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| Symphony Under the Sky 2011 has concluded. Please check out Symphony Under the Sky 2012! About this Concert The ESO will travel to New York City in May 2012, but brings the sound of Broadway to Hawrelak Park on Labour Day weekend. Members of Strathcona High School's Les Misérables and Edmonton's own Broadway star Susan Gilmour join the orchestra for an afternoon of familiar tunes. Featured Repertoire LLOYD WEBBER: Music from Phantom of the Opera SCHÕNBERG: Selections from Les Misérables RODGERS: Carousel Waltz GERSHWIN: Summertime BERNSTEIN: Selections from West Side Story, Candide and On the Town SONDHEIM: Send In the Clowns & Comedy Tonight |
Thank you to our sponsors!  Media Sponsors |
Ticket InformationAdult Reserved $33 / Grass $20Child (12 & under) Reserved $13 / Grass Free Tickets subject to applicable service charges. |
 Your ESO is extremely pleased to have Bullfrog Power as a partner to lower the electricity-related emissions footprint of the festival with Alberta-made wind power. |
 Heritage Amphitheatre celebrates its 25th Anniversary in 2011. |
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Thank you to our festival vehicle sponsors:
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Program Info
Program
JULE STYNE
Overture to Gypsy (5’)*
RICHARD RODGERS
Carousel Waltz (8’)*
JOHN KANDER
Selections from Chicago (6’)*
GEORGE GERSHWIN
Summertime (from Porgy and Bess) (4’)*
MEREDITH WILLSON
Seventy-Six Trombones (from The Music Man) (3’)*
INTERMISSION
LEONARD BERNSTEIN
Overture to West Side Story (5’)*
LEONARD BERNSTEIN
“I Can Cook Too” (from On the Town) (4’)
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Susan Gilmour, vocalist
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LLOYD WEBBER / ELIOT / NUNN
“Memory” (from CATS) (4’)*
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Susan Gilmour, vocalist
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BOUBLIL / SCHÖNBERG / NATEL / KRETZMER
“Master of the House” (from Les Misérables) (5’)*
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Strathcona High School's cast of Les Misérables
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BOUBLIL / SCHÖNBERG / NATEL / KRETZMER
“I Dreamed a Dream” (from Les Misérables) (3’)*
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Susan Gilmour, vocalist
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BOUBLIL / SCHÖNBERG / NATEL / KRETZMER
“One Day More” (from Les Misérables) (4’)*
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Strathcona High School's cast of Les Misérables
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INTERMISSION
LEONARD BERNSTEIN
Overture to Candide (4’)*
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Send in the Clowns (from A Little Night Music) (4’)*
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Comedy Tonight (from A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum) (5’)*
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER
Selections from Phantom of the Opera (8’)**Indicates approximate performance duration
Program subject to change
Program Notes
The musical Gypsy is a star-making vehicle for the character Rose, the “ultimate stage mother.” The story is based on the memoirs of striptease performer Gypsy Rose Lee, which producer David Merrick discovered, and in which Ethel Merman became interested. Both Irving Berlin and Cole Porter turned down the project, but a who’s who of Broadway talent came on board. The book was by Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins came on as director and choreographer, and Stephen Sondheim (who had worked with both Laurents and Robbins in West Side Story) wrote the lyrics. It opened May 21, 1959, and ran for over 700 performances in its initial production. Jule Styne wrote the memorable score, the overture to which opens our Broadway afternoon.
No program which even scratches the surface of music from Broadway could overlook Richard Rodgers. While he wrote music for dozens of hit shows with other collaborators, his partnership with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II is justifiably the most famous. Carousel opened in 1945, and was the team’s second show together. Rodgers would later claim the melodramatic musical about carnival life was his favourite – thanks in no small measure to music such as the lovely waltz we will hear today.
Chicago was a hit Broadway musical from the same songwriting team that created Cabaret. John Kander wrote the music, with Fred Ebb as lyricist. Its original run began in 1975 and went for over two years. Its revival in 1996 is, incredibly, still running. A meditation on fame and morality, the show is filled with great tunes, and lots of razzle dazzle dance numbers (choreographed by Bob Fosse). This afternoon’s selections include All That Jazz, Cell Block Tango, Roxie, and Both Reached for the Gun.
