New Year's Eve Concert

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 8:00 p.m.
Patriots Theater at the War Memorial

Click Here For New Year's Eve Concert Program Information

"Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits"

Sunday, April 2, 2005 - 3:00 p.m.
Patriots Theater at the War Memorial

Click Here For "Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits" Program Information

Click Here To Order Tickets To "Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits"

“Christmas Holiday Spectacular!”

Sunday, December 18, 2005 - 3:00 p.m.
Patriots Theater at the War Memorial
Trenton, New Jersey

John Peter Holly, conductor
Trenton Children's Chorus • Victor Shen, conductor

Program:

Leroy Anderson: A Christmas Festival
Howard Blake: The Snowman
Leon Jessel: Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
Leroy Anderson: Sleigh Ride
Holcombe: The Festive Sounds of Hannukah
Victor Herbert: March of the Toys
Bizet: Farandole from L’Arlesienne
Berlin: White Christmas

Christmas Holiday Spectacular Tickets: $40, $35, $30, $25, $20

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Symphony Presents "Christmas Holiday Spectacular!"

The Greater Trenton Symphony Association will present its annual Christmas Holiday Spectacular!  in a single performance at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 18, 2005 at Patriots Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton. Tickets, priced from $20 to $35, are available in person at the War Memorial Box Office, and can be ordered by calling the GTSO Box Office at 609-396-5522, ext. 2, or Tickets.com at 1-800-955-5566.

Conductor John Peter Holly and the orchestra's 65 musicians will be joined by the 40-voice Trenton Children's Chorus in a program of popular holiday favorites including Leroy Anderson’s "Sleigh Ride," and “A Christmas Festival,” “March of the Toys” from Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland, the “Farandole” from Geroges Bizet’s L’Arlesienne Suite  and “The Festive Sounds of Hannukah” by Trenton composer Bill Holcombe. A special feature on this year's program will be a performance of "The Snowman," a 25-minute musical story with narration by British composer Howard Blake, based on the popular children's book and animated feature of the same name. "The Snowman" will be conducted by the orchestra's principal clarinetist, George Balog, of Trenton; Mr. Holly will be the narrator. The second half of the program will feature an audience sing-along led by the Trenton Children's Chorus and an appearance by Santa Claus, who will conduct the orchestra in “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The concert will conclude with a performance of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”

An international sensation, “The Snowman,” came into being in 1982 as a children’s book written and illustrated by British cartoonist Raymond Briggs. Since then, it has become one of the most popular Yuletide books ever written. As a result of the initial success of the book, British composer Howard Blake was commissioned to write a musical score for a thirty-minute animated feature based on the book. The resulting video and the CD of the soundtrack also became international best-sellers and soon after, a stage show and ballet were created based on Blake’s musical score. “The Snowman” has also been frequently performed in a concert version by symphony orchestras. This performance marks the first time it will be performed at the War Memorial.

The War Memorial Building is located at the intersection of West Lafayette and Barracks Streets in Trenton, adjacent to the state capital complex. Free, secure parking is available in lots adjacent to the War Memorial. Directions to the hall can be obtained by calling 609-984-8400, or by visiting www.thewarmemorial.com. More information about the GTSO can be obtained by calling 609-396-5522, or by visiting www.trentonsymphony.org.

This program has been made possible in part by funding from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding has been provided by New Jersey Travel and Tourism.

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New Year's Eve Concert: “Music From Classic Films”

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 8:00 p.m.

John Peter Holly, conductor
Clipper Erickson, pianist
Deborah Ford, soprano

Program:

George Gershwin: An American in Paris
[used in the 1951 MGM Gene Kelly musical of the same name]

Max Steiner: Casablanca Suite
[excerpted from the score of the classic film, Casablanca ]

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra
[1^st Movement; used in David Lean's Brief Encounter ]

Johann Strauss, Jr: The Blue Danube Waltz
[used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey ]

Plus the top 4 songs in the history of motion pictures:
Over the Rainbow [from The Wizard of Oz ]
As Time Goes By [from Casablanca ]
Singin' in the Rain [from the MGM musical of the same name]
Moon River [from Breakfast at Tiffany's ]

New Year’s Concert Tickets: $65, $55, $45, $35, $25

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Press Release: For Immediate Release [12/19/05]

Contact: John Peter Holly, 609-575-0032

[Please note: contact number is not ticket order number.]

