Waukegan Symphony Orchestra Young People’s Concert
When: 11 a.m., Feb. 27
Where: Waukegan High School Trapp Auditorium, 2325 Brookside Ave., Waukegan
Tickets: Free for students: $5 for adults accompanied by a child
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The composer might be dead, but music is still alive – and the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra aims to show that to young people as well as adults at the annual Young People’s Concert Feb. 27 in Waukegan.
They’ll perform “The Composer is Dead,” a quirky 21st century way to introduce kids to the instruments of an orchestra, said music director Stephen Blackwelder, who’s been at the helm of the symphony for 14 years. “It’s a musical whodunit for orchestra and narrator.”
The music was written by Nathaniel Stookey, and the story was written by Lemony Snicket, a well-known children’s author who “tells it like it is,” Blackwelder said. “It even includes a bit of psychological profiling of the members of the orchestra.”
The concert will also include a guest performance by award-winning 16-year-old violinist Joshua Brown of Gurnee and an overture by W.A. Mozart.
Blackwelder started the young people’s concerts in 2011 because he and Claudia Freeman, Waukegan Park district superintendent of cultural arts, remember enjoying watching Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on TV.
“But we also do them because it’s the best way to let kids know that live orchestral music can be both fun and fascinating,” Blackwelder said.
He added he hopes the adults will find the youth concerts fun and fascinating as well.
The Rev. James Olson, a minister at St. John’s United Church of Christ in Waukegan, will narrate “The Composer is Dead.”
When Olson joined the DePaul Community Chorus, which Blackwelder directs in Chicago, he said he discovered the pastor was a fan of Lemony Snicket books.
Learning that, Blackwelder said, “He simply had to be our narrator for ‘The Composer is Dead.'”
The piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and premiered in 2006. At the beginning, the narrator announces a composer has been killed. The local inspector decides to interview the woodwinds, strings, brass and other instrument families to solve the mystery.
The first violinists say they were performing a waltz when the nasty deed was done. The inspector suggests the violinists killed the composer because they had too many notes to play, to which the violinists reply if there were no composer, they’d have to play for square dances instead. Meanwhile the violists complain that no one notices them and they get stuck having to stack up the chairs after the concert.
Will the perpetrator of the deed be discovered among the orchestra members?
To inspire the young audience, Blackwelder also has asked young violinist Joshua Brown to perform a short and dazzling piece accompanied by orchestra and written by Tchaikovsky, who also composed the famous “Nutcracker Suite.”
“Joshua just returned from winning a raft of prizes at the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in Russia,” Blackwelder said. “We wanted to invite him to play a concert in his own neighborhood.”
Blackwelder said he hopes the concert will prove that “classical music doesn’t always deserve its smug and stuffy reputation,” adding Mark Twain once said the music written by composer Richard Wagner, “is better than it sounds.”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance writer.