After a hiatus of several years, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra is returning to its “Made in Vermont” tour, in which the VSO Chamber Orchestra showcases Vermont’s unique music around the state.
“It’s back — but it’s back a little different. It’s a lot of music when it comes down to it. These are people making important music today,” explains Matt LaRocca, VSO’s artistic adviser who curated the program and is conducting.
“The tour really celebrates the amazing musicians and creators who call Vermont home,” he said. “We have Kat Wright and her music, new pieces from Kyle Saulnier and Erik Nielsen, lots of solos from all throughout the orchestra, and a chance for us to play music across different genres that highlight how amazing our orchestra is.”
Next weekend, the “Made in Vermont” tour will take Wright and the VSO Chamber Orchestra to Higher Ground in South Burlington at 8:30 p.m. Friday; Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center in Stowe at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4; and the Bellows Falls Opera House (in partnership with Next Stage Arts) at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5.
The program will feature favorites by renowned classical composers, including Henry Purcell, Manuel De Falla, Maurice Ravel and Erik Satie. New for the tour, the concerts will also feature youth from local schools including Stowe High School and South Burlington High School, who will perform with Wright.
Wright, in addition to several of her original songs orchestrated by LaRocca, will perform her version of the beloved aria “Dido’s Lament” from Purcell’s tragic opera “Dido and Aeneas.”
“This is a little bit of a holdover from pre-COVID when we did a show with Kat at Higher Ground, and it was so wonderful,” LaRocca said. “Kat’s music is fantastic — she as a musician is absolutely fantastic — and it can work so well in the orchestral world. Her music is perfect with an orchestra.”
It was La Rocca who pitched the idea of “Dido’s Lament” to Wright who comes from a background of folk and soul.
“I wanted her to enter our world, too,” LaRocca said. “To me, ‘Dido’s Lament’ is one of the greatest songs ever written — it is the greatest love song ever written, hands down. For me, this is one of the highlights of the program, ‘Dido’s Lament’ sung like this. It’s different — and it was sort of like I was hearing it for the very first time when Kat first sang it.
“The power and intimacy of her voice is one of the things that are most striking about her,” LaRocca said. “Her voice has such an immediate draw to you with the way that she sings and how she delivers the music. She’s really special.”
Nielsen, of Brookfield, one of Vermont’s best-known composers, is represented by “Meadowlark,” his tribute to Pete Sutherland, Vermont’s beloved folk musician who died last year.
“Erik knew Pete for years and they worked together at the Green Mountain Suzuki Institute,” LaRocca said. “This was written for a faculty group there. It’s arranged for string orchestra, and it’s a beautiful piece — beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”
Saulnier, of Burlington, a classical and rock musician with a doctorate in composition, is another Vermont composer (and VSO violinist Brooke Quiggins’ husband).
“He has this incredible style that fuses orchestral classical music, jazz harmonies and forms, and some of the rock influences prevalent these days,” LaRocca said. “His music is really unique. I look at him as a composer who has a real and individual voice — which can be rare among modern composers. I can hear a piece and know that Kyle wrote it.”
Saulnier’s “a foundation of sand.” was originally conceived as a chamber piece for Anne Decker’s TURNmusic.
“I’ve re-composed it for the current VSO cycle,” Saulnier said. “It’s based on the metaphor of building structures on unsound foundations, though not necessarily any specific instance of that proverb. Musically, it’s a driving, rhythmically oriented study in momentum, growing slowly until the energy spills over and ends, ideally, with a breathless lack of restraint.”
“This is a piece I’m really excited about,” LaRocca said.
Jessica Meyer, the one contemporary non-Vermont composer, is based in New York City.
“Her career right now is absolutely peaking,” LaRocca said. “She’s had premieres in Carnegie Hall; A Far Cry commissioned her; the President’s Marine Band has performed her wind ensemble music. Like Kyle, she has all these different styles of music coming together in what she does.
“The piece that we are playing by her, ‘Go Big or Go Home,’ has tinges of fiddle music, and rock, and a percussion jam section in the middle, and a classical-style canon at the end of the piece,” he said. “It’s really interesting and exciting music that she writes.”
Lest traditional classical music-lovers feel forgotten, the program includes revered masterpieces: Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin (Prelude); Satie’s “Gymnopedie” No. 1 (La Rocca’s arrangement of the Debussy orchestration); and from De Falla’s “El amor brujo,” “Pantomime” and “Danza ritual del fuego.”
“The Ravel represents my own way of thinking about music,” LaRocca said. “‘Tombeau’ is one of my all-time favorite pieces. Period.”
jim.lowe@timesargus.com / jim.lowe@rutlandherald.com
Vermont Symphony Orchestra The Vermont Symphony Orchestra will present the VSO “Made in Vermont” tour, featuring the VSO Chamber Orchestra conducted by Matt LaRocca and singer-songwriter Kat Wright: — Friday, Nov. 3: South Burlington — Higher Ground, 8:30 p.m. — Saturday, Nov. 4: Stowe — Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, 7 p.m. — Sunday, Nov. 5: Bellows Falls — Bellows Falls Opera House, 4 p.m. For tickets or information, go online to www.vso.org