Technically, 1935’s Porgy and Bess is an opera, not a musical – and there are plenty of scholars of both who will regale you on the differences between the two. But considering that the opera was written by one of the most successful Broadway musical composers who ever lived means that a song from the work is hardly out of place on a program such as this. In fact, one opera critic sniffed derisively at the work’s premiere. “This is not an opera,” he wrote, “it’s got too many songs in it.” George Gershwin scored the incredible music, while Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward supplied the words. Summertime is the opera’s first song, a lullaby that a young mother sings to her baby.
If Gypsy was a vehicle for its star Ethel Merman, then Meredith Willson’s The Music Man was the same for Robert Preston. It’s almost impossible to think of anyone else other than Preston inhabiting the role of Harold Hill, the con artist who tried to snow the residents of River City, Iowa, only to fall in love. The original run, which began in 1957, went on for nearly 1400 performances, and won the 1958 Tony Award for Best Musical. Seventy-Six Trombones is a song in which Hill besots the residents of the Midwest town, describing a magnificent marching band.
The second part of our Broadway afternoon opens with the overture to Leonard Bernstein’s brilliant musical that transplanted the story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the tenements of New York. West Side Story opened in 1957 and has seen several revivals since. This overture features many of the show’s memorable melodies, in an arrangement by Maurice Peress.
British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's many successes started out in London's West End, but traveled the Atlantic to become Broadway smashes soon after. The great English poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) allowed himself a touch of whimsy in his collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. CATS charmed Lloyd Webber enough to inspire one of the most unique stage experiences to come out of London's West End in 1981 - then to Broadway a year later, staying there for an incredible 7485 performances. Its signature tune is the showstopper Memory – an exception to the rule, however, in that, while based on an Eliot poem called Rhapsody on a Windy Night, had lyrics written by Terry Nunn.
Ten years before a sailor pursued his ideal in On the Town, stowaway Billy Crocker tried to win the heart of heiress Hope Harcourt on a New York to London oceanliner, in Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. The 1934 musical featured songs such as the title number, You’re the Top, and I Get a Kick Out of You – so it’s not surprising that the great number Blow, Gabriel, Blow is less well known.
A surprising number of musicals have come from sources which would seem to run counter to the stereotype of a Broadway musical. Victor Hugo’s mammoth novel Les Misérables (translated perhaps most accurately as “The Wretched Ones”) is a case in point. Published in 1864, the novel spans 17 years in the lives of its characters, centering on a French policeman’s dogged pursuit of a thief named Jean Valjean, who stole only to eat. The musical which compressed the novel into two hours and change was an amazingly success, opening in 1987 and running until 2003, with a book by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, and music by Claude-Michel Schönberg. We will be treated to three songs from the nine-time Tony Award winner.
By the standards of what describes a successful Broadway show, Leonard Bernstein’s Candide is perhaps the least successful of all the shows represented on this afternoon’s program The original production ran for three months and a day beginning in late 1956. Not much for a musical – but as an opera (and this show definitely straddles the two genres), it’s pretty incredible. The sparkling overture has become a staple of the modern orchestral repertoire from its first performance.
After cutting his teeth as a lyricist for other people’s productions, Stephen Sondheim has gone on to become one of the boldest innovators in American musical theatre. His shows often have an adult edge to them, and use source material from all over the map: children’s fairy tales (Into the Woods), arthouse film (Passion), and even a French impressionist painting (Sunday in the Park with George). Perhaps his most famous song is Send in the Clowns from the 1973 musical A Little Night Music (also based on a film – by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman). The broad bedroom farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was the first production for which Sondheim was both lyricist and composer; it opened in 1962 and ran for over two years. It was based, incredibly enough, on the works of Roman playwright Plautus (c. 254-184 B.C.), though one wonders how the lyrics to songs like Comedy Tonight would translate back into Latin.
We finish our afternoon of Broadway with a suite of tunes from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. Based on Gaston Leroux’s 1909 gothic serialized novel, it opened in the West End in 1986, and on Broadway in 1988. As arranged by Calvin Custer, the suite includes The Phantom of the Opera, Think of Me, Angel of Music, All I Ask of You, Masquerade, and Music of the Night.
We close with one last item. Electric lighting first came into use on theatre marquees along Broadway in the first decade of the 20th century. But it was soon discovered that coloured bulbs burned out too quickly, and replacing them became expensive. Soon, all the theatres adopted white bulbs – and Broadway has been known as the Great White Way ever since.
