CSO's RHAPSODY IN BLUE to Conclude American Roots Festival, 2/27-28

Led by guest conductor Donato Cabrera and featuring guest pianist Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini, this concert offers not only Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, the all-time classic synthesis of Carnegie Hall and Tin Pan Alley, but two more pieces with similar flavors from Gershwin's fellow American, George Antheil.

The full program will include Dvo?ák's Humoresque, Joplin's Overture to Treemonisha, Weill's Little Threepenny Musik, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Antheil's Jazz Symphony, and Stravinsky's Scherzo à la Russe.

The Columbus Symphony presents Rhapsody in Blue at the Southern Theatre (21 E. Main St.) on Friday and Saturday, February 27 and 28, at 8pm. Tickets start at $10 and can be purchased at the CAPA Ticket Center (39 E. State St.), all Ticketmaster outlets, and www.ticketmaster.com. To purchase tickets by phone, please call (614) 228-8600 or (800) 745-3000. The CAPA Ticket Center will also be open two hours prior to each performance. Young people between the ages of 13-25 may purchase $5 All Access tickets while available. For more information, visit www.GoFor5.com.

The 2014-15 Masterworks Series is made possible through the generous support of season sponsor Anne Melvin.

Donato Cabrera is Music Director of the California Symphony, the Green Bay Symphony, the New Hampshire Music Festival, and Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and the Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. A champion of new music, he is a co-founder of the New York-based American Contemporary Music Ensemble which is dedicated to the outstanding performance of masterworks from the 20th and 21st centuries, primarily the work of American composers.

Active in Oregon politics, Lauderdale served under Portland Mayor Bud Clark and Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt. He graduated with honors from Harvard with a degree in history and literature, but instead of running for political office, Lauderdale founded the "little orchestra" called Pink Martini. Lauderdale also collaborates with international superstar and singing sensation Meow Meow, the surf band Satan's Pilgrims, and novelist/writer Tom Spanbauer. In 2008, he completed his first film score for Chiara Clemente's documentary Our City Dreams, a portrait of five New York City-based women artists of different generations.

Dvo?ák was a Czech composer that frequently employed aspects, specifically rhythms, of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). His style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them." Written in the summer of 1894, Humoresque is a piano cycle penned by Dvo?ák from his sketchbooks of American musical themes he found interesting during his time in America.

Joplin was an African-American composer and pianist who achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was even dubbed the King of Ragtime Writers. During his brief career, he wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. His opera Treemonisha was not performed in its entirety until 1972, after the discovery of the piano score. Its theme is that education is the salvation of the Negro race, represented by the heroine and symbolic educator Treemonisha who runs into trouble with a local band of magicians who kidnap her.

Weill was a German composer was a leading composer for the stage, best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife." The production was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Socialist critique of the capitalist world. It opened on August 31, 1928, in Berlin.

American composer and pianist George Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known. His Rhapsody in Blue was composed in 1924 for solo piano and jazz band, combining elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. Commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman, the piece received its premiere in the concert, An Experiment in Modern Music, held on February 12, 1924, in New York, by Whiteman and his band with Gershwin playing the piano.

Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the modern sounds - musical, industrial, mechanical - of the early 20th century. His A Jazz Symphony is a jazz-influenced classical work written in 1925. It was premiered at his infamous 1927 Carnegie Hall concert, but was originally intended to be used in Paul Whiteman's Experiment in Modern Music concerts, but was deemed too radical.

Stravinsky was a Russian (and later, a naturalized French and American) composer, pianist, and conductor, widely considered to be one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. Stravinsky had been going through economic problems since moving to America, and Scherzo à la Russe was first conceived as a work for the film The North Star. When the film project was aborted, Stravinsky re-orchestrated it for the Paul Whiteman Band. The only two conditions were that the piece had to be easy-listening and had to fit on a 78 rpm disc. This version for jazz orchestra premiered in 1944, but was not successful. Stravinsky then re-arranged it for symphony orchestra in 1945, and premiered it with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in March 1946, conducting the concert himself.

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