(elegant music) - [Presenter] Funding for this program has been provided by the FS Foundation, bringing together adults of all abilities and backgrounds as they pursue passion, prosperity, and purpose, Linda and Alvaro Pascotto, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

Additional support provided by these funders.

(dynamic music) - An overture is, it maybe sounds obvious.

It's the first thing.

It's the first, the introduction in the concert.

- This is the appetizer.

It's to wake the audience up, to welcome them, to heighten their senses so that they're ready for the main course.

So they're usually short, and they come in all different styles and emotions, but it's basically a way to bring the audience in, to welcome the audience to the concert.

- The piece that we're beginning the first concert with, which is called "Starburst" by Jessie Montgomery.

She's a living composer, and this is a contemporary work.

- With new works, you're trying to not only find out what the composer is saying, but how they're saying it, what their musical language is.

Whereas Mozart, Haydn, we know what their classical music, you know, their structures are, and so we're trying to figure out what they say within it.

With new composers, it's fantastic because you try to figure out their voice as well as what they're saying with it.

- "Starburst" refers to a exploding supernova.

- It has so much color and texture.

It even has jazzy aspects to it.

And so you can feel this contemporary feeling of this fantastic string work.

- I think the audience is gonna really sit up in their chairs and take notice.

(dynamic music) (audience applauding) The piece by Marquez, "Danzon Number Two," that is a work which it has Latin, contemporary Latin origins with a Mexican composer.

- He was really inspired in the "Danzon."

It's a type of dance, a Cuban dance that in Mexico became very, very popular.

And Maestro Marquez makes a beautiful rendition of the style of the piece as a popular dance, but doing it in a wonderful symphonic piece.

And for that, what he did was to go to the ballrooms.

So he went to those places at night to listen to that music, the wonderful bands and how people dance.

Anyway, he assimilated these wonderfully, and now this piece has become really well-known and really popular, surely as a symphonic piece.

- And it's very, it's a showpiece for the orchestra.

It shows off all the colors of the orchestra right from the beginning.

It's a big audience-pleaser.

I'm sure they're gonna go wild.

(plaintive music) (spirited music) (laid-back music) (vibrant music) (audience applauding) - Playing the trumpet (laughs) is all about control.

It's a very physical instrument.

Your lungs have to be in tip-top shape, and you have to have control over your muscles, particularly here in your face, and then, of course, the fingers.

"Quiet City" is a piece by Aaron Copland.

When he wrote this particular version, he asked the trumpet player to play through it.

And the trumpet player played it, and he was like, "Well, it's a little too taxing.

It's a little too long."

Copland added the English horn and took out some of the trumpet parts and made it the piece that it is today.

If you go and just listen to "Quiet City" without knowing anything, you might say, oh, it's a nice piece with the trumpet.

But if you know it's supposed to be a jazz trumpeter looking out of a window, starting out a little nervous and a little nostalgic and all of these things together, the outlook's a little bit different.

Knowing the history of the music, knowing what the composer was thinking, and knowing what type of picture that the composer wanted to paint for the audience, all these things matter.

(pensive music) (audience applauding) - I have a soloist that is only a 13 year old.

And she's a wonderful soloist.

She's a wonderful young artist.

- I'll be playing the Saint-Saens "Violin Concerto in B minor, Number Three" with the orchestra.

- It's one of the most beautiful violin concertos.

Has a little bit of a Bohemian style that requires a lot of passion, and she plays it absolutely gorgeous.

- The conductor for my concert is Gabriela Diaz-Alatriste, and she's amazing.

She's a lot of fun and she's very smart, and she likes to interact with me in the music, which is very helpful and a lot of fun to do.

- Very charming, very mature, very poised, and she makes the most beautiful music.

- What I like most about this concerto is there's lots of drama in it.

And there's so many different things you can do with it, and you can just be really flashy, and that is definitely my kind of piece.

(stirring music) (mellow music) (suspenseful music) (stirring music) (mellow music) (suspenseful music) (stirring music) (audience applauding) I would love to come back and play with the Classical Tahoe Orchestra.

They're so much fun, and everyone's so encouraging, and I really enjoy my time here.

- In 1958, my dad did a huge State Department tour with Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong.

They were part of this musical ambassador program.

And this tour, at one point, they sort of snuck in to East Germany.

They drove around the Brandenburg Gate, and that really inspired him, and my father, he wrote this tune.

So it started as a quartet tune.

What we're playing at Classical Tahoe is an arrangement that I asked my youngest brother, Matt Brubeck, to do specifically for Daves Centennial.

The idea was let's feature more of the classical, incredible geniuses that are playing in the orchestra, not have it all be jazz guys.

- I think they admire our technique 'cause we spend many years getting really, really good at playing all kinds of things in tune and everything.

But we really admire jazz guys.

Because we don't improvise, right?

We're not trained to do that.

"Brandenburg Gate," that has solos for a solo quartet.

- So the first violin, the cello, second violin, viola, bass, they all have their solos, plus the jazz guys.

- It's a really good piece.

Gives us a chance to sort of pretend like we can do jazz even though we can't.

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