Clasica Concert at Autry National Center – October 12

Clásica – las raíces de la música (the roots of music) is one of our exciting new series of free concerts that explores the connection between the roots of Latin, Hispanic and Classical music. Our next concert in the series is Sunday, October 12 at the Autry National Center (google map) with special guest Ixya Herrera. (View flyer)

The concert begins at 2 p.m. It’s going to be a great show you won’t want to miss. For more information call (626) 793-7172 ex 18.

Can You Guess The Grape?

No, no, it’s not anybody in the picture! Guess the Grape is the theme of our final Summer Chamber Music & Wine series.

In case you’re wondering, the Chamber series brings together a wine expert, a music expert and musicians for an intimate evening of music and food at the historic Boddy house at Descanso Gardens.

Our host on Sunday is assistant conductor Jeffrey Bernstein with musical guests, the Crown City Brass Quintet. If you haven’t attended our newest musical offering, you better hurry – our last event this summer is Sunday, September 28 and the last day to register is this Wednesday the 24th.

Please note we’ve moved up the start time to 5:30 p.m. - so we can take advantage of the available daylight. More information is here, download the flyer,[pdf] or call (626) 793-7172 ex 3050 to reserve your place.

Pure Fun

Robert Thomas from the Pasadena Star News offers a good preview of our upcoming concerts at Descanso Gardens this weekend. In addition to a detailed description of our program, he also makes it clear that these concerts will be pure fun.

Conductors have diverse reasons for choosing orchestra programs. Some celebrate anniversaries (e.g., a composer’s birthday or an orchestra’s founding). Some probe music deeply. Still other programs are simply pure fun.

Count the Pasadena Pops’ concerts this weekend, titled “I Hear America Singing,” in the third category.

Not every piece on the program will be vocal, but for Music Director and Conductor Rachael Worby, this was a uniquely personal program.

“It was a chance to look at the whole world of American music and pick my favorite composers, many of which have a vocal element to them – but not all,” she said.

You can read more of his piece here, and get more information about our concerts here.

American songs, poetry and music.

More information about our upcoming POPS concerts at Descanso Gardens comes courtesy of The Foothill Weeklies.

The program will include American songs and American poetry, a combination that conductor Rachael Worby has used in the past to bring a fuller sense of entertainment to a summer evening. Worby has brought on board four singers and a dance troupe and a surprise guest for a poetry reading to fill out the bill of on-stage activity along with the full symphony orchestra.

Get ready for a great night.

I hear America Singing – This Weekend!

Pasadena Now previews our next POPS concert at Descansco Gardens.

Music lovers will experience our journey as a nation when Maestra Rachael Worby and The Pasadena POPS present I Hear America Singing Friday, Aug 15, through Sunday, Aug. 17, at Descanso Gardens.

Joining The POPS will be guest artists David Gagnon, tenor; Eric Owens, bass baritone; Khori Dastoor, soprano; saxophonist Douglas Masek, and the Lula Washington Dance Theatre.

All things American will be celebrated, starting with a reading of Walt Whitman’s I Hear America Singing from his Leaves of Grass, followed by John Philip Sousa’s rousing The Stars and Stripes Forever and John Adams’ exuberant minimalist work, Short Ride In A Fast Machine. A reading from Langston Hughes’ poem Let America Be America Again is followed by a dance presentation of Duke Ellington’s The River performed by The Lula Washington Dance Theatre. Soprano Khori Dastoor and tenor David Gagnon will be featured in Suite No. 1 from West Side Story in a 90th birthday tribute to Leonard Bernstein.

We’re looking forward to a great weekend of concerts.

What People Are Saying About Our New Summer Chamber Music & Wine Series

People are talking about us again. This time it’s about our new Summer Chamber Music & Wine series. The La Canada Valley Sun’s Jane Napier Neely attended our July 13th event and loved it.

In spite of my appearance I did venture out Sunday evening to attend the newly formed Summer Chamber Music & Wine Series held at the beautiful Descanso Gardens Boddy House. Well, I gotta tell you this ongoing event is one not to be missed…This evening was a delight for the senses and I know that the next two events will be also.

The Pasadena Star-News also mentions our series including some of the details.

Our next Summer Chamber series event is August 10th at 6:30 p.m. Reservations with advanced payment are required, so get more information and order tickets now.

