Welcome Back Bash

Nathan Chan, cello
Geoffrey Larson, conductor

Doors and refreshments at 6:00 PM
Performance at 7:00 PM

Siamak Aghaei and Colin Jacobsen: Ascending Bird

Based upon a traditional Persian folk song, this evocative piece emerged from the intersection of two pioneering ensembles: The Knights, founded by brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen in New York in the late 1990s, and the Silk Road ensemble, conceived by the acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998. Both groups emphasize cultural collaboration and the artistic traditions which inspire and unite musicians and audiences around the world.  During a trip to Iran in 2004, Colin Jacobsen learned of Ascending Bird through his Silk Road colleague, Siamak Aghaei, who had learned it during his childhood there.  The story closely resembles the Phoenix myth.  A bird attempts to fly to the sun.  Twice it fails.  The third time, it sheds its physical body in the solar glow, as a metaphor for achieving spiritual transcendence.  Jacobsen originally wrote this work for string quartet, then adapted it for small orchestra. 

Sufjan Stevens arr. Michael Atkinson: Suite from Run Rabbit Run

A native of Detroit and a longtime New York resident, Sufjan Stevens has earned both Grammy and Oscar nominations for his eclectic scores.  (He performed his song, Mystery of Love, part of the soundtrack to Best Picture nominee Call Me by Your Name, at the 2018 Academy Awards ceremony.)  Trained on oboe, English horn and piano, he later took up the banjo and guitar.  His compositions and collaborations have spanned a wide musical range, from indie folk and rock to baroque pop, symphonic and electronica.  In 2001, he released his second album, an electronic music recording titled Enjoy Your Rabbit.  Its songs, which incorporate both English and Chinese language vocals, generally correspond to the animals of the Chinese zodiac (with one rooted specifically in his Christian faith).  Stevens described the project as “an aural environment for each animal: a movie soundtrack (without the movie).”  In 2009, New York-based composer Michael Atkinson arranged the songs for strings for an album called Run Rabbit Run.  In doing so, he respected Stevens’ original concept, with the instruments here replicating the glitches and white noise of the earlier, electronic recording.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1

Born in Saint Petersburg in 1906, Shostakovich was a member of the first generation of Russian composers to pursue their careers entirely within the period of the Soviet Union.  He composed prolifically, despite the artistic and personal challenges—and, on occasion, threats—he encountered.  (As he famously declared, “Art destroys silence.”)  His large and varied output includes fifteen symphonies and an equal number of string quartets, in addition to theatre, ballet and film scores and seven operas. He wrote the first of his two cello concertos in 1959, dedicating this work to his good friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who committed the score to memory in just four days. Shostakovich suggested that an “impulse” from an earlier cello-and-orchestra piece by Prokofiev—a work composed seven years earlier, and also intended for Rostropovich—inspired this concerto.  It calls for a relatively small orchestra, and much of it plays out as chamber music.  The first movement, described by the composer as a “scherzo-like march,” introduces his musical signature (D-E-flat-C-B-natural) multiple times, and it recurs throughout the score.  The second movement evolves from reflection to passion, with a notable interchange between cello and clarinet, as well as a little dance.  The mostly brooding cadenza serves as the third, bridging movement.  The finale has often been described as “circus music,” with both haunted and frenzied passages.  The only brass instrument in the score, a French horn, serves as a kind of alter ego to the cello, even as the solo instrument engages in many discreet exchanges with it, clarinet and celesta.  This is classic Shostakovich, making powerful emotional statements with rather modest forces, while nodding in the direction of both folk and film music.  It also reflects the virtuosity of its dedicatee, Mstislav Rostropovich, with its runs, harmonics, left-hand pizzicato and double stops.  He gave the successful world premiere of this concerto at the Leningrad Conservatory on October 4, 1959.

Program notes by Steve Reeder

Nathan Chan, Cello

Cellist Nathan Chan discovered his talent for music at an early age through conducting. Before he was two, he could emulate the styles of conductors he saw on music videos such as Seiji Ozawa, Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, using a chopstick as a baton. As a toddler, his imitations were so intuitively musical that he caught the attention of San Francisco Opera Assistant Conductor Sara Jobin. Under her eye, he made his debut as a conductor at age three, leading the San Jose Chamber Orchestra in a set of Mozart variations, despite not yet being able to read music. This was followed by a guest appearance with the Palo Alto Philharmonic a year later, conducting the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Initially drawn to the sounds of low strings, he began formal music lessons with cellist Irene Sharp at age five. He later studied with Sieun Lin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Nathan Chan has performed as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Reno Philharmonic, and Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra, working with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin, James Gaffigan, Alexander Prior, Benjamin Simon, Donato Cabrera, Alasdair Neale, Edwin Outwater, Laura Jackson, and David Allen Miller, among others. He also participated in the Emmy-award winning NPR program From The Top and NPR's Performance Today with Fred Child. In 2009, he was featured in The World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies, a three-part British series documenting a global search for talented musicians, in which Nathan and three other performers gave the world premiere of the Velesslavista Quadruple Concerto, composed by Alexander Prior. Nathan Chan has performed benefit concerts for the American Alzheimer's Association and the Friends of Children with Special Needs, among others. For his contributions to the community, he won the Peninsula Arts Council’s Ray Lorenzato Diamond Arts Award in 2007. In 2006, Nathan Chan appeared in The Music in Me, a documentary that aired on HBO and won the Peabody Award. This program led to a performance in Carnegie Hall and caught the attention of the legendary soul singer Roberta Flack, who invited Nathan to collaborate on her project of Beatles songs for Sony Records.

