Landmarks Orchestra's logo that reads: "Boston Landmarks Orchestra" surrounded by a deep purple rectangle. Clockwise, there are other squares with different colors and abstract figures in white, including an orange square with a violin player, a brown square with a conductor with a baton, a red square with a narrator reading from a book, a yellow square with a flute player, a gray square with two figures applauding, and a green square with a dancer.

Mozart & More @ Peoples Baptist

Saturday, August 17, 2024
4:00PM – Peoples Baptist Church

Table of Contents

Mozart & More

Boston Landmarks Orchestra | Christopher Wilkins, conductor
Adrian Anantawan, violin

Lucio Silla:  Overture Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
(1756–1791)
Symphony No. 29 in A, K. 201 Mozart
  Allegro moderato
Andante
Menuetto: Allegretto—Trio
Allegro con spirito
Shuffle Along Overture Eubie Blake
(1887–1983)
arranged Will Vodery
Adoration Florence Price
(1887–1953)
arranged Peter Simcich

Adrian Anantawan, violin

Las cuatro estaciones porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires): Astor Piazzolla
(1921-1992)
  Verano porteño (Summer)

Adrian Anantawan, violin

Danzón No. 2 Arturo Márquez
(b. 1950)

Run Time

The total run time of this concert is approximately one and a half hours with no intermission.

Boston Landmarks Orchestra

Boston Landmarks Orchestra LogoBoston Landmarks Orchestra builds community through great music. Landmarks produces free concerts and musical events across the greater Boston area. Increasing access to music for everyone, and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of all its programming. Between 2018 and 2023, 70% of the repertoire Landmarks performed was written by composers of color or women. The orchestra intentionally promotes artists and targets audiences that have been historically excluded from orchestral music. Landmarks was founded in 2001 and began its signature summer concert series at the DCR Hatch Memorial in 2007. The orchestra also performs community concerts at local venues in neighborhoods such as Roxbury, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain.

Headshot of Christopher Wilkins. He is smiling, wearing a gray and light blue shirt.CHRISTOPHER WILKINS was appointed Music Director of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra in the spring of 2011. Since then, he has expanded the orchestra’s mission of making great music accessible to the whole community. He has also helped develop the orchestra’s Breaking Down Barriers initiative, making accessibility a priority in all aspects of the orchestra’s activities.

Mr. Wilkins also serves as Music Director of the Akron Symphony. As a guest conductor, Mr. Wilkins has appeared with many of the leading orchestras of the United States, including those of Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. Previously, Mr. Wilkins served as Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic, the San Antonio Symphony, and the Colorado Springs Symphony.

He has served as associate conductor of the Utah Symphony, assisting Joseph Silverstein; assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi; conducting assistant with the Oregon Symphony under James DePreist; and was a conducting fellow at Tanglewood. He was winner of the Seaver/NEA Award in 1992.

Born in Boston, Mr. Wilkins earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1978. He received his master of music degree at Yale University in 1981, and in 1979 attended the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin as a recipient of the John Knowles Paine traveling fellowship. As an oboist, he performed with many ensembles in the Boston area, including the Berkshire Music Center Orchestra at Tanglewood, and the Boston Philharmonic under Benjamin Zander.

First Violin

Gregory Vitale, Concertmaster

Christine Vitale

Yeolim Nam

Yumi Okada

Mina Lavcheva

Jodi Hagen

 

Second Violin

Paula Oakes, Principal

Colin Davis

Stacey Alden

Robert Curtis

Lisa Brooke

 

Viola

Kenneth Stalberg, Principal

Abigail Cross

Don Krishnaswami

Ashleigh Gordon

 

Cello
Aron Zelkowicz, Principal

Melanie Dyball

Stephen Marotto

 

Bass

Robert Lyman, Principal

Bebo Shiu

 

Flute and Piccolo

Lisa Hennessy, Principal

 

Oboe

Andrew Price, Principal

Laura Shamu

Clarinet

Margo McGowan, Acting Principal

 

Bassoon

Gregory Newton, Acting Principal

 

Horns

Kevin Owen, Principal

Whitacre Hill

 

Trumpet

Dana Oakes, Principal

Jesse Levine

 

Trombone

Hans Bohn, Acting Principal

 

Piano

David Coleman

 

Timpani

Jeffrey Fischer, Principal

 

Percussion

Robert Schulz, Principal

 

Personnel Manager 

Christopher Ruigomez

Librarian

Daniel Meza

Assistant Librarian

Sophie Steger

Guest Artists

Adrian Anantawan playing his violinAdrian Anantawan holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music, Yale University and Harvard Graduate School of Education. As a violinist, he has studied with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Anne-Sophie Mutter; his academic work in education was supervised by Howard Gardner. Memorable moments include performances at the White House, the Opening Ceremonies of the Athens and Vancouver Olympic Games and the United Nations. He has played for the late Christopher Reeve, Pope John Paul IL and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Adrian has performed extensively in Canada as a soloist with the Orchestras of Toronto, Nova Scotia, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver. He has also presented feature recitals at the Aspen Music Festival and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. He has also represented Canada as a cultural ambassador in the 2006 Athens Olympics, and was a featured performer at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies. Adrian helped to create the Virtual Chamber Music Initiative at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab Centre. The cross-collaborative project brings researchers, musicians, doctors and educators together to develop adaptive musical instruments capable of being played by a young person with disabilities within a chamber music setting. He is also the founder of the Music Inclusion Program, aimed at having children with disabilities learn instrumental music with their typical peers.

