First Violins
David Stone,
Concertmaster
Kathy Leer
Victor Gasser
Henry Null
Kevin Kishiyama
Catherine Weinberger
Elaine Schott
Second Violins
Joel Schwimmer,
Principal
Tammie Wrocklage
Alice Green
Irwin Maguire
Leonard Chen
Sara Tennant
Elvira Tafoya
Veronica Fortier
Violas
Terence Geoghegan,
Principal
Kathleen Feldman
Esther Frankel
Robert Neuman
Martin Shapiro
Molly Buzick
Cellos
Carol Roe,
Principal
Hugh Snyder
Jeannot T. Maha’a
Michael Burridge
Cellos (cont.)
Claudia Scott
David Roe
Cindy Weymouth
Carol Sipper
Karen Spechler
Bonnie Luck
String Basses
Dege Donati,
Principal
Andrew Saunders
Raymond Rengo
Flutes
Mary Maguire,
Principal
Kristin Osaki,
Oboes
Louis Grace,
Principal
Elizabeth Turner
English Horn
Louis Grace
Elizabeth Turner
Clarinets
Peggy Liborio Willis,
Principal
Carol Simon
Bass Clarinet
Katherine Woolf
Bassoons
Hap Russell,
Principal
Cavit CelayirMonezis
French Horns
Sherry Trujillo,
Co-Principal
Johann Trujillo
Co-Principal
Margaret LaFon
Susan Miller
Trumpets
James Labertew,
Principal
Scott Pickering
Alex Feldman
Trombones
Howard Simon,
Principal
Donald Faith
Steve Larios
Tuba
Michael Evans
Timpani
Charles Hamilton
Percussion
Brian Alexander
Harp
Margaret Hontos
James Mooy holds music and education degrees from UCLA (B.A. and M.A.). His
trumpet performance studies have been with Jimmy Valves, Ron Thompson, Tony Plog,
and Mario Guarneri. A Music Academy of the West alumnus, he has toured the U.S. and
Japan as a professional trumpet player. James taught the band and orchestra program
at R.A. Millikan High School in Long Beach for five years. During that time he freelanced
regularly in the Los Angeles area and held a full-time position as a Disneyland musician.
Mr. Mooy currently conducts the Lunch Break Jazz Ensemble, and the Symphony
Orchestra at Santa Barbara City College. Additional teaching duties include Music
Appreciation and Music Technology. He has served as an adjudicator for numerous
solo, chamber, wind ensemble, string ensemble, and jazz ensemble festivals. He has
repeatedly served as conductor for honor bands and orchestras. He has served as guest
conductor for the Santa Barbara Schools String Festival and the SB Youth Symphony.
Jeannot T. Maha'a, cello. Originally from Honolulu, Mr. Maha'a performs widely on
both cello and double bass and is a specialist in historical performance practice including
the use of original instruments. As a participant at the Baroque Performance Institute at
Oberlin (Oberlin Conservatory of Music), he received instruction in Baroque cello, bass
viola da gamba and double bass violone. His research into the early history of bass
instruments has led to a close association with Dr. Nona Pyron with whom he works as a
research assistant and editor at Grancino Editions, the Santa Barbara-based early music
publisher and home to the Grancino Collection of Early Cello Music, Dr. Pyron's
collection of over 8,000 unknown and forgotten 17th and 18th Century works.
More than a period instrument performer, Mr. Maha'a's freelance work stretches well
beyond the Baroque and Classical realms and includes regular performances with area
Indie/Pop and Rock artists, and included a two-year stint as soloist with the Brazilian
jazz band, Cello Bossa. His talents were recently featured in the Centerstage Theatre
production of Michael Smith's Bad Dog and Other Plays (composing and performing a
score described by the Santa Barbara News Press simply as "Beautiful"), and the
Victoria Hall production of Aeschylus' The Persians (improvised score).
In addition to his freelance work, Mr. Maha'a teaches privately dedicating much of his
attention to children and beginning adult cellists and bassists.
