Meet our soloist: Eduard Teregulov

We are delighted to have Eduard Teregulov join us on stage this weekend! Let's find out a little more about the Feb. 8 performance:

Why did you pick this piece to perform? Is there specific significance or do you love the piece? Why?

I am always on the lookout for lesser-known works. How many times have the audience heard cello concertos by Dvořák, Elgar, or Schumann? Those are incredible works, but there is so much more amazing music written out there. Music that deserves to be performed and brought to the audience. I am a strong believer in diversity in classical music, and I am doing my best to contribute to it with my performances. In my opinion, both works by Sam Wu and Matilde Capuis are going to make a great contrasting program that will be engaging to the audience. They pair wonderfully with Debussy’s La Mer and Oceana by Stella Sung.

Have you played this piece before?

No, I haven’t. This will be my first public performance. When FVSO reached out to me about this concert, I was thrilled that maestro Sütterlin agreed to program these works.

Tell us about some of your other favorites.

I am a huge enthusiast for contemporary music and music of the 20th century. Some of my favorite composers are Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke, and Witold Lutosławski. I also love working with living composers. In the past few years, I have commissioned and premiered over 20 works for cello, including compositions for cello and electronics, cello and piano, and solo cello. Some of my late favorites are ROAR by Hannah Rice, Swansongs by Mara Gibson, Tesla Fantasy by Alina Akhmetova, and if/then Kari Watson.

What are you looking forward to about the performance?

I’m very excited to create some amazing music with FVSO and maestro Kevin Sütterlin, and I can’t wait to share it with you all on Saturday, February 8th at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. It’s going to be a blast!

Join Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra with Eduard Teregulov on Saturday, Feb. 8 at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. Pre-concert talk begins at 6:40pm. Concert starts at 7:30pm.

Purchase tickets here!

More about Eduard Teregulov:

Eduard Teregulov is a winner of international competitions in both Europe and the United States. He started his musical journey at the age of five and now maintains an active career around the country. His recent performances include playing in Carnegie Hall and DiMenna Center in New York City.

Eduard Teregulov is an avid advocate of the music of living and underrepresented composers. Amplifying and creating platforms for artists of today and underrepresented composers is central to his music career. Within the framework of his project on expanding the cello repertoire of the 21st century, Teregulov commissioned and premiered over twenty works for cello, including a cello concerto, works for solo cello, various chamber ensembles, and electro-acoustic compositions. He was invited to perform at festivals, conferences, and concert series including SEAMUS, ChimeFEST at UChicago, Electric LaTex at Rice University, New Music on the Bayou, Music by Women, Branceleoni International Festival, and many others.

Dr. Teregulov holds the position of Assistant Professor of Cello and Double Bass at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. He is also a founding member of Homegrown New Music Ensemble and the Music Director of the concert series in Fargo, ND - Fugitive Sound Experience.

Meet our Composer: Sam Wu

One of the pieces FVSO will perform at the February 8 Oceana concert is cetacean songs by Sam Wu. This fascinating piece is designed to inspire and inform and we can't wait to share this with you. We had a chance to talk with composer Sam Wu, who will also join us at the concert, and asked a few questions about the piece. 

What was your inspiration for the piece? What brought you to this idea?

"cetacean songs is inspired by the complexity of whalesong. While we don't understand what whales are singing and saying, we know that they communicate with specific syntax, repetition, and even regional dialects. To me, the sound of the cello shares a kindred spirit with whalesong; before I wrote the work, I also read a wonderful book by Tom Mustill, How to Speak Whale, which greatly inspired (and informed) me."

What do you want people to take away from the performance?

"I hope people walk away from the performance with an awareness of how little we know about the ocean and its inhabitants, as well as how fragile aquatic ecosystems are. Musically, I also hope people enjoy the vast colors and effects the solo cello explores throughout the concerto––I am so thrilled and grateful to work with the incredible Eduard Teregulov for this performance!"

Tell us a little about your other works.

Much of my music is programmatic––I enjoy creating musical metaphors with extra-musical concepts. Besides whalesong, I have also written music inspired by weather data visualization (Wind Map), the elaborate Shanghai metro system (Mass Transit), and moons in our Solar System that plausibly host liquid oceans (Ocean Moons). I grew up playing the violin, and first fell in love with music playing in youth orchestras; as a composer, I feel most at home writing for the orchestra, and am excited to work with Maestro Sütterlin and the FVSO for the first time!

