Plus Oscar® and Grammy® Award-winning composer Michael Giacchino’s Voyage
Pasadena CA – Music Director David Lockington and the Pasadena Symphony continue the 19/20 Symphony Classics season with Gershwin/Debussy on Saturday, February 15 at Ambassador Auditorium with matinee and evening performances at 2:00pm and 8:00pm. This powerful and romantic Valentine’s program opens with a bang with Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and celebrated film composer Michael Giacchino’s interstellar Voyage. Nick Kendall of the wildly popular Time for Three brings his unique brand of virtuosity and infectious enthusiasm to a fanciful violin concerto based on Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Vaughan William’s longingly poetic Lark Ascending. Debussy’s La Mer paints a majestic picture of the sea with a mosaic of orchestral colors to close out the symphony’s ode to romance, arriving just in time to celebrate with your valentine.
The February concert boasts a new work by Oscar® and Grammy®-Award winning composer Michael Giacchino as part of the orchestra’s 19/20 Composers Showcase. Perhaps the most highly acclaimed film composer of his generation, Giacchino has written scores for many popular films including Up, Coco, Star Trek, Jurassic World and most recently Jojo Rabbit among many others. Commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra in 2018 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of NASA, Voyage is Giacchino’s first work written for symphony orchestra. He says the work expresses “what is going through your mind when you wake up on the morning of a launch, going out to the pad, being buckled in, waiting for launch, blasting off, weightlessness, reaching your destination, and coming home.” Lockington describes the piece as “epic in its kind of cinematic scope and also very personal.”
Make it an occasion to remember and treat your Valentine to a one-of-a-kind experience with lunch or dinner in the luxurious Symphony Lounge, a posh setting along Ambassador Auditorium’s beautiful outdoor plaza, that offers uniquely prepared menus for each concert from Claud &Co, fine wines by Michero Wines serving Riboli Family Wines, plus music before the concert and during intermission. Or come early to learn more about the music with Insights, a pre-concert discussion with Music Director David Lockington and violinist Nick Kendall, beginning one hour prior to each performance.
All concerts are held at Ambassador Auditorium, 131 South St. John Ave, Pasadena, CA. Subscription packages start at as low as $99. Single tickets start at $35 and may be purchased online at www.pasadenasymphony-pops.org or by calling (626) 793-7172.
What: The Pasadena Symphony presents Gershwin/Debussy
David Lockington, conductor
Nick Kendall, violin
Copland Fanfare for the Common Man
Michael Giacchino Voyage
Gershwin Porgy and Bess: Fantasy for Violin
Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending
Debussy La Mer
When: Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm
Where: Ambassador Auditorium | 131 South St. John Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105
Cost: Tickets start at $35.00
Parking: Valet parking is available on St. John Ave. for $20. General parking is available in two locations for $10: next to the Auditorium (entrance on St. John Ave) at the covered parking structure and directly across the street at the Wells Fargo parking structure (entrance on Terrace at Green St). ADA parking is located at the above-ground parking lot adjacent to the Auditorium (entrance on St. John Ave.) for $10. Parking purchased onsite is cash only.
Symphony Lounge: Located on the plaza at Ambassador Auditorium. Opens at 12:30 pm before the matinee and 6:00 pm before the evening performance.
Pre-Concert Discussion:Pre-concert discussion with David Lockington and Nick Kendall begins one hour before curtain and is available to all ticket holders at no cost.
The Pasadena Symphony Association
Recent Acclaim for the Pasadena Symphony and POPS:
“The Pasadena Symphony signals a new direction…teeming with vitality…dripping with opulent, sexy emotion.” – Los Angeles Times.
“In his five years leading the PSO, Lockington has taken an ensemble that was already quite good and elevated it into one where excellence is the byword.” – Pasadena Star News.
Formed in 1928, the Pasadena Symphony and POPS is an ensemble of Hollywood’s most talented, sought after musicians. With extensive credits in the film, television, recording and orchestral industry, the artists of Pasadena Symphony and POPS are the most heard in the world.
The Pasadena Symphony and POPS performs in two of the most extraordinary venues in the United States: Ambassador Auditorium, known as the Carnegie Hall of the West, and the luxuriant Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Garden. Internationally recognized, Grammy-nominated conductor, David Lockington, serves as the Pasadena Symphony Association’s Music Director, with performance-practice specialist Nicholas McGegan serving as Principal Guest Conductor. The multi-platinum-selling, two-time Emmy and five-time Grammy Award-nominated entertainer dubbed “The Ambassador of the Great American Songbook,” Michael Feinstein, is the Principal Pops Conductor, who succeeded Marvin Hamlisch in the newly created Marvin Hamlisch Chair.
A hallmark of its robust education programs, the Pasadena Symphony Association has served the youth of the region for over five decades through the Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestras (PYSO), comprised of five performing ensembles with 300 gifted 4th-12th grade students from more than 50 schools all over the Southern California region. The PYSO has toured internationally at prestigious venues in New York, Vienna, and most recently San Jose, Costa Rica. They regularly perform throughout Southern California and have appeared on the popular television show GLEE.
The PSA provides people from all walks of life with powerful access points to the world of symphonic music.
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David Lockington
Music Director
David Lockington began his career as a cellist and was the Principal with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for two years. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Cambridge where he was a choral scholar, Mr. Lockington came to the United States on a scholarship to Yale University where he received his Master’s Degree in cello performance and studied conducting with Otto Werner Mueller. He was a member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and served as assistant principal cellist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra for three years before turning to conducting.
