PREVIEW
Edmonton Youth Orchestra Concert
Sunday, May 6 at 2 p.m.
Winspear Centre
Tickets: Adults $15, seniors/students $10. Call 780-420-1757 or www.tixonthesquare.ca
Some people are late bloomers. Then there is Michael Massey, who has been a composer in hiding waiting to reach his peak creative years.
Best known as the Edmonton Youth Orchestra conductor for 37 years, the classically trained pianist has of late started a second career – composing.
Tom Pinch’s Ride - A Choral Symphony, his fourth composition after Cooking Lake Suite, The Most Romantic Science and The Wind in the Willows, receives its world premiere at the Edmonton Youth Orchestra concert on Sunday, May 6 at Winspear Centre.
“I love Dickens and Tom Pinch was a character in Martin Chuzzlewit. He was one of the nicest characters in a book full of revolting people,” said Massey.
“There is this wonderful passage, a chapter where Tom trusts his employer, Pinchbeck, regardless of anything anyone else says. And finally his employer fires him. Tom finally sees Pinchbeck in his true light.
Tom decides to take a trip to London to visit his sister. He’s never been in a stagecoach and there’s this wonderful passage of the countryside with him starting in the stagecoach at night and arriving in London in the morning.”
The four-movement composition captures Tom’s moods from his early anxiousness and anticipation for the carriage ride to the nocturnal moon-rise and glowing stars hovering in the heavens as mists sweep across the fields. It ends with the arrival in London starting with the sunrise and ends with a rousing climax describing the city’s bustling streets.
“It’s melodic, harmonic and fun. And I hope descriptive and atmospheric,” Massey said adding that the Senior Orchestra will play the 28-minute piece.
The Richard Eaton Singers, soprano Whitney Leigh Sloan, and St. Albert baritone Michael Kurschat, join the orchestra for Tom Pinch’s Ride.
“It’s exciting for the kids to work with a choir. It adds colour.”
In addition, the Intermediate Orchestra performs Beethoven’s Turkish March from the Ruins of Athens as well as Three Bavarian Dances.
Young violin protégé and Intermediate Orchestra concertmaster Jacques Forestier, 13, recently returned from the prestigious 2018 Menuhin Violin Competition in Geneva, solos in Ralph Vaughn Williams' tone poem The Lark Ascending.
“The Lark is a very subtle piece and he’s doing a terrific job,” Massey noted.
This concert is more than a world premiere of Massey’s personal ode to Dickens. It is also a special sendoff to Eileen Lee, the orchestra’s general manager who retires after 31 years of service.
For over three decades she worked hand-in-hand with Massey developing short and long-term policies, arranging contracts, dealing with the board and making grant applications in addition to scheduling concerts and workshops.
“I’ll miss it (EYO) but music has always been a big part of my life,” said Lee, a classically trained violinist who as once a member of the North Wales Orchestra. After moving to Edmonton, she performed with the Academy Strings Ensemble and University Symphony Orchestra.
At the concert, the board is honouring her with the Eileen Lee Scholarship, a $300 bursary awarded to a student that demonstrates musicality, passion and commitment.
