Symphony has a new conductor and an ambitious new season

The Capitol Theatre is undergoing renovation and so is one of its primary tenants, the Yakima Symphony Orchestra, which opens its 2010-2011 season later this month with an ambitious schedule and its first new conductor in 42 years.

Lawrence Golan, winner of a public selection process earlier this year to replace YSO founding conductor Brooke Creswell, starts off with the appropriately named "New Beginnings" program Sept. 18. He'll follow that with three more full-orchestra classical performances, two chamber orchestra programs and two pops concerts -- something new to Yakima.

"It's well-written music by great composers," the 43-year-old Golan says of the pops programs. "It's just a different style of music, often more danceable, more singable, more recognizable."

And that's just the beginning. Five years from now, Golan hopes to have six full-orchestra classical performances, four pops concerts, four chamber programs, a fully staged opera and two educational performances just for local students. Admittedly, that's a ways off, and its achievement will depend on whether the YSO can increase private donations and corporate sponsorship enough to support such a season.

"More concerts means more costs," Golan says. "Now, although it also means more revenue in ticket sales, ticket sales only cover about 30 percent of our expenses for any given concert. ... So really, it's not up to us to determine the size and scope of our season; it's up to the community. We will perform as much as the community is willing to support us."

In the meantime, there's this year's season to discuss:

Sept. 18: "New Beginnings"

Featuring Peter Boyer's "New Beginnings," a Washington premiere; Antonin Dvorak's "New World"; and Chris and Dave Brubeck's "Ansel Adams: America," also a Washington premiere.

Golan is big on thematic programming, and this one fits perfectly.

"Because it's a new era, and I'm the new conductor, that in itself gave me the thematic material for this concert," he says.

The selections reflect Golan's desire to juxtapose the familiar (Dvorak) with the new (the Boyer and Brubeck pieces), all held together by a thematic thread.

"There will always be a balance between continuity and variety, and also variety in the sense of working old standards, or war-horses, chestnuts -- there are various words for it -- that the audience will know and love, with pieces they've probably never heard before or even heard of before," he says.

Toward that end, the Brubeck piece, "Ansel Adams: America," will include a new wrinkle that's indicative of Golan's daring: projections of more than 100 photographs by and of Adams while the symphony plays. That may not seem so revolutionary in a post-MTV world, but in the often-stodgy realm of classical music it's the equivalent of night baseball at Wrigley Field or color photos in the New York Times. You can almost hear the monocles of bewildered patrons dropping into champagne glasses.

While promising more of that sort of innovation, Golan also sounds a note of appeasement to the more traditional symphony audiences: Just as there may be video associated with some concerts, others will be standard and traditional.

"There are definitely people who would not want to incorporate multimedia into the concert hall," he says. "I think the reason some orchestras are hesitant about it -- while everyone wants to bring in new audiences -- they're concerned about alienating their current audiences. That's exactly where our philosophy comes in, about appealing to everyone in the community."

Oct. 9-10: "Rhapsody in Blue"

Chamber concert with Bill Mays on piano and the Tom Harrell Quintet, featuring Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" and "The Easy Winners"; Darius Milhaud's "La Creation du Monde"; George Antheil's "A Jazz Symphony"; and George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."

This concert, at The Seasons Performance Hall, is part of The Seasons Fall Festival, which is largely focused on jazz, and the program reflects that.

"It focuses on the juxtaposition of jazz and classical music," Golan says. "In particular, it features the three earliest examples of classical pieces that had jazz influence."

Oct. 30: "Dia de los Muertos"

Chamber concert with a guest piano soloist from Morelia, Mexico, featuring Richard Meyer's "Dia de los Muertos" and Luigi Cherubini's "Requiem No. 1" in C minor.

In conjunction with communitywide Day of the Dead celebrations, The Seasons will host a program that includes a haunting requiem that Beethoven himself said was better than Mozart's.

