Muses
BAINBRIDGE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Music Director & Conductor Mario Alejandro Torres
Featuring: Cyndia Sieden, soprano
Live Painting by Amelia Kaiser
The Program
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF: Vocalise
RICHARD STRAUSS: Four Songs, Op. 27
NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Scheherazade, Op. 35
Read the Guest Column from Maestro Torres
As Albert Einstein sagely observed, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” It is our desire and goal to make this concert a unique and wonderful experience, and we encourage you to let your minds wander the infinite space of your imagination. Rachmaninoff’s beautiful and lovely Vocalise sets the initial tone for the concert. Then, the acclaimed soprano Cyndia Sieden will delight you with Strauss' Four Songs, Op. 27 - songs that were written as a wedding gift for his beloved bride, soprano Pauline de Ahna. For our last selection, we invite you to give free reign to your creative muse as we immerse ourselves in the extraordinary tales of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra's four-concert classical series features a star-studded cast of guest performers, masterworks, beloved favorites, original compositions, and special collaborations. Performances continue on April 13 & 14, 2019 and June 8 & 9, 2019.
Mario Alejandro Torres
Mario Alejandro Torres is a conductor, teacher, and performer native to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Currently based in Seattle, Washington, Mr. Torres made his Benaroya Hall conducting debut in collaboration with Maestros Ludovic Morlot and David Alexander Rahbee in an exciting concert with the University of Washington Symphony Orchestra. For the past two years, he has served in a conducting fellowship with the Seattle Symphony, assisting Maestro Morlot in collaboration with artists such as Hilary Hahn and John Luther Adams. As the Music Director of Poulsbo Community Orchestra, he has brought a new and exciting sound to the ensemble. Outside of the United States, he has conducted performances with the Eddy Snijders Orchestra in Paramaribo, Suriname, and in his hometown with the professional Chamber Orchestra of San Pedro Sula, and Victoriano Lopez School of Music Choir.
As an advocate for Education, Mr. Torres serves as Assistant Conductor of the University of Washington Symphony Orchestra, where he is a candidate for the doctoral degree in orchestral conducting under the mentorship of David Alexander Rahbee and Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot. His energy and passion to work with young musicians have brought the UW Campus Philharmonia Orchestras to a higher level of artistic performance. He has also held teaching positions at the Victoriano Lopez School of Music in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and Louisiana Academy of Music in Natchitoches, Louisiana. In his work for social inclusion, Mr. Torres has appeared internationally as a guest conductor and clinician for programs such as The National Music School of Suriname in South America and the Académie Musicale Occide Jeanty in Croix des Bouquets, Haiti.
As a violist, he has performed as a soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of San Pedro Sula, NSULA Symphony and Chamber orchestras, Rapides Symphony Orchestra, and the Monteux School and Music Festival. He has been co-principal violist for Texarkana Symphony Orchestra, South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, and Shreveport Summer Music Festival. He has also played with Symphoria, Shreveport, Longview, Rapides, Marshall, and Costa Rica Symphony orchestras. Mr. Torres performed with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, and England.
Mr. Torres holds a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from Ithaca College under the mentorship of Jeffery Meyer, and a Bachelor and a Master of Music in Viola Performance from Northwestern State University of Louisiana (NSULA). Mr. Torres completed a professional program with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas’ Global Leaders Program, focusing in community leadership, teaching artistry, and social entrepreneurship. Mr. Torres also holds degrees in Computer Information Systems and Business Administration.
His wife Jenny is an active member of the community, supporting and engaging in activities with the Seattle Music Partners Program, and the Special Events department of the Seattle Symphony
Cyndia Sieden
American soprano Cyndia Sieden moves easily among the Baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary repertoires to worldwide acclaim. In addition, her performances and recordings of his works affirm her status as one of the sovereign Mozart interpreters of the present day.