Over the past thirty years, David Lockington has developed an impressive conducting career in the United States. A native of Great Britain, he served as the Music Director of the Grand Rapids Symphony from January 1999 to May 2015, and is currently the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate. He has held the position of Music Director with the Modesto Symphony since May 2007 and in March 2013, Mr. Lockington was appointed Music Director of the Pasadena Symphony. He has a close relationship with the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Spain, where he was the orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor from 2012 through 2016, and in the 15/16 season was named one of three Artistic Partners with the Northwest Sinfonietta in Tacoma, Washington.
In addition to his current posts, since his arrival to the United States in 1978 Mr. Lockington has held positions with several other American orchestras, including serving as Assistant Conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra and Opera Colorado, and Assistant and Associate Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In May 1993 he accepted the position of Music Director of the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, assumed the title of Music Director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in September 1995 and was Music Director of the Long Island Philharmonic for the 96/97 through 99/2000 seasons.
Mr. Lockington’s guest conducting engagements include appearances with the Saint Louis, Houston, Detroit, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Oregon and Phoenix symphonies; the Rochester and Louisiana Philharmonics; and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall. Internationally, he has conducted the Northern Sinfonia in Great Britain, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra in Beijing and Taiwan,and led the English Chamber Orchestra on a tour in Asia.
Recent and upcoming guest conducting engagements include appearances with the New Jersey, Indianapolis, Utah, Pacific, Colorado, Nashville, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Stamford, Tucson and Kansas City symphonies, the Florida and Louisville Orchestras, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and the Buffalo, Calgary and Oklahoma Philharmonics. Mr. Lockington’s summer festival activities include appearances at the Grand Teton, Colorado Music, Interlochen, Chautauqua and Eastern Music festivals.
David Lockington began his career as a cellist and was the Principal with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for two years. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Cambridge where he was a choral scholar, Mr. Lockington came to the United States on a scholarship to Yale University where he received his Master’s Degree in cello performance and studied conducting with Otto Werner Mueller. He was a member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and served as assistant principal cellist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra for three years before turning to conducting.
Nick Kendall
Violinist
Nicolas (Nick) Kendall connects people through music. He picked up his first violin at the age of three. With an insatiable appetite for a diversity of expression, he went to the streets of Washington D.C. to play trash cans for lunch money as a teenager. By college, he was forming pick-up rock bands at Curtis Institute between concert debuts at the most prestigious halls in the world.
Nick is one of our generation’s most persuasive champions of bringing new audiences to concert halls across America. Irreverent, funny, and relentless, Nick has become a force for bringing people together through music, on stage and off. His work is based on the simple idea that the energy you exude greatly impacts the relationships that you build.
Nick’s leadership comes from a long personal history with collective action. Years ago, Nick gathered his friends to form a band whose direction comes from the power of the collective, now the critically acclaimed East Coast Chamber Orchestra. His genre-bending trio, Time for Three, or TF3, creates new communities of audiences who otherwise might not participate in the performing arts.
Trained in the Suzuki method, which his grandfather, John Kendall, brought to America in the 1960s, Nick continues the teaching tradition. As a caretaker of his craft, he is passing on the vitality of classical music to a new generation
Michael Giacchino
Composer
Composer Michael Giacchino (“Juh-key-no”) has credits that feature some of the most acclaimed film projects in recent history, including The Incredibles, War for the Planet of the Apes, Ratatouille, Star Trek, Jurassic World, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and Coco. Giacchino’s 2009 score for the Pixar hit Up earned him an Oscar®, a Golden Globe®, the BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Critics’ Choice Award and two Grammy® Awards.
Giacchino studied filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. After college, he landed a marketing job at Disney and began studies in music composition, first at Juilliard, and then at UCLA. He moved from marketing to producing in the newly formed Disney Interactive Division where he had the opportunity to write music for video games.
After moving to DreamWorks Interactive, he was asked to score the temp track for the video game adaptation of The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Subsequently, Steven Spielberg hired him as the composer and it became the first PlayStation game to have a live orchestral score, recorded with members of the Seattle Symphony. Giacchino went on to score numerous video games including Spielberg’s Medal of Honor series.
Giacchino’s work in video games sparked the interest of J.J. Abrams, and thus began their long-standing relationship that would lead to scores for the hit television series Alias and Lost, and the feature films Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Super 8 and Star Trek Into Darkness. Additional projects include collaborations with Disney Imagineering on music for Space Mountain, Star Tours (with John Williams), the Ratatouille ride in Disneyland Paris, and the Incredicoaster on Pixar Pier at California Adventure. Giacchino was the musical director of the 81st Annual Academy Awards®.
His music can be heard in concert halls internationally with all three Star Trek films, Ratatouille, Jurassic World, Up and Coco being performed live-to-picture with a full orchestra. In June 2018, Giacchino premiered his first work for symphony orchestra, Voyage. Commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the piece celebrates the 60th anniversary of the founding of NASA.
Giacchino’s recent projects include Spider-Man: Far From Home and the Oscar-nominated Jojo Rabbit, both released in 2019.
Giacchino serves as the Governor of the Music Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the advisory board of Education Through Music Los Angeles.