Nathan Chan was named a 2012 Davidson Fellow for his project entitled, "The Importance of Passion” and was awarded a $25,000 scholarship as part of this prestigious honor. While in New York City, he made his debut in Avery Fisher Hall (now David Geffen Hall) playing Haydn's Cello Concerto in C Major and with the Juilliard Orchestra performing Strauss' Don Quixote as the winner of the 2013 Juilliard Cello Concerto Competition, led by Maestro Leonard Slatkin. In 2015, Mr. Chan was chosen to participate in Classe d'Excellence du Violoncelle with world-renowned cellist Gautier Capuçon in association with Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France. Nathan won the 2015 Aspen Low Strings Concerto Competition playing Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D Major and was a recipient of the 2016 Samuel Mayes Memorial Cello Award at Tanglewood.

Nathan is a strong proponent of using technology and social media to attract others into the classical world and is committed to his fast growing Internet presence; to date, he has over 25 million views on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. (@nathanchancello) In 2018, Mr. Chan performed the Elgar and Schumann Cello Concertos with the Bainbridge Symphony and the Cascade Symphony. During the COVID Pandemic, Nathan ran a fundraising campaign called “Nathan Chan Chats for Change”, raising over $1800 for charities for social justice change, COVID relief and the Seattle Symphony. Nathan recently released his first NFT, collaborating with AI Artist Lia Coleman, combining classical music with machine learning art. Nathan’s 2020-2021 season includes a performance of Popper’s Fantasy on Little Russian Songs arr. small ensemble with Philharmonia Northwest as well as a summer as a 2020 Participant at the Marlboro Music Festival.

Nathan received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics at Columbia University and his Masters of Music with Richard Aaron at The Juilliard School. He is Seattle Symphony’s Assistant Principal Cello. Visit him online at nathanchan.com.

Geoffrey Larson, Conductor

Geoffrey Larson is the founding Music Director of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra. He also serves as Assistant Conductor and Chorus Master of Berkshire Opera Festival in Massachusetts. He is currently a Doctor of Music candidate in orchestral conducting at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he has served as Assistant Conductor of IU Opera and Ballet Theatre. For his recent debut conducting Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied at BOF, Classical Voice North America noted that he “conducted with passion and precision, and together with cast and orchestra delivered the drama, as well as the beauty, of Cipullo’s score.”

Geoffrey has served as the Assistant Conductor of the Saratoga Orchestra of Whidbey Island, and has appeared with ensembles such as the Bainbridge Symphony, Thalia Symphony, and Northwest Mahler Festival. In the summer of 2016, he served as Assistant Conductor for two young artists opera productions in Prague, Czech Republic. These included Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre, the site of the work's premiere, where he worked closely with renowned American baritone Sherrill Milnes. In 2014, he presented a lecture and complete performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire at Pittsburgh Opera Studio. His opera credits include Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Chabrier’s L’étoile, and Puccini's Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi.

Geoffrey has given the world premieres of numerous works and has demonstrated a passion for new music, creating the ongoing Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra initiative to perform new works of rising young composers. He worked with composers Reza Vali and Huck Hodge to choose the winners of SMCO’s International Composition Competitions in 2014 and 2016. He has collaborated in performance with composers such as Erberk Eryılmaz, Nancy Galbraith, and Leonardo Balada.

Geoffrey is a current student of Arthur Fagen and Thomas Wilkins at Indiana University. He previously studied with two-time Grammy Award winner Robert Page at Carnegie Mellon University, where he conducted performances and recording sessions of the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic and Contemporary Music Ensemble. He was named a Fellow at the Bard Conductors Institute as the course’s youngest member in 2007, and joined three other young conductors in master classes at London’s Royal Academy of Music in 2008 at the personal selection of the late George Hurst. He has studied at the Pierre Monteux School under the tutelage of Michael Jinbo, and he studied opera conducting with Wolfgang Harrer for five months in Vienna, Austria. He additionally counts David Neely, Peter Erös, Ronald Zollman, Raphael Jimenez, and Rodolfo Saglimbeni among his teachers in conducting. He has assisted conductors such as Uriel Segal, Gerard Schwarz, and Brian Garman.

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SEATTLE METROPOLITAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Violin I
Pamela Liu, Concertmaster
Constance Aguocha
Alexander Hawker
Randy Zhang
Annika Kounts

Violin II
Candice Chin
Thao Huynh
Katy Balatero
Kathy Shaw

Viola
Tricia Wu
Brian Hillyard
Mario Torres
Rafael Howell

Cello
Mary Riles
Youngbin Kim
Andrew Shiau

Bass
Bryan Kolk

Celesta
Mario Torres