Music Director and Conductor Allen Gross
Welcome to our Sixtieth Season!
This is an especially exciting year for us. Just think -- sixty years of bringing symphonic music to the Santa Monica and Westside communities, free of charge! At a time when one often reads in the press about declining audiences, we can justly be proud of you, our audience -- you are growing and in fact getting younger. I like think that we still have a thirst for great music, and that being at a concert brings something more to the music than sitting at home and listening to a CD, however beautifully played.
To celebrate this anniversary we have planned some exciting programs and will feature some special soloists. We open the season with the eminent concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Martin Chalifour, as soloist. He will be performing the American premiere of "Rhythm Changes" by the young California composer Peter Knell. Peter is a Pasadena native, and I have known him since he played the double bass in one of my youth orchestras. He has since won numerous prizes and is rapidly establishing himself as one of America's finest young composers. Mr. Chalifour will also perform Ravel's enchanting "Tzigane."
Our second concert is entitled "A Salute to the Community." Santa Monica has a wealth of musical talent, and we are proud of our connection to the public and private schools which nurture it. For this concert we are being joined by the Crossroads Chamber Orchestra, directed by Alexander Treger. Each orchestra will perform separately, and we will join together for a performance of Dvorák's Eighth Symphony. We are also honored to feature baritone Jubilant Sykes, a Santa Monica native and graduate of Santa Monica High School, who has gone on to an important international concert and recording career.
It seems that every year we perform a symphony by either Mahler or Shostakovich, and this year is no exception. Both the orchestra and I agree that these are the two most important twentieth-century symphonists, and we love to perform their music. This year we are performing Shostakovich's important Fifth Symphony. Opening the program will be Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn and orchestra, featuring our wonderful principal winds as soloists. A treat for all of us!
It is of course fitting to celebrate the season with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a conclusion. We will be joined by the Santa Monica College Chorale as the College celebrates its 75th year, and by the Occidental-Foothill Master Chorale, with soloists Elin Carlson, Tracy Van Fleet, Jonathan Mack and Jinyoung Jang.
We are all looking forward to this special anniversary, and we hope you see you at all our concerts this year!
Allen Robert Gross
Music Director and Conductor
Music Director/Conductor of the Santa Monica Symphony since 1991, Allen Gross continues to delight the public with enthusiastic and well-prepared performances of a challenging and diverse repertory that embraces the new and the old, the familiar and the unfamiliar. A native New Yorker, he studied with Pierre Monteux, Walter Susskind, Sandor Salgo and Hans Swarowsky, beginning at Queens College and UC/Berkeley before earning his doctorate at Stanford and continuing at the Vienna Music Academy and the American Institute of Orchestra Conducting. From 1972-1978, he directed the Heidelberg Castle Festival, also serving as conductor of the Junges Kammerorchester Heidelberg and in the opera houses of Freiburg and Aachen. Back in the United States, Gross directed the orchestra and opera programs at the University of Louisville before joining the music faculty at Occidental College in 1983 to serve as Director of the Occidental-Caltech Symphony Orchestra. He has since served as Music Director/Conductor of the Pasadena Young Musicians Orchestra and the Pasadena Summer Youth Chamber Orchestra and has appeared with the Los Angeles Monday Evening Concerts, the Minnesota Composers Forum, broadcast concerts from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and honors orchestras in California and Nevada. Last Season, Mr. Gross returned from China, where he conducted a concert with the orchestra of the Shenwang Conservatory of Music. The past two summers, he has traveled and concertized in Italy, the Czech Republic and other Eastern European countries with members of the Santa Monica Symphony.
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