Released: April 14th, 2008
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Symphony of the Mountains will present their fifth concert in the Eastman Masterworks Series on Saturday, May 3 at 8:00 PM at the Toy F. Reid Employee Center on the Eastman Chemical Company campus in Kingsport. Titled Music and Art the program will feature well-known opera and musical theatre melodies. As Musical Director/Conductor Cornelia Kodkani-Laemmli says, “We’re saving a seat for you!”
Joining Symphony of the Mountains for the performance are members of Kingsport Ballet, Valeria Sinyavskaya, Artistic Director, and Rostislav Dzabraev, Artist in Residence. Also participating is Matthew Hullman from Kingsport Theatre Guild, Sharon Hurd, Artistic Director.
This concert features music with large orchestra, including the additional woodwinds piccolo, bass clarinet, alto and tenor saxophones, English horn and contrabassoon. The program begins with Prokofiev’s hauntingly beautiful Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2. The movements to be performed include The Montagues and the Capulets, Juliet – the Young Girl, Dance of the Maids of the Antilles and Romeo at Juliet’s grave. Mr. Huffman from Kingsport Theatre Guild will recite the final monologue from the Shakespeare play during the final movement.
Chopin’s lush, lyrical Les Sylphides is next on the program and will feature performers from Kingsport Ballet and soloist Rostislav Dzabraev in a multitude of preludes, waltzes and mazurkas. Rostislav Dzabraev received his training from the State Classical Ballet Academy in Ufa, Russia, training school of ballet legend Rudolph Nureyev. He progressed to become an apprentice at the famed Kirov Academy in St. Petersburg. He performed extensively with the Ufa Ballet and the Saint Petersburg Ballet and has toured throughout Russia, Finland, Canada, North America, Egypt and Bermuda. He has been recipient of numerous awards at national and international dance competitions including the Second International Festival of Moscow where he was awarded first place, and the Rudolph Nureyev Ballet Competition where he was a finalist. He is also recipient of the Pearl Krima award. Mr. Dzabraev arrived in Kingsport from St. Petersburg, Russia in April of 2007 to become Artist in Residence for Kingsport Ballet. He has performed in Kingsport Ballet’s Spring Concert 2007 and has participated in several outreach presentations around the tri-cities, including ETSU’s Baroque Music Camp and Arts4Kids workshops. Mr. Dzabraev teaches ballet and partnering at Kingsport Ballet, boys and adult classes and continues to perform lead roles in KB productions.
Ms. Sinyavskaya, serves as ballet mistress and artistic director of Kingsport Ballet since 2002. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Lunacharsky Institute of Theatrical Arts in Moscow. She has staged many full-scale productions, such as Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and Giselle as well as choreographed contemporary works. She has directed the re-staging of the Sleeping Beauty, and the creation of two additional Tchaikovsky works: Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. Under her direction, the company premiered the full-length Giselle at Eastman Auditorium in March of 2007, displaying the masterful blending of professional and student work. Ms. Sinyavskaya’s students have been routinely accepted for summer study at the Kirov Academy in Washington, DC, and have received dance scholarships to renowned programs such as Walnut Hill Academy of Ballet and Wake Forest University. Former students of Ms. Sinyavskaya’s have traveled from Japan, Russia, Great Britain and various states in the US to Tennessee in order to take class with her and receive coaching to prepare for auditions. Ms. Sinyavskaya is frequently invited to teach and set works for professional companies in Florida. In 2004 she was recipient of the Arts Council of Greater Kingsport’s Arts Leader of Excellence award.
The final work on the program is Moussorgsky’s powerful masterwork, Pictures at an Exhibition. Originally a piano piece based on paintings of the composer’s good friend, Viktor Hartmann, this work in fifteen brief movements features a recurring Promenade that represents the composer walking through an imaginary exhibition. Strikingly named movements include: Gnomus, a nutcracker in the form of a lame gnome; Bydlo, a Polish ox cart the seemingly moves from a distance, approaches, the fades away; Ballet of the Newly Hatched Chicks in Their Shells, in which you can visualize the quirky, jerky movements of the hatchlings pecking at their shells; The Hut on Fowl’s Legs, home of Russian folk lore’s evil witch Baba Yaga; The Old Castle, which features a haunting, plaintive saxophone solo; and the majestic, powerful Great Gate of Kiev.
Tickets are $22 and $18 for adults and $10 for students. To order tickets or for further information, contact the Symphony of the Mountains by phone at 423-392-8423, by e-mail at info@SymphonyoftheMountains.org or online at www.SymphonyoftheMountains.org. Tickets will also be available at the door the day of the performance; the box office opens at 6:30 PM.
Join Cornelia Kodkani-Laemmli at 7:00pm for Concert Prelude, an informal, informative introduction to the evening’s repertoire and guest artists