Gandolfi's Cosmic Garden at Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center

The unique Classical Connections format features musical examples and explanation by DPO Artistic Director Neal Gittleman, followed by a performance of the entire composition. Directly following is a casual Q&A and an Ice Cream Social with a free scoop of Graeter's.

The Dayton Philharmonic will begin the program with “Gagliarda,” which is part of the larger work
Ancient Airs and Dances by Ottorino Resphigi. Resphigi based “Gagliarda” on Renaissance lute music by Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo.

In Dumfries, Scotland, an architectural theorist, Charles Jencks, and his late wife, Maggie Keswick, an expert on Chinese gardens, designed what came to be called the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. The garden “uses nature to celebrate nature through nature.” In other words, it features forms of nature interpreting forces of nature. The 30-acre site consists of 40 major areas of landscapes, gardens, bridges, sculptures, and architecture. The Six Gardens of the Senses, the Quark Walk, Black Hole Terrace, The Nonsense, the DNA Garden, Fractal Terrace, and the Universe Cascade are just a few of the concepts and artistic representations.

Michael Gandolfi is currently chair of the Composition Department at the New England Conservatory of Music and a faculty member of the Tanglewood Music Center. As a composer and music educator, his natural curiosity leads to creating many “points of contact” between music and other fields, including science, film, and theater. His interest and understanding of science in turn led him to discovering the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. This home of science as garden and vice versa inspired Gandolfi’s 2009 work The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. With the garden and its theories as his muse, Gandolfi has created an energetic and innovative piece that never really allows the listener to predict what will be heard next. The music deftly conjures the garden landscapes and the premises of natural and physical science that they represent. When Jencks and Keswick worked on the garden, they saw it as connecting the worlds of art, nature, and science. Gandolfi’s Garden of Cosmic Speculation invites a new link, making connection between the worlds of art, nature, science, and music.