EARLY BIRD SPECIAL ON TRANSLATIONS TICKETS!
If you don’t have tickets for Translations yet, now is the time to get them! From now until January 13, you can buy tickets to this concert at the same discounted price subscribers pay. To purchase tickets call the Civic Box Office at 831-420-5260, Tuesday–Friday, 12pm–4pm, or visit santacruztickets.com.
TRANSLATIONS: CONNECTIONS BETWEEN TIMES, PLACES, AND CULTURES
Our Translations concert on January 28 and 29, 2023 will be unique and breathtaking! It features the world premiere of a new piano concerto by Turkish composer and pianist Hakan Ali Toker, commissioned specifically for the Santa Cruz Symphony. The program also features vivid translations of Point Reyes wildlife by Northern California native Gabriella Smith, and Ravel’s homage to the Parisian Baroque à la François Couperin.
The program starts with Gabriella Smith’s Tumblebird Contrails. Smith grew up in the San Francisco Bay area with a love for the environment and for composing. Many of her works deal with the climate crisis; her calls for action are made through the kind of music that attaches the listener emotionally to the natural world. Smith wrote: “Tumblebird Contrails is inspired by a single moment I experienced while backpacking in Point Reyes, sitting in the sand at the edge of the ocean, and listening to the hallucinatory sounds of the Pacific.”
Next we’ll have Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, written in 1917 for solo piano and orchestrated in 1919. Ravel experienced the horror of World War I as well as tremendous personal losses before composing this piece. The tragedy of his life is barely disguised by the upbeat Baroque forms used in this suite. He dedicated each movement to a friend who died in the war. Despite the background of tragedy in its composition, Le Tombeau de Couperin is a lighthearted and sometimes reflective work rather than a sombre one, a tribute to 18th-century French music.
Finally, Turkish composer Hakan Ali Toker will offer us Civilization. His stirring world premiere concerto fuses elements of Western classical music with Turkish and other traditional themes, along with jazz. It requires the soloist to use two separate pianos, each tuned slightly differently, while he and the orchestra improvise particular passages. This means that each performance has its own distinctive variations. Toker is both the composer and the featured piano soloist for this standout piece!
We are particularly proud that Maestro Daniel Stewart, on behalf of the Santa Cruz Symphony, commissioned this inspiring piano concerto. Our special thanks go to the commission sponsors, Richard Klevins and Gay Nichols, and Lee and Emily Duffus. Co-commission sponsors are Bob Edmund, and Dr. Roger Knacke. We also thank our concert co-sponsors, Ralph and DeAnne Boroff, and Melanie LeBlanc, along with our artist sponsors Vance Landis-Carey and Robert Carey.
Translations will be a show of creativity and virtuosity. Don’t miss out!