CODY ENGLANDER
Staff Writer
In just one week together, Music School Festival Orchestra students have fine-tuned their skills ahead of a public performance for Chautauquans.
“It’s a monumental undertaking every year, but that’s what we’re all about here,” said Timothy Muffitt, artistic director of the School of Music and conductor of the MSFO. “… It’s a real feet-to-the-fire moment. I think the players love the challenge.”
To Muffitt, the first concert is essential to developing students in the MSFO not just into good individual artists, but a harmonious orchestra.
“The amount of growth that is going to happen from a group of 82 individuals into one unit is a remarkable thing to observe,” Muffitt said. “… It’s a growth process that will continue for the next six weeks,” Muffitt said.
Muffitt begins every year’s first MSFO concert with a classical era symphony piece, Haydn’s Symphony No. 96, one of four works in tonight’s program.
“Musically, this next style, nothing shapes an orchestra up faster,” Muffitt says. “It requires a level of unity, transparency and connectedness among the players — it’s a remarkable thing to see how they take that style and become a cohesive ensemble.”
The concert will also be the world debut of “An American Story,” a commissioned piece by Kwame Alexander, with the author narrating featuring music by Damien Geter.
Alexander’s “An American Story” was originally a #1 New York Times bestselling picture book, which told the story of American slavery through the voice of a teacher educating her students. This is the MSFO’s second collaboration with Alexander but the first with Alexander’s original work.
The concert continues with John Corigliano’s neo-romantic composition, “Elegy,” a mid-20th century piece that taps into the American orchestral movement of the era. According to Muffitt, including pieces like these are important for developing a cohesive group of musicians in a short period of time.
“I think one of the exciting things that we tap into is, as things happen more quickly, they happen more easily, they happen without even stopping to talk about it,” he said. “It’s like any relationship with a good friend. You start finishing their sentences, you know what they’re going to say, and this relationship develops in that way.”
The concert concludes with Shostakovich’s First Symphony, which he wrote when he was just 18 years old.
“It’s full of really big important solos for wind and string players,” Muffitt said. It’s an interesting style in and of itself to dive into and be an important part of the process of this first week of growth. At 8 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater, the MSFO opens their concert series for the summer with a wide array of compositions to showcase the beginnings of their work together.
“Monday night will sound fantastic,” Muffitt said. “Six weeks from now will be unbelievable.”
