Funding for this program has been provided by the FSC Foundat bringing together adults of all and backgrounds as they pursue passion, prosperi and purpose.

Linda and Alvaro Pascotto the Carol Frank Buck Foundation in memory of Carroll.

Frank Buck.

Additional support provided by these funders.

David Chan and I were close colleagues at the Met for 19 years.

I've been concertmaster at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for 22 seasons.

We know each other very well.

I respect him greatly and he has become a very prominent conductor.

I think among musicians we often say that a person plays like their personality, and I think conducting is no dif To be really effective, you have to be authentically you I can only be myself on the podi I have a very strong idea of wha an orchestra needs to see and what they don't need to see.

So I try to provide that nucleus to my conducting and the rest is just kind of fee and spontaneous expression and hopefully it works.

We're so thrilled to be welcomin Isabel Leonard to our stage.

She is singing some arias with u from the operatic world.

She's singing a couple of arias from C Isabel Leonard is probably the leading American mezzo of her generation.

So it's a huge privilege and pleasure to have her here.

An incredible singer who I've heard many times on sta at the Metropolitan Opera, from my position down in the pit It's nice to be a little closer with her, and she's singing some really beautiful arias with I'm very excited about that.

It's going to be absolutely dazz No matter how much I love working with symphonic repertoire, with symphony orches When I come back to vocal repert there's always a feeling of, Oh yeah, this is kind of home ba What I find is when orchestras w with singers, they're forced to breathe with the singers, and that just transforms the playing in general.

Wind and brass players always have to breathe as part of their playing.

String players can fall into the of breathing just for survival.

But when you really breathe with in a way that promotes the line of the mu that goes with the cadence of th it transforms the playing.

So I think it's great to have it as part of the festival this year.

The Bizet symphony in C is this brilliant work that was written by a 17 year ol Hard to believe and it's mostly very joyous and optimistic in na especially the first, third and fourth movements in particul It seems like a youthful charact You know, I would say when you'r when you're looking at the music you know, first movement, allegr third movement, allegro vivace, fourth movement, allegro vivace.

This is a youthful person that is ready to go fast.

I discovered the music of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson just a couple of years ago and f it was immediately something that was very special and that spoke to me personally.

He was a composer, he was a conductor, he was he was active in jazz and pop and classical ballet.

So a really successful, versatil musician.

Anyway, this piece that we're go to be playing as a string orches It's called Sinfonietta Number T Generations.

This piece generations, which is for string orchestra, is is a gem, I think, which I couldn't believe I didn't know.

It's a very heartfelt, warm, slow moving Sarabande.

So a Sarabande was an old musica from the Baroque era from 17th and 18th centuries.

It was a slow, dignified dance in triple meter.

The rhythm of a sarabande is dum da, da dum da, da dum...

So this sarabande a very beautiful, emotional piec Interestingly he dedicated each movement to members of his own family.

That is why generations has such a deep meaning, I think not just him at, at that time, but I think to us today, because we can see our own famil and dedicate our own feelings in that moment that we perform it.

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.

I feel like it's the anthem of violin concertos.

I cannot imagine being a violini without this piece.

I can't imagine a world without these melodies.

It's really I mean, it sounds so but I'm serious.

Like, I remember the first time that I heard this piece performe and it was life altering.

The melodies are so catchy and they just never leave your e And that's just fine because they are so beautiful and it's just heart on sleeve mu It's the reason that I love playing the violin.

It's there's a lot of virtuosity It starts off technically simply for the violi so I can sort of relax and get i how I'm feeling on the stage, how my nerves are feeling and playing easy stuff.

And then it slowly ramps up, gets harder and harder and h and then there's a cadenza where the violin gets to take ov And it's just, yeah, there's, there's everything in t and there's within all of the be in the first movement, there's always this underlying t that I'm hearing in these narrow half steps in the music.

So a half step is as opposed to a whole step, a lot more space.

And so that that half step, there's just a lot of there's a lot of rubbing tension togethe And so that's musically a tool for tension.

But also, you know, for someone who doesn't know anything about you just kind of feel it.

You're like, I want it to go som So you'll hear the cellos all the time, you know?

And it's just moves the music along that way.

And it sort of just feels like, you know, there's all this suspe but right away, when the violin comes in at the The first thing I do.

So then it's just this dichotomy of tension and release that I think makes t so satisfying to listen to and t Funding for this program has been provided by the FSC Foundat bringing together adults of all and backgrounds as they pursue passion, prosperi and purpose.

Linda and Alvaro Pascotto the Carol Frank Buck Foundation in memory of Carroll.

Frank Buck.

Additional support provided by these funders.