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Iris Orchestra Opening Night Concert- A Great Success!!

October 17th, 2007

This past weekend I was privileged to play my first concert with the Iris Orchestra in Memphis, TN. The program consisted of Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, Samuel Barber’s Violin concerto and Brahm’s Symphony #3. The soloist for the Barber was Cho-Liang Lin. Cho-Liang sounded really great. It was such a pleasure playing this piece with a musician of such a high caliber. The Golijav piece consisted of a string orchestra split into 2 parts. It is a very passionate, exciting piece that written as an homage to the Argentinian composer Astor Piazzola. We finished the first half with the Barber Violin Concerto. Following the concerto, we played a Piazzaola encore with Cho-Liang. We concluded the concert with Brahms Symphony #3.

The conductor of the Iris Orchestra is Michael Stern. He is the son of the late great violinist Issac Stern. He is an excellent musician and I enjoyed working with him a great deal. One interesting point that he made about the concert was that in the time of Brahms, they played most of the symphonies with a smaller orchestra that we usually do today. We had an orchestra just a little bigger than a chamber orchestra. The result was fascinating. You can hear so much of the color changes and all these interesting lines and figures that would probably be covered up in a larger symphony orchestra.

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Click here to learn more about Iris, or check out Osvaldo Golijov and Cho-Liang Lin for more information.

Entry Filed under: IRIS Orchestra, Orchestra