Mr. Maha'a plays an Italian cello made by the Genoese master Paolo Castello in 1766.
Tonight, however, Mr. Maha'a will perform using a magnificent Milanese instrument by
Giovanni Grancino, made in the year 1716, and generously loaned to him for this
performance.
For more information or to hear recordings from his CD, Early Music for Violoncello, visit:
www.sbcello.com.
Program
*************************************
Russlan and Ludmilla Overture
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857)
Cello Concerto, Op. 129 in A minor
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
I. Nicht zu schnell
II. Langsam
III. Sehr lebhaft
Jeannot T. Maha'a, - cello
Intermission
Our Town
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
L'Arlesienne, Suite No. 1
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
I. Allegro deciso
II. Minuet, Allegro giocoso (minuetto)
III. Adagietto
IV. Carillon - Allegro moderato
James D. Mooy, Director
Program Notes
Russlan and Ludmilla Overture (1842)
Glinka's opera is based on a poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, who
had also agreed to write the libretto for the opera but was killed in a duel before starting
on the project. The typically operatic plot begins at the betrothal feast of the knight
Russlan and the princess Ludmilla. In a poof of smoke, Ludmilla disappears, abducted
by the evil dwarf Tchernomor. The rest of the opera concerns Russlan's adventures in
trying to find Ludmilla ahead of two other suitors. But Russlan has two advantages his
competitors don't: a magic sword bestowed on him by a giant, singing head; and a ring
enchanted by a good wizard named Finn. With the help of these implements, Russlan
manages to return the princess to Kiev and awaken her from her enchanted slumber.
Glinka's overture has become one of the favorites of the orchestral repertoire and
is based largely on the wedding music at the conclusion of the opera. Its lush
orchestration and use of folk tunes is one of the earliest examples of the so-called
Russian national sound, and set the stylistic stage for Glinka's successors, including
Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, and even Stravinsky.
Cello Concerto, Op. 129 in A minor (1850)
Schumann's Cello Concerto was composed in the short space of only two weeks,
but it did not receive its premiere until four years after the composer's death. Though
most biographers agree that Schumann was fully lucid when penning the Cello
Concerto, it was likely around this time that he began to suffer from the advancing
mental illness that eventually led to his death in an asylum six years later. Current
scholarship theorizes that the symptoms of Schumann's insanity (which included
frequent "conversations" with Felix Mendelssohn, who had died in 1847) are consistent
with mercury poisoning, which he likely contracted from treatment for syphilis.
Schumann may in fact have been chatting with ghosts, because the Cello
Concerto shares some significant traits with Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, written in
1846. The most notable points in common are the sudden entrance of the soloist after
the briefest of orchestral introductions, and the seamless segues between the three
movements. In Schumann's case, after just three introductory woodwind chords, the
cellist enters with a mysterious-sounding theme, which builds in waves then crashes
triumphantly into the first full orchestral passage. Where the listener might traditionally
expect a solo cadenza, the storm of the first movement instead disperses suddenly,
pivoting on a paraphrase of the opening chords the lullaby-like second movement, a
romantic duet between the concerto soloist and the principal orchestral cellist over
pizzicato strings. However, the spell is broken quite abruptly, accelerating into the
vigorous rondo-form finale. The last movement is punctuated by an accompanied
cadenza, which was an innovation virtually without precedent in Schumann's time. The
orchestra then joins with the soloist in earnest for the triumphant final chords.
Our Town (1940)
The film version of Our Town, released in 1940, was adapted from Thornton
Wilder’s famous play of the same name. The story is set in the fictional town of Grover’s
Corners, and follows the life of its main characters, George and Emily, through their
childhood, marriage, and (spoiler alert!) Emily’s eventual death. Wilder himself
describes the play in the preface: "Our Town is not a picture of life in a New Hampshire
village; or a speculation about the conditions of life after death...It is an attempt to find a
value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life."
Copland’s evocative score capitalizes on his quintessentially American sound.
