Lovely bookends: Valentine’s and Family Day
How wonderful that next weekend is bookended by two days that are devoted to love; Valentine’s Day and Family Day. Now you may be someone who dismisses Valentine’s as a false construct put upon society by a greeting card company, but I would argue that any day that celebrates love is a good thing.
When I was a kid, Valentine’s Day was a celebration of all kinds of love, not just the romantic love of a couple. We would send out valentine’s cards to extended family and friends and on the actual day, there was baking and small tokens of affection exchanged between parents, seven kids and even the dog.
It made absolute sense to me when provincial governments started to declare a family day holiday right next to Valentine’s. Whether you celebrate the traditional nuclear family, or the wider extended family, or the more modern concept of family of choice, it’s a gift to have a day devoted to spending time, catching up and celebrating the love of family.
Within a symphony orchestra we talk about families of instruments, of which there are four; strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. Each family has its own way of creating sound and comes with its own beauty as well as quirks. In fact, the players of these instruments start to take on particular personality aspects of their respective family.
We also think of the orchestra as having a wider extended family, our patrons, our chorus, our supporters and most of all our Okanagan Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Family is about nurturing, teaching and mentoring our youngest members so they can grow up to be accomplished adults. We think of this relationship in the same way between our professional musicians and our students in the OSYO.
The best way for the OSYO students to receive this nurturing is by playing side by side with our OSO professionals and it is no accident that this annual opportunity falls on Family Day weekend.
Our annual side by side concert is always my favourite. The students work for months leading up to it and while we see lots of improvement in these rehearsals, the biggest change comes in the three days before the concerts when the students get to sit side by side with their mentors.
The change in their playing in that short time is nothing less than a miracle, and their ability to grow continues after this experience. Before you know it, the students are all grown up and becoming the mentors to the next generation of young musicians, and so it continues.
It has been fun to choose the music for this annual Side-by-Side family weekend set of concerts. Our soloist is Jaeden IzikDzurko. Jaeden grew up in Salmon Arm. He first played with the OSO as a soloist when he was just 13 years old. He is now in his second year of studies at the famous Julliard School in New York. He is performing the andante spianato et grande polonaise brilliante by Chopin, a piece that sees the soloist totally supported by the orchestra. He will also play The Romantic Piano Concerto composed by Ernst Schneider who lives in Penticton. The second movement (or section) of this concerto is like a gift of love to everyone.
The second half of the program is made up of two contrasting works by Maurice Ravel. The first, Ma M?re l’Oye (Mother Goose Suite) is a set of miniatures inspired by fairy tales; Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, Beauty and the Beast and The Fairy Garden. I think The Fairy Garden is my most favourite four minutes of music ever composed. These musical gems will evoke the mood of each story.
Our Side-by-Side piece, also by Ravel, is La Valse. This wonderful, swirling piece of music was composed in 1919 to celebrate the bygone era of the Viennese waltz. Imagine the romance of the glittering ballroom and the colours of the gowns as couples took to the stage. The music is glorious to listen to. It is also fun to play, especially for the students being mentored by their orchestra family.
We have called this concert Joie de vivre to celebrate the joy of life, the joy of these French composers, the joy of music and most of all the joy of family.