Sam will join Dr. Sütterlin at the pre-concert talk at 6:40pm on February 8 at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. Get your tickets online now!

More about Sam Wu:

Sam Wu's music "abounds in delicate colours, wisps of sound and sylvan textures" (Gramophone). Many of his works center around extra-musical themes: architecture and urban planning, climate science, and the search for exoplanets that harbor life.

Selected for the American Composers Orchestra's EarShot readings and the Tasmanian Symphony’s Australian Composers’ School, winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and First Prize at the Washington International Competition, Sam Wu also received Harvard's Robert Levin Prize and Juilliard's Palmer Dixon Prize.

Sam’s collaborations span five continents, notably with the orchestras of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Sarasota, Melbourne, Tasmania, Macao, and Shanghai, the New York City Ballet, National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Sydney International Piano Competition, the Lontano, Parker, Argus, ETHEL, and icarus Quartets, conductors Osmo Vänskä, Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Dina Gilbert, and Benjamin Northey, violinist Johan Dalene, and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei.

From Melbourne, Australia, Sam holds degrees from Harvard, Juilliard, and Rice. He is currently on faculty at Whitman College, as their Visiting Assistant Professor of Music in Theory and Composition.

World Premiere in November from Lawren Brianna Ware

 

The only thing we love more than our local soloists is working with composers on new works to premiere on our stage. We are once again blessed to do so in November! 

Lawren Brianna Ware will be in Appleton for the performance of "The Moirai," a commission from April Ann and Kevin Sütterlin as a gift to the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra, in honor of their dear friend and mother figure Danna Sue Browder Brown, who passed away on August 3, 2024.

She will join us for the concert as well as the pre-concert talk, but let's learn a bit more about the piece so you can come to the talk ready with questions!

Purchase your tickets now for our November 16, 2024 concert!

What was your inspiration for the piece? What brought you to this idea?

The piece was inspired by the concert's overall theme of fate. After speaking with Kevin and learning that the closing piece would be Beethoven's 5th Symphony, I had the idea to tie in the idea of "fate knocking" into my piece. Since my composition would open the concert and Beethoven's 5th would close the. concert, I felt that it would be really cool to create a piece that helped to "bookend" the program with the theme of "fate." I chose a more literal route and composed the piece based on the Fates or "Moirai" from Greek Mythology.

What do you want people to take away from the performance?

My goal in writing is to "create music that makes one feel." Regardless of the feeling (although of course I hope that it is a GOOD feeling), I want the listener/audience to be intellectually stimulated while also experiencing a visceral reaction. Also, I just want the audience to have fun and enjoy the piece. I want them to be transported musically so that they can see the story that I am attempting to tell unfold. 

We are delighted you will be joining us for the concert. Is this the first time you will be joining an orchestra for a world premiere? 

I am SO excited and honored to be joining you! Thank you for the opportunity! And yes, this is my first time joining an orchestra for a world premiere and I am SO PUMPED!!! I have had the opportunity to have pieces read by my school's orchestra, but this is the first time I've had a premiere by a professional orchestra. It's really a dream come true!

Tell us a little about your other works.

I have a wide range of other works with some being very traditional acoustic "contemporary classical" to electronic works. I've had the opportunity to write for many different ensemble types and instrument combinations from orchestra, to wind ensemble, chamber works to electronic music for a comic book. The vast majority of my compositions are programmatic in nature. I focus on telling the stories that I feel need to be told. Those stories, for me, are based on experiences ranging from simply seeing beautiful art or travelling all the way to focusing on topics of mental health, African-American and World history, mythology, literature, and deep emotions. 

