Colorado Symphony Chorus
Beethoven 9
The Philadelphia Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductorYannick Nézet-Séguin leads The Philadelphia Orchestra and Colorado Symphony Chorus in Beethoven’s choral masterpiece, Symphony No. 9, featuring the beloved “Ode to Joy,” with an incredible cast of singers including Leah Hawkins, Eve Gigliotti, Issachah Savage, and Joshua Hopkins. Terence Blanchard’s Suite from Fire Shut Up in My Bones opens the program.
Program Highlights
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Leah Hawkins, soprano
Eve Gigliotti, mezzo soprano
Issachah Savage, tenor
Joshua Hopkins, baritone
Colorado Symphony Chorus
Duain Wolfe, director and conductor laureate
Taylor Martin, director and conductor
TERENCE BLANCHARD Suite from Fire Shut Up in My Bones
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9, Choral
Pre-Concert Talk: Join us at 5:10 PM in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater Main Lobby for a preconcert lecture.
All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.
Program Notes
NÉZET-SÉGUIN CONDUCTS BEETHOVEN 9
Orchestral Suite from Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2019/24) TERENCE BLANCHARD (b. 1962)
When the Metropolitan
Opera opened its 2021-22
season with Terence
Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up
in My Bones, it was the first opera by a
Black composer the company had ever
given. The work had been premiered in
2019 by Opera Theatre of St. Louis, but
the Met’s imprimatur was historic, and
it became doubly emphatic when the
company revived it two seasons later.
It was the second of the composer’s
operas, having been preceded by his
Champion in 2013. The Met would also
produce Champion, in 2023, with the
result that Blanchard was represented
on the company’s boards during three
consecutive seasons.
Born and raised in jazz-drenched
New Orleans, Blanchard developed
into a top-drawer trumpeter. Following
his schooling at Rutgers University,
he inherited (from Wynton Marsalis)
the trumpet desk in Art Blakely’s Jazz
Messengers and in 1986 founded his
own quintet. Forty years into his career
he continues to hold a commanding
presence in the jazz world. In 2023
he became director of SFJAZZ, San
Francisco’s jazz hub, and in 2024 he
was named a National Endowment for
the Arts Jazz Master. He became active
as a composer for film and television,
for which he has written some eighty
scores. He gained particular note for
his soundtracks for films by director
Spike Lee, including Jungle Fever (1991),
Malcom X (1992), BlacKkKlansman
(2018), and Da 5 Bloods (2020).
Having grown up in a music
loving family—his father was an opera
enthusiast—it was perhaps inevitable
that Blanchard-the-composer would
eventually turn to that genre. Fire Shut
Up in My Bones provided a potent story.
The librettist Kasi Lemmons based
the opera on the memoir of that name
by Charles M. Blow, then an op-ed
columnist for the New York Times. The
story relates Blow’s growing up in rural
Louisiana, the deprivations of poverty,
the difficulties of a malfunctioning
family, the enduring trauma of sexual
molestation, and the complication of
his own evolving sexuality. Blanchard
provided an eclectic score, giving a nod
toward Puccini in its lyrical melodies
(he cites La bohème as a favorite when
a youngster), but also drawing on his
fluency in jazz—the opera includes a full
jazz ensemble within its orchestra—and
from gospel, blues, and other genres
traditional among Black communities.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin (who
conducted the opera’s premiere) and
The Philadelphia Orchestra asked
Blanchard to craft music in the opera
into an orchestral suite, which they
introduced in 2024. The 15-minute suite,
which the conductor describes as “a
summing up of the opera itself,” omits
the jazz sub-ensemble and redistributes
vocal lines to players in the orchestra,
making the music practical for a
symphony orchestra
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, Choral (1822-24) LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Some early listeners encountering
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the
first time dismissed it as the raving
of a deaf lunatic. His contemporary
Louis Spohr was an enthusiast of his
colleague’s prior works, but here he
drew the line: its first three movements,
he wrote, “are to my mind inferior to all
the eight previous symphonies,” and
he found the finale “so monstrous and
tasteless ... that I cannot understand
how a genius like Beethoven could
have written it.” And yet, countered
Hector Berlioz, “There is a small minority
of musicians whose nature inclines
them to consider carefully whatever
may broaden the scope of art, ... and
they assert that this work is the most
magnificent expression of Beethoven’s
genius. ... That is the view I share.”
The Ninth provided much to
perplex its audiences. When Beethoven
unleashed it, in 1824, the idea of a
symphony running an hour or more was
preposterous. Nonetheless, its impact
was such that it inspired some ensuing
symphonists to essay structures as
long or even longer. Beethoven’s
inclusion of voices in the finale also
caused consternation. Was this a proper
symphony at all, or a sort of oratorio?
And what about the vocal writing itself,
which made exorbitant demands of the
soloists? (“No one will ever approach
the sublimity of the first movement,”
Giuseppe Verdi wrote decades later,
“but it will be an easy task to write as
badly for voices as is done in the last
movement.”) Misgivings aside, this
symphony does pack an undeniable
punch, in no small part thanks to
precisely these “problematic” features—
the momentum acquired through its
remarkable length, the revitalizing of
its essential sound with the entrance
of the soloists and chorus in the finale,
even the drama born of solo singers
sitting silent for nearly an hour and then
leaping in to wrestle the challenges of
the score.
The Ninth Symphony took its
time germinating in the composer’s
laboratory: Beethoven composed it
mostly between 1822 and February
1824, although he was actively plotting
the piece by 1817 and some of its
musical material was sketched as
early as 1812. Like all his symphonies,
the Ninth was conceived as a grand
experiment; but it held onto its stature
as a beacon of the avant-garde even
more firmly than its predecessors
did. Doubtless that has to do partly
with the fact that it was Beethoven’s
last symphony. The Ninth takes on a
magnified aura of monumentality—of
finality, on one hand, but also of pointing
to a future that Beethoven would not
himself address. The path from the
Ninth remained an uncharted challenge
to future generations of composers. No
masterpiece inspired them more
Artist Biographies
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Photo Credit: George Etheredge
Canadian-born conductor and pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin is currently in his 14th season with The Philadelphia Orchestra, serving as music and artistic director. An inspired leader, Yannick is both an evolutionary and a revolutionary, developing the mighty “Philadelphia Sound” in new ways. Widely recognized for his consummate artistry, he has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most thrilling and sought-after talents of his generation. His collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The Philadelphia Inquirer has said that under his baton the Orchestra is “at the top of its considerable form”; the Associated Press has called it “a premier orchestra at its peak”; and the New York Times wrote, “the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better.”
Nézet-Séguin has taken The Philadelphia Orchestra to new musical heights in performances at home in Marian Anderson Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts; at the Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, and the Kennedy Center; in Philadelphia neighborhoods; and around the world, beginning with his inaugural tour with the Orchestra to Asia in 2014.
Yannick has shown a deep commitment to expanding the repertoire by embracing an ever-growing and diverse group of today’s composers and by performing and recording the music of underappreciated composers of the past, such as Florence Price, the first Black women to have her work performed by a major American symphony orchestra; Clara Schumann; William Dawson; Lili Boulanger; Louise Farrenc; and William Grant Still. His concerts of diverse repertoire attract sold-out houses, and he continues to make connections within the diverse communities of Philadelphia, showing his commitment to engaging music lovers of all ages across the region.
Under Nézet-Séguin’s leadership, the Orchestra returned to recording in 2013 with a release on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Leopold Stokowski transcriptions of works by Bach. Other releases for the label include Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and all four piano concertos with pianist Daniil Trifonov; Bernstein’s MASS; Mahler’s Symphony No. 8; Florence Price’s First and Third symphonies, which won the GRAMMY Award for Best Orchestral Performance in 2022; and Price’s Fourth Symphony paired with William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony. In Nézet-Séguin’s inaugural season, the Orchestra returned to the radio airwaves, with weekly Sunday afternoon broadcasts on WRTI-FM. In 2017, they also began a national series on SiriusXM.
In addition to his role with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin became the third music director in the history of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in August 2018. He has been artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000, and in summer 2017 he became the third-ever honorary member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He was music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 2008 to 2018 (he is now the ensemble’s honorary conductor) and was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic from 2008 to 2014. He enjoys close collaborations with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and notable European festivals including the BBC Proms, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Salzburg, Berlin, and Grafenegg. Throughout Europe and North America, his appearances have left indelible marks on the international classical music scene.
Nézet-Séguin’s talents extend beyond symphonic music into the world of opera and choral music. His critically acclaimed performances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera (where he made his debut in 2009, returning each season), the Vienna State Opera, Milan’s La Scala, London’s Royal Opera House, and Dutch National Opera demonstrate that he is an artist of remarkable versatility and depth.
Nézet-Séguin, a five-time GRAMMY winner, and Deutsche Grammophon (DG) embarked on a major long-term collaboration in 2012; he signed an exclusive contract with the label in 2018. His recent recordings include projects with The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Orchestre Métropolitain, the Berlin Philharmonic, soprano Renée Fleming, and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, as well as the soundtrack for Maestro, and his first solo piano album.
In 2022, Nézet-Séguin started as conducting consultant for two films: Maestro, a film by Bradley Cooper (who also plays the title role), also starring Carrie Mulligan, chronicling the life of Leonard Bernstein; and Happy Days, a Quebec film by Chloé Robichaud starring Sophie Desmarais in the role of a young conductor.
A native of Montreal, Nézet-Séguin studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at Montreal’s Conservatory of Music and continued his studies with renowned conductors, most notably Carlo Maria Giulini; he also studied choral conducting with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College.
Nézet-Séguin was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2012, one of the country’s highest civilian honors; Companion to the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec in 2015; an Officer of the Order of Quebec in 2015; an Officer of the Order of Montreal in 2017; Orchestras Canada’s Betty Webster Award in 2020; and the French government’s Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2022. His other honors include Musical America’s 2016 Artist of the Year; ECHO KLASSIK’s 2014 Conductor of the Year; a Royal Philharmonic Society Award; Canada’s National Arts Centre Award; the Virginia Parker Prize; the Prix Denise-Pelletier, the highest distinction for the arts awarded by the Quebec government; and the Oskar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance. He has also received honorary doctorates from the University of Quebec in Montreal; the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey; McGill University in Montreal; the University of Montreal; the University of Pennsylvania; Laval University in Quebec; and Drexel University in Philadelphia.
LAWN SCREEN: Bravo! Vail is pleased to offer the lawn screen experience at this evening's concert.
PRESTO CLUB: Presto Club Night: Youth ages 8–14 are invited to attend pre-concert activities and social lawn experience on this concert. Click here to learn more.
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