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.