Texas Music Festival Trumpets 2016 Summer Concerts with Musical Firsts

This summer the 27th Annual Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival (TMF) will chart several musical firsts, including the TMF debut of distinguished Austrian conductor Hans Graf, who holds the distinction of having been the longest serving Music Director in Houston Symphony history. The June 3 - July 2 international music residency, based at the University of Houston (UH) Moores School of Music, attracts classical music's rising stars from top tier music conservatories worldwide to study and perform in concert with world-class soloists, conductors and faculty artists at the UH Moores Opera House and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion.

"We're delighted Maestro Graf will join us for Week 2 (June 18), when he conducts the TMF Orchestra for 'Musical Firsts," comprising the first major orchestral compositions by Sergei Rachmaninov, Anton Webern and Alban Berg," said Alan Austin, TMF General and Artistic Director. "These are all composers Maestro Graf has a particular affinity for, and he is known as a preeminent interpreter of their work."

Each year, TMF offers music lovers a month of cool, classical concerts in June. The TMF Orchestra Series will open Saturday, June 11 with a rich "Roman Holiday"-themed musical getaway. Mark Hughes, Houston Symphony Principal Trumpet, will provide fitting fanfare as guest soloist under the baton of TMF Music Director & Chief Conductor Franz Anton Krager. The program includes Giuseppe Tartini: Concerto for Trumpet in D Major, three pieces by Ottorino Respighi: Roman Festivals, Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome; and the famous showpiece, The Carnival of Venice by Herbert L. Clarke. The 95-person Festival Orchestra will be augmented by extra brass from Hughes' UH Moores School trumpet studio.

For TMF Week 2, Graf, who has led such major North American and European orchestras as the New York, Los Angeles, Vienna and London philharmonics among many others, will conduct three "Musical Firsts:" Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 13; Webern: Passacaglia, Op. 1; and Berg: Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6.

"I am so pleased to have the opportunity to conduct these talented young musicians, many of whom are the same age as the program's three composers were when they wrote their first major works at the close of World War I. I'm very much looking forward to exploring how the composers interpreted their time and future through their early compositions," said Graf, whose impressive resume includes guest appearances at such preeminent festivals as Tanglewood, Aspen Music Festival and the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago, to name a few.

TMF Week 3, entitled "The Audience's Guide to the Orchestra," marks the return of Guest Conductor Mei-Ann Chen, plus TMF's first approach to an orchestral "primer" program for classical music lovers of all ages. The dual June 24 and 25 concerts will boast the student winner of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Young Artist Competition as soloist (work TBA), complemented by the following family-friendly program: Piotr Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture - Fantasy; Benjamin Britten: Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34 narrated by Houston Public Media's St. John Flynn; and Igor Stravinsky: Petrouchka (1947).

Topping off the four-week festival will be the Grand Finale Saturday, July 2, featuring Richard Strauss: An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64, an epic piece about an 11-hour physical and spiritual journey climbing an Alpine mountain, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds, Op. 297b. The concert will spotlight four of TMF's faculty members with native Texan Carl St. Clair conducting. The soloists are Richard Beene, bassoon, Dean Emeritus of the Colburn School Conservatory of Music; Leone Buyse, flute, a professor at the Rice University Shepherd School of Music; Jonathan Fischer, oboe, principal oboe of the Houston Symphony; and Robert Johnson, horn, associate principal horn of the Houston Symphony. Fischer and Johnson are both affiliate artists at the UH Moores School of Music.

TMF is a rigorous training ground for serious music fellows to learn and perform 13 major classical works over four weeks with four different conductors. "Our demanding schedule is on par with a professional symphony orchestra's," says Austin, 1990 TMF alum. "Our number of applicants continues to rise because conservatory students desire the depth and scope of our repertoire. They have to stretch themselves here, but they relish the opportunity."

Four hundred applicants from the U.S. and 22 foreign countries applied for the prestigious TMF Orchestral Institute this year, representing 112 conservatories and schools of music, including such noted music schools as Cleveland Institute of Music, Eastman School of Music, Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, Northwestern University, Rice University Shepherd School of Music, University of Houston Moores School and Yale University.

The 95 fellows who comprise the Festival Orchestra are chosen by highly competitive live and recorded auditions held in January and February each year. All receive a full fellowship to underwrite their time in Houston.

The Festival offers the chance to win a guest soloist role through the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Young Artist Competition, open to all TMF Orchestra fellows, with the final judging a free public event Sunday, June 12, 2 p.m. at UH Dudley Recital Hall. The 2016 winner will perform with the Festival Orchestra at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands Friday, June 24, 8 p.m. and at the Moores Opera House Saturday, June 25 at 7:30 p.m. The first prize also carries an international invitation to appear as a soloist with the Akademisches Orchester in Leipzig, Germany at the prestigious Gewandhaus. TMF also trains another 250 young musicians through its summer institutes for voice (Le Chiavi: The Keys to Bel Canto), high school jazz and piano, and a workshop entitled, "The Informed Flutist."

Pre-concert activities for each TMF Orchestra Series performance include performances by members of Virtuosi of Houston and Settling the Score, a lecture series hosted by noted music theorist Dr. Andrew Davis, Director of the Moores School of Music.

TMF also showcases the talents of its faculty artists on five faculty chamber music concerts as part of its PERSPECTIVES Series Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m., June 7, 14, 21, 28 and a bonus concert Thursday, June 16 at UH Dudley Recital Hall. The programs will be: Parisian Holiday - June 7: Faculty Chamber Music Loeffler: Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano; Debussy: Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp; Ravel: Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano; Classical Mashup - June 14: Beethoven: Sonata No. 1 in D Major for Piano and Violin, and more; A Texas Original: Chamber Music of David Ashley White - June 16: Elegy and Exaltation for Piano Trio; The Peace of Wild Things for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano; L'isola di S. Michele for Oboe and Piano; Six Miniatures for Three Players; Gathering the Lost Garden for Mezzo-Soprano, Clarinet and Piano; Lagniappe for Solo Piano; Phantasy and Toccata for Solo Piano; Four Madrigals of Michelangelo for Soprano, Violin and Piano; Divertimento for Violin and Viola; American Voices - June 21: Previn: Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano and the premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts': In at the Eye for Baritone, Flute, Violin, Cello and Piano; and Side by Side - June 28: faculty and students perform together, including Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat. TMF is supported, in part, through the generosity of the Immanuel and Helen Olshan Foundation, created by two Houstonians who loved attending summer music gatherings in Colorado and New England. Houston's Texas Music Festival is considered on par with such renowned festivals as Aspen or Tanglewood Music Festivals.

Saturday Orchestra Series performances are reserved seating and parking is free. A variety of Series Packages individual tickets may be purchased online at www.tmf.uh.edu and through the UH Moores School Ticket Office 713-743 3313. Orchestra Series single tickets are $25; $15 for students and seniors. Tickets to PERSPECTIVES concerts are $20 general admission and $10 for seniors/students. The TMF Season Pass is $135 for general admission and $75 for seniors/students (includes four Orchestra Series Concerts at Moores Opera House and four PERSPECTIVES (with a fifth bonus concert) at Dudley Recital Hall. The UH Moores Opera House is on the UH Main Campus, I-45 at Cullen Boulevard, Entrance #16.

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