More about Lawren Brianna Ware:

Dr. Lawren Brianna Ware, a Gadsden, Alabama native, is a graduate of The University of Wisconsin-Madison where she earned her DMA in Music Composition with a minor in musicology. Compositionally, Dr. Ware’s goal is to “write music that makes one feel.” Although she is an “up and coming” composer, she has begun to secure her place in the world of contemporary classical composition. Dr. Ware’s compositions have  been featured on several professionally recorded albums including Marcus Eley’s Grammy nominee contender (2023) “Perseverance,” Jessica Johnson’s “Sojourn”(2023), the Amernet Quartet’s “Alabama String Quartets (Birmingham Arts Music Alliance)”(2020) and Dr. Cole Bartels’ “On the Brink”(2022). She will be included on upcoming albums by Cobus du Toit (flute) and Lara Downes (piano). Her most recent projects include working as a Lullaby Teaching Artist for the Overture Center’s Lullaby Project, being the inaugural composer and co-founder of the Black Composer Revival Consortium, composing for the Minnesota Consortium for Black American Composers (2020), and composing and releasing an electronic music album in conjunction with comic book writer Jaromir François on the comic My Brother Teddy (2021). 

FVSO Principal Susan Sullivan Takes to the Stage as Soloist

We're looking forward to our upcoming fall concert, Fateful Fifth, on Saturday, November 16 at 7:30pm at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. What makes this concert even more special is the soloist is our own Pricipal Bass Susan Sullivan. 

She took time out of practice and teaching to answer a few questions for us about her upcoming performance. 

Why did you pick this piece to perform? 

Solos for bassist are not as plentiful as for violinists or pianists, so there are only a couple of concertos in the repertoire that come to mind when playing with an orchestra. One is the Bottesini, and the other is the Koussevitsky. I am more familiar with the Koussevitsky so I chose it for this concert. And it is so much fun to play the double stops in the first movement!

Have you played this piece before?

I have worked on the first movement as the solo piece required for orchestral auditions but have never performed the concerto for an audience. I am looking forward to playing the entire piece and not just the first movement.

Tell us about some of your other favorites.

I’ll tell you a little secret: at heart, I am an orchestral bass player so most of my musical favorites are in the orchestral realm. I really, really enjoy the sound and texture of an orchestra. The melodies, harmonies, and endless combinations of the instruments melding together is music for my soul. However, playing the Bach Cello Suites is another kind of music for my soul. They are so simple yet complicated. The playing has to be so clean and precise, yet musical. I do prefer the suites played on the bass (but don’t tell the cellists that or I will be ostracized by them!).

What are you looking forward to about the performance?

It is relatively rare for a bassist to be a soloist so I am honored to be playing a concerto with the Fox Valley Symphony. This will be a new experience for me. And it is a new experience for our audience, who, I hope, will enjoy the sound of the solo bass. 

The conert is on November 16, so order your tickets online now!

More about Susan Sullivan:

Susan grew up in Stevens Point, WI and has played the bass since 9^th grade.  She attended Northwestern University to study with Warren Benfield and Joe Guastafeste, both of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra bass section.  After obtaining a Bachelor of Music degree, she free-lanced in the Chicago area for many years before moving back to Wisconsin.  She is the Principal Bass of the Fox Valley Symphony, and also plays in the Weidner Philharmonic and the Elgin (IL) Symphony Orchestras.  She has been a substitute player in many orchestras in the area, including Madison, Sheboygan, and Manitowoc.

Susan is currently in her 19^th year of teaching private bass lessons at the Lawrence Community Music School where she enjoys the chance to work with both children and adults on a one-to-one basis.  For many years, Susan has been leading Fox Valley Youth Orchestra bass sectionals and appreciates the opportunity to pass on her orchestral skills to the next generation of musicians.

Helping the FVSO raise funds for the Youth Orchestras, Susan has been the long-time  bass coach for the Sinfoniac participants.  Once they’ve gotten over the shock of the size of the instrument and have figured out how to get the bass in the car, her section players perform like they were meant to be musicians!

When not playing the bass, Susan enjoys reading, gardening, and testing out new recipes on her FVSO colleagues.

 

Meet our Soloist!

Our opening night is just ONE week away, and we are delighted to work with Jeanyi Kim on Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77. 

A note from Jeanyi:

I chose the Brahms Violin Concerto because I have always loved it so much! There are so many great violin concertos (Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Sibelius, Mendelssohn to name a few), but none with quite as much depth of expression and emotion. Along with the Beethoven, it is one that the performer cannot lavish gratuitous display upon, otherwise it detracts from its power. It’s probably one of the most challenging and demanding of the soloist’s technical command and endurance, because of the unidiomatic leaps, arpeggios, double and triple stops and symphonic structure and length. This is a masterpiece written for the violin, but not by a violinist. 

