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We invite you to hear the Culver City Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Fetta and the musicians of the orchestra, in the great indoors of Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium for our 2009-10 Season. It will be our 47th year, and our 10th year in Culver City.

The concert dates :
Saturday, October 24, 2009, 8:00P.M.
Saturday, January 30, 2010, 8:00P.M.
Saturday, April 3, 2010, 8:00P.M.
Saturday, June 12, 2010, 7:30P.M.
(Programs subject to change and admission charge.)

Are you on our postal and e-mail mailing lists? To receive updates, please send your addresses, postal and/or e-mail. Click on this link: info@culvercitysymphony.org

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Season Premiere: City Music,
Ten Years in Culver City
The inspiration for Music comes in many places,
but it is in the cities where orchestras are found.

October 24, 2009, Veteran's Memorial Auditorium

 

    Our season premiere concert, City Music, Ten Years in Culver City,  was indeed music for the city - Culver City and the metropolis of Los Angeles.  We were gladdened at the large sized audience. We saw our old friends of the orchestra, our new friends of the orchestra, our old personal friends who are new orchestra friends, and a number of enthusiasts of the Bass. 

    The general consensus amongst audience, orchestra, bass soloists and conductor was that it was a night of glorious music making.  We are glad that the audience was able to experience the music.  If you could not attend, we hope that will consider our next concert, American Beat: Music of the Americas, January 30, 2010, 8PM, Veteran's Memorial Auditorium.

            The concert began with the briefest of fanfares, Stravinsky's Fanfare for a New Theater (1964),  with two members from the trumpet section of the orchestra stepping up to the stage for their less-than-one-minute in the spotlight: Jason Foltz, Principal Trumpet, and David Costello. 
   
    Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture/Fingal's Cave (1830) employed the full orchestra in a charged reading, fitting for the 200th Anniversary of the composer's birth.
   
    Next on the program was Copland's Quiet City (1940), unquestionable city music for strings, trumpet and English Horn. The soloists were two orchestra members: Jeani Lewis, English Horn, and (again) Jason Foltz. Jason is originally from Michigan and studied at the University of Southern California. He has a jazz background in addition to  his classical leanings, and those jazz sensibilities shone through in the warmth of  his playing. Jeani's playing nicely complimented the trumpet and she handled her solos with much appreciated  artistic phrasing and emotion. Jeani related the story that she was to perform the work for the composer in that other Westchester, the one in New York state. Unfortunately, Copland became ill, and the concert was cancelled.  Jeani was very pleased to finally get the chance to perform this atmospheric, urban-tinged work by one of this nation's greatest composers.

    A true rarity for the orchestra and Board of Directors, the audience, and probably anyone within hundreds of miles of Culver City was A. F. Hoffmeister's Concerto for Bass No. 3 (1780). A Viennese contemporary of Mozart and Beethoven, known to both of these musical  giants, Hoffmeister caught the bass concerto craze of  that time. The Bass soloist was Aleksey Klyushnik, who is a winner of the 2008 Parness Young Artists Concerto Competition. Like other winners before him, he displayed the talent and high standards of previous concerto competition winners. Now studying at Yale,  Aleksey chose this very obscure work, and after some difficulties in just finding the orchestra parts, and some trepidation on just exactly who was this composer and what kind of piece it would be, the charms of the work won over many in the orchestra.  Aleksey's was a virtuosic performance, with his fingers running up and down the fingerboard and displaying a keen musical presence.  (If you know the performance history of this work with orchestra in the United States, we would like to hear from you.)

    Beethoven's symphonies seem synonymous with season premieres and concerts of special occasion. As the president/executive director and a member of the orchestra (2nd Violin), I confess to a certain bias, but I thought the performance of Beethoven's  Symphony No. 7 (1812) was quite memorable in the capturing of the many moods of the work.  The orchestra and conductor Fetta found the first movement's expansiveness in the  Introduction,  and dug into the obsessiveness of the Allegro section. The eternal Allegretto movement found the requisite timelessness. The  pursuit of the glorious energy of the symphony's finale jumped out. 

    Conductor Fetta said he was very pleased with the Beethoven and the entire concert.  For those of you who only know us through our concerts at Chace Park, Marina del Rey, Fetta has said you really can't hear how good this orchestra is until you hear it indoors.  We love playing at the Marina, and the sound engineers do a wonderful job at the park, but something is to be said of the great indoors.

    While this concert was without admission charge, it was not free to produce.  We need your support, and becoming a Member of the Westchester Symphony Society is one way to do so. For those of you who have renewed your membership, or joined for the first time, on behalf of the Board of the Directors of the Westchester Symphony Society, and the Culver City Symphony Orchestra, I thank you for your much needed, and appreciated support.

    If you would like to become a member, please go the Membership link above for information.

 

Aleksey Klyushnik / Klyushnik and Fetta--------- Intermission

 

This performance is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County board of Supervisors

through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

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A Culver City Symphony Orchestra String Quartet performs at theOfficial Ceremonies of the re-opening of the Westfield Mall - Culver City

 

Members of the orchestra, Violinists Nancy Roth (orchestra concertmaster) and Rebecca Rutkowski, Violist Lavette Allen and Cellist Michael Levin performed outdoors and inside the refurbished mall to a large crowd of Culver City notables from public and private enterprises, and a large contingent of Westfield personnel. We think the quartet added to the classiness of the this event, and helped with ceremonies. A number of us were very impressed at how well the mall looks, it is more open and airy. The skylight scallops are still there to bathe the inside in natural lighting, and a new light fixture/sculpture graces the center.

