Message from the Artistic Director
We hope you enjoyed our exciting 2012/13 season, a season crafted just for you and full of favourite masterworks.
The season began with Beethoven’s celebratory Consecration of the House Overture. Internationally renowned Guelphite, Joseph Macerollo performed Bridge‘s virtuosic Concerto for Accordion. He then returned as an onstage presenter to deliver an entertaining lecture on Berlioz‘s most intriguing masterpiece, Symphonie Fantastique, with live musical demonstrations from the orchestra. The GSO then performed for you Berlioz’s masterpiece in its entirety.
December brought the much-anticipated collaboration with the Guelph Chamber Choir (Artistic Director, Gerald Neufeld) and welcomed the return of Jacques Israelievitch, a favourite with our audiences and our musicians alike, who performed both as Guest Conductor and Violin Soloist. Also joining us for this concert was the Suzuki String School of Guelph.
As always, the GSO celebrated the New Year with a fun-filled Viennese-style concert and this year we presented a collaboration that was not to be missed. We heard the future stars of opera, as the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio joined the Guelph Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. This operetta has been a New Year’s favourite since its premiere in Vienna in 1874, and we couldn’t wait to bring it to you!
The February program featured the greatest and most brilliant showpieces of the American repertoire. We started with Copland’s immensely popular Appalachian Spring followed by our guest pianist, the multi-talented GSO percussionist Amy Di Nino, playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Also on the program was Copland’s Hoe-Down and Bernstein’s dynamic Symphonic Dances from West Side Story Suite. The Guelph Youth Symphony Orchestra (Artistic Director Chris Cigolea) joined the GSO on stage.
We brought our season to a close with works of orchestral magnificence: Humperdinck’s glorious Overture to Hansel and Gretel and Beethoven’s ground-breaking Symphony No. 5. Joining our season finale was Canadian composer Barbara Croall’s haunting and imaginative work, Sound of the Drum. Also, our GSO under-23 Concerto Winner, William McLeish, joined us in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme.
We look forward to welcoming you to our 2013,2014 Season which you will find listed on the ‘Concerts’ page. Tickets are on sale at River Run Box Office May 1, 2013
Sincerely, Judith Yan, Artistic Director
Judith Yan, Biography
Judith Yan has been a staff conductor for the San Francisco Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, and the National Ballet of Canada. She is the Music Director and Principal Conductor of Opera on the Avalon, a summer festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and was most recently appointed Artistic Director of Guelph Symphony Orchestra. As a conductor of ballet she has led over 90 performances for the National Ballet of Canada, working with the world’s leading choreographers and ballet masters of today. Prior to her work with the NBoC, Judith served as the Staff Conductor of the San Francisco Opera, assistant to Maestro Donald Runnicles.
While with San Francisco Opera, her performances of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress for San Francisco Opera Merola was included in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Top Ten Classical Performances of the Year. Prior to the San Francisco Opera she served as the Canadian Opera Company’s Conductor-in-Residence, a position created for her by then General Director, the late Richard Bradshaw. For the company, she conducted in the Altamira-sponsored outdoor concerts, Alexina Louie’s The Scarlet Princess, and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia.
She made her German conducting debut in 2005 with of La Cenerentola and Idomeneo with Ulmer Oper, and made her Italian debut in 2007 in Sulmona, Italy with COSI Festival’s production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. She returned in 2008 to conduct Puccini’s La Boheme. 2011 includes a New Zealand debut with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, a Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra debut, a return to Hong Kong Ballet for Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a recital with members of the San Francisco Opera for the Muir Land Trust in Lafayette, California, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in St. John’s, Newfoundland, a debut with Stratford Symphony Orchestra, and concerts with Guelph Symphony Orchestra.
To link to Judith’s website, click here.
