Chamber Orchestra Farewell Concert

On Thursday, March 31st, the BYU Chamber Orchestra had our China Tour Farewell Concert on BYU Campus.  We already had prepared this concert on our short Wyoming tour, but it's always nice to perform it back in our own concert hall.  Our program consisted of a lot of unique pieces, such as:

Three Episodes from the Musical "Our Town" - by Leonard Bernstein

I couldn't find a You Tube video of this piece, but it is music from a musical that Bernstein wrote music for before West Side Story came into the picture.  It has a lot of similarities to that music though.  There's some parts that definitely feel like I'm playing in a Jazz Band, such as including a saxaphone in the last moment.

The Butterfly Lover's Concerto - by Chen/He

This video shows the first few minutes of the concerto.  Our Concertmistress, Aubrey Woods, played it with us, and she just played it beautifully.  As you can probably guess, this is a Chinese violin concerto, and what will be cool is that we will be performing it with the dancers of the Beijing Dance Academy in China.

Muqum from the Chinese Folk Dance Suite - by Chen Yi

This video shows the piece.  Our Second Violin Leader, Rachel Ostler, played this piece with us.  It is a very unique piece based off a Chinese Folk Dance.  Amazingly enough, it sounds quite middle-eastern in many ways.  I wish I had a recording of Rachel playing, because she played it superbly.  She is only 18 years old I think and plays amazingly.

Dream Children - by Edward Elgar

Here is a short excerpt from it.  It is truly an inspiring piece where Elgar portrays his emotions involving children and his imagination of what is ahead of them in the world as they grow up.

Dances of Galanta - by Kodaly

Here's a short clip from the piece.  This is a very difficult, but fun piece to play.  It portrays the atmosphere of Gypsies and the juxtaposition between more graceful dances and just plain rowdy where everybody ends up in a heap on the floor.  It's awesome music.

The performance went really well overall.  Many people said it was probably the best they had ever heard the BYU Chamber Orchestra ever play.

To make it better, my friend, Amy Norton came to the concert of which I'm truly grateful.  Thanks Amy for being such a great support.