SIDENOTES

Loudoun Symphony Celebrates American Composers

Featuring members of Loudoun Symphony Orchestra

Opening Music: Excerpt from American Landscape by Soon Hee Newbold

Performed by LSYO Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association May 2021.

Program

Entrada by Frank Gulino

James Martin, trombone

String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11 by Samuel Barber

III. Molto Allegro

The Argot String Quartet

Dr. Jie Kim, violin 1

Dr. Marjory Serrano, violin 2

Jason Diggs, viola

Camilo Perez-Mejia, cello

Violin Sonata No. 4 by Charles Ives

III. "Children's Day At the Camp Meeting"

Thomas Gardner, violin

Hall of Ghosts by Amanda Harberg

Michelle Rippey, piccolo

Fantasy for Clarinet and Piano by Howard Hanson (Edited by Tod Kerstetter)

Betty Bley, clarinet

Connie Olivera, piano

About the Artists

James Aaron Martin is a trombonist based in the Washington D.C. metropolitan region. He is an avid recitalist of 20th century music and has given performances of solo repertoire for trombone over the world. He received a Master of Music and Pedagogy from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Aarhus, Denmark and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance from the Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA. Martin currently holds the position of principal trombone with The American Pops Orchestra and is the second trombonist with Maryland Lyric Opera Orchestra

The Argot String Quartet is a classical ensemble based in Frederick, MD. Dr. Jie Kim and Dr. Marjory Serrano are LSO's co-concertmasters. Mr. Jason Diggs and Ms. Camilo Perez-Mejia freelance and teach in Maryland and West Virginia. They have been performing together for over 5 years.

Thomas Gardner is a Virginia Native and is the Principle Second Violinist of the Loudoun Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, Thomas is a strings teacher in Loudoun County Public Schools. Thomas and his wife Claire have four wonderful children.

Michelle Rippey studied flute through high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, holds a Bachelor’s of Music in Flute Performance and a Master’s Degree in Education. In addition to playing flute and piccolo with the Loudoun Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Rippey enjoys performing as a freelance soloist and chamber musician throughout Maryland and Northern Virginia. Ms. Rippey also has a passion for teaching flute and piccolo and maintains a private flute studio teaching lessons both in Loudoun County, VA and Frederick County, MD.

Betty Bley, The Loudoun Symphony’s Principal Clarinetist, is a Vandoren Artist-Clinician, adjudicator, and clarinet sectional coach. She maintains a large private studio, and is the editor of clarinet music for the Virginia Band & Orchestra Directors Association, grading and maintaining a database of over 4,000 solo and ensemble works for clarinet. For four weeks each summer, she teaches clarinet technique to 135 beginning through 9th grade students at the Vienna Band Camp.

Connie Olivera, The Loudoun Symphony’s Music Librarian, has a private piano studio in Ashburn. She is a member of the Fairfax Loudoun Music Fellowship, and has been teaching privately since she was 14 years old. Connie and her husband are owners of Olivera Music Entertainment, a full-service music entertainment agency. Connie performs regularly as a piano soloist and in various small and large ensembles, playing classical, jazz, and contemporary music.

About the composers and works

Frank Gulinos is graduate of Peabody Conservatory where he studied bass trombone with Randy Campora and Jim Olin. As a composer, Frank has had works commissioned, performed, and commercially recorded by some of the world's foremost brass players, including euphonium virtuoso Steven Mead, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra bass trombonist Gerry Pagano, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra bass trombonist Brian Hecht, and Christopher Dudley, principal trombonist of the Bergen Filharmoniske Orkester in Bergen, Norway.

Samuel Osmond Barber II (1910 – 1981) was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. Barber arranged the second movement of this string quartet for string orchestra, which is possibly his most famous work: Adagio for Strings.

Charles Edward Ives (1874 – 1954) was an American modernist composer and one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Ives often explored nontraditional tunings for instruments, most notably the quarter-tone tuning for pianos.

Amanda Harberg is a composer, pianist and educator.Hall of Ghosts was composed in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown period; it was inspired by piccoloist Gudrun Hinze’s video for Harberg’s “Prayer Project” filmed in the hauntingly empty Gewandhaus Chamber Music Hall. Evocative of imagined spirits in the empty hall, the music pits dramatic silences, amid searching and plaintive phrases of the piccolo, against a lively middle section - a dialogue between the ticking of time and an instrument striving to make itself heard.

Howard Hanson (1896 – 1981) was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music. In 1944, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 4, and received numerous other awards including the George Foster Peabody Award for Outstanding Entertainment in Music in 1946.