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Music Beat: Celebrate The Season<\/strong> One of my favorite musical events of the year comes along this week, on Friday afternoon and evening: the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra\u2019s post-Thanksgiving salute to the holidays soon to come, the \u201cCelebrate the Season\u201d concert, given in conjunction with the city\u2019s Canopy of Lights celebration on the Monroe County Courthouse square.<\/p>\n Actually it is a twice-given happening: a one-hour version at 5:30 for families with younger children and a 90-minute version at 8. Both are at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, just a few steps away from where the holiday lights will be turned on to bring after-dark sunshine into the air and into our hearts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I like to attend because the music is always played well and with seeming joy. The purpose is not to show off, to exhibit skills, although the performing musicians do so just by engaging in this delightful exercise, but because the atmosphere engendered is warm, comfortable, uplifting, and all sorts of such good feelings.<\/p>\n It is the orchestra\u2019s gift to the community, and it always leaves me smiling. The chatter I hear when the songs have ended and we who came to hear head outside into the joyous tumult on the streets, the talk is so very positive, so expressive of satisfaction.<\/p>\n Actually, \u201cCelebrate the Season\u201d is one of those entertainments I often refer to as unreviewable. Yes, I will probably have something to tell you afterwards, but these concerts are presents which one accepts and for which one gives thanks. Certainly, I do.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s concerts have a special significance. They come as part of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra\u2019s 50th season. Donna Lafferty, the orchestra\u2019s executive director and one of its trombonists, says the BSO\u2019s programming committee decided that marking half a century of musical togetherness deserves recognition.<\/p>\n \u201cTo that end,\u201d she explains, \u201cwe have programmed several pieces that do not relate to the holidays but to what was an annual event for us, \u2018Night in Old Vienna.\u2019 While we were forced to stop doing that long-beloved program about 10 years ago for lack of financial viability, many of our regular audience members have fond memories of the event and never miss a chance to remind us about how much it meant to them. So, this is a way to say \u2018Thank you\u2019 to those people and give them a chance to relive the experience, even if just for a little while.\u201d<\/p>\n Donna Lafferty also expressed excitement about new community partnerships: \u201cWe\u2019ll have members of the Voces Novae choir singing carols in front of the theater as people arrive. We\u2019ll also feature the Quarryland Men\u2019s Chorus during the 8 o\u2019clock program, singing Irving Berlin\u2019s \u2018White Christmas.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And, please take note, if you cannot attend the Bloomington shows on Friday, the BSO has been invited to give an encore performance next Sunday at the new Brown County Music Center. The facility, says Donna, \u201cis amazing: a huge theater with not a bad seat in the house and equipped with all sorts of high tech equipment to accommodate all of the different acts they\u2019ve been programming already.\u201d<\/p>\n Both programs, the shorter and the longer, contain holiday favorites, such as \u201cA Canadian Brass Christmas,\u201d \u201cCarol of the Bells,\u201d a sing-along, and Leroy Anderson\u2019s \u201cSleigh Ride.\u201d They\u2019ll also offer an orchestrated reading of \u201cA Visit from St. Nicholas\u201d (\u2018Twas the Night Before Christmas), to be narrated by the outgoing executive director of the Buskirk-Chumley, Danielle McClelland.<\/p>\n \u201cWe invited Danielle to join us this year for many reasons,\u201d says Donna. \u201cShe is a valued partner who made our move to the BCT for our performances possible and provided incredibly helpful insight into creating more of an event rather than a \u2018simple\u2019 concert. She is an icon of the Bloomington community, not just for her work with the theater but also because of her support for and mentorship of upcoming performing artists. And, most important, she is a good friend to many of us. We\u2019re reluctant to say goodbye to her, but we\u2019re also excited to see what she will be doing next.\u201d<\/p>\n Both programs also include a symphonic adaptation of the \u201cOde to Joy\u201d from Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony, a reading of the Trepak from Tchaikovsky\u2019s \u201cThe Nutcracker Suite,\u201d and sundry items, all familiar.<\/p>\n The evening concert adds three more pieces. One is \u201cA Rose for Ruth Ann,\u201d written by BSO tuba player Paul Hartin, notes Donna, as tribute to Hillyard and Ruth Ann Trubitt, \u201ctwo of the BSO\u2019s most enduring, influential, and beloved board members, who saw the orchestra through some very lean years. Ruth Ann also was instrumental in making \u2018Night in Old Vienna\u2019 such a mainstay in our programming.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019We wish You a Klezmer Christmas,\u2019\u201d Donna says, \u201cwas composed by one of our violinists, Lauren Bernofsky, and is a cute, sweet and extremely clever melding of traditional carols with the catchy sounds of Klezmer music. And the third piece, is Tabakov’s Bulgarian Dance Number 2. Another of our violinists, Simona Staneva, is from Bulgaria and has been very homesick. Her visa status makes it difficult for her to go back, so we\u2019re bringing a bit of Bulgaria to her for the holidays.\u201d<\/p>\n The artistic director and conductor of the BSO, Alejandro Gomez Guillen, a charming host and authoritative musician, will be on the podium to direct the festivities and make the music \u201ca warm and enthusiastic invitation to join us in celebrating the season while traveling across the globe, back through time, and into the stories of our imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Music Beat: Celebrate The Season By Peter Jacobi H-T columnist Nov 24, 2019 Updated Nov 25, 2019 One of my favorite musical events of the year comes along this… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"tags":[],"news-category":[],"class_list":["post-2534","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4368,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2534\/revisions\/4368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"news-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloomingtonsymphony.com\/staging\/6573\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-category?post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy Peter Jacobi H-T columnist
\nNov 24, 2019 Updated Nov 25, 2019<\/p>\n