It gives color and depth.”

This is certainly the case for his short “Fanfare for Our Common Earth,” the brilliant opening of a five movement suite for symphony orchestra and narrators, commissioned to celebrate Earth Day 2001 and first performed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The energetic opening fanfare theme heard tonight is joyous rather than boisterous, and alternates frequently with more lyrical musical material in a rapid ebb and flow of positive emotion that never loses momentum. It is a fitting prelude to the cautionary but hopeful spoken words that follow in the complete suite.

Aaron Copland

“Laurie’s

Song” from opera The Tender Land (1954)

New Yorker Aaron Copland (1900 1990) was one of the most successful and influential of American composers, and developed a sound and style that helped to define “Americanness” in music especially with his folkloric ballets Rodeo and Appalachian Spring and his film scores.

1n 1952 he was commissioned to create an intimate scale opera, eventually titled The Tender Land, for an NBC television broadcast, and began work on a story about Laurie, a young Depression era farm girl, about to become the first in her rural family to graduate from high school. Within the 24 hour timespan of the story she will also fall instantly in love with a drifter (this is the time of hobos “riding the rails”), endure unpleasant suspicions and accusations from the family patriarch about her new romantic interest, and pack her traveling bag for an elopement. Alas, the drifter leaves her behind, and with a mixture of disappointment and hope, she leaves home anyway to begin the first steps of defining her own future.

The television deal fell apart, and the opera was hurriedly premiered at New York’s City Center Opera on April 1, 1954, to mixed reviews. Copland later revised it and expanded its scope for a better “fit” with the demands and possibilities of the opera stage. The 1950s were a time when some Broadway composers were inching a bit toward operatic seriousness, and some opera composers were inching a bit toward an accessible “Broadway” sound. “Laurie’s Song,” from Act 1 of The Tender Land, seems a good example of this. A gentle soliloquy on the passing of time that beautifully establishes the young woman’s character, it progresses through two “verses” with similar music, a contrasting “bridge” that includes a sudden fortissimo with a bit of agitation in her surprise at her own thoughts, and a gentle return to a third “verse.” However, this is not a pop tune by any stretch of the imagination, but rather a carefully crafted aria in understandable musical language. Laurie’s transparency, supported by Copland’s gorgeous melody and harmony, wins us over.

Joseph Curiale

Awakening: Songs of the Earth (1995) I Compassion II Forgiveness III Joy

Versatile contemporary musician, composer, and teacher Joseph Curiale was born in Bridgeport, CT in 1955 and educated at the Universities of Bridgeport, Nebraska, and Minnesota. He is equally at home in the popular music world and the concert music world, having worked as jazz composer/arranger with the Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis Jr. bands (among others) as well as creating symphonic works performed by wind ensembles and orchestras around the world. He has also created a foundation dedicated to humanitarian assistance in places such as India and the Philippines, and he has written three books on creativity.

Beethoven once composed a string quartet movement subtitled “Holy Song of Thanks to God on Recovering from Illness,” and it is this spiritual frame of mind that permeates Curiale’s Awakening, a three movement work composed after his own long recovery from near fatal illness. He revealed that “...being re connected to the sacred Earth … did more to heal me than any medical intervention ... silence taught me everything. It brought me compassion …. It taught me how to forgive, and gave me a sense of true joy...” “Compassion” opens with short phrases in the solo trumpet, each ending on “held” notes (fermatas), and these fermatas permeate the movement, as if relishing the very act of deep breathing; the music also features several hymnlike “Amen” cadences. “Forgiveness” opens cautiously and tentatively in the woodwinds, as if daring to expose emotion. It soon reaches an emphatic and cathartic climax with a short triplet plus duplet melody to which one could mentally sing the words “Will you forgive me? Yes, I forgive you.” “Joy” is dancelike and increasingly energetic, with many syncopations (displaced accents) and

occasional changes of meter (beat groups) that suggest that the joyful dancer is making up his steps and skips “as if no one is looking.”

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, op. 67 (1808)

I Allegro con brio II Andante con moto III Scherzo: Allegro IV Allegro

Like Bach’s and Mozart’s, the very name of Ludwig van Beethoven (b. 1770, Bonn d. 1827, Vienna) has become synonymous with “genius” in music, and many consider his 5th Symphony to be the single most influential composition in Western music history. It clearly marks a change in the social position of a composer from being a musical servant of the upper classes to becoming a successful independent artist, and the position of music itself from being a pleasant and diverting court entertainment to being an art form both emotionally expressive and provocatively thoughtful, requiring careful attention from the listener.

Although sketches for the Fifth Symphony were begun in 1804, it was completed and premiered on December 22, 1808 at a lengthy concert (“Akademie”) produced by and for Beethoven himself in a rented hall. In addition to the Fifth, the program featured the premieres of the Sixth Symphony and the Fourth Piano Concerto (very substantial works) as well as vocal and choral compositions. The concert was not a success due to the bitter cold, the unpreparedness of some of the musicians, and the very monumentality of the music itself, which overwhelmed the mental processing capacity of all but the most fervent Beethoven fans.

The first movement is dominated by an iconic opening four note “Fate” motive and is a model of efficiency, relentlessness, and momentum. It is in conventional sonata form, featuring the exposition of contrasting thematic ideas, the development and exploration of these ideas in dramatic contest, and the recap of the original ideas. We hear this as a defiant, unfinished struggle which it was, mirroring Beethoven’s coming to terms with increasing deafness (in fact, the night’s concerto performance was his last public appearance as a piano soloist).

The slower second movement is much more restful, at least at the beginning; a theme and variations form (with a double theme). Although the tempo is somewhat leisurely and the opening theme is relaxed and expansive, the energy of each succeeding variation tends to increase as a bit of insistent stress reappears; Beethoven’s argument with Fate is clearly not over.

The Scherzo movement opens mysteriously and ominously from the depths of the orchestra in cellos and basses, and the four note Fate theme soon reasserts itself in the horns to dominate this section. The Scherzo’s contrasting middle section is also introduced by cellos and basses, this time playing a furiously fast major key melody imitated up through the orchestra in a volcanic musical eruption. The movement ends with a very soft, eerie, suspenseful bridge to the triumphant final movement, another sonata form design featuring a majestically simple opening theme in the satisfying key of C, joyfully resolving and dispelling the gloom and worry of the first three movements.