Auburn Symphony Orchestra’s first concert of the season – Radical Rachmaninoff on Oct. 13– will feature the world premiere of a new piece titled Turbulent Flames by award-winning composer Jessica Meyer.
The concert also features renowned pianist Dominic Cheli performing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, often referred to as the most difficult piano piece ever written. The concert will be performed on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, starting at 2:30 p.m. at Auburn Performing Arts Center.
Information and tickets can be found at auburnsymphony.org or by calling the box office at 253-887-7777.
Auburn Symphony Orchestra (ASO) is leading a consortium of orchestras from across the nation to commission Turbulent Flames. Meyer says, “I wanted to write a fiery piece for orchestra that combined a good amount of virtuosity, unpredictability, and fun.” ASO will give the world premiere on October 13, 2024 and it will then be performed by other members of the consortium over the next two seasons: Greenville Symphony (SC), Cape Symphony (MA), Idaho Falls Symphony (ID), Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra (NC), Skagit Symphony (WA), and Walla Walla Symphony (WA).
ASO believes performing and commissioning new music is vital. “Works performed today add to the overall canon of music so that a century from now listeners will have an idea of what music was like in the early twenty-first century,” says music director Wesley Schulz.
Schulz has a way of combining new music and orchestral classics to create invigorating concert experiences. He has matched the new Jessica Meyer piece with Piano Concerto No. 3 by Sergei Rachmaninoff – an inventive favorite from 1909 with excruciatingly difficult technical passages for pianists. This piece features Dominic Cheli, who’s playing has been described as “spontaneous yet perfect, the best of how a young person can play.” (Symphony Magazine). Rounding out the program is Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5, a triumphant work inspired by the majestic Nordic landscapes.
Tickets and information for all of Auburn Symphony Orchestra’s concerts and events can be found at auburnsymphony.org.
About Jessica Meyer
With playing that is “fierce and lyrical” and works that are “other-worldly” (The Strad) and “evocative” (New York Times), Jessica Meyer is an award-winning composer and violist whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility and emotional clarity. Meyer’s first composer/performer portrait album, Ring Out (Bright Shiny Things, 2019) debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart. Her second album, I long and seek after, is a collection of her vocal works that was recently released in March of 2024 on New Focus Recordings and was hailed by Musical America as “gorgeously scored.”
Since the start of her composition career in 2014, at age 40, Meyer’s compositions have viscerally explored the wide palette of colors available to each instrument while combining techniques inspired by her experiences as a contemporary and period instrumentalist. Her works have been performed in venues from the Kennedy Center to Carnegie Hall, by musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, and by orchestras around the country. Her first Symphonic Band piece was commissioned and toured by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band and was a finalist for the William D. Revelli Composition Contest. She has also received multiple commissioning awards from both Chamber Music America and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Premieres have included performances by acclaimed vocal ensembles Roomful of Teeth and Vox Clamantis, the St. Lawrence String Quartet as the composer in residence at Spoleto Festival USA, the American Brass Quintet, PUBLIQuartet, Sybarite 5, NOVUS NY of Trinity Wall Street, a work for A Far Cry commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Juilliard School for a project with the Historical Performance Program, and by the Lorelei Ensemble for a song cycle that received the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America. Recent premieres included works for the Dorian Wind Quintet, Hausmann Quartet, Hub New Music, the Portland Youth Philharmonic in collaboration with the female vocal ensemble In Mulieribus, and her viola concerto GAEA that she premiered alongside the Orchestra of the League of Composers at Miller Theatre in NYC. Upcoming premieres include works for the Brooklyn Art Song Society, the American Guild of Organists for their National 2024 Conference, and a new orchestral piece to be premiered by a consortium of orchestras across the United States.
About Dominic Cheli
Dominic Cheli’s playing has been described as “spontaneous yet perfect, the best of how a young person can play.” (Symphony Magazine). His rapidly advancing career included his Walt Disney Concert Hall Debut with the Colburn Orchestra where Dominic was “mesmerizing, (he) transfixed the audience…his fingers were one with each key.” (LA Times). He gave his Carnegie Hall Recital Debut in 2019 and has had a busy performing and recording career ever since. He recorded his 2nd CD on the Naxos label of the music of Liszt/Schubert, and was a performer, producer and editor on a 3rd CD of the music of Erwin Schulhoff for the Delos Label featuring his collaboration on Piano Concerto no. 2 with Maestro James Conlon. He also recently completed work as a composer, audio editor and performer on the documentary Defying Gravity (2021).
