"Boots and Toots"
Wear your boots, Wrangler's and hat to this concert of music about the American West displaying the music of the Prairie, a fiddle contest, a rodeo and the music from one of our favorite films, "Dances with Wolves".
Prairie Overture has a simple sonata form using "Western" style tunes and was originally composed and published for band. Many conductors suggested that the composer transcribe it for orchestra. The music evokes an image of the distant horizon of the prairie from horseback with the wind blowing the grasses in elongated waves as far as the eye can see.
Robert Ward was born in 1917, in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a student of Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School of Music; with Frederick Jacobi, Bernhard Wagenaark, Albert Stoessel and Edgar Schenkman at the Juilliard Graduate School and with Aaron Copland at the Berkshire Music Center. Mr. Ward received the 1962 Pulitzer Prize in Music and the 1962 Music Critics Circle of New York Citation for his opera, THE CRUCIBLE (based on the play by Arthur Miller), premiered in the fall of 1961 by the New York City Opera.
Marie Rhines, violinist and composer, is, like so many talents that deliberately skirt the edges of America's highly commercial mainstream music, a pioneer. She has refused to limit the development of her instrumental technique and has brought the backwoods and Western folk fiddle from the barnyard and the cattle trail to the prominence of concert auditoriums.
First you appreciate Marie's virtuosic technique, then the complex rhythms, melodies and harmonies. Next you discover the depth of the thought, feeling, knowledge and sensitivity and her own impressions of life, which become shared experiences with her audience. Add her dry wit, her charming presence and the haunting beauty of her solo vocals, and all the ingredients for an unforgettable evening of entertainment are added in the exact proportions. Marie possesses that rare ability to entertain, educate and captivate an audience with each performance.
Although she has applied her gift of talent to that which is closest to her heart, traditional American fiddle music, another talent is composing music. She has expanded her eclectic musical pursuits as instrumentalist, arranger and composer in her American Folk Concerto for Violin and Symphony Orchestra winning several ASCAP and Rockefeller Awards. Marie's very personal contemporary Western compositions with epic lyric poems combine her vocal talents with her focus on Western folk traditions and her devotion to the chronicling of the rapidly shrinking American West of the 20th century. Her perspective of today's pioneers will add material for generations to enjoy in the decades ahead.
The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo commissioned the choreographer, Agnes de Mille, and the composer, Aaron Copland, to collaborate on the creation of a western ballet for its 1942-43 season. The idea for the ballet was devised by Agnes de Mille and is very basic. It deals with the problem that has confronted all American women from earliest pioneer times and which has never ceased to occupy them throughout the history of the building of our country: "how to get a suitable man".
A number of American folk songs are woven into the score. Source material for Rodeo was drawn from "Our Singing Country" by John A. and Alan Lomax and from Ira Ford's "Traditional Music of America". Two songs from the Lomax volume are incorporated into the first Episode: "If hed'd be a buckaroo by his trade" and "Sis Joe". The rhythmic oddities of "Sis Joe" provided rich material for reworking. A square dance tune called "Bonyparte" provides the principal theme of the Hoe-Down. On the other hand no folk material was drawn upon for the Corral Nocturne.
Concert Suite from Dances with Wolves is a compilation of the lyrical and imaginative tunes from the film score written by John Barry who gained early fame as the composer of many of the James Bond films. He also worked on a number of more serious films, including the 1968 costume play The Lion in Winter, whose sometimes heavily dramatic music won him his second original-score Oscar, and Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner's 1990 portrait of a man's relationship with native American in the old west. Here Barry's much warmer and more mellow music brought him yet another Academy Award.
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