BLOOMINGTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERFORMS “EXPERIENCE THE RING” ON OCTOBER 9

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:
Sara Kleinsasser Tan, General Manager
Bloomington Symphony Orchestra
Phone: 952-563-8573
E-mail: info@bloomingtonsymphony.org
Website: https://www.bloomingtonsymphony.org

BLOOMINGTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERFORMS “EXPERIENCE THE RING” ON OCTOBER 9

Bloomington, Minnesota – September 21, 2016 — The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra (BSO) will present the first concert of the 2016-17 season, called “Experience the Ring,” on Sunday, October 9 at 3 p.m. at the Kennedy High School Auditorium (9701 Nicollet Ave S.) in Bloomington.

The program includes pieces from each of Richard Wagner’s four Ring Cycle operas, performed by orchestra alone and featuring a cast of ten singers and a narrator. Featured pieces include Entry of the Gods into Valhalla from Das Rheingold, Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, Forest Murmurs and The Forging of the Sword, both from Siegfried, and Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung.

The cast includes local singers Sofia Ardalan, Lisa Drew, Debra Gilroy, Mary Laymon, Colleen Meier, Megan Wagner, Lola Watson, Karen Wilkerson, and Amy Wolf as the Valkyries. Chicago-based tenor Jerrad Fenske will perform as Siegfried. Former Metropolitan Opera soprano Audrey Stottler will narrate the concert, tying all of the pieces of the Ring Cycle together for the audience.

Music Director and Conductor Manny Laureano says of the program, “Set your imagination to work as the BSO, a cast of singers, and former Metropolitan Opera soprano Audrey Stottler reveal the beauty and power of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle through a set of excerpts and spoken narrative. Giants, mythical gods, heroes and heroines, villains, dragons, a magical sword, and a lump of coveted gold provide the story where deceit is overcome by an ultimate act of love and redemption, all set to some of the greatest music of the 19th century.”

Manny Laureano was named Artistic Director and Conductor of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra in April 2013. Laureano is a gifted conductor, having served as Assistant Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2005-06 and conducting the Minnesota All-State Orchestra in 2008-09. In recent years he has appeared regularly as a guest conductor at Indiana University, as well as at the Eastern Music Festival, St. Olaf College and Bethel University. He is in demand as a guest conductor of community orchestras all over the Twin Cities. In addition to this work, Laureano and his wife Claudette have served as Co-Artistic Directors of the Minnesota Youth Symphonies since 1988.

Season and single tickets for the BSO’s concerts are available in advance online, by phone or in person. Phone: 952-563-8575. Online: https://www.bloomingtonsymphony.org. In person: Bloomington Box Office – 1800 West Old Shakopee Road, Bloomington. Season tickets are $48 for adults, $40 for seniors, advance purchase required. Single tickets are available in advance or at the door: $14 for adults, $12 for seniors and free for students with an ID.

For information or to request high-resolution photographs of Manny Laureano, the cast of singers or the BSO, contact: info@bloomingtonsymphony.org

Website: https://www.bloomingtonsymphony.org
Phone: 952-563-8573

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1963. Today the BSO is made up of talented professional, semi-professional and amateur musicians who are selected through a highly competitive audition process. The BSO performs major symphony works at accessible church, school and park locations in the south and southwest Twin Cities metropolitan area.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

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2016-17 Brochure

Take a minute to view our 2016-17 season brochure! We are looking ahead to a great season and hope you will join us at one of the four outstanding concerts that Maestro Manny Laureano has planned for the Bloomington Symphony. Please share this page with your friends and fellow music lovers, too!

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“Three Singing Masters” Concert Preview No. 1

Welcome to the first edition of Manny’s Musings for the 2014-15 concert season! We are thrilled to share the thoughts of Manny Laureano, the Bloomington Symphony’s Music Director and Conductor, with our audience, in advance of our concert “Three Singing Masters” on Sunday, October 5. We will post future Musings in the days leading up to the concert. Please be sure to visit again soon and learn more about the program!

Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

RichardWagnerThose of you who are regular attendees of BSO concerts will recall that Wagner’s Overture to Rienzi was performed as part of our programming last season. It was an early work about an Italian subject. This season, the Overture to a mammoth opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, propels us forward more than two score and four years to see a middle-aged Richard Wagner who has developed his sense of chromaticism on the heels of his opera, Tristan and Isolde. He chooses for this opera a German subject that is steeped in the reality of an annual singing contest that was held in Nürnberg.

Interestingly, Wagner gives the chromaticism that mark the success and curiosity of Tristan a bit of a rest and settles into a style that is more diatonic and “listener friendly.” This was to be the opera that preceded his most illustrious work, Der Ring des Nibelungen, where his creative powers become almost a plaything for him. Die Meistersinger has, at its core, the requisite hero who wishes to win the hand of a local maiden, not through swordplay or deviousness, but through song.

The overture is a proper overture, in the sense that there are many themes that are represented in the opera, unlike Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro or even the miniature overture that begins the Nutcracker ballet. Virtually every note heard in the overture is reflected in the course of the opera either as a full-fledged theme or a more brief leit motiv, from the stately march of the masters, to the prize song offered by the hero, Walther, to a fugue based on the light-footed dances of the apprentices. The constant and smooth shifting of character in this overture and its ability to achieve transparency in the midst of presenting themes on top of themes is a testament to Wagner’s skills of orchestration.

Please join us for this concert, “Three Singing Masters,” on Sunday, October 5 at 3 p.m. at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Bloomington. To purchase tickets in advance, please visit our online box office here. Tickets are always available at the door (cash or check only).

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2014-15 Concert Season Announced!

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra

Bloomington Symphony Orchestra Music Director Manny Laureano has assembled four concerts with a variety of well-known classics and a few pieces that may be new to some in the audience. The 2014-15 concert season will feature a young soprano, a seasoned cellist and the BSO solo debut of our new concertmaster. Click on the link to learn more about each concert.

2014-15 Concerts

October 5, 2014 – Three Singing Masters: Wagner, Strauss & Mahler

November 16, 2014 – Anybody Here Speak American?: Copland, Barber & Ives

February 15, 2015 – Melodious Tchaikovsky: Three pieces by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

April 19, 2015 – Music in 3D: The Sequel: Franck, TBA & Mussorgsky/Ravel

Tickets:

Season tickets (one ticket for each concert) are available for purchase through the Bloomington Box Office (only). You can click here to order tickets online or you can call 952-563-8575 or stop by the Box Office in person  at 1800 West Old Shakopee Road in Bloomington.

Can’t make it to every concert? You can still get the discounted price by purchasing in advance, four or more tickets to any of the concerts. Season and four-ticket packages are $48 for adults and $40 for seniors.

Single tickets are available in advance or at the door for $14 for adults and $12 for seniors. Students are always free, thanks to our generous donors.

For more information about any of our concerts, please contact our General Manager, Sara Tan at info@bloomingtonsymphony.org

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“The Passion of Rachmaninoff” Concert Preview No. 1

This “Concert Preview” will provide background information on the pieces the BSO will perform next. Each Concert Preview is written by the BSO’s Artistic Director and Conductor, Manny Laureano. Look for the next Concert Preview on February 6.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Richard Wagner

While it can be argued that the music of Richard Wagner should be “blamed” for the direction 19th century music took toward a lack of tonality, the truth of the matter is that Wagner started off in a rather traditional fashion. In fact, it’s interesting to note that, unlike many of his musical predecessors, his first love was writing the written word rather than music itself. He was so moved by the works of Shakespeare and Goethe, for example, that he was compelled to try his hand at writing at the age of fourteen. It was at that time that he went about the task of attempting to write music for his tragedy, Leubald. He spent the next many years perfecting his musical craft for the sake of accompanying the great stories that stirred his heart, at first, alone, and then with help from teachers such as Christian Weinlig, of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig.

