| December 12, 2008 | Media contact: Carrie McClintock, Gifts of Art E-mail: cmcclin@umich.edu Phone: 734-764-2220 |
U-M Life Sciences Orchestra kicks off 9th season with Jan. 11 concert
Pre-concert lecture by Music Director Mark Latham on Shostakovich's Symphony No. 12 begins at 3:15
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ANN ARBOR, Mich. –The University of Michigan Life Sciences Orchestra will heat up a cold January day with a concert at Hill Auditorium on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009.
Led by music director Mark Latham, the LSO will kick off its ninth season with a program that includes not one, but two Twelfth Symphonies: one by Joseph Haydn, who is often called the father of the symphony, the other written nearly two centuries later by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
The concert will begin at 4 p.m. It is free and open to the public, with no tickets necessary, though donations will be accepted at the door. James Shayman, M.D., who is U-M’s associate vice president of research for the health sciences and a professor at the U-M Medical School, will give opening remarks.
A pre-concert talk by Latham, who is a doctoral candidate in conducting at the U-M School of Music, Theatre and Dance, will begin at 3:15 p.m. in the lower level of Hill Auditorium, which is located at 825 N. University Ave. in Ann Arbor.
In addition to Haydn’s own work, the Symphony No. 12 in E major, written in 1763, the program will include two pieces that tip their hats to the master composer. The concert will open with American composer John Corigliano’s “Promenade Overture,” which turns Haydn’s “Farewell Symphony” on its head by asking the musicians to enter the stage one by one and take their seats to play. (Haydn’s work had the players leave one by one, blowing out the candles that lit their music.)
The second piece, the “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” written by Johannes Brahms in the 1870s, may or may not actually be based on a theme by the man called “Papa” Haydn. But in any event, it is well-known and often performed.
After a brief intermission, the concert will resume with Shostakovich’s salute to Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution. His Symphony No. 12 in D Minor, Op. 112, is also called “The Year 1917” and was composed in 1961. Latham’s pre-concert talk is titled “A Visual and Aural Exploration of Shostakovich’s 12th Symphony.”
For more information on the concert or the LSO, visit www.umich.edu/~lsorch, send e-mail to orchestra@umich.edu, or call (734) 936-ARTS.
The LSO is part of the Gifts of Art program, which brings the world of art and music to the U-M Health System. The orchestra was founded in the spirit of the U-M effort to encourage collaboration, community and creativity beyond the traditional boundaries between academic disciplines in the basic sciences, health sciences, health care, engineering, social science and the humanities.
The orchestra is made up of members of U-M’s medical, health and life science community, including faculty, staff, students, family members and alumni. It gives its members an outlet for their musical talents and a chance to interact with one another across academic disciplines and professions. Founded by students and staff from the U-M Health System, the orchestra made its concert debut in January 2001.
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