Beautiful and intimate lyricism is there, but it’s interwoven into the greater whole and shared with other instruments in the orchestra (for instance the famous oboe solo in the opening of the 2nd movement.) This is a tour-de-force for both the soloist and orchestra, and definitely a bucket list piece for me!

Although I have played this piece in different settings, I’ve never had the opportunity to perform it with orchestra. I’m so honored and delighted to have been invited by conductor Kevin Sütterlin to solo with the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra. I couldn’t be more excited and thrilled to meet and collaborate with Maestro Sütterlin and the wonderful musicians of the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra!!!

Join us on September 21 at 7:30pm for "Ben, Bonds, and Brahms" at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Cetner. Be sure to come early at 6:40pm for the pre-concert talk with Jeanyi and Kevin, and stay late for a free public reception in the lobby.

PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS HERE!

MORE ABOUT JEANYI KIM:

Jeanyi Kim is the Associate Concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Concertmaster of Milwaukee Musaik (also known as the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra). A Toronto native, Kim's command as a violinist and orchestral musician have brought her to illustrious venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, Salle Pleyel, and the Concertgebouw. As a guest, she has appeared as Assistant Leader of the London Symphony Orchestra (UK) under Sir Colin Davis and Valery Gergiev, Concertmaster of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, Principal Second of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and guest musician of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Of her featured solo recital, the Journal Sentinel praised her performance, drawing likeness to that of "a glamorous international star." Kim is equally comfortable in soloist, chamber, and orchestral roles as well as a variety of styles, and her playing has been described as "engrossing…intelligent," and simultaneously having "easy grace" (Journal Sentinel) and "fistfuls of technical fireworks." (Urban Milwaukee) 

Recent solo appearances include performances with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Musaik Chamber Orchestra, Sunflower Music Festival Orchestra, Kenosha Symphony Orchestra and Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra. A passionate and energetic chamber musician, Kim is a founding member of the Philomusica Quartet, and is a regular artist at the esteemed Sunflower Music Festival. She has performed in a number of prominent chamber music series, including Frankly Music, Dame Myra Hess, Fine Arts at First, Searl Pickett, as well as on radio broadcasts for Wisconsin Public Radio, WFMT Chicago and Kansas Public Radio. In addition, she serves as Vice President of the Board of Milwaukee Musaik. 

A dedicated teacher, Kim has held faculty positions at various institutions, including University of Wisconsin-Parkside and University of New Haven, and during summers has taught at several festivals, including the Eleazar de Carvalho International Music Festival (Brazil) and the Elm City ChamberFest. Under her guidance, many of her students have gone on to win various prizes and honors. Kim is also a frequent adjudicator of competitions. Her major teachers include Erick Friedman, Kyung Yu, Rebecca Henry and Berl Senofsky, and important mentors include Aldo and Elizabeth Parisot, Sidney Harth, and Tokyo String Quartet. As a graduate student at Yale, she served as a teaching assistant to Erick Friedman. Kim holds a DMA from Yale University, where she also earned her BA, MM, and MMA degrees. As an undergrad, Kim was the recipient of the Bach Society Award. 

Kim recorded for a Boosey & Hawkes publication/CD entitled, 10 Violin Solos from the Masters, released by Hal Leonard. She performs on a 1705 Petrus Guarnerius violin. 

She and her husband, violinist and conductor Alexander Mandl, enjoy the adventures of raising their two young children, Miranda and Nikolas, frequenting their favorite coffee shops, biking, sailing, and traveling. 

More information on Philomusica Quartet and Milwaukee Musaik can be found here: www.philomusicaquartet.com 

www.milwaukeemusaik.org

Meet the Composer!

 

FVSO is excited to welcome Benjamin Krause to Appleton for our Opening Night concert on September 21 at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. In fact, he's the Ben in our concert title "Ben, Bonds, and Brahms" so you know we are serious!

Ben's piece is titled "Brief as Lightning" and will start the season and our first concert.

While you can meet Ben at our upcoming concert and ask him questions at our pre-concert talk, we wanted to start with some questions of our own.  

