World Premiere of Purple Prose and Famous Clarinetist Headline Symphony

Mar 31, 2006

For Immediate Release

Contact: Annie Matlow 326-3136

SPOKANE: Music Director Eckart Preu and the Spokane Symphony play the world premiere Conrad Pope's Purple Prose on Friday, April 7 at 8 p.m. at the Spokane Opera House.

All music for the very diverse program was made in America. That's true even for Symphonic Metamorphosis, the brilliantly entertaining orchestral showpiece by German composer Paul Hindemith, who relocated to the United States to escape Nazi oppression. And there's a connection to the movies as well, for Conrad Pope is one of Hollywood's most successful composer/arrangers while Gershwin's Promenade was actually written for a 1937 film.

Composer Pope has pursued two very successful but also very contrasting careers. Though a California native, as a student he traveled to the east coast as well as Europe for a thoroughly established education in classical music. At Boston's New England Conservatory of Music, he studied with Gunther Schuller and Donald Martino and won the George Chadwick Medal, the school's highest honor. Remaining on the east coast, he moved on to Princeton University for graduate studies with Milton Babbitt, the uncompromising leader of America's serialist or twelve-tone composers. Subsequently, he taught at Boston's Brandeis University, writing classical chamber music, and served as Director of the Music Production Company, working with composer Peter Maxwell Davies and avant garde director Peter Sellars.

But eighteen years ago, the state of California lured Pope back, and he set out onto a new career path as one of Hollywood's leading arrangers, orchestrators, and conductors. To date, he has worked on more than eighty feature films, including such hits as the last three Star Wars movies, War of the Worlds, King Kong, Memoirs of a Geisha, Munich, The Matrix, the Harry Potter films, and Pirates of the Caribbean. He is the go-to guy' for a number of Hollywood's top composers, notably John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and James Horner, with whom he collaborates closely on film scores.

Alongside his thriving film career, Pope still keeps very active as a classical concert composer. It's very rewarding to have the opportunity to put some of my own stuff forward and be released from the tyranny of the screen, he says. My new musical life is probably oriented more to Leonard Bernstein's ideas of music than Milton Babbitt's.

When Preu conducted Pope's Summer Sketches, commissioned by the Hart College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, he found it went over very well with audiences, and so Maestro Preu decided to commission him to write something for the Spokane Symphony. That the piece received the title Purple Prose, Pope says, is completely by accident. I gave him a sample of the music and said, Here's an example of my purple prose, and Eckart took the title seriously!

Scored for a traditional symphony orchestra of moderate size with parts for piano, harp, and four percussion players, Purple Prose is like a four-movement mini-symphony, lasting about fifteen minutes. Pope describes the first movement as being the most substantial and challenging to listen to. It has lots of dance rhythms — like a tip of the hat to MGM musicals and their dance scenes. The outer sections have driving rhythms and peppy tunes, while the middle section floats over slowly changing harmonies. Opening with dissonant fanfares in the brass, the second movement is the complete opposite of the first: more of an operatic, slow, tragic movement. The third and fourth movements melt into each other. The third is a crypto-scherzo: my tip of the hat to silent films and especially the drive and energy of Buster Keaton films. The fourth movement is expansive and flight-like.

Following Purple Prose, the audience will be treated to two outstanding pieces by two of American's greatest composers, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. One of the greatest American clarinetists, Richard Stoltzman, will perform them. Clarinet Concerto by Copland and Promenade (Walking the Dog) by Gershwin are sure to thrill the Symphony audience.

Stoltzman's virtuosity, musicianship and sheer personal magnetism have catapulted him to the highest ranks of international acclaim, making him one of today's most sought-after concert artists. As a soloist with more than a hundred orchestras, a captivating recitalist and chamber music performer, and an innovative jazz artist, he has defied categorization, dazzling critics and audiences alike with his performances of all genres of music.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of a jazz-playing railwayman, Stoltzman spent his early years in San Francisco and then moved to Cincinnati. His musical education started with his father's saxophone sessions and informal church concerts. After high school in Cincinnati, Stoltzman entered Ohio State University as a double-major in music and mathematics.

Stoltzman went on to earn a Master of Music degree at Yale University while studying with Keith Wilson, and later worked toward a doctoral degree with Kalmen Opperman at Columbia University. In 1967, he began what was to be a ten-year association with the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. Marlboro's focus on chamber music put him in direct contact with such musical luminaries as Rudolf Serkin, Pablo Casals and Marcel Moyse - artists who were to have a profound effect on the way Stoltzman regarded his music making. Since then, Stoltzman's unique way with the clarinet has earned him an international reputation, as he has opened up possibilities for the instrument that no one could have predicted, including presenting the first clarinet recitals in the histories of both the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall. This concert is underwritten by Eastern Washington University.

Tickets are $15, $23, $31, and $35. Tickets are available in advance without service charge at the Spokane Symphony Ticket office, 818 W. Riverside, Suite 100, or by calling 509-624-1200. Tickets are also available at all TicketsWest outlets or by calling 1-800-325-SEAT or at spokanesymphony.org.