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University Symphony Chamber Orchestra with Stephen Stubbs and Pacific MusicWorks

Thursday, January 30, 2014 - 7:30pm
$15 ($10 students/seniors). Notecard.
The University of Washington Symphony Orchestra
The University of Washington Symphony Orchestra

David Alexander Rahbee conducts members of the University Symphony in a concert of works by C.P.E. Bach and Joseph Haydn. Plus: School of Music faculty artist Stephen Stubbs conducts a work by Arcangelo Corelli, featuring guest musicians from Pacific MusicWorks.

 

PROGRAM DETAIL
Gabrieli: Sonata Pian'e Forte, for brass     arr. Mogans Andersen    
Tigran Arakelyan, conductor

Corelli: Concerto Grosso in D major Op. 6 No. 1    
Stephen Stubbs, conductor

CPE Bach: Symphony in E Minor, Wq. 177    
conducted by David Alexander Rahbee

Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 59 in A Major, "Fire"    
conducted by David Alexander Rahbee

 

CONDUCTOR BIOS
David Alexander Rahbee
Conductor David Alexander Rahbee, director of orchestral activities at the University of Washington, is a native of Boston. He studied conducting at the New England Conservatory, Université de Montréal, Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna and at the Pierre Monteux School. He also studied violin and composition at Indiana University. He further refined his artistic training by participating in master-classes with Kurt Masur, Sir Colin Davis, Jorma Panula, Zden?k Mácal, Peter Eötvös, Zoltán Peskó, Helmut Rilling and Otto-Werner Mueller.

He was awarded the American-Austrian Foundation "Herbert von Karajan Fellowship" for young conductors in Salzburg (2003), as well as fellowships from International "Richard-Wagner-Verband-Stipend" in Bayreuth, Germany (2005), the Acanthes Centre in Paris (2007) and the Atlantic Music Festival in the USA (2010). At the Salzburg Festival in 2003 he was assistant conductor of the International Attergau Institute Orchestra, where he also worked artistically with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and guest conductors including Bobby McFerrin.

He has appeared in concert with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, l'Orchestre de la Francophonie, the Dresden Hochschule Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica de Loja (Ecuador), the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, "Cool Opera" of Norway (members of the Stavanger Symphony), the Savaria Symphony Orchestra, Schönbrunner Schloss Orchestra (Vienna), the Gächinger Kantorei, the Bach-Kollegium Stuttgart, the Kammerphilharmonie Berlin-Brandenburg and the Divertimento Ensemble of Milan.

In the genre of contemporary musical theatre, Rahbee lead a fully staged production of Bruno Maderna's chamber opera Satyricon with the Divertimento Ensemble. He also lead this ensemble in the Italian premiere of Helmut Lachenmann's Mouvement – vor der Erstarrung.

The first of his several ground-breaking articles on Gustav Mahler, “Gustave Charpentier’s Louise and Mahler’s Sixth Symphony” appears in the spring 2013 edition of the music journal Sonus. His arrangement of the Overture to Rossini's Barber of Seville for trombone quartet has been recorded and released on CD by Summit Music, played by the quartet known as Four of a Kind, four of the world’s greatest trombonists. This arrangement, along with many others, is published by Warwick Music, England.

Stephen Stubbs
After a thirty year career in Europe, musical director and lutenist Stephen Stubbs returned to his native Seattle in 2006. Since then he has established his new production company, Pacific Musicworks, and developed a busy calendar as a guest conductor specializing in baroque opera and oratorio.

With his direction of Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, he began his career as opera director and founded the ensemble Boston Early Music Festival Tragicomedia. Since 1997 Stephen has co-directed the bi-annual opera and is the permanent artistic co-director. BEMF’s recordings of Conradi’s Ariadne, Lully’s Thesee, and Psyché were nominated for Grammy awards in 2005, 2007, and 2009.

Stephen was born in Seattle, Washington, where he studied composition, piano and harpsichord at the University of Washington. In 1974 he moved to England to study lute with Robert Spencer and then to Amsterdam for further study with Toyohiko Satoh and soon became a mainstay of the burgeoning early-music movement there, working with Alan Curtis on Italian opera in Italy, William Christie on French opera in France and various ensembles in England and Germany particularly the Hilliard Ensemble.

With his return to Seattle in 2006 he formed the long-term goal of establishing a company devoted to the study and production of Baroque opera.  His first venture in this direction was the creation of the Accademia de’Amore, an annual summer institute for the training of pre-professional singers and musicians in baroque style and stagecraft, now housed at the Cornish College of the Arts.

In 2008 he established Pacific MusicWorks. The company’s inaugural presentation was a revival of South African artist William Kentridge’s acclaimed multimedia marionette staging of Claudio Monteverdi’s penultimate opera The Return of Ulysses in a co-production with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. After a warmly received 2010 presentation  of Monteverdi’s monumental Vespers of 1610 at Seattle’s St. James Cathedral, PMW presented a full subscription season, opening with a program based on the Song of Songs and ending with two triumphantly successful performances of Handel’s early masterpiece,  The Triumph of Time (1707).

As a guest conductor Stubbs has led performances of Gluck’s Orfeo and Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Bilbao, Spain, and Monteverdi’s Orfeo at Amsterdam’s Netherlands Opera. Following his successful debut conducting the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 2011, he was invited back in 2012 to conduct the Symphony’s performances of Messiah.  He will also debut with the Edmonton Symphony in Messiah this season.

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