Our Town was nominated for Best Score at the 1940 Academy Awards, but lost to
Pinocchio. Interestingly, the very next year, the Academy began offering separate
awards for Best Original Score and Scoring of a Musical Picture. Copland did eventually
win an Oscar in 1949 for his score to The Heiress.
L'Arlesienne, Suite No. 1 (1872)
Boy meets girl and falls madly in love. Girl is unfaithful, boy throws himself off
balcony. Thus summarizes the story of Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlesienne. Georges
Bizet was commissioned to write incidental music for the production, and originally
scored it for small orchestra and chorus. He re-worked it into an orchestral suite after
the play’s critical failure.
The Prelude acts as a mini-overture, opening with a theme and variations on the
jaunty Spanish Christmas carol "March of the Kings." The march gradually dies away,
leading into an operatic intermezzo whose seductive first theme is one of the great--and
one of the only--orchestral solos for saxophone. The Minuet begins on a jarring
dissonance in a minor mode, but the darkness soon dissipates into the pastoral trio, with
open fifths imitating bagpipes. The minuet is followed by the contemplative Adagietto for
muted strings. The Carillon, as its title suggests, imitates the tolling of bells. The joyful
pealing is interrupted by a melancholy middle section, prescient of the play's tragic end.
However, the bell tones return to bring the suite to a vigorous conclusion.
© 2007 by Molly Buzick, DMA
Special thanks to:
Molly Buzick, Program Notes
Esther Frankel, Post Concert Reception
Jim Mooy, Program
Pamela Lasker, Tickets
Future Concerts
Special Thanks
Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees
Dr. Kathryn O. Alexander, Dr. Joe W. Dobbs, Mrs. Sally D. Green, Mr. Morris Jurkowitz, Mr. Doug
Montgomery, Ms. Joan Livingston, Mr. Desmond O’Neill, & Mr. Luis Villegas.
Santa Barbara City College Administration
Mr. John Romo, Superintendent/President Dr. Jack Friedlander, Executive Vice-President for Educational
Programs Mr. Joe Sullivan, Vice-President, Business Services Dr. Alice Scharper, Dean of Educational
Programs
The Department of Music
Dr. John Clark: Department Chairman,Theory, Musicianship, Songwriting, &
Music Appreciation, Eric Heidner: Concert Band, Fundamentals, Jazz Studies, Music Appreciation Dr.
Margaret Hontos: Theory, Music History, World Music, Music Appreciation Nathan Kreitzer: Chorus,
Vocal Technique, Applied Voice James Mooy: Orchestra, Jazz Studies, Electronic Music, Fundamentals,
Music Appreciation Josephine Brummel: Piano & Accompanying, Keyboard skills Dominic Camardella:
Sound Recording, Electronic Music David Campos: Piano Studies, Jazz Improv Agatha Carubia: Applied
Voice Phyllis Dunn: String Techniques Dr. Linda Holland: Musicianship, Fundamentals, Flute Studies Ike
Jenkins: Jazz Studies Dr. David Malvinni: Music Appreciation, History of Rock William Redman: Guitar,
Jazz Studies Dr. Charles Wood: Jazz Improv, Jazz History James Watson: Laboratory Teaching Assistant
Assistants
Ted Cheesman, House Manager. Lavonne Sanchez, House Staff.Robert Mendoza: SBCC Duplicating
DepartmentPam Lasker & the Garvin Theatre Box OfficeRobert and S.B.C.C. Duplicating Dept.
SBCC Endowment for the Arts
This endowment is intended to provide permanent support for SBCC’s Music programs, and to foster
broad-based student access to the arts. This new fund will not only sustain continuing excellence in
SBCC’s Music programs, but will support innovative, cross-disciplinary programs to engage more students
in the arts. Many SBCC students have never been exposed to the wonders and joys of the arts. Your gift of
any amount can help to sustain and expand opportunities for these students. Please contact the Foundation
for Santa Barbara City College at 965-0581, ext. 2618, to learn more about how you can help.