Seattle Collaborative Orchestra concert - Tuesday, February 12th

• Scheherazade - Rimsky-Korsakov

I love this piece. Probably everyone who plays the violin loves this piece, because it has an amazing solo part for violin as well as really fun playing for the section musicians. We get to do lots of things that sound complicated and hard, but that are really entertaining violin tricks. It's based on the idea of 1001 Nights, the story of Scheherezade and Shahryar, the sultan who has married and beheaded one wife per day until Scheherezade came along with her stories and cliffhangers that compelled him to listen to her every night instead. You can hear their two personalities in the piece; it opens with Shahryar's theme, loud and gruff, and the solo violin responds as Scheherezade.

• 1001 - Primiani

This is another one of my favorite things in life - a new piece of music, and it was commissioned especially for this orchestra! It was written as a response to Scheherezade, and in the wake of #MeToo, and it explores what it must have felt like to be Scheherezade, to have to entertain some powerful old creep until he decided that you're an okay enough person for him to not chop your head off. It's minimalist in that Philip Glass way that I like so much, and it includes a tape recording that we play along with, which adds an interesting new dimension.

• Study for Orchestra - Perry

I had never heard of Julia Perry until I started rehearsing this piece, and that's sad, because she and her story are excellent. This piece is very difficult to play and put together, but it's a labor of love for me - it sounds both like jazz and serialism. It's aggressively modern and intellectual. I think that it may be the first piece of classical music by a Black woman that I have ever performed.

Give it a listen here - it's only about 7 minutes long, and there's a lot going on.

(If you're interested in more classical music by Black composers, may I suggest this? I can't go, and I'm sad that I can't.)

• Concerto No. 3, Movement 1 - Mozart, with Addison Kotulski as our soloist on Horn.

It's Mozart! It's lovely! It's with a young horn player who won a competition in order to play this with us- she's great. Come listen.

This concert will take place in the Roosevelt High School auditorium, at 7pm on Tuesday, February 12th.

You can get tickets here, and I feel that I should point out that anyone under 18 can get in for FREE! There are also big discounts for anyone who is a student, or over 65.

I'm choosing to remain optimistic that the weather will hold for this and that it will happen - however, I'll write and tell you if it isn't going to.