THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 12, 1995 TAG: 9501120043
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
TWO TRUMPETERS display their wares at Chrysler Hall this weekend - the former bandleader of the ``Tonight Show'' and the former first trumpet of Miami's Coral Gables High School.
Doc Severinsen returns to the Virginia Symphony Friday with the new ``American Concerto'' of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Miami native Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Severinsen and Virginia Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta premiered the work in September with the San Diego Symphony, which commissioned it along with the Virginia Symphony and Buffalo Philharmonic.
From a car phone in Los Angeles last week, Severinsen explained how he and Virginia Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta selected Zwilich. Buoyed by their 1993 performances of Stephen Paulus' ``Concerto for Doc,'' they decided to commission another work, and the search for a composer was under way.
``I just felt that Ellen was more consistent,'' Severinsen said. ``I could listen to a concerto or a symphony or different pieces, and I could hear Ellen Zwilich in all of them. And she played trumpet in college. She played the Haydn trumpet concerto. She knows the instrument.''
This was far from Zwilich's first high-profile commission. Since winning the Pulitzer for her Symphony No. 1 in 1983, she has written works for the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among others. Nor was it her first trumpet concerto, as she wrote a small-scale work a decade ago, the Concerto for Trumpet and Five players, recorded by Zubin Mehta and members of the New York Phil-harmonic.
But this commission was special.
``I just jumped at it, because I love JoAnn's work,'' Zwilich said, from her home in Riverside, N.Y. ``I know she's a wonderful person to have at the helm of a first performance. And I love Doc's playing.''
To TV fans without musical training, Doc may be little more than an oddly dressed bandleader and foil for Johnny Carson's jokes. Zwilich has a different opinion.
``Doc is so versatile and such an unbelievable trumpet player,'' she said. ``I played well enough to know how well he plays. He's top of the line.''
Severinsen stipulated that he did not want a concerto combining classical and jazz styles: ``I had no desire to make that marriage work.'' But Zwilich said her writing was informed by Severinsen's entire range of talents.
``The reason I call this `American Concerto' is that as I started to think about it, there are many American trumpet players, including myself as a youngster, who've had a whole variety of experiences. We played in big-band stuff. We played in the orchestra. We played chamber music. The best people are often capable of very different kinds of playing.
``I just felt that I could do anything I wanted to because he would be able to play it. And that's a very nice feeling. It's a wonderful experience to write a concerto. Even if it's for an instrument you know well, you end up learning new things about it.
``I think the trumpet is a terrifically versatile instrument. We're kind of used to hearing the sort of Baroque stuff you hear in bookstores, the high trumpet playing long lines. It does have a long history, military and ceremonial.'' But Zwilich is just as - if not more - interested in such jazz trumpeters as Clifford Brown.
While it is not a jazz work, the ``American Concerto'' has touches of the brilliance, rhythm and energy of jazz. These are thoroughly American qualities that make it a worthy companion to the music of Copland, Bernstein and their contemporary Jerome Moross, whose First Symphony opens the program. Like Thea Musgrave, whose ``Simon Bolivar'' will be premiered by Virginia Opera Jan. 20, Zwilich is in the midst of a career defined more by artistic achievements than gender. Born in 1939, she started composing at age 10 and learned to play violin, trumpet and piano. She studied at Florida State University and the Juilliard School, with teachers including the eminent composers Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions. She played violin in the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stowkowski.
Her first significant premieres were in the mid-1970s, when such musicians as the conductor/composer Pierre Boulez took notice of her work. She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer, by which time she had already decided to forsake teaching and playing for full-time composing.
``At that time I felt that I wanted to kind of help create a profession of composer and define myself not as somebody who wrote music on weekends and Wednesday afternoons, but have that be the focus of my life. At the beginning it was very hard. I had always been gainfully employed. I still did some freelance work as a violinist. I burned some other bridges behind me and just decided to see what would happen.''
Zwilich says that - in this country at least - being a woman is not much of an issue for a composer.
``I think the music world has been ahead of a lot of other people for a long time,'' Zwilich said. ``I think that I don't work as a woman. I write as all the things I am as a human. One of those things is female. I don't think anybody writes as a man. They write as a human.
``All I have ever wanted was opportunity. What you do with that opportunity is something else.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
CONCERT FACTS
The Virginia Symphony, with trumpeter Doc Severinsen and music
director JoAnn Falletta. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at Norfolk's
Chrysler Hall. The program includes the Symphony No. 1 of American
composer Jerome Moross, the ``American Concerto'' of Ellen Taaffe
Zwilich and Rimsky Korsakov's ``Scheherazade.'' Tickets $15-$34.
Call 623-2310 for more information.
by CNB