A native of St. Louis, Dominic has performed with orchestras all across the country and abroad including the San Diego Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Colburn Orchestra, Virginia Symphony, Adrian Symphony, and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie (Germany). He has worked with conductors such as James Conlon, Gerard Schwarz, Valery Gergiev and many others.
Dominic debuted at several major festivals across the United States including the Ravinia Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Virginia Arts Festival. Upcoming engagements include appearances with the Seattle Symphony, a debut at Alice Tully Hall, and his 4th appearance at Carnegie Hall.
In July 2017, Cheli’s 1st album, featuring the music of Muzio Clementi and released by Naxos, was hailed as “definitive performances, that match splendid playing with an appreciation of Clementi’s diverse, classically based style.” Also in 2017, Dominic was named 1st prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York City.
With a fascination and appreciation for the beneDits of technology especially in our new virtual age, Dominic was appointed LIVE Director of Tonebase Piano in 2021. As a result, he is the host and presenter of numerous virtual lectures, performances and workshops each month to the 5,000+ subscribers on the platform. His mission is to share personal knowledge and invite guests to democratize high-level music education, allowing everyone to learn from and be inspired by the best!
Committed to engaging with his surrounding community, Dominic regularly performs and brings curated programs/educational residencies to schools and retirement homes. He has performed as an artist for Project: Music Heals Us, a non-proDit organization that presents interactive classical music performances to diverse audiences in order to provide encouragement, education, and healing with a focus on elderly, disabled, rehabilitating, incarcerated, and homeless populations.
Dominic has received degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, Yale University, and the Colburn School studying with Andre-Michel Schub, Peter Frankl, and Fabio Bidini.
Mr. Cheli is a Yamaha Artist and recently appointed faculty member of the Colburn Community Music School.
In his spare time, Dominic enjoys cooking and training for Ironman triathlons.
About Wesley Schulz
Wesley Schulz is widely recognized for his superb programming and spirited yet heartfelt music making with orchestras. At home with masterworks, contemporary music as well as pops, the Cultural Voice of North Carolina deems Schulz’s conducting “spectacular.” Schulz is Music Director and Conductor of the Auburn Symphony Orchestra (WA) and recently completed four successful seasons as the Associate Conductor of the North Carolina Symphony. Prior to this, Schulz was a Conducting Fellow at the Seattle Symphony, Assistant Conductor of the Britt Festival Orchestra and Education and Family Conductor for the Austin Symphony Orchestra.
Key to Schulz’s success is his passion for diversifying classical music and expanding the concert hall to include all listeners. He has collaborated with some of the most dynamic musical artists of our time including Philippe Quint, Bella Hristova, Richard Lin, Leslie Odom Jr, Pink Martini, Randall Goosby, Cirque de la Symphonie, John Williams, Amos Lee and many more. When not on the podium, Schulz enjoys distance running, doing CrossFit, cooking and playing endless fetch with his two dogs, Chewbacca and Han Solo.
About Auburn Symphony Orchestra
Auburn Symphony Orchestra changes lives and our South Puget Sound community through the shared experience of live orchestral music performances and by nurturing the relationship between our audiences and our artists.
In 1996, Founding Conductor and Music Director Stewart Kershaw assembled a talented group of regional musicians to form a symphony orchestra. Now under the direction of Wesley Schulz, the fully-professional Auburn Symphony Orchestra has become one of the most acclaimed orchestras in the Northwest with its core of musicians from the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra. Recent special projects include collaborations with other arts groups such as the Reno Chamber Orchestra and the Guild Dance Company to co-commission new choreography for Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Schulz and ASO were invited in July 2022 to perform for the closing concert of the American Guild of Organists National Convention with soloist Renée Anne Louprette at Benaroya Hall. With New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices program and New Music for America, ASO has been a proud partner in co-commissions of new music, often as the smallest budget orchestra in these nation-wide projects.
The Orchestra’s home is the Auburn Performing Arts Center in downtown Auburn. Chamber concerts take place around the Auburn community including St Matthew / San Mateo Episcopal Church, Soos Creek Botanical Gardens, and the Auburn International Farmers Market.
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