Artist Info
Robert Bernhardt, conductor
Robert Bernhardt served as Music Director and Conductor of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera for 19 seasons. He was the second Music Director in the combined company’s history, and is now the first with the title Emeritus. A lover of all genres of music, he is equally at home in symphonic, operatic, pops, and educational performances. He also nears another milestone in his career with the Louisville Orchestra, with this year representing his 30th consecutive season with the LO, and his 15th as Principal Pops Conductor. 2010-2011 saw Mr. Bernhardt make his conducting debuts with the Houston Symphony and Cincinnati Pops, and returning twice to the Boston Pops. His vast symphonic repertoire covers most of the standard canon and his commitment to the music of our time is significant. He has been a frequent guest conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, and the Boston Pops. He has also been a guest with the Seattle Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, the Nashville Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, the Iceland Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, and others. He has recorded for Vanguard, First Edition, Carlton Classics, and RPO record labels. He has also conducted the Louisville Ballet, the North Carolina Ballet, the Jacksonville Ballet, and the Lonestar Ballet.Born in Rochester, NY, Robert Bernhardt holds a Master's Degree with Honours from the University of Southern California School of Music where he studied with Daniel Lewis. He was a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Union (NY) College, where he was an Academic All-American baseball player. His son, Alex, lives and works in Seattle with his wife and new daughter, and his daughter, Charlotte, is a resident of New York City. He and his wife, Nora, live on Signal Mountain.
Robert Bernhardt holds a special place in the hearts of Edmonton Symphony Orchestra musicians and audiences. This year’s Symphony Under the Sky marks his sixth consecutive as the festival’s conductor, and he frequently leads the ESO in subscription series performances at the Winspear Centre. He last conducted the ESO in December 2010, and returns to kick off the Robbins Lighter Classics series on October 6, 2011.
Susan Gilmour, vocalist
Susan Gilmour is a singer-actress of international standing, having starred on Broadway, in Los Angeles, across the US and Canada, and around the world. She has been featured on many television specials, including three seasons on the CTV series Sun Country and on the Gemini award-winning CBC television special Michael Burgess Live at Massey Hall. Ms. Gilmour began her performance career by training with Edmonton Musical Theatre and the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. She landed the role of Miss Stacy in Charlottetown's own Anne of Green Gables, and Aldonza/Dulcinea in Man of LaMancha at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax. She then won the role of Fantine in Les Misérables which she performed in Toronto. She went on to play Fantine on Broadway, in Los Angeles (where she received a Robby Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actress), and in the International Touring Company to Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, South Korea, and Capetown, South Africa.Susan Gilmour has starred in other highly acclaimed productions of The Drowsy Chaperone; Evita; CATS; Man Of La Mancha; Oliver!; Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; Anything Goes; Guys and Dolls; Little Women; The Beggar's Opera; CHESS (in Concert); and originated the role of Dorrie in Larry's Party. She created the title character in the CanStage world premiere of Pelagie, for which she received a Dora Award Nomination for Best Actress. Ms. Gilmour recently enjoyed two seasons at The Stratford Festival in Three Penny Opera, My Fair Lady, and Into The Woods. She toured Sardinia, Italy performing the show On Broadway in concert with Theatro Lirico de Cagliari’s Symphony Orchestra, and she performed with Colm Wilkinson in his concert Broadway and Beyond across Canada and at The Town Hall on Broadway. Susan has developed her own I Dreamed A Dream concert, and plays to sold-out crowds.
This is Ms. Gilmour’s debut with the ESO.
Strathcona High School's cast of Les Misérables
The award-winning Strathcona Theatre program was pleased to perform Les Misérables this past April at the Westbury Arts Barns as a part of their rigorous season that included, dance, improv, and one-act festivals and musical theatre. For the production of Les Misérables, which included 40 student performers, 15 student musicians, and 12 student technicians, Strathcona was awarded many prestigious Cappie awards including Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Ensemble, and Outstanding Song - receiving 13 awards overall this year. The Strathcona theatre students performed to eight sold out houses and loved every minute of the epic musical.The Strathcona Theatre Department is proud to offer a pre-professional training program for high school aged performers and artists. The goal of the Strathcona Theatre Department is to provide students with the skills necessary to move on to competitive post secondary programs as well as amateur theatre experiences. Strathcona offers challenging and engaging courses for actors at various levels of development. Programs are designed to encourage students to create imaginative and compelling characters, to regard their voices and bodies as creative instruments, to expose them to theatrical literature, and to instill in them a sense of respect and professionalism for this art form that will stay with them throughout their lives. Last summer, the Strathcona Theatre Co. toured to and performed the world premiere of the Canadian musical, St. Aggie's 84 by Chris Wynters at the world's largest Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland as a part of their challenging season.
