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TICO
Pops Concert
By
David Amos
There
is something about the hot summers that lends itself to music of a lighter fare.
This is not only a local condition, but a worldwide tradition. Theater plays are
more likely to be comedies, and we frequently see Broadway shows and musicals.
The heavy stuff is usually relegated to the winter season. Could it be because
the friendly outdoors competes with our leisure times, and performing
organizations have to present more popular programming in order to compete with
summer outdoor leisure activities, and attract the more casual listener?
It
could be. And in orchestral music this is even more evident. Just check out the
options: Starlight, San Diego Symphony Summer Pops, and so on.
And
so it is with the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra. Now in its 33rd
year of existence, TICO also presents a summer pops concert, which, to no
one’s surprise is well attended and enjoyed.
For
this summer, TICO will present two pops concerts. The first, on Sunday, July 16,
is an outdoor program at the Allied Gardens Recreation Ground, on Greenbrier
Ave., off Waring Road. The music starts at 7 p.m., and is free. The second
program will be at Tifereth Israel Synagogue’s Cohen Social Hall, the
orchestra’s home base, on Sunday, July 30, at 3 p.m. For the latter, there is
an admission charge, and it is best to call the synagogue’s office at 619-697
6001 for reservations, group prices, directions, or any other information about
either concert.
There
is a great variety of music for both programs. Guest soloists include three
outstanding musicians from the Orquesta de Baja California, a professional
ensemble that has performed in New York’s Lincoln Center, and in many parts of
Mexico. The OBC is planning a tour of Europe in the summer of 2007, with
concerts in Paris, London, culminating with two programs in Scotland’s
prestigious Edinburgh Festival.
For
the upcoming TICO concerts, OBC guests will include its concertmaster, Ondrej
Lewit, Principal Second Violin Jorge Soto, and clarinetist Alexandre Gourevitch.
The violinists will play solos and duets by Dvorak and Sarasate, and Gourevitch
will perform a virtuoso Klezmer clarinet work by the Russian composer Vyacheslav
Grokhovsky.
Gourevitch
has been a frequent performer in San Diego, including recent appearances at the
San Diego Jewish Arts Festival. For the TICO programs, he will play the Suite on Jewish Themes by Grokhovsky. He has just arrived from a
Klezmer concert in Moscow, which has attracted some of the finest interpreters
of this genre from all over the world. (Would you believe, a Klezmer
concert in the Kremlin?)
Gourevitch
has been promoting Jewish music his entire life. His versatility allows him to
play classical music, with all the disciplines that it implies, and instantly
switch to Klezmer and Jewish folk music, with its expressive flexibility and
freedom of improvisation. His creative brand of playing has emerged into a
style, where the sound of the clarinet and the human voice practically become
one single musical entity.
These two concerts will also feature other interesting attractions: Three Sousa
marches, highlights from The Sound of
Music, two patriotic medleys, themes from the various Star
Trek television series and films, and a special arrangement of famous tunes
by Irving Berlin, specially prepared for TICO by Shelly Cohen. Mr. Cohen, a
friend and supporter of TICO, was for many years the assistant director of
NBC’s Tonight Show, and arranged
much of the music we heard played by Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band.
TICO’s
own harpist, the multi-talented Sylvia Lorraine Hartman, will sing the popular Habanera, from Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen. Many of you have heard Sylvia’s unusual versatility and
talent, when, as a featured soloist, she performed music for piano and orchestra
by De Falla, sang arias by Handel and Menotti, played the timpani, conducted the
orchestra, and covered a variety of percussion instruments, all at an amazing
level of musicianship. She is also an organist and a choir director.
* *
*
Here
is an insightful remark by Henri Frederic Amiel:
“Mozart
has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean, and Beethoven, the romantic
grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea. And while the soul of
Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs
shuddering the storm beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each
represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to
both.”