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Special
Events
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| Orpheus
Chamber Orchestra Celebrates 50th Williams Center Performance March 25,
2004 |
It
was a beautiful night when Orpheus celebrated its 50th performance
in Easton with an all-American program: Charles Ives' Three Places
in New England, Walter Piston's Sinfonietta, Aaron Copland's
Suite from Appalachian Spring, and as a special treat, Edgar
Meyer's Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra, with the composer
as soloist.
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| Before
the concert, Ronnie Bauch spoke on behalf of Orpheus and presented
a signed original of Paul Seiko Chihara's An Afternoon on
the Perfume River, a Lafayette commission. |
Williams
Center Director Ellis Finger presented Orpheus with a commemorative
display piece. (See below.) |
Lafayette
College President Arthur Rothkopf, a big Orpheus fan, spoke appreciatively
about the orchestra's long relationship with the college. |
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Some views of the
sold-out concert. |
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| More
concert photos, with Edgar Meyer in the center. |
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| After
the concert, orchestra members and Friends of the Williams Center
enjoyed a wonderful champagne reception in the Wilson Room of
Lafayette's Pfenning Alumni Center. |
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More
photos from the reception. |
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| Suzi
Ryder '05 was happy to meet Edgar Meyer. |
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Ellis: "Will
you come back for our 25th anniversary season?"
Edgar: "I'll be here!"
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Here
are the tributes included in the commemorative program insert,
and on the display piece presented to Orpheus. |
It
all began with my phone call in 1985, inquiring of Orpheus’s
interest in performing at the Williams Center. “Can I get
back to you on that?” came the answer—usually the
kiss of death in the arts world. When my call was returned several
days later, the response astonished me: “How would Lafayette
feel about hosting Orpheus three times a year?” The query
came from the orchestra’s need to enhance performance and
recording commitments that were just being established with Carnegie
Hall and Deutsche Grammaphon, respectively, and to our usefulness
as a “run out” venue for their work.
After some breathless moments of excitement and some crucial reflection
among Lafayette’s program advisors, we decided to go forward
with a two-years courtship. When Orpheus first traveled to Easton
November 12, 1987, few would have imagined that this initial commitment
would result in the self-sustaining 18-year marriage that has
evolved.
That memorable evening gave us Mozart, Haydn, Bizet, and new work
by Irving Fine—a spectrum of styles that has continued to
mark Orpheus’s programming ideas. There would of course
be more of the classics suitable to Orpheus’s instrumentation,
but there would also be Shostakovich and Stravinsky, Schumann
and Richard Strauss, and a wide array of American composers—the
pantheon of Copland, Ives, Carter, and Piston, but younger voices
such as Susan Botti, Ellen Zwillich, and Paul Chihara (with a
20th anniversary commission by the Williams Center).
In their debut Easton performance, Orpheus highlighted two of
its own members as soloists: Bill Purvis in Mozart’s Horn
Concerto No. 3 and Randall Wolfgang in Bizet’s Symphony
No. 1. Many other “member concertos” would follow,
with splendid solo performances by Todd Phillips, Eric Wyrick,
Charles Neidich, Susan Palma-Nidel, Martha Caplin, Frank Morelli,
Eriko Sato, and Liang-Ping How, among others.
There have also been many guest appearances at Williams Center
performances by musicians whom Orpheus would then showcase in
their upcoming Carnegie Hall performances. Such evenings have
treated our local audiences to musicians unlikely to have been
heard in other roles: pianists Jeffrey Kahane, André Watts,
Cecile Licad, and Olli Mustonen; violinists Gil Shaham and Elmar
Oliveira; vocalists Andreas Scholl, Milagro Vargas, and Carmen
Pelton; and tonight, the great bassist Edgar Meyer.
Choosing personal highlights from this large array of performances
is understandable difficult. But if I had to settle on a precious
few, certainly I would have to consider Gil Shaham’s first
performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Branford Marsalis’s
performance of French suites and concertos, the extraordinary
all-Ives concert led by Gil Kalisch, and the gala evening at Easton’s
State Theater with James Galway.
Thank you, Orpheus! And many happy returns!!
Ellis Finger, Director, Williams Center for the Arts |
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As
President of Lafayette College, I salute the long and fruitful
partnership that Lafayette has enjoyed with Orpheus, which reaches
this significant milestone on March 25. Early in my presidency
I had the pleasure of presenting Orpheus with a certificate of
honor when we celebrated their 25th performance at the Williams
Center. Since then Barbara and I have attended so many wonderful
evenings of Orpheus music, which have enriched immensely the cultural
life of the Lehigh Valley and the educational experience of our
students. Encore!
Arthur J. Rothkopf, President, Lafayette College
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Among
the many constituencies of the Lafayette community who continue
to benefit from our special relationship with Orpheus, the Department
of Music is especially grateful. Having the opportunity to extend
the classroom into the concert hall, and vice versa, is truly
a unique and exciting way to bring the study of music to life.
In addition to the obvious educational values that high quality
live performances bring, Orpheus musicians have always been eager
to reach out to students and faculty in the classroom through
special coaching and lecture-demonstration activities. These continue
to be cherished educational activities.
J. Larry Stockton, Chairman, Department of Music
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More
than 25 years ago my wife and I moved from Philadelphia to Bethlehem.
In those days, Orpheus was a grand experiment, and we were among
its early well-wishers, and soon, its fans. We drove devotedly to
New York to hear Orpheus concerts in Carnegie Hall—and that
was before I-78! What a pleasure it was when we could regularly
hear Orpheus only 20 minutes away...year after year. While our subscription
expands every season, as the Williams Center offerings expand, Orpheus
remains the center for us. Orpheus in Easton draws us back, and
Orpheus keeps us coming. Those three concerts are always high points
of the season. We feel very fortunate, and we thank all those who
make Orpheus a presence in our lives and in the lives of so many
others in the Lehigh Valley—especially the Friends of the
Williams Center, whose gifts enable Lafayette to continue as Orpheus’s
home away from home.
Paul Larson, Advisory Board, Friends of the Williams Center |
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