January 17, 2014
Dear YSO alumni,
We hope you had a wonderful winter holiday and an auspicious start to 2014!
Whether you’ve made your Carnegie debut by now or let your case grow dusty, we hope you still recall your musical Mondays and Wednesdays with fondness. We are beginning a regular alumni correspondence, and we hope that this mailing and future newsletters will harken back to those sweet-sounding afternoons and help keep everyone in touch. We’ll also use these updates to keep you in the loop about what we’re playing, concert and recording news, and the doings and going-ons of current members.
In the more immediate future, we will be performing at the Yale Club of New York City next Wednesday, January 22, at 8:00 PM. Our Yale Club concert will now take place on Thursday, May 15, at 8:00 PM. If you are in the area, more information about this event can be found here, and tickets to this and all of our upcoming events may be purchasedhere. We hope to see you there!
To keep everyone up to date on the latest alumni news, we’re going to need your help. Got a story to tell, an opportunity to share, a YSO tidbit you’ve clung to since days of yore, even a spot-on viola joke? Fill out our form so we can include it in our next newsletter. Also, please take a moment to update your contact information for our records.
We can’t wait to hear from you!
Best wishes,
Yale Symphony Orchestra
Here’s a snapshot of our last semester:
- In our September season opener, we performed Wagner’s Overture to Tannhauser, Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, and Gliere’s Harp Concerto, with William Waite Concerto Competition winner Chelsea Lane ’14. You can stream and purchase recordings of the concert here.
- Thanks to our new online ticketing system, the Halloween Show sold out in a record-smashing six minutes. Students shut out of the frenzy bemoaned their lack of a speedy Internet connection, and the social networks were rife with the most plaintive requests for orchestra tickets we’ve ever seen. A small number of DVDs of the film, directed by violist Junesoo Seong ’15, are still available for purchase through our bandcamp page.
- In November, we took a hint from the crimson New Haven foliage, performing Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. The concert also featured concertmaster and assistant conductor Jacob Joyce ’14, first conducting Sibelius’ The Oceanides, then as a soloist along with Jacob Schafer ’15 and Leo Singer ’14 in Handel’s Concerto Grosso in C Major, “Alexander’s Feast”. We were also fortunate to have composer Tom Myron in the audience during our performance of his piece Katahdin (Greatest Mountain), from the soundtrack to a PBS documentary. Recordings of this concert may be streamed and purchased here.
- We performed our annual Handel’s MessiahSing-in with the Yale Glee Club to a large audience of diligent community songsters.
- Our recording of the Hindemith piano concerti with Idil Biret was named to the Rhapsody.com Top 10 Classical Albums of December. Released on the Naxos label, this album was our major label debut and is available for preview and purchase on Amazon and iTunes.
- Next year we’ll be heralding our 50th anniversary season. Toshi, our maestro, has a birthday concert in the works, so stay tuned!