The Connection

I am very excited about the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra's opening night concert on Saturday, September 27th at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall & Arts Center. "Dare to… Embrace the World" is the title of this colorful and exuberant concert that launches our 2014-2015 "Dare to..." Season.

Some music aims primarily to delight the senses. Other music engenders escapism and fantasy. The music on the ASO's 2014-2015 "Dare to..." Season does indeed ravish the senses and it does provide a much needed respite from our daily concerns, but it does something else that goes even further. This music has an intensity of feeling and such a passionate poetry about it that it almost seems to dare the listener to feel more deeply — to live more fully. I know that this may sound like an exaggerated claim, but I can say in my defense that this music has affected me personally exactly in that way. I feel that the music to this "Dare to..." Season has changed me in significant ways. It has shaped who I am, my values and the way I perceive and relate to the world. It has dared me to feel more deeply, to transcend my own perceived self limitations, and to more fully embrace life and the world around me. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for being able to encounter and experience this music in such a personal way.

There is a long tradition of this type of "daring" symphonic music (which I will explore in a subsequent "Musing"). Suffice it to say, that a certain composer with the first name of Ludwig had a lot to do with establishing this kind of music.

The ASO's "Dare to..." Season will explore — through five different concerts — five different ways that music can "dare.” Our opening concert, "Dare to... Embrace the World" draws on many rich cultural traditions ranging from American jazz and the Broadway musical, to Latin American and Middle Eastern influences, to the great Russian musical tradition. What unifies this extraordinarily vivid music is its visceral quality and a powerful immediacy of feeling. The daring element heard in Leonard Bernstein's “West Side Story” owes much to Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet” upon which it is based, and inspires the listener to contemplate the meaning of forgiveness. Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony represents an entire world of emotion and such profoundly felt sentiment that I feel simultaneously exhausted and elated after conducting it.

Another all-important quality shared by the music on our "Dare to...Embrace the World" concert is it's "universality" of appeal and accessibility. This music dares to speak directly and simply to the heart through beautiful soaring melodies and sensuous harmonies and textures. These qualities help to give this music its global and "everyman" appeal.

I am especially pleased and proud that all of these elements can be found in the music of this year's winner of the Kluge Young Composer's Competition, Nebal Maysaud. His "O Great Mystery" will receive its world premiere at our "Dare to...Embrace the World" concert. Maysaud's music embraces so many of the qualities that I find in this new generation of composers' music — eclecticism, strong individuality and deep sentiment and feeling, and a globalist world-view and desire to reach across cultural and national boundaries. I strive for these qualities in my own musical compositions that I write with my wife Kathryn, and am heartened to see them embraced by so many young composers. The future of symphonic music is exciting indeed.

See you at the concerts.