Wyso concert opus one 2018 full#

And that's why, if you look at the list of the concerts we're having, you’ll see some really big, grand compositions.

Wyso concert opus one 2018 full#

The limitations also, I hope, gave them a much greater thirst for the full symphonic orchestra sound that WYSO can provide. We were distanced and had to observe so many protocols, which, of course, also had their own artistic value because they forced the students to think about music differently.

Last summer, we did have a live, in-person season, but it was limited. This is a pivotal year, and not just because it's been two years since WYSO has been able to come back to its full size. On the World Youth Symphony Orchestra's full return Listen to the entire interview or read the edited transcript below. Macelaru spoke with IPR's Nancy Deneen about his experiences as a student at Interlochen and what’s in store for WYSO’s first “regular” season under his leadership. From singer-songwriters to classical, world music, and Broadway stars, it's a celebration of the diversity of our thriving musical culture.Interlochen named Cristian Macelaru the World Youth Symphony Orchestra's inaugural artistic director and principal conductor in 2019, but it wasn’t the first time he’d played a leadership role with the ensemble.īefore leading the Orchestre National de France, winning a Grammy and guest conducting the world’s premier orchestras, Macelaru graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy and served as WYSO’s concertmaster as a camper. And so we did something like that for the entire orchestra.'ĭiscoveries at Walt Disney Concert Hall is an eclectic mix of concert specials, recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and hosted by Renee Montagne. 'And he would cue everybody: What they should do and when they play and be hollering and playing on his bass at the same time. 'I decided, in putting this piece together, that we should do what he did so many times in his own appearances at clubs with his groups –- that is to say, he dictated an ending,' he says. So Schuller says that he and the band improvised one, using Mingus as a guide. According to Schuller, the work was titled 'Epitaph,' because a few movements in the score had that word in block letters.Īstonishingly, when the enormous score for 'Epitaph' was found, it was missing one thing -– a finale. Composer and arranger Andrew Homzy reconstructed it, and Schuller conducted the premiere in 1989. But 10 years after his death in 1979, the score - four feet high and 4,235 measures long - was discovered in a closet in his apartment. And so the musicians couldn't handle it, and so eventually the concert was aborted when the union stage crew said, 'Wait a minute, it's midnight, we've gotta stop this.''ĭistraught, Mingus never visited the score again in his lifetime. He hadn't had a chance to rehearse it properly and the copyists were, indeed, even still copying some of the music –- it wasn't even fully ready. 'And it was one of the most chaotic and frustrating and disastrous concerts that anybody has ever heard, because the music was so difficult and so strange. 'There's this famous, legendary disastrous concert and recording session in Town Hall, where I happened to be present,' Schuller says. But the first performance was a travesty. He scored it for a 31-piece double jazz orchestra, and got an all-star group to play it. Gunther Schuller says Mingus probably composed most of the piece over a three-year period in the late '50s. But how Mingus came to write the piece remains something of a mystery.

It's all there: It's like a musical picture of Mingus' personality - from the most beautiful gentle ballads, lyric pieces, to these extremely chaotic, disorganized, wild pieces.'īy the time 'Epitaph' premiered in 1962, Mingus was already well-known as a composer, bandleader, and virtuoso bass player, a musician who had worked with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Duke Ellington, among others.

'He could be as gentle as a baby, and he could also be so full of tantrums and explosive and angry, and all of this range of feelings is in this piece. He says that Charles Mingus was a man of many moods - and that he sees them in the very fabric of Mingus' masterpiece. Jazz historian and composer Gunther Schuller conducted the entire concert in front of a 31-piece jazz orchestra. I'm talking about, like, work songs and gospel, you know, all the way up through Ellington, all the way up through the strife of the '60s. 'But it's always rooted - it's always coming out of that real indigenous black tradition. 'When you hear Mingus' music, that's about as advanced as you can get,' McBride says.

The moment he got the job, he put Charles Mingus' monumental, 2 1/2-hour jazz symphony 'Epitaph' at the top of his list. As creative chair for jazz at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, bass player Christian McBride gets to program four concerts a year.