Enjoy wine, appetizers and meet musicians in garden

 Published in the April 27 – May 10, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life

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By Staff Report

Morgan Hill Life file photo  The South Valley Symphony's annual Mother's Day concert takes place May 8 at the Mission Church in San Juan Bautista.

Morgan Hill Life file photo
The South Valley Symphony’s annual Mother’s Day concert takes place May 8 at the Mission Church in San Juan Bautista.

South Valley Symphony music director and conductor Tony Quartuccio encourages families to take their moms on this Mother’s Day for a musical tour. The orchestra will perform music at its Sunday May 8 concert inside the Mission Church in San Juan Bautista that will give audience a taste of North and South American cultures.

The “Postcards from the Americas” concert will close the 2015-2016 concert season which had the arching theme “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The SVS’s annual Mother’s Day concert through word of mouth has grown into a favorite tradition for many South Valley residents to spend a spring Sunday afternoon enjoying fun music, Quartuccio said.

“When we first started doing this concert years ago, we didn’t think it would be popular at all,” he said. “We had to take the Mother’s Day concert date at the mission because no other date was available. And you know what? People saw it as an alternative way to give a Mother’s Day present and spend a Sunday in the spring and come to the rose garden (next to the church) and have some refreshments afterwards.”

The concert will start the “travelogue” with the rhythmically upbeat “Cuban Overture” written by George Gershwin. Originally titled “Rumba,” the tonal poem was a result of a two-week holiday Gershwin took in Havana in 1932.

“It sort of ties in with America recently opening our borders with Cuba. It’s a cultural piece that shows we love Cuban music,” Quartuccio said.
The next piece in the concert program takes the audience to a pre-Columbian world with a Native American flute solo performed by Jeff Chambers accompanied by the orchestra.

“It salutes the Native Americans before the Europeans got here,” Quartuccio said. “It makes sure that the Native American people are honored.”
From there, the musical travelogue takes the audience on a road trip through the rugged natural beauty in Canada and the United States with the Canadian composer Michael S. Horwood’s “National Park Suite.” The five movements of this piece give an aural description of five destinations: Forillon National Park in Québec, Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, Fathom Five Marine Park in Ontario,Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and Jasper National Park in Alberta.

“This is a historic piece because no one has written an entire suite of national parks depicted in music,” Quartuccio said. “So the music is literally suppose to sound like the sounds and the sea waves and the moods and experience of actually being there.”

The concert then journeys to South America to explore Argentina musically with a piece titled “Oblivion for Solo Violin and Strings” by Astor Piazzolla. The violin solo will be performed by concert master Beverly Blount.

“Piazzolla is the king of tango, so it’s a luscious love song of a piece that I think the audience will really enjoy,” Quartuccio said.

The concert trip heads back north to Mexico with “Danzon No. 2” by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez The composition is one of the most popular and most frequently performed orchestral Mexican contemporary classical music compositions, Quartuccio said.

“This is a love song, an incredibly rhythmic dance that will make people want to get out of their seats and dance,” he said.

The concert finishes back in the United States with a special musical treat guaranteed to end the concert on a festive note, he said.

“Of all the music in the United States, what is the most American of musical forms, and we believe it’s jazz. So we’ve brought in the Zinfandel Stompers New Orleans Jazz Band to play some Dixieland Jazz with the orchestra.”

After the concert, audience members can enjoy wine and appetizers as they meet the musicians in a reception hosted by the symphony in the rose garden courtyard adjacent to the church.

“With this particular concert program there are so many diverse styles. There’s a lot of variety,” Quartuccio said. “This concert kind of goes the extra mile in terms of variety and the musical styles from the various countries we visit.”