Pops!
Normally when musicians talk about a “music season” of an orchestra, we usually start counting from the orchestra’s opening concert (usually in late August or early September) to their closing concert (the following year in July), which lasts about 11 months. Sounds like having a school year, right? Yes, orchestral musicians do take a summer break off!
All different kinds of concerts that you could think of are scheduled in one music season. Let me take the 2018/2019 music season of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra (GSO), as an example of how China orchestras normally make their music season plans.
After calculation, the number of concerts of GSO for the music season 2018/2019 are as follows:
Subscription Concerts: 17
Pops Concerts: 6
Special Productions: 2
Festival Concerts: 3
Special Projects: 2
Tour: 3 (concerts)
Music Happy Hour (Ensemble concerts): 4
That adds up to 37 concerts. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Well there are also a lot of other concerts that are not counted as the music season concerts! We will leave this for next time :)
This time, let us talk about the Pops concert series. What are Pops concerts? As a similar imitation of Pops Orchestras in the western culture, Pops concerts normally consist of “popular music (generally traditional pop) and show tunes as well as well-known classical works,” with short descriptions and speeches of each piece from the conductors. In general, Pops concerts work as friendly invitations to new music audience — through the conductors’ speeches, they enjoy the music and get to know about the musical background of each piece. We always have a full house for the Pops series, and the audience enjoyed the Sunday afternoon with laughters and smiles!
On this Sunday, we will be performing our first Pops Concert of the season, “The Wonderful World of Dance,” conducted by Maestra Jing Huan, with the following repertoire:
Selections from Adolphe Adam’s Giselle
Selections from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake
Selections from Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring
Selections from Wu Zuqiang, Du Mingxin’s The Red Detachment of Women
Selections from Du Mingxin’s The Fish Beauty
Selections from Du Ming’s The Past of Shawan
I would say it is a huge repertoire! I am always excited each time when I get to play a lot of music in one concert. And even more special for harpists: There goes the enormous Swan Lake harp cadenza!
Looking forward to play more unique harp pieces this season! Now I should get back to practise :)