Festival Info
Parking
Park your vehicle for only $5 at the U of A’s Stadium Car Park (116 St & 89 Ave), and ride ETS buses for free directly to Hawrelak Park! Parking is very limited at Hawrelak Park and not guaranteed. Free, supervised bike racks will also be available at Hawrelak Park, courtesy of the Edmonton Bicycle Commuters’ Society.
Park 'n' Ride Shuttle Hours
Friday, September 2nd: 5 pm - 10:30 pm
Saturday, September 3rd: 12 pm - 11:30 pm
Sunday, September 4th: 12 pm - 11:30 pm
Monday, September 5th: 12 pm - 5:30 pm
On-site Box Office
The on-site Box Office Tent is cash only. There will be an ATM machine on site.
On-site Box Office Hours
On-site Box Office Hours
Friday, September 2nd: 5 pm - 7:30 pm
Saturday, September 3rd: 12 pm - 7:30 pm
Sunday, September 4th: 12 pm - 7:30 pm
Monday, September 5th: 11:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Food & Drink
Food vendors will be located in the Heritage Amphitheatre and the Winspear Concession stand will offer snacks, hot and cold drinks, wine & beer.
Symphony Under the Sky Online
Stay tuned to festival updates by connecting with us on Facebook and Twitter!Twitter: @edmsymphony (festival hashtag is #yegSUTS)
Facebook: facebook.com/edmontonsymphony
Weather
In case of inclement weather, festival concerts will take place at the Winspear Centre. If at all possible, all performances will remain at Hawrelak Park. The decision about whether to change venues will be made 3 hours prior to the performance. Venue change information will be announced on 92.5 JOE FM, posted on the front page of this website, and noted at 780-428-1414 and 1-800-563-5081.
Festival Supporters
Thank you to our festival supporters The City of Edmonton through the Edmonton Arts Council and The REALTORS® Association of Edmonton.
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Comments
How about calling this one something like
Musical Theatre around the world and through the ages
Include some Canadian content and a piece or two from other musical theatre traditions
Show how music theatre developed, with a piece or 2 from before 1920.
Similar comment with your Hollywood show
Use Monday in part to highlight our military music tradition since we have the military there.
We live in Canada and the world.
Your programming and marketing should reflect that consistently. Reply | Reply with quote | Quote
Thank you for your feedback! We appreciate hearing ideas from our patrons to better understand what they would like to hear. I have passed your message on to the programming department.
While this program does not focus on Canadian content specifically, we have certainly done so in other programs. For example, last year's final Symphony Under the Sky program included arrangements of great Canadian hits like Snowbird, Big Yellow Taxi, Heart of Gold and more. And of course this year for the Sunday evening performance we welcome the legendary Ian Tyson to perform his very Albertan music.
In addition, we are featuring a number of Canadian composers throughout our season this year, and are proud to represent Canada when we perform at Carnegie Hall next May. In that program we feature four acclaimed Canadian soloists and will perform music by three composers currently living in Edmonton.
We are committed to providing Canadian content, but it so happens that this particular program draws upon another country's music. This is part of our mandate to perform music from many cultures, traditions and eras for the Edmonton community.
Thanks again for your feedback, and I hope you are able to take in some performances more to your liking.
-Philip Paschke
Edmonton Symphony Orchestra Reply | Reply with quote | Quote
Thank you. Reply | Reply with quote | Quote
We very recently transitioned to a new ticketing system, and the detailed seating plan of the Heritage Amphitheatre that was part of the previous system was not able to be replicated in time for this year's festival. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience, and the detailed plan will be developed for next season. If you need any assistance in booking reserved seats, please call the box office at 780-428-1414 to purchase tickets.
Thanks,
-Phil Reply | Reply with quote | Quote
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