Rienzi was Wagner’s first successful opera. He already had a few junior works to his credit from piano sonatas to a Symphony in C major. He had already written operas (Die Hochzeit and also Die Feen) but it was not until he completed Rienzi that he took his foothold into prominence during a time of nationalistic musical fervor in Germany. Wagner’s use of chromaticism continued a natural transition in music history that started with Hector Berlioz in Paris and continued with him. It was that use of chromaticism that opened the gates for new modalities in subsequent composers.

The Overture to Rienzi

Normally, one would think of a trumpet calling soldiers to war to be involved in a complex set of flourishes. But in this immensely popular overture, Wagner decides that a single note, swelling and fading, should be the signal to battle for the Collonas, a family featured in the opera. But the call to action gives way to a solemn prayer from the fifth act of the opera rather than an act of miltarism. This foray into grand opera in the French tradition of the time is wonderfully tuneful yet it offers a glimpse into the ascending chromaticism that would mark the unique quality of Wagner’s subsequent work (if you think you hear a bit of The Flying Dutchman in various transitory and developmental passages it is for good reason for it would be the opera that followed Rienzi by a year!). All the ingredients for a 19th century grand opera on Italian themes are present: corrupt government officials, forbidden love, dueling families, a burning city, and, of course, vendettas accompanied by mobs thirsting for blood. But none of this seems quite so horrific when people are singing at the top of their lungs!

Please join us for this concert, “The Passion of Rachmaninoff,” on Sunday, February 16 at 3 p.m. at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Bloomington. To purchase tickets in advance, please visit our online box office here. Tickets are always available at the door.

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The Passion of Rachmaninoff

Concertmaster Rebecca Corruccini

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra invites you to an afternoon of great music on Sunday, February 16 at 3 p.m. The concert begins with Wagner’s Overture to Rienzi, followed by Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, performed by our concertmaster, Rebecca Corruccini. The program concludes with Symphony No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Maestro Manny Laureano thinks that the second movement is so romantic, you might want to bring a date! Wrap up your Valentine’s weekend with a concert of beautiful music. Ticket information can be found here.

Keep an eye on this page for Manny’s Musings, a preview of the concert music.

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2013-14 Season Announced!

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra’s newly appointed Artistic Director and Conductor Manny Laureano has put together his first season of programs for the BSO. The season promises to be a celebration of firsts, as the conductor and musicians begin a new era of making music together.

The BSO begins it’s 51st season on Sunday, October 6 with a concert called “Let Us Begin.” This concert will feature Shostakovich’s first opus, a Scherzo in f# minor, followed by Mendelssohn’s first piano concerto performed by Susan Billmeyer, the Minnesota Orchestra’s keyboard player. Brahms’ First Symphony completes this concert of “firsts.”

The BSO’s fourth annual concert at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie, this year on Sunday, November 24, is entitled “Sit Right Back and You’ll Hear the Tale.” This concert includes programmatic pieces including Borodin’s Overture to Prince Igor, as well as the Polovetsian Dances from the same opera. The concert will end with Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical tale of Scheherazade.

On Sunday, February 16, 2014, the BSO will celebrate “The Passion of Rachmaninoff,” with a concert program of Wagner’s Overture to Rienzi, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major and concluding with Rachmaninoff’s passionate Symphony No. 2. The BSO’s concertmaster, Rebecca Corruccini will make her annual solo appearance at this concert.

The BSO will conclude its 2013-14 season with “Music in 3D,” a nod to the imagination that music inspires. “Music in 3D” includes Death and Transfiguration by Strauss, The Swan of Tuonela by Sibelius and Respighi’s well-known piece, The Pines of Rome. This concert will also feature a performance by the grand prize winner of MNSOTA’s Mary West Solo Competition.

Season and single concert tickets are now available online through the Bloomington Box Office or by calling 962-563-8575. Tickets are always available for purchase at the door. Single concert tickets are $14 for adults and $12 for seniors. Discounted season tickets are $48 for adults and $40 for seniors. Students with a valid ID are admitted free, thanks to our generous sponsors.

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