Seattle Symphony Spotlight

“Be Prepared” is not only a motto in the world of scouting, but it’s good advice for those who work as Associate Conductors of professional symphony orchestras. Lee Mills holds that position with the Seattle Symphony. When the orchestra’s music director, Thomas Dausgaard, was unable to conduct the season opening dress rehearsal due to illness, Lee stepped in to lead the rehearsal at the last minute. Lee grew up in the small city of Belgrade, Montana and began to pursuit music seriously after his physics studies didn’t quite work out how he had hoped. Lee Mills’ path as a conductor has taken him to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil where he’s served for the past 5 years as resident conductor of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. KING FM’s Dave Beck talks to Lee Mills on this edition of our Seattle Symphony Podcast.

A signature programming approach of Seattle Symphony Music Director Thomas Dausgaard is to collaborate with folk musicians in exploring the roots of symphonic music by composers like Rachmaninoff and Sibelius. This week’s SSO performances of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” in Benaroya Hall are preceded by a 20 minute presentation exploring the folk roots of Stravinsky’s revolutionary 1913 ballet score. Dausgaard talks with Dave Beck about the performers of traditional folk music and dance who will be on the Benaroya Hall stage this week with the SSO. We’ll find out how these folk artists take us into the ancient sound world of Lithuanian folk music that Stravinsky studied in creating "The Rite of Spring."

For about a year, Seattle Symphony Principal Cellist Efe Baltacigil has been in conversation with Seattle-based composer Angelique Poteat as the two have collaborated on this week’s world premiere of Angelique’s new cello concerto. Angelique is a much admired clarinetist and composer with deep ties to the Seattle Symphony. She’s already had orchestral and chamber works performed by the players in the orchestra, and she’s participated over the years in the Seattle Symphony’s Merriman Family Young Composer Workshops. Her music has been heard not only in Seattle but throughout the United States and in Australia, Japan and across Europe. Efe Baltacigil talks with KING FM’s Dave Beck about Efe’s admiration for the craft and musicianship of this gifted young composer. Efe says Angelique has even woven Efe’s love for jazz and the art of improvisation into the new concerto.

Andy Liang, a member of the Seattle Symphony’s first violin section, wasn’t so sure how committed he was to music when it was time to decide where he would go to college. Andy had played in Carnegie Hall and appeared on the NPR Program From the Top in his teen years. So he had the talent to study pretty much anywhere he wanted. But his interests outside of music gave him second thoughts about where he saw his life going. That all changed when Andy found out about a violinist hero of his who was going to be teaching at Rice University in Texas. Andy took up that story with us when he visited recently at Classical KING FM and spoke with host Dave Beck.  

Augustin Hadelich returns to Benaroya Hall this week to play the Brahms Violin Concerto. In 2016, Augustin won the Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his performance of Henri Dutilleux’s Violin Concerto, The Tree of Dreams, with the Seattle Symphony and Music Director Emeritus Ludovic Morlot. KING FM’s Dave Beck speaks with Augustin about his long association with the Brahms Violin Concerto, a work he first performed publicly when he was just 10 years old. We hear how Augustin Hadelich wrote his own cadenza for the Brahms Concerto, a piece he has recently recorded. We get an informative primer from Augustin on the tradition and history of the cadenza in famous violin concertos. And he talks about the challenges of writing a cadenza in the authentic style of Brahms. 

This week we hear from Peter Oundjian, who stepped in on short notice to guest conduct the Seattle Symphony. Oundjian is Conductor Emeritus of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director for 14 years. He’s conducting the SSO this week in place of Cristian Macelaru who could not be here due to illness. Oundjian talks about his admiration for the music of Felix Mendelssohn as heard in the composer’s “Scottish” Symphony on the program this week. He tells Dave Beck about how his many years as first violinist in the Tokyo String Quartet inform his interpretation of symphonic music, and speaks on his recent return to the violin after a neurological condition forced him to put down the instrument in the mid-1990s.

Dave Beck speaks with guest conductor Masaaki Suzuki. Together with his son, Masato Suzuki, Masaaki has created a performing version of Mozart’s very last composition, the famously unfinished Requiem Mass. The piece was written by Mozart on his deathbed and it was left to his students and others to complete the work. Masaaki Suzuki leads the SSO, Seattle Symphony Chorale and vocal soloists in Benaroya Hall this week in an edition of the Requiem that the Suzukis put together from fragments of the music Mozart left behind. All three of the works on the program this week explore topics of mourning and loss. There are also works by Toru Takemitsu and Karl Amadeus Hartmann on the program.

Claire Chase was awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant in 2012 for her work, not only fostering the creation of new music, but for building organizations, forming community alliances and supporting educational programs reaching new audiences. That work is on display in Seattle this week when she is soloist with the Seattle Symphony and Music Director Thomas Dausgaard in the 2018 composition “Aello: Ballet Mecanomorphe” by Olga Neuwirth. It’s for flute, bass flute and an ensemble that includes tuned water glasses and a typewriter. Claire Chase gave the world premiere of the piece, an homage to the Bach Brandenburg Concerto Number 4, last year at the BBC Proms with Thomas Dausgaard leading the Swedish Chamber Orchestra.

This week in Seattle, Claire Chase also presents music by Marcos Balter as part of her innovative Density 2036 project. She explains more about this effort to generate new flute music, a project unfolding over a 23 year time span.

We meet the occupant of the Charles Simonyi Principal Horn Chair in the Seattle Symphony. Jeffrey Fair has been playing in the SSO since 2003 when Gerard Schwarz was music director. In 2013 he won the principal horn position during Ludovic Morlot’s tenure as music director. Jeff Fair tells KING FM’s Dave Beck about Jeff’s journey as a musician from a grade school child picking up the french horn for the first time in Oklahoma, to performing the pinnacle horn solos of the symphonic repertory with one of the world’s finest orchestras, the Seattle Symphony.

Daniel Muller-Schott played the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the SSO in September, 2019. Born in Munich, Germany in 1976, Daniel Muller Schott came to international attention as a teenager winning the Tchaikovsky International Competition at age 15. That achievement brought him to the attention of the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Daniel talks with us about a year he spent following Rostropovich around the world and studying with the great Slava. Daniel learned that if Rostropovich wanted to give you a cello lesson at 2 in the morning, you woke up and took that lesson.