PROGRAM

Leonard Bernstein:

Three Dance Episodes from On the Town

Halil, featuring Paul Taub, flute

Mass, in collaboration with St. Stephen’s Church Choir

Click HERE to preview the repertoire

ABOUT THE CONCERT

Our final concert commemorates the 100th birthday of legendary American composer, conductor, and pianist Leonard Bernstein. His multi-faceted life is reflected in the programming: ragtime rhythms from the musical On the Town, the prayerful Halil for flute and chamber orchestra, and the dramatic Mass, which includes traditional Latin texts as well as English texts written by Bernstein himself, Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz, and Paul Simon.

GUEST ARTIST

Paul Taub was born in New York City, and has been a resident of Seattle since 1979. He holds a B.A. degree from Rutgers University and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts. He has studied with some of the world’s greatest flutists including Michel Debost, Samuel Baron, Marcel Moyse, and Robert Aitken. As a longtime Cornish faculty member and founding member of the Seattle Chamber Players, Taub plays an active role in the Seattle contemporary music scene. He has performed and recorded American and world premieres by internationally known composers including Robert Aitken, John Cage, George Crumb, Janice Giteck, Sofia Gubaidulina, Wayne Horvitz, Ned Rorem, Toru Takemitsu, Reza Vali, and Peteris Vasks among others. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Northwest, the Everett Symphony, the Young Composers Collective, and the Esoterics.

Taub has also worked extensively to promote Soviet/Russian composers in America and American composers in the former Soviet Union. His Soviet repertoire has been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, at the Goodwill Arts Festival, in a solo recital at the Leningrad Musical Spring International Festival and at New York’s Symphony Space. He has also performed four times in Russia with the Seattle Chamber Players and twice at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Poland, as well as in China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands and Ukraine. Taub’s program of international solo flute music has been presented at numerous festivals and universities throughout the U.S., Canada, and France. Repertoire on his first CD, Oo-Ee (Periplum), features ten solo commissioned works, and has been performed in Seattle—where he gave the first flute recital in the new Benaroya Hall—and in New York City. In 2011, he released Edge – Flute Music from the Periphery of Europe (Present Sounds) featuring works by Kancheli, Vasks, Sergei Slonimsky, Artur Avanesov and Elmir Mirzoev.

Taub has also been a featured performer at National Flute Association conventions in Los Angeles (1992), Atlanta (1999), Las Vegas (2003) and New York (2009). He has recently completed distinguished terms on the Boards of Chamber Music America and the National Flute Association.

Paul Taub performs Hermeto Pascoal’s “Bacurau”.

VIDEO PREVIEWS

Bernstein’s On the Town – performed by the European Philharmonic of Switzerland