Heights Chamber Orchestra Concert
Music Director Travis Jürgens serves as Director of Music Ministry at Saint Ambrose Catholic Parish and as Music Director of the fully professional Perrysburg Symphony Orchestra. He won 2nd Prize and the President of the Jury Award at the 2019 Bucharest Music Institute International Conducting Competition. He has collaborated with esteemed conductors, including Michael Tilson Thomas and Marin Alsop. He has been praised as “a superior conductor” and “well on his way to becoming a major conductor in the world of symphony orchestras” (Opus Colorado).
Kira McGirr, Mezzo-Soprano
Noted for the richness of her voice, and “clear, focused sound,” mezzo-soprano Kira McGirr is a dynamic and versatile vocalist. Highlights this season include solo debuts with the Lexington Bach Festival, The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra, the Musical Theater Project, Cleveland Repertory Orchestra. She is a frequent collaborator with Local4Music in their series featuring the work of living female and female-identifying composers. Ms. McGirr sings with Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, Trinity Cathedral Choir, Schola Cantorum Lorain and appears as part of Trinity Cathedral’s Music Arts BrownBag Concert Series
Ms. McGirr is the Executive Director of the Cleveland Chamber Choir. She holds a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Oberlin College Conservatory.
Igor Stravinsky – Octet for Wind Instruments
Stravinsky started composing the Octet in Biarritz, France, in late 1922 and finished the work in Paris on May 20, 1923. The score is dedicated to Stravinsky’s second wife, Vera de Bosset. He gave information about the work in meetings with his biographer friend Robert Craft, “The Octet began with a dream in which I saw myself in a small room surrounded by a small group of instrumentalists playing some very attractive music. I did not recognize the music, though I strained to hear it, and I could not recall any feature of it the next day, but I do remember my curiosity— in the dream—to know how many the musicians were. I remember too that after I had counted them to the number eight, I looked again and saw that they were playing bassoons, trombones, trumpets, a flute, and a clarinet. I awoke from this little concert in a state of great delight and anticipation, and the next morning began to compose the Octet.”
Libby Larsen – Raspberry Island Dreaming
Raspberry Island Dreaming, is a song cycle by Libby Larsen setting the poetry of Joyce Sutphen and Patricia Hampl. It consists of three songs about the Mississippi River and is part of a much larger dream which was born in the heart and mind of Bruce Carlson, director of the Schubert Club. Bruce looked at Raspberry Island, a snippet of land below the Wabasha Bridge, and fell in love with it. Maybe it is because the island is so small and the river is, as Joyce Sutphen tells us in her poem, “all dreams we ever dreamed.” Or maybe it is because in the midst of the bustling metropolis and through all manner of raging weather, the island is constant and quiet.
Johannes Brahms – Symphony No. 4 in E Minor
This last symphony of Brahms, considered a tragic, expectation-shattering farewell, is a piece that has both the beauty of lyrical lines and the complexity of texture. The finale has been considered the highest culmination of Brahm’s ingenious composition talent, his deep emotional struggle, and his darkest view of the world. The musicologist Donald Tovey praises the work as “one of the greatest orchestral works since Beethoven.” The symphony is rich in allusions, most notably to various Beethoven compositions. The symphony may well have been inspired by the tragedies of Sophocles, which Brahms had been researching at the time.
Event Links
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