INNOVATION IN CREATIVE COLLABORATION AND CONCEPT GENERATION
FOCUSES
- Developing innovative, compelling, and relevant concept programs for professional (Symphoria) and student (Hamilton College) orchestras
- Collaborating with other artists—dancers, actors, singers, puppeteers, digital artists—to create a total experience through and around a music performance
- Imaginatively framing music in a broader context in education programs from children to adults (Symphoria SPARK & Kids’ Concerts, HCO Brainstorm series)
COLLABORATION
- Dance – conducted full production of Tchaikovsky Nutcracker with Utica Dance. Other dance commissions with orchestra.
- Film – conducted various silent film accompaniments for SPARK Series, Syracuse International Film Festival, Society for New Music.
- New Music and Opera – led premiere of Persis Parshall Vehar’s opera Eleanor Roosevelt with Society for New Music.
CONCEPTS
SYMPHORIA SPARK SERIES:
- Music of Machines (Museum of Science and Technology) – the machine aesthetic in music, music about machines, music machines
- Sweet Encounters (Everson Art Museum) – music ‘from and for the heart’ by Fauré, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Rodrigo; with tango dancing at intermission
- Music and Experimental Film (Palace Theater) – new pairings of avant-garde silent films with music of Beethoven, Debussy, Shostakovich, and Milhaud
- Music from Space (Museum of Science and Technology) – a journey to the edges of the solar system inspired by the Voyager space probe launched in 1977
SYMPHORIA KIDS’ CONCERTS
- Sounds of Nature: the Environments of Central NY– a multimedia music and science collaboration with scientists from SUNY Environmental Sciences & Forestry
- Colors of the Orchestra – starts with orchestral colors and combines them into pictures
- Carnival of the Animals – animals past and present, on land and sea, in the air (with Open Hand Puppet Theatre)
- Hallowe’en – I can pass as both Harry Potter and Darth Vader.
HCO BRAINSTORM! PROGRAMS
- The Creative Spark: Origins of Genius – composers’ early works and influences
- Reverberations Over Time – musical hybrids of multiple periods and styles
- Kinesthetic Sound – the sensation of movement as an essential aspect of music
- Apollo’s Muse: the Classical Ideal – Apollonian and Dionysian principles in music
- A Sense of Time – how different musical works reflect their era’s understanding/concept of time