Symphony Presents New Year’s Eve Concert

Music From Classic Films To Be Featured

The Greater Trenton Symphony Association will present its annual New Year’s Eve Concert at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 31, 2005 at Patriots Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton. Tickets, priced from $25 to $65, are available in person at the War Memorial Box Office, and can be ordered by calling Tickets.com at 1-800-955-5566. Tickets will be available at the door on the day of the performance.

The program for this year's concert, "Music From Classic Films," will feature An American In Paris by George Gershwin, On Beautiful Blue Danube by Johann Strauss, Jr., (used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the Second Piano Concerto by Sergei Rachmaninoff (used in the 1945 Noel Coward/David Lean classic, Brief Encounter.)  Additional selections will include orchestral arrangements of "Hooray for Hollywood," and "That's Entertainment," along with the top four songs in the history of motion pictures: "Singin' In the Rain," "Moon River," "As Time Goes By," and "Over the Rainbow."

George Gershwin's orchestral tone poem, An American In Paris, ranks with Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings and Gershwin's own Rhapsody in Blue as the most significant contributions to the orchestral repertoire by American composers to date. Composed in 1928, An American In Paris is a deceptively complex work that has sometimes been dismissed by critics and audiences as "high-class pops music." While it can also be appreciated on that level, An American in Paris is, in fact, an orchestral tour-de-force that combines a remarkable variety of musical styles. The work is actually a sort of musical autobiography, that could have been called "An American Composer In Paris." Throughout the eighteen-minute work, Gershwin drew on a wide range of musical influences including ragtime, early American jazz, blues, and Eastern European Klezmer music, all of which he heard growing up in Brooklyn. It also contains stylistic elements of some of the great composers living in Paris in the early twentieth century, including Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky. There are numerous passages throughout An American In Paris in which Gershwin consciously imitated key phrases from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, two landmark works that premiered in Paris a decade before. Twenty-three years after its premiere, Gershwin's masterpiece was adapted into a lavish Hollywood musical starring Gene Kelly and directed by Vincente Minelli.

Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, one of the most frequently performed works for piano and orchestra, was used as the musical soundtrack for one of the most romantic films ever made, David Lean's Brief Encounter. Known primarily for his great sceen epics such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage To India, David Lean began his directing career in the 1940s collaborating with Noel Coward in a series of screen adaptations of his plays including Blithe Spirit, This Happy Breed and Brief Encounter. Brief Encounter tells the touching story of a doomed love affair simmering under the surface of British emotional reserve. Throughout the film, which unfolds in a series of flashbacks narrated by the female protagonist, (played by Celia Johnson) the Rachmaninoff Concerto accompanies her interior monologues, conveying the turbulent and conflicting emotions that she is experiencing. Due to its use in this film, Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto became immensely popular during the 1940s, and has remained a popular favorite with concert audiences ever since. (Rachmaninoff himself performed on the War Memorial stage in 1941.)

The War Memorial is located at the intersection of West Lafayette and Barracks Streets in Trenton, adjacent to the state capital complex. Free, secure parking is available in lots adjacent to the War Memorial. Directions to the War Memorial can be obtained by calling 609-984-8400, or by visiting www.thewarmemorial.com. More information about the GTSO can be obtained by calling 609-396-5522, or by visiting www.trentonsymphony.org.

This program has been made possible in part by funding from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding has been provided by the New Jersey Office of Travel and Tourism.

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Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits

Sunday, April 2, 2006 • 3:00 p.m.
Patriots Theater at the War Memorial
Trenton, New Jersey

John Peter Holly, conductor
Steven Ryan, pianist

Don’t miss this spectacular concert 
of favorite selections by the world’s most popular orchestral composer, Peter Illych Tchaikovsky! Come and hear the GTSO’s 70 musicians perform in this exciting program that will include:

• Swan Lake Excerpts
• Piano Concerto No. 1 in Bb Minor 
• Symphony No. 4 in F Minor [Finale]
• Marche Slav
• None But The Lonely Heart
• Waltz from Sleeping Beauty

Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits Tickets: $40, $35, $30, $25, $20

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