Welcome to the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra's new weblog, created by, about and for the TSO, its audience and musicians.  On this blog, we will be posting regularly, every other week on Thursday.   Although I will write many of the entries, we will also invite occasional guest bloggers.  This might include members of the TSO, TSO Chorus, or guest artists.  We welcome your ideas, comments, and thoughts.

Andy Buelow
Executive Director

It's hard to believe that the first concert of the 2010-2011 season is a week off.  (Slightly frightening, in fact.)  The musicians have picked up their music from the bin in the office, and the first rehearsal is Monday night.  I'm looking forward to hearing it.

My Dad, who is a retired music professor, pointed out to me recently something I hadn't noticed:  every piece on the season opening concert was written in the 20th Century.  That's fairly unusual in the Orchestra world.  The symphony orchestra evolved during the 18th and 19th centuries, and probably reached its artistic peak with the late 19th century Romantic era.  Perhaps for this reason, 19th century music predominates in the repertoire.  Much great music was written in the 20th Century, however, and this concert attests to the fact that it was absolutely not all abstract, atonal and difficult to understand.

This program is definitely in the "what's not to like" category.  It's all great, listenable music, but my personal favorite piece on the lineup is the Aaron Copland suite from Billy the Kid.  I've liked it since I first heard it at age 17, but I really came to appreciate it when I bought a piano reduction by Lukas Foss and started trying to play it.  If you have hands the size of a giant -- and four of them rather than two would be ideal -- it's no problem to play.

Billy the Kid marked a new direction in this quintessentially American composer's artistry, but also a turning point in American music in general.  If you listen to his earlier music, you will probably find it far more dense, abstract and complex.  His Orchestral Variations and Piano Sonata are examples of this earlier genre, when Copland's writing was much more reflective of the neo-classical style of Stravinsky or the uncompromising discordance of Bartok.    Billy the Kid represents a remarkable about-face.  It predates the better-known Rodeo and Appalachian Spring as the first work written in the open, tonal, widely-spaced and economic style that came to define Copland's music for most people.  "I decided to see whether I might say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms," Copland later recalled.  And say it he did.  However, with no disrespect to Copland,  Billy the Kid is nowhere near as simple as it sounds, as anyone who has played it knows.

We are preparing some special surprises for this concert, and we think you will go away satisfied, wanting more and with happy ears  -- which is, after all, our goal.  The orchestra definitely gets a workout on this program, one which they will love.  As an audience member, you'll hear a program of very tonally accessible music, even if it is all from the 20th century.  I think you'll find these pieces some of the most amazing, colorful and delightful works ever gathered together in one program.  They're all very different from one another, but they have one thing in common:  you'll hear some of the most marvelously orchestrated music in the repertoire -- music that could only have been written for symphony orchestra, and can only be properly appreciated performed by symphony orchestra.