Congratulations to Westfield and the City of Culver City for a very fine reconstruction. (Members of the orchestra and board of directors shop at this mall.)

Nancy Roth, Rebecca Rutkowski, Michael Levin and Lavette Allen

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Marina del Rey Summer Symphony

Frank Fetta-Conductor

For the ninth consecutive year, the Culver City Symphony Orchestra, in a unique funding relationship with the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors, changes name to the Marina del Rey Summer Symphony, heads west, and performs outdoors along the waters' edge at -

Burton Chace Park, 13650 Mindanao Way, Marina del Rey.

These concerts are due to the initiative of Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, 4th District, and the Symphony Society and orchestra are very appreciative of the supervisor's love of music and desire to bring music to the Marina.

The special appeal of the ocean pulls the orchestra to this wonderful setting. However, a word to the wise, the venue is on a point of land with water on two sides. The wind can blow, and it can become cold and damp. This does not hamper the music making, nor its enjoyment, but the evening is better enjoyed when the listener has a warm sweater or jacket, and bring something to sit on. Virginia Bortin, of the Department of Beaches and Harbors, is the manager of these summer concerts.

 

 

July 9, 7:00P.M.

Ralph Vaughn Williams - Serenade to Music

Francois Poulenc - Gloria

Carl Orff - Carmina Burana, Lori Stinson, Ralph Cato, Steve Grabe and the Southern California Master Chorale

July 23, 7:00P.M.

A showcase of finalists and winners from the Loren L. Zachary National Vocal competition in arias and ensembles from beloved operas.

August 6, 7:00P.M.

Claude Debussy - Nocturnes

Aaron Copland - Symphony No. 3

Sergei Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 3, Rufus Choi- Piano

August 20, 7:00P.M.

Cleo Laine, John Dankworth, and the John Dankworth Group,

in music by John Dankworth and classics from Jazz to Broadway sung by Dame Cleo Laine

 

Performance tent and the grassy knoll with some preconcert audience members.

 

The audience gathers before the concert, the performance tent is to the left.

 

It can get cold at Chace Park.

 

Frank Fetta during the July 9, 2009, performance.

 

A crowd gathers before a concert at Burton Chase Park, Marina del Rey, 2005.

Photos: Hermes

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Orchestra Conductor and Music Director Frank Fetta is the Director of the Zachary Opera Competition based in Los Angeles.

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Orchestra president Matthew Hetz was the guest speaker at the November 12, 2008, Culver City Chamber of Commerce Breakfast, held at the Four Points by Sheraton in Culver City.

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Students and Parents visit a rehearsal

 

Orchestra Tuba player Anthony Bancroft's teaches music in the El Segundo School District. Students and their parents attended a rehearsal for the October 25, 2008, concert. Some met Music Director and Conductor Frank Fetta and sat through the rehearsal process. This gives these students and their parents a very personal experience on how an orchestra and its conductor puts a piece of music together, take it apart and put it back together when leading up to a performance.

Frank Fetta in the center (top and right photos, with the blue Tee shirt); Orchestra Tuba player Anthony Bancroft is in the Hawaiian shirt (just back from vacation Anthony?); and students and their parents pose in front of the orchestra before we start playing.

Photos: Hermes

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contact us at:info@culvercitysymphony.org

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A string quartet plays for the city council

 

A string quartet comprised of members of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra performed in the Plaza of Culver City City Hall for a delightful, late afternoon reception for three outgoing City Council Members: Alan Corlin-Mayor, Carol Gross-Vice Mayor and Steve Rose.

The orchestra, its Board of Directors and its president knew these three council members. We appreciate their relationship and we thank them for their support of the orchestra. We wish them the Best in their future endeavors.

The Quartet

Violins: Roman and Victoria Selizinka

Viola: Lavette Allen

Cello: Anita Gendler

 

__________________________________(photos: Hermes)

 

ORCHESTRA OUTREACH

Through Campus Concerts, an outreach program sponsored by the Musicians Union, the Culver City Symphony Orchestra Wind Quintet performed at Farragut Elementary School, Culver City, on April 27, presenting two programs. The quintet was Pat Maki-Flute, David Kossof-Oboe, Patricia Massey-Clarinet, Nate Campbell-Horn John Campbell-Bassoon.

The Campus Concerts programs introduces students to Classical Music, the life of Mozart was featured through a musical narrative of his early life, and to some of the orchestra instruments through individual demonstration. For this program, the instruments demonstrated were the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn. All the instrumentalists gave intriguing and informative demonstrations of their respective instrument. Garnering perhaps the most interest was the demonstration of a selection of Handel's Water Music played through a garden hose, with a funnel at the end, to demonstrate that if the tubing of a horn was not coiled, stretched out it would be sixteen feet long.

 

A second Campus Concert was held at El Marino Language School, Culver City, on May 30, 2007.

Hopefully the programs will open up to these students the wonders and excitement that listeners can receive from Classical Music.

There was a lot of hands in the air to answer questions, foot stomping, phantom conducting, and a whole-body-shimmy to the music. We hope we made a positive impression with the students. While geared towards the young, we feel that one is never too old to discover what Classical Music can bring into one's life. Visit one our concerts to discover the joys of music.

 

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