1. What was your inspiration for the piece? What brought you to this idea?

I knew that this piece was going to serve as a concert opener, basically a fanfare. I wanted to write a quick, energetic, and somewhat flashy piece that contained a lot of variety even within its short span. There wasn’t any specific source of inspiration other than these general musical ideas – the title, “Brief as the Lightning,” came later as I looked for language that alluded to a sense of kinetic, flashy energy. I was drawn to a passage from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that compares the wild and fleeting feelings of love to a lightning storm erupting at night. As with a lot of my music, a rhythmic impulse drives the piece forward. Over these rhythms come soaring melodies in the strings, somewhat reminiscent, to my mind, of the jazz-tinged Hollywood scores of the 40s and 50s.

2. What do you want people to take away from the performance?

I mainly hope that the audience is energized and thrilled by the music. There is a feeling I get from my favorite highly-propulsive pieces that is somehow both visceral and visual, and like all music it mostly bypasses my ability to describe meaningfully in words.

3. We are delighted you will be joining us for the concert. Is this the first time you will be joining an orchestra for a world premiere? If so, what are your thoughts? If not, how did that feel to experience?

I’m very fortunate to have had a previous orchestral work, Pathways, premiered by the Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra at Rice University and later performed by the Houston Symphony and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. Having so many musicians on stage to perform my work is always an overwhelming and slightly intimidating experience for me. Whenever I’m writing a piece of music, I want to do right by the performers, and have them in mind as much as I do the audience or myself.

4. Tell us a little about your other works.

I write a variety of music within the orchestral, chamber, and vocal or choral worlds. Even though my style encompasses many extremes and contrasts, as a whole I tend to be preoccupied with color and harmony, rhythmic energy, and the relationship between text and music. My Six Lowell Songs for voice and piano showcase impressionistic, colorful harmonies and my interest in poetry. Taxonomies of Pulse is a work for two pianos that, while still harmonically-oriented, is much more focused on energetic rhythmic patterns and the ways in which they can be combined and developed. I have also written a lot of choral music (such as “Hear Our Cry, O Lord”), which tends to be more influenced by early music and the Western sacred music tradition in general. My website is a good place to visit to hear more.

This piece is very special to FVSO, as it was commissioned by our music director Kevin Sütterlin and his wife April in honor of Dr. Monroe Trout, one of our most impactful supporters over the years and winner of the Winston Churchill Leadership Medal. Sadly, we lost Dr. Trout recently, but his legacy will live on with us. 

Join us on September 21 at 7:30pm for "Ben, Bonds, and Brahms" at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Cetner. Be sure to come early at 6:40pm for the pre-concert talk with Ben and Kevin, and stay late for a free public reception in the lobby.

PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS HERE!

Symphony Under the Stars

The Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra is bringing Symphony Under the Stars to Fox Cities Stadium, Neuroscience Group Field on Saturday, July 20. This is a free, family-friendly event with no charge for parking or admission.

“We look forward to this all year, and we hope the audience does too! This event is free so your entire family can come together, enjoy music, food, and fireworks, and really bring us all together as a community,” says Music Director Kevin Sütterlin.

Sponsorship makes it possible for FVSO to offer this event for free, so there are no barriers to participation for anyone. This year, the concert is presented by Mary Beth Nienhaus, Community First Credit Union, Network Health, WE Energies, the Community Vision Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley, Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Fox Cities, and Wisconsin Public Radio. 

“This night is about FUN and celebration,” says Executive Director Jamie LaFreniere.  “From kids to grandparents, absolutely everyone belongs here, and it is designed to bring us all together.”

There will be a mix of classical music, rock, and pop from the FVSO. The audience will hear Sousa and Sibelius, as well as Chicago and the Scorpions. The orchestra is also bringing back their house band, Russ & the Renegades to rock the park. “It is not every day we get to perform Metallica,” says Sütterlin.

Fox Valleyaires Men’s Barbershop Chorus and MacDowell Male Chorus will perform again this year, joining the orchestra since the first summer concert nine years ago.

“We are also happy to bring back the open rehearsal during the day, 3-5 p.m., for a more sensory-friendly experience,” said LaFreniere. “For those with special needs who have a hard time with large crowds and don’t want the noise of fireworks, we love having them join us earlier so they can still get to enjoy a free concert.”

Please contact FVSO at info@foxvalleysymphony.com to make special accommodations for the daytime rehearsal.

The parking lot opens at 5 p.m. (for those eager tailgaters), the gates to the park and concession stands open at 6 p.m., and the concert starts at 7:30 p.m. with fireworks to end the night.