Summer Chamber Music & Wine Series

We’re really excited about our new Summer Chamber series. It’s a perfect opportunity to combine fine wine, food and Chamber music in the intimate setting of the Boddy House in Descanso Gardens. Meet the musicians of The Orchestras of Pasadena as they discuss the evening’s program. Join us August 10, 6:30pm to 8:00pm: In the Mix! Meritages and Blends. Special guests include Jorge Mester, Pasadena Symphony Music Director and Clarinetist Phil O’Connor.

Our last Summer Chamber event of the season will be on September 28, 6:30pm to 8:00pm: Guess the Grape, pairing a selection of favorites. Guests will be Jorge Mester, Pasadena Symphony Music Director and the Crown City Brass Quintet.

Reservations and advanced payment, $65 per person, are required. You can download the flyer and order form or reserve by phone (626) 793-7172, ext. 3050.

Review of our Saturday Concert

Music Critic John Farrell reviews our Saturday performance of Verdi’s Requiem.

Save the biggest for last. That was the recipe for Saturday’s Pasadena Symphony Orchestra concert, the last one in the orchestra’s 2007-2008.

If you hadn’t read the program, which announced a performance of Verdi’s Requiem as the final work on the annual schedule, you could still tell, as you were taking your seat, that it was going to be a night of big sounds. Eight bass fiddles leaned against the concert shell on the left. The chairs for the musicians were crowded right up to the edge of the stage, and there was a choir rank in the back that would eventually fill up with more than 100 singers, so many that when they stood to sing the also spread out across he back of the stage: They needed extra room to breathe.

This was the second time that the Verdi Requiem as been heard locally. Last fall, it was performed by Los Angeles Opera as a tribute to both Luciano Pavarotti and Edgar Baetzel. If memory serves, Saturday’s version was more lyric, more dramatic and altogether more satisfying.

It was a wonderful night, we hope you loved it as much as we did!

TEMPO! TEMPO! We Love to Sing and Play!

Our elementary school program, TEMPO! (Teaching the Essentials of Music through Participation and Observation) featured something different and more hands-on for the 3,000+ 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd graders that receive the program this past March. The TEMPO! “Student Workshop 1,” featured dancer Heather Lipson and vocal specialist Vena Luthey who got the kids to sing and move to TEMPO! Song favorites such as “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.”

Heather Lipson gets TEMPO! students to move to “I’ve been working on the Railroad.”

“Student Workshop 2,” featured artists Enzo Fina (who is the teaching artist in residence for the Orchestras’ Middle School program Science of Sound), Ross Crayton (TEMPO! 3 teaching artist) and Luke Alberti (piano/keyboard). Director of Education and Community Engagement, Jerri Price-Gaines created and narrated a story about a Little Boy who gets lost in the forest while TEMPO! students created the sounds that went along with the story. Students played their recorders, along with human sounds, indigenous instruments and body percussion to create sounds of an indigenous people in outdoor environment. Students were given plastic bags to make the sound of rain; Bubble Wrap to make the sound of a crackling fire and Poster Boards and Transparencies to make the sound of Thunder.We had a great time in the creation of this story set to music!

Enzo Fina demonstrates some of his home-made musical instruments!

- The Education & Community Engagement Department

Preview of Verdi Requim

Robert D. Thomas previews our April concert. He quotes Music Director Jorge Mester.

The evening will be the final concert of the orchestra’s 80th season and it was a natural choice for Music Director Jorge Mester, who estimates he has conducted the work about 10 times. “I think ‘the Verdi’ is one of those magic pieces that works on every level,” says Mester. “For some reason, many performing artists often feel a spiritual connection to it. For those who find it a religious experience, it is that also, but it’s dramatic, very operatic as well.”

Only a handful of organizations have the forces to perform Verdi’s Requiem adequately, explains Jeffrey Bernstein, director of the Occidental Chorale, which will sing in Saturday’s performance. “It requires enormous forces, a full-sized orchestra and a lot of singers — 120 singers is a bare minimum. It doesn’t get done a whole lot because it takes an orchestra of the Pasadena Symphony’s caliber to do it.” To cite but one example of that latter statement: Verdi’s Requiem wasn’t performed by the Chicago Symphony until 1952.

Few works in the choral repertoire vary as widely dynamically as does the Verdi Requiem. The Dies Irae and Tuba Mirum sections feature some of the loudest music ever written, with trumpets surrounding the stage and bass drum stroke that hammer home the ominous message like no other composer every did.

“Jorge’s passion for this piece is incredible; in a way,” says Bernstein. “He feels like he wrote it. I can tell when we talk about it that this is going to be quite extraordinary.”

It will be an extraordinary evening, we can’t wait!