Program Notes:

Concerto for Westerlies

Concerto for Westerlies by Conrad Tao brings us into the present, showcasing a composer-performer known for his fearless virtuosity and stylistic fluidity. Tao’s music often balances crystalline clarity, moving seamlessly between lyric introspection and rhythmic drive. This reflective work brings the natural world into the concert hall with breath, virtuosity, and lyricism. The piece featured the acclaimed brass quartet The Westerlies, Ensemble-in-Residence at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School, composed specifically for the ensemble, the opening phrases, written on the first day of spring in Central Park, capture Tao’s lyrical, fluid style, full of vitality, warmth, and expressive nuance.

Overture to Egmont

As the musicologist Paul Mies has remarked, heroism was a major concern of Beethoven’s times. Not surprisingly, the composer gravitated toward protagonists who dared much against repressive forces in his rare forays into music for the theater.

 
Egmont is a case in point. In 1809 Beethoven was commissioned to compose incidental music for the Vienna revival of the play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). This was Goethe’s free interpretation of Count Egmont’s 16th-century struggle for Dutch liberty against the autocratic imperial rule of Spain. Egmont is imprisoned and sentenced to death, and when Klärchen, his mistress, fails to free him, she commits suicide. Before his own death, Egmont delivers a rousing speech, and his execution becomes a victorious martyrdom in a fight against oppression.

 
Beethoven’s incidental music begins with a powerful, strikingly original overture that summarizes the course of the drama, from its ominous slow introduction (suggesting the oppressive tread of Spain with the rhythm of a sarabande) to the manic transformation of tragedy into triumph in a brilliant coda, which Beethoven echoed at the end of the play as a “Symphony of Victory.” —From the Los Angeles Philharmonic archive 

Scheherazade, Op. 35

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s career stood in the very center of Russian musical life of the second half of the nineteenth century.  His first career was in the Russian navy, but he soon garnered success in music.  Known primarily for his fifteen operas, he was instrumental in the rising importance of that genre in Russia.  In addition to his fame and influence as a composer, he was also head of the conservatory in St. Petersburg–today, his statue dominates the little park directly across the street from the conservatory and the famed Mariinsky Theatre.   In the West, of course, we know him primarily for Russian Easter Overture and the tone poem, Scheherazade.  His ability as an orchestrator and teacher of orchestration is one of his many legacies–Igor Stravinsky was one of his students.  In fact, much of the marvelous musical atmosphere that audiences adore in Stravinsky’s early ballets, the Rite of Spring, Firebird, and Petrouchka, lead directly back to Rimsky-Korsakov and the orchestral style of his operas.  And it is of no small interest that there are sections in Debussy’s La Mer and Ravel’s Daphnis et Cloé that seem lifted right out of Scheherazade. A fascination with the exotic, and with non-Western subject matter was a prime characteristic of Romanticism, and Russian music of the late nineteenth century is exemplary of this predilection. 

 
Scheherazade, completed in 1888, was inspired by the well-known story, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.  The eponymous heroine must entertain her bridegroom, the murderous sultan, with continuous intriguing tales in order to forestall the arrival of the executioner who had beheaded a thousand previous wives the morning after their successive marriages.  While Rimsky-Korsakov more or less disclaimed his well-known reputation for his evocative musical Orientalism, his abilities therein certainly created a triumph of exotic atmosphere in Scheherazade.   The four movements–following their titles, which Rimsky-Korsakov later withdrew—allude to four stories of Scheherazade, the sultana.  We can follow loosely the narrative, for Scheherazade is represented by the elaborate, highly figured violin solo that constantly weaves in and out of the texture as the stories unfold.  

THE WESTERLIES 

The Westerlies, “an arty quartet…mixing ideas from jazz, new classical, and Appalachian folk” (The New York Times), hold a singular space in modern music. From Carnegie Hall to Coachella, the GRAMMY-nominated ensemble has upended presumptions of the brass tradition to create music that is “folk-like and composerly, lovely and intellectually rigorous” (NPR Music).

Comprising Riley Mulherkar and Chloe Rowlands on trumpet and Andy Clausen and Addison Maye-Saxon on trombone, the ensemble has relentlessly composed, arranged, adapted, recorded, and toured over the past fifteen years with the precision of a string quartet, the audacity of a rock band, and the charm of a family sing-along. 

Across ten critically acclaimed studio albums, The Westerlies have earned “a unique reputation for exploring the emotional textures of American music” (DownBeat), championing living composers and collaborators including Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Conrad Tao, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, and Theo Bleckmann.

MANNES ORCHESTRA

Led by maestro David Hayes, Mannes Orchestra has been hailed by The New York Times as an orchestra whose quality is “a revelation,” and for its “intensity of focus.” The 2025/2026 Season sees the orchestra return to the stage in many performances, collaborations, and projects, including at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, City Center with the Martha Graham Dance Company, John L. Tishman Auditorium at The New School, and appearances with Mannes Opera at the Baruch Performing Arts Center and The Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.