Oakland East Bay Symphony Presents World Premiere of Mary Fineman's Song Cycle, IT'S ABOUT LOVE Tonight

The Oakland East Bay Symphony and Music Director/Conductor Michael Morgan will continue their 25th anniversary season with a concert featuring the world premiere of Bay Area composer-pianist-vocalist Mary Fineman's song cycle, It's About Love, featuring guest vocalist Wesla Whitfield, and the Symphony's Young Artist Competition winner Matthew Linaman performing Bloch's Schelomo tonight, February 21, 2014.

, at 8 pm at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. The program will also include Dvo?ák's Symphony No. 7 in D minor and will feature members of Oakland East Bay Symphony's MUSE young musicians program performing Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain with the Symphony. The concert will be preceded by a talk by Oakland Symphony Chorus Music Director Dr. Lynne Morrow at 7 pm. The world premiere of Mary Fineman's It's About Love was commissioned as part of the New Visions/New Vistas Commissioning Project, supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation. For more information, visitwww.oebs.org .

Composer/pianist/vocalist Mary Fineman says, "It's About Love is a four-song cycle for voice and orchestra that explores different facets of love-love of nature and the sacredness of the everyday; love that endures despite loss, or love of the world. In deciding which pieces of mine to orchestrate for this commission, I knew instinctively that these four songs would lend themselves to the medium. I had often heard a different ending in the song "It's About Love" that wasn't possible for me to play on piano. "Morning Prayer" (also called "Chickadee") had fragments of melodies crying out for instruments. And "I thought I Saw You", though deeply pianistic, had an introduction which seemed to me could be well served, again, by additional instruments.

Each song has a history. The last one in the cycle, "And The World Spins 'Round, 'Round", is a song without words and one of my earliest works. It is particularly dear to me as I simply awoke one morning with the opening 32 bar chorale. Its music is bittersweet, with an interlude that is a glimpse of the equanimity (some may call Heaven) we all seek."

About Mary Fineman

Mary Fineman is an Oakland-based pianist, singer-songwriter, and composer. Originally from Baltimore, Mary studied music theory with Grace Newsom Cushman, and moved to Montréal to study piano with Philip Cohen and Lauretta Altman. She taught at Concordia University in Montréal and later at Temple Junior College in Texas. She worked as a freelance accompanist for instrumentalists and singers and improvised for dancers for many years.

She started composing, began vocal studies with Cary Sheldon and Marcelle Dronkers, and has been performing her songs and piano pieces ever since. With the opportunity presented by the New Visions/New Vistas Commissioning Project, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, she brings four of her pieces to orchestral life in collaboration with the Oakland East Bay Symphony under Michael Morgan.

Mary is involved in the on-going recording of her more than forty songs and piano pieces, and teaches at her studio in Oakland. Three of the songs being performed by Oakland East Bay Symphony have been recorded on her solo CD "Everyday Secrets." She has kept a journal about her year of orchestration which can be found on her website.

About Matthew Linaman

Matthew Linaman has been Grand Prize Winner of the San Francisco Conservatory, The Oakland East Bay Symphony and the Reno Chamber Orchestra concerto competitions. In 2012, he performed Ernest Bloch'sSchelomo with the SF Conservatory Orchestra under James Feddeck and gave two performances of the Haydn C Major Concerto to sold out audiences with Theodore Kuchar leading the Reno Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Linaman has participated in solo and chamber master classes with Alisa Weilerstein, Matt Haimovitz, Richard Aaron, Norman Fischer and Yehuda Hanani. He has also performed with faculty in chamber ensembles from some of the country's leading conservatories, including Peabody, Oberlin, Manhattan School of Music, Michigan University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

A founding member of the Cello Street Quartet, he joined forces with Singer/Songwriter Matt Alber, Conservatory Alumnus Nick Pavkovic and videographer Greg Sirota in a joint project called Matt Alber:With Strings Attached. This "behind the scenes" film was nominated to air in the International LGBT Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco in June of 2013. Cello Street Quartet is an official affiliate of the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music and will be going on an international tour in 2014 through the American Voices diplomatic music program, American Music Abroad.

A native of Reno, NV, Mr. Linaman studied with Jean-Michel Fonteneau at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is honored to have been the recipient of the Corry Rankin Memorial Scholarship during his studies.

About Wesla Whitfield

Wesla Whitfield is a remarkable singer with a deep love for that rich storehouse of musical treasures often identified as The Great American Popular Songbook. She has been developing her skills and learning her demanding craft since she "knew at age two-and-a-half that I would grow up to be a singer." Her sound and approach place her on the borders of both jazz and the great standards and neglected gems of such composers as Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hart.

Ms. Whitfield was born in Santa Maria, California, and serious radio and record listening provided some important early influences including Rosemary Clooney, the Hi-Los, Peggy Lee, Frankie Laine and Dean Martin. Among her earliest professional experiences was a mid-70s stint with the San Francisco Opera as a chorister. With her husband/pianist/arranger Mike Greensill she performs annually throughout the country and returned in 2007 for the 26th and final winter run in San Francisco's York Hotel Empire Plush Room. Together they have opened at Michigan's Meadowbrook, New Jersey's Garden State Art Center and Flint Center in Cupertino for such notables as George Burns, Michael Feinstein and Frankie Laine.

She has made solo symphonic appearances with the San Francisco Symphony as well as San Jose, Sacramento, Omaha, Stockton, Napa, Auburn, Concord Pavilion, Santa Rosa and California Symphonies. She has appeared twice on Garrison Keillor's national show, "Prairie Home Companion", singing with the legendary trumpeter, Joe Wilder, on "Weekend Edition" with Susan Stamberg, "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, and on "All Things Considered' with Robert Siegel.

Tickets for the February 21 concert are priced from $20 to $70 and may be purchased at www.oebs.org or call510-444-0801.