Highlights of 2011 included performances in Morton Feldman's monodrama Neither for New York City Opera, Ariadne in Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos at the Netherlands Opera and Soprano I in Luigi Nono's Prometeo at the Salzburg and Berlin Festivals. In contrast to these knotty modern works, she returned to Blondchen in Mozart's Abduction with Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and on tour throughout Holland.
Sieden has starred at most of the world's great opera houses, including the Munich Bayerische Staatsoper, the New York Met, Paris's Opéra Bastille, the Wiener Staatsoper, Barcelona's Gran Teatre de Liceu, Brussels's La Monnaie, and London's Covent Garden and English National, as well as in Beijing and Australia. Her highly-praised Metropolitan Opera debut was as Berg's Lulu, and her success quickly led to reengagement in 2008 for Die Zauberflöte's Queen of the Night, one of her signature roles.
She is a brilliantly idiomatic interpreter of the works of Richard Strauss. She frequently performs Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos (Munich, Japan, Vienna), as well as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier (Paris Châtelet) and Aminta in Die schweigsame Frau (Palermo and Munich).
Her performances in the high-flying role of Ariel in the premiere of Thomas Adès's The Tempest at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, ignited rave reviews and an astonished public. She has garnered equal enthusiasm and devotion for her Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, all over the world. Other specialties are Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, and the operas of Handel.
Sieden is much in demand for Orff's Carmina Burana, the oratorios and masses of Handel, Mozart, and Haydn, and works of Bach, Strauss and Mahler. She has sung with many of the most renowned symphony orchestras in the world, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival. In addition, her Lieder recitals are always highly-anticipated events.
Cyndia Sieden was born in California, USA, and received her first vocal instruction there. The significant milestone in her studies was work with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in master classes in Carmel Valley, CA in 1982. Schwarzkopf then invited Sieden to become her private student, and also to work with her in master classes at the 1983 Salzburg Mozarteum. Sieden sang in the culminating concert/competition and won first place, the springboard for her first professional engagements.
In 1984, Cyndia Sieden made her European debut in Il Barbiere at the Bavarian State Opera; her American debut also took place in 1984, in La Fille du Regiment, in Tampa, Florida.
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Amelia Kaiser
Artist Amelia Kaiser will paint live alongside the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra during Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, on February 16 and 17 at BPA. Thrilled to work for an audience with such a deep appreciation for the arts, Amelia says that each live-painting event poses a unique challenge, and that – at 50 minutes – this performance marks the shortest time frame she’s undertaken to date.
She looks forward to bringing a visual representation of this beloved tale to life, in concert with BSO’s beautiful musical rendition. Amelia will work with acrylic paint on birch-wood panels, lending a natural texture to the painting that will suit the subject – a rendezvous in a sultan’s palace chamber, overlooking the sea. She says, “My intent is to paint a diptych, completing one panel per performance – the first featuring Scheherazade and the second the Sultan, enchanted by her storytelling. My strokes will be quick and gestural, with strong colors and bold contrast to allow the audience to easily see my progress as I work.” The finished works will be available to purchase.
Amelia Kaiser is an artist based in Tacoma, Washington, who studied Studio Arts at Pacific Lutheran University. Her diversity is her greatest creative strength – working in watercolor, pen and ink, and acrylic paint to produce commissions, original works, live paintings, murals and more.
The focus of Amelia’s work is story-telling. She aims to leverage the ability of art to transport the viewer to a certain moment in time (real or fictional) or engage them in a particular emotion, and seeks to tell stories of individuals and communities in unexpected ways.
Amelia finds special joy in creating commissioned pieces that commemorate milestones in her clients’ lives – be that a graduation, the birth or death of a loved one, wedding, anniversary, etc. She believes all moments in life are sacred and worthy of recognition.
Tickets
Adults - $21.00 USD
Discounted - $18.00 USD
Youth 18 and under (free with paying adult) - $0.00 USD
Youth in Music Initiative: Please phone the BPA Box Office at 206.842.8569 to take advantage of this offer for youths, 18 and under.
Performances
February 16 & 17, 2019