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Eureka Symphony Season Finale

Van Duzer Theater

The Eureka Symphony’s Season Finale honors Americana at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, May 30 and 31 at the HSU Van Duzer Theatre. The program celebrates American music with three 20^th century composers: Morton Gould, Samuel Barber, and Randall Thompson. Gould’s American Salute opens the evening with its stirring variations on the popular folk tune, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” American Salute was written overnight in 1943 for a radio broadcast, and features dynamic brass fanfares and woodwind glissandos against a jubilant melodic line. Second on the program is Barber’s Knoxville Summer of 1915. This luxurious piece draws on James Agee’s novel/memoir of his own childhood in the south, with lyrics for soprano voice that reflect an irrecoverable moment of togetherness before loss. Act Two is given to Randall Thompson’s Symphony No. 2 in four movements. Leonard Bernstein was a student of Thompson’s, and this symphony was the first he conducted. Bernstein described it “as a sort of crooning pleasure, like taking a long, delicious warm bath” – and it owns a cinematic feel and fluidity that will be familiar to modern audiences.

Featured guest artist and Humboldt native Clara Lisle will sing the soprano solo in Knoxville Summer of 1915. Lisle graduated this winter from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, where she had performed as Marguerite in Faust and Eurydice in Orpheus in the Underworld. Symphony audiences will recognize Lisle as a 2008 winner of the Eureka Symphony’s Youth Competition, alongside Otis Harriel and Kira Weiss. Lisle’s first voice teacher was Sheila Marks – from whom she learned rigor: “…you had to work for her approval, and I needed that. When she began to believe in a future for me as a singer, that was what gave me the confidence to pursue a career.”

Lisle approaches classical work from a very human space: “The most important imagery for me is not objects or colors, but experience. I always try to strip the piece down, get rid of old fashioned or overly poetic language that might distract us modern readers from the raw meaning, and rewrite it in a context that applies to me personally. A poem might be 300 years old, and while the language or circumstance might have changed some, the human experience that’s at the bottom of it – love, lust, death, loss, betrayal – that’s timeless. You have to let it get to you, mean something to you, and then you can translate that to an audience.”

Tickets for the Season Finale are on sale now by calling 707-822-2401, or they can be purchased at the door. In honor of the upcoming Memorial Day, all military veterans will be admitted free of charge. The audience is invited to come at 7 p.m. for a behind-the-scenes Music Talk with concert master Terrie Baune and pianist John Chernoff. A free shuttle will be available for rides between the lower parking lot at HSU and the Van Duzer. Additional details, plus subscriptions for the upcoming 2014-15 season are available at eurekasymphony.org

DATES/TIMES

WHERE

• Van Duzer Theater

PRICE

• $20
• $28 Premium
• Free Military veterans