Juneau Symphony Performs Co-Sponsored Clarinet Concerto
I’m in no way a music critic. I know if I liked it or didn’t and can only tell you why in the most general way. So I’m just reporting that we went to hear the Juneau Symphony. For the record, one of the tickets we had was a freebie given to a legislator who gave it to me. I’m not making an editorial comment here. I did use the ticket so I obviously don’t think it’s unethical, though I do wonder what the cumulative impact is. Still pondering this. But as a new comer here, I’m reporting things I think are interesting. My wife, who’s been taking the bus to get places outside the downtown area, thinks the Juneau transit should give free bus passes to legislators so they can see a different side of Juneau and talk to people they don’t usually talk to. We paid the full $22 for the second ticket.
The concert was in Juneau Douglas High School’s auditorium. It was a busy night at the high school, with two basketball games and then the homecoming dance.
The Symphony cut the intermission short in hopes of getting the concert done before the music of the dance seeped into the concert hall. And, for the record, we didn’t hear any dance music until the last notes of Dvorák were over.
What made the concert particularly interesting was the Alaska premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s Clarinet Concerto with guest clarinet soloist Jon Manasse, who spoke about the piece with conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett before the performance. There’s a snippet of the conversation on the video.
The program note on the Clarinet Concerto, written by the composer says:
The model of a number of small groups and communities grouping together to do something that none of them could do alone is one that probably could well be used for a lot of other projects.
It was a good evening, I enjoyed the music, and there were parts of the new piece that particularly appealed. I had a sense of water in many spots and I liked the way the orchestra and the soloist were so closely connected. But a friend with us talked about how beautifully the piccolo dueted with the clarinet and how good the first french horn was, but that was way beyond my abilities to discern the subtleties. (The symphony picture was while they were tuning up.)
The concert was in Juneau Douglas High School’s auditorium. It was a busy night at the high school, with two basketball games and then the homecoming dance.
The Symphony cut the intermission short in hopes of getting the concert done before the music of the dance seeped into the concert hall. And, for the record, we didn’t hear any dance music until the last notes of Dvorák were over. What made the concert particularly interesting was the Alaska premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s Clarinet Concerto with guest clarinet soloist Jon Manasse, who spoke about the piece with conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett before the performance. There’s a snippet of the conversation on the video.
The program note on the Clarinet Concerto, written by the composer says:
The Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, Op.110 was written for clarinetist Jon Manasse, and commissioned by a consortium of orchestras, and organizations composed of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Bozeman, Juneau, Las Cruces, North State (CA), and Roanoke symphony orchestras, Erie and Evansville philharmonic orchestras, The Chappaqua Orchestra, Hanson Institute for American Music at the Eastman School of Music, Buffet Crampon USA, Vandoren Paris, River Concert SEries at ST. Mary’s College of Maryland & The Chesapeake Orchestra and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The model of a number of small groups and communities grouping together to do something that none of them could do alone is one that probably could well be used for a lot of other projects.
It was a good evening, I enjoyed the music, and there were parts of the new piece that particularly appealed. I had a sense of water in many spots and I liked the way the orchestra and the soloist were so closely connected. But a friend with us talked about how beautifully the piccolo dueted with the clarinet and how good the first french horn was, but that was way beyond my abilities to discern the subtleties. (The symphony picture was while they were tuning up.)
