Andrew Crust, associate conductor
Ian Parker, piano soloist
Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
Gershwin, Three Piano Preludes
I. Allegro ben ritmato e deciso
II. Andante con moto
III. Agitato
Gershwin, An American in Paris
It begins with a low trill and a sinuous upward glide to a wailing note from the clarinet. In 1924, Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue brought the spirit of jazz age to the orchestral stage. Celebrated pianist Ian Parker steps into Gershwin’s shoes as soloist with the VSO, and in the popular Piano Preludes. Conductor Andrew Crust also paints a musical picture of An American in Paris!
Ian Parker, piano
Magnetic, easy-going, and delightfully articulate, Canadian pianist/conductor Ian Parker captivates audiences wherever he goes. As a pianist, he has appeared with top Canadian orchestras including the symphonies of Toronto, Quebec, Vancouver, Victoria, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Orchestre Métropolitain, and the Calgary Philharmonic. In the U.S., orchestral highlights include the San Francisco, Cincinnati, National, Santa Barbara, Richmond, and Honolulu symphonies as well as the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom, to name just a few.
In addition to his work at the keyboard, Ian Parker is music director and principal conductor of the VAM Symphony Orchestra at the Vancouver Academy of Music. He is also artistic director of the Resonate chamber music series at the Kay Meek Centre in North Vancouver. An enthusiastic recitalist, Mr. Parker has performed across the United States, Europe, Israel, and throughout Canada on tours with Debut Atlantic, Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, and Piano Six.
Mr. Parker’s recordings include a CD with the London Symphony conducted by Michael Francis featuring three piano concertos: Ravel Concerto in G, Stravinsky Capriccio, and Gershwin Concerto in F, released by ATMA Classique, and an all-fantasy solo CD including fantasies of Chopin, Schumann, and Beethoven on Azica Records. Additionally, CBC Records released a recording of three Mozart concertos featuring Mr. Parker and his two cousins, Jon Kimura Parker and Jamie Parker, with the CBC Radio Orchestra and Mario Bernardi on the podium.
Born in Vancouver to a family of pianists, Mr. Parker began his piano studies at age three with his father, Edward Parker. He holds both the Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Yoheved Kaplinsky. While at Juilliard, he was awarded the Sylva Gelber Career Grant by the Canada Council for the Arts, presented annually to the “most talented Canadian artist.”
ianparker.ca
Andrew Crust, associate conductor
Andrew Crust has developed a versatile international career as a conductor of orchestral, opera, ballet and pops programs. Currently serving as the Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony in Canada, Andrew conducts a large number of subscription, pops, educational and contemporary concerts with the VSO each season. Andrew is the newly-appointed Music Director of the Lima Symphony Orchestra beginning in the 20/21, where he programs and conducts the Grand Classics, Pops and Educational series, featuring such soloists as Awadagin Pratt, Amit Peled and Katherine Jolly.
In the current and upcoming seasons Andrew will debut with the Arkansas and Vermont Symphonies as Music Director finalist, and with the San Diego Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic as a guest conductor. Other recent engagements include performances with the Winnipeg Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Bozeman Symphony and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie in Québec.
Andrew is a 2020 winner of the Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award. In 2017 he was awarded first prize at the Accademia Chigiana by Daniele Gatti, receiving a scholarship and an invitation to guest conduct the Orchestra di Sanremo in Italy. He was a semi-finalist for the Nestlé/Salzburg Festival’s Young Conductors Award competition, and was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic as a winner of the Ansbacher Fellowship, with full access to all rehearsals and performances of the Salzburg Festival.
Andrew is equally at ease in the pit, having conducted ballet with Ballet Memphis and the New Ballet Ensemble, and opera with Opera McGill, College Light Opera Company, Boulder Opera Company, and others. As a Pops conductor, Andrew has collaborated with such artists as Rufus Wainwright, Steven Page, Michael Bolton, Cirque de la Symphonie, and the United States Jazz Ambassadors. Andrew has also established himself as a conductor of films with orchestra.
Andrew served as Assistant Conductor of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra from 2017-2019 where he conducted around forty concerts each season. He stepped in last minute for a successful subscription performance featuring Bernstein’s Serenade with violinist Charles Yang. Andrew also served as Conductor of the Memphis Youth Symphony Program. As the Assistant Conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Maine from 2016-2018, he conducted a variety of concert series, helped coordinate the orchestra’s extensive educational programs, and helped lead a program for concertgoers under 40 called “Symphony and Spirits”.
Crust was the Assistant Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of the USA (NYO-USA) in the summers of 2017 and 2018, assisting Michael Tilson Thomas on an Asian tour, as well as Giancarlo Guerrero, Marin Alsop and James Ross at Carnegie Hall and in a side-by-side performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also served as Cover Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, San Diego Symphony and Nashville Symphony, Assistant/Cover Conductor of the Boulder Philharmonic and Assistant Conductor of Opera McGill.
Abroad, he has led concerts with the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Italy, Hamburger Symphoniker at the Mendelssohn Festival in Germany, the Moravian Philharmonic in the Czech Republic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile in Santiago.
As an arranger/orchestrator, Andrew is currently working with Schirmer to make orchestrations of a set of Florence Price’s art songs, has orchestrated works by Alma Mahler and Prokofiev, as well as many pops and educational selections.
Andrew is dedicated