From 2012-2016, he was the co-Director of Music at the Conservatory Lab Charter School, serving students from the Boston area, kindergarten through grade eight-his work was recognized by Mayor Marty Walsh as a ONEin3 Impact Award in 2015. Adrian is also Juno Award nominee, a member of the Terry Fox Hall of Fame, and was awarded a Diamond Jubilee Medal from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to the Commonwealth. He is the current Chair of Music at Milton Academy, the Artistic Director of Shelter Music Boston and is an Associate Professor of Music at Berklee College. Throughout the year, Adrian continues to perform, speak and teach around the world as an advocate for disability and the arts.

Shelter Music Boston logoShelter Music Boston delivers monthly chamber music concerts to Greater Boston homeless shelters and substance use recovery centers, providing classical music as a social service. Every note invests in the capacity of classical music to create social change in environments of great need. We believe all people deserve access to the dignity, creativity, and passion of classical music.

Podium Note

by Christopher Wilkins

In Mozart and More at Peoples Baptist Church, Adrian Anantawan solos in two works; both are arrangements for violin and strings of works originally composed for other forces. The first is Adoration, a prayer-like meditation written for solo organ by Florence Price. Then comes Astor Piazzolla’s brilliant “Summer” from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas). Piazzolla performed and recorded all four “seasons”—tango-inspired pieces—several times with his quintet. But they have become enormously popular in recent years in arrangements by Leonid Desyatnikov. The four movements, each under ten minutes long, quote from Vivaldi‘s The Four Seasons.

Wolfgang Amadè Mozart was eighteen years old when he composed his sublime Symphony No. 26. This masterpiece forms the nucleus of the “Mozart” portion of the evening. Opening the program is another terrific, lesser-known youthful work, his overture to the opera Lucio Silla, composed when he was just 16.

Tonight’s concert is a tale of two halves. The first half comprises music by Mozart; the second is all music of the Americas. Eubie Blake’s Shuffle Along, with lyrics by Noble Sissle, opened in 1921 on West 62nd St in New York. The all-Black cast musical was so successful that New York City permanently changed the traffic patterns in the San Juan Hill neighborhood on the West Side to accommodate the huge influx of theatergoers eager to see the show. Shuffle Along not only altered the racial success formula on Broadway, it also changed forever the course of American popular music. Artists as diverse as George Gershwin, Al Jolson, and Langston Hughes heralded the arrival of a new sound in American musical theater.

Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2 has rapidly become one of the most frequently performed orchestral works by any living composer. It is admired—adored even—throughout the world for its propulsive rhythms, sweeping lines, irresistible sensuality, and the warmth of its Cuban-Mexican soul. One of its delights is the orchestration, which includes wonderfully idiomatic solos for clarinet, oboe, piano, violin, trumpet, and piccolo.

In the following conversation, Adrian Anantawan speaks with me about his career and his performance with the Landmarks Orchestra:

CW: We’re all excited to have you with us next week, Adrian. It will be a full week, to say the least. But I know you always have lots going on. What’s happening with you right now?

AA: This is Shelter Music week. I’m playing duets with a wonderful tuba player, Eric Goode. We’re doing Chopin Nocturnes, the Bach Double, some fiddle tunes, and repertoire that’s just kind of all over the place! Eric’s a great player. He’s also a teaching assistant with me at Milton Academy, and the Children’s Program Director at Shelter Music. We do one or two children’s sites a month at Shelter Music. We have six regular adult partner sites, and two for the children. Consistency is key.

CW: You’ve worked with the Landmarks Orchestra in so many different capacities: as soloist, conductor, and teacher. Next week you appear in your role as Artistic Director of Shelter Music. In addition, you’ve influenced us in your work in the abilities space, as an advocate, advisor, and as a scholar. How does applying so many different skills allow you to realize your goals as an artist?

AA: I think I’ve just always wanted to do some good in the world. It’s a very personal thing, because I could easily have been someone who didn’t have access to music because I needed an adaptation in order to play the violin. I wouldn’t be performing today if it wasn’t for a confluence of factors, including a music teacher— a childhood instructor in Canada—and engineers working together to develop how I could play the instrument.

CW: That early support must have been remarkable, because you got into the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, arguably the most prestigious music school in the world. No doubt you received exceptional training there in musical performance. But did they also support you in pursuing the things you were interested in as your life mission? 

AA: Curtis was a wonderful experience. I got to play with some of the future stars in the field—it was a blessing. At the time, Curtis didn’t really have a robust understanding of how to encourage musicians to make an impact through the knowledge translation field.

Yet, interestingly, there were a lot of people in my cohort—like Stan Thompson, for instance—working on issues of access. So I was aware of an appetite to do that amongst my peers, to impact community as related to our specific identities. I think that the Curtis Institute of today is a different institution, constantly looking for new ways to foster accessibility.

CW: Landmarks programming is always eclectic. Drawing from many different traditions helps us connect to the diverse populations of Boston. The program we’re doing together next week is a great example— it’s incredibly diverse. What role does programming play in serving the mission of Shelter Music?

AA: The two organizations definitely align in terms of exploring the diverse range of composers who write currently, and have written throughout the past. The point is to reflect the populations we’re serving. With Shelter Music, like most organizations, it’s how you balance it. If you’re new to classical music and you’re listening to Mozart for the first time, then that’s new and exciting, and that should be celebrated.

But every year we also have special projects that bring new works into the world, music that is especially applicable to the world we live in. A couple years ago, we commissioned composers to set music to poetry written by individuals who are experiencing homelessness. We collected pieces of music that were meaningful to them—”Eye of the Tiger,” for instance—and then created new works based on these songs. Playing them back to the audience, they hear their favorite songs in fresh and interesting ways. It’s a great way to create conversations that go deeper with these communities.

We’re currently working on a different project in partnership with Carnegie Hall and one of our partner sites where we create lullabies for moms—songs that reflect and amplify their stories. In the context of homelessness, we constantly see a narrative of “fear of othering.” Art can be a direct resistance to that. Music in particular has this power.

In terms of who performs with Shelter Music, the musicians we invite are folks who engage well with our audiences no matter who they are. The idea is to minimize barriers, to create spaces for conversation, which are as important—in some cases more important—than the music itself. And we have ensemble leaders in our monthly programming who guide newer musicians to engage in this work.

CW: We will perform in five different venues: the Hatch Shell, three neighborhood venues, and the Pine Street Inn. Performing in a shelter will be a first for us. Tell us what you’re learned about making music in such varied settings.

AA: We visit the Pine Street Inn every month. This program will be for men who are going through recovery from substance use. In the Shattuck facility, there is an attached shelter as well. We’ve had incredibly moving interactions with these men. Some of them will go deeply into their relationships with music. One might say, for instance, that he has a musical background, but doesn’t currently have access to a musical instrument. Bringing live music into the space changes the relational dynamic in a crucial way.

There is a lot of difficult and powerful work that contributes to recovery. Music can help alleviate the toughness throughout the day. But it can also provide a platform for discussion as we form new bonds. To encourage dialogue, we typically plan a shorter program. That’s true for next week’s program with Landmarks musicians at the Pine Street Inn. The musical portion is truncated because we want to add to the experience a robust back-and-forth with the audience.

CW: It’s such important work, Adrian. And you’re helping us all conceive how to do it usefully. Where would you like to go next with all of this as your career develops?

I would love to be able to help shift our thinking about disability in classical music—to view it as its own culture that can be celebrated. I’m interested in creating spaces for would-be musicians who are currently disabled but don’t disclose it, because there’s a stigma around the perception of not being capable. I would like to continue working with young people who have disabilities, supporting their development and confidence. That’s where I find my passion.

I’d like to travel and see other programs in Asia, in Europe, and play music and just use my gifts and whatever I can do from my unique vantage to create positive impact. And then, while I can, to perform and just express myself, always championing the incredible things that are happening in the world around these intersections. They can be difficult to see because we tend to work in isolation.

CW: The performing piece is key. It’s the draw. It’s what creates the beauty and the energy that attracts people to the experience and makes them want to be a part of it. But you’re also showing the way. You’re opening up a path for people who may not see it as available to them. It’s exciting for us at Landmarks to work with you on so many levels, as it has been well over decade now. Thank you for your time. We can’t wait for our work together next week!

AA: I’m really excited about it.

CW: And for more information?

AA: For more information, people can go to my website or Shelter Music’s website. They can also check out the work I’m doing at Berklee with the Music Inclusion Ensemble, which is awesome.

Ambassador Program

Started in 2022, the Ambassador Program aims to seasonally employ enthusiastic, music-loving folks from a variety of backgrounds, representing the diversity of Boston’s neighborhoods. With 54% of our Ambassadors speaking more than one language—including Spanish, Portuguese, and French—they help spread the word of Boston Landmarks Orchestra to a vast number of Boston communities, including Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, East Boston and more. From promoting our concerts in their own neighborhoods, to helping patrons both new and familiar navigate the Esplanade, our Ambassadors are here to engage as many people as possible, promoting Boston Landmarks Orchestra’s mission of building community through great music.

 We are supported by many individual donors who believe in free music for all. Please support us by donating today!

 

THANK YOU
to our many donors and supporters. 

Click here for current list of donors 

Special thanks to our Trustees, Advisors, Musicians and Staff who make our work possible.

Click here for a list of Board Members

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