Concert III - The River

MAY 20, 2023 (8:00PM)

MAY 21, 2023 (3:00PM)

Trey Makler, “you echo in me” (World Premiere)

Felix Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto

Edward ‘Duke’ Ellington, The River Ballet Suite

This program features two American works—one by Duke Ellington, and the other written with you in mind by our Composer in Residence, Trey Makler. The River is yet another ballet score, written for Alvin Ailey and the American Ballet Theater in 1970. This fabulous work uses the progress of a river, from a tiny spring to the ocean, as a metaphor for life. Like the other two seldom-heard ballet scores we present this season, this is a work of huge invention, and a reminder (as if any of us need it), that Ellington is one of our very greatest composers. Violin virtuoso Cordula Merks completes our traversal of 19th-century concertos with the warmhearted Mendelssohn.

   TREY MAKLER

 Trey Makler is a musical storyteller. His music creates dramatic, poignant narratives that take the listener on unexpected journeys through memories of hope, play, struggle, and triumph. He is a doctoral candidate in composition and theory at the University of California, Davis, and holds degrees from the Juilliard School and the University of Missouri. His primary teachers have included Mika Pelo, Melinda Wagner, Stefan Freund, and W. Thomas McKenney.

    CORDULA MERKS

 Violinist Cordula Merks is the Concertmaster of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. Previous positions include First Assistant concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony and concertmaster of Germany’s Essen Philharmonic, Bochum Symphony and Bergische Symphony. She has also served as guest concertmaster for many orchestras, including the Houston Symphony, American Ballet Theater at the Met, Dresden Philharmonic, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Portuguese National Opera.