“Ordering up customized pieces has its advantages,” writes Ray Mark Rinaldi in Thursday’s (4/3) Denver Post. “First, it allows an ensemble to tailor the notes on the page to the particular talents in the ranks. Second, it can supply localized material that takes on themes meaningful to the ensembles’ unique audiences…. The Denver Philharmonic unveils Jeffrey Nytch’s Symphony No 1: ‘Formations’ about the geological history of the Rocky Mountains on April 4.… Nytch, who teaches entrepreneurship to music students at the University of Colorado, hatched the idea as a way of commemorating the 125th anniversary of the Geological Society of America, which happens to be based in Boulder, as well. He lined up three Front Range orchestras—the Denver Phil, the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra and the Boulder Philharmonic—to support the work, with funding from the society as a spark. The piece has four movements, following the traditional symphonic form.… The work includes references to everything from the formation of the Earth’s crust 1.8 billion years ago to the contemporary—and controversial—mining process known as fracking.” Rinaldi’s article also previews a second Denver premiere of a six-minute work by Steven Bryant by the Colorado Wind Ensemble on April 6.
Posted April 7, 2014
