Kyle Wiley Pickett
This Saturday night at the Cascade Theatre, the North State Symphony will perform a concert that conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett has been anticipating all year.
The orchestra will perform Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with San Francisco Opera rising star soprano Heidi Melton. The symphony will also unveil a brand new work, “The Bird’s Companion,” composed by Russell Burnham, the orchestra’s principal clarinetist. The Chico State music professor wrote the piece based on three poems by William Carlos Williams, and Melton will also sing on the work.
“(Burnham) is a really fine composer and we wanted something that could feature Heidi on the first half of the concert,” Wiley Pickett said by phone on Wednesday. “It’s a neat piece, light and bouncy. It’s grown on us quickly.”
Heidi Melton
The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. and Wiley Pickett does a pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $20, $24 and $40. For full details of the show, visit the symphony’s website.
While Burnham’s work is based on poems contemplating old age, death and rebirth, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony follows a poem about a child’s perspective on heaven. The journey of the piece is taken from the Biblical passage where Jesus says, “Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, Shall in no wise enter therein.”
After the orchestra’s stirring success with Mahler’s Second Symphony last season, area classical fans started requesting more Mahler. That was just fine with Wiley Pickett. He remembers first hearing the Mahler 4 at an outdoor concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was lying on the grass, watching the stars and hearing the music with his girlfriend Alice, who would later become his wife.
“It’s one of my all-time favorite symphonies,” he said. “Mahler is taking a childlike view of life after death. It’s a magical and mystical, beautiful, sublime work.”
The concert will open with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Overture to The Wasps,” originally composed for a production of Aristophanes’ satirical play of the same name.
“It sounds like an English folk tune,” Wiley Pickett said. “It’s light and fun.”
Despite the ongoing recession, Wiley Pickett said attendance for North State Symphony concerts has remained strong. Chalk it up to the ongoing need for diversion for one thing, but also because the orchestra has produced stellar, professional concerts.
For more information on tickets, call 243-8877 or visit the Cascade Theatre’s website.