"It's possibly a Yakima premiere of this piece, even though it's 200 years old," Golan says. "It's another example of a great piece of music the audience will love even though they've never heard it before."

Nov. 14: "A Salute to Rogers and Hammerstein"

Pops concert with members of the Yakima Symphony Chorus and the Yakima Children's Choir, soprano Mia Spencer and bass-baritone Vijay Singh, featuring highlights from "Carousel," "Oklahoma!" "South Pacific," "The King and I" and "The Sound of Music."

Like the incorporation of multimedia elements, the pops series is something new and is aimed at attracting an audience that may not otherwise be interested in orchestral music. The key with popular music is that the orchestra and the conductor take it seriously, Golan says, so that it doesn't come off as musical pandering.

"Some musicians can consider popular music second-class, and pops concerts in general to be second-class," he says. "But my experience has been that musicians are more than happy and more than excited to play a well-thought-out, well-prepared, well-done pops concert."

Feb. 19: "Concert Fantastique"

Full-orchestra classical concert with pianist John Pickett, featuring Luis de Freitas Branco's "Scherzo Fantastique," a Washington premiere; Sergei Rachmaninov's "Piano Concerto No. 2" in C minor; and Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique."

A celebration of narrative Romanticism, this concert features "perhaps the quintessential piece of the Romantic Period," Golan says.

"It tells the story of the composer's obsession with a young lady, even to the point of him taking opium and hallucinating various scenes involving the young lady," he says. "The last movement, 'The Dream of the Witches' Sabbath,' involves witches and goblins and skeletons. And the skeletons are portrayed by the string players hitting their strings with the wood part of the bow as opposed to the hair. It sounds like bones clinking against each other."

March 12: "Oscar Night"

Pops concert with Golan on the violin, featuring music from Academy Award-winning scores.

Golan, a substitute violinist with the Chicago Symphony and a violinist with the Honolulu Symphony before he began conducting, agreed somewhat reluctantly to showcase his own virtuosity for this concert.

"My basic attitude is not one of trying to unduly take the spotlight; the spotlight should be on the orchestra," he says. "But if me playing the violin a little bit helps sell tickets, then that's to the benefit of the orchestra."

April 2: "Final Thoughts"

Full-orchestra classical concert with clarinetist Jeffrey Brooks featuring Aaron Copland's "Three Latin-American Sketches," Mozart's "Clarinet Concerto," and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 6 'Pathetique,'"

Perhaps the most interesting of the themed concerts, this one features only composers' final works. The program is no mere novelty, though, says Golan, who insists he will not sacrifice quality to shoehorn works into a theme.

"Tchaikovsky's sixth and final symphony is absolutely considered one of his greatest masterpieces," Golan says. "And he died nine days after conducting the first performance of it."

May 21: "Verdi Requiem"

Full-orchestra classical concert with the Yakima Symphony Chorus, Yakima Valley Community College Choir, Central Washington University Choir, soprano Gayla Blaisdell, mezzo-soprano Melissa Shiel, tenor Tor Blaisdell and baritone Derrick Parker.

This 85-minute requiem, which Golan says is basically "an opera without a set," is this season's operatic offering. It is a turbulent piece, frightening at times, ethereal at others. It's the final performance of the season and is representative of the season as a whole -- perhaps even the direction of the YSO -- in its variations and its ambition.

That's Golan, too: a curator of classical music's tradition who nevertheless is willing to evolve.

"It is a living art," he says. "We need to respect that and present to our community all that is going on with that living art."

* Pat Muir can be reached at 509-577-7693 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.

If you go

WHAT: Yakima Symphony Orchestra 2010-2011 season.

WHEN: Sept. 18 through May 21.

WHERE: Full-orchestra classical and pops concerts at the Capitol Theatre, 19 S. Third St.; chamber concerts at The Seasons Performance Hall, 101 N. Naches Ave.

TICKETS: Prices vary, with individual tickets starting at $15 and packages starting at $30. For more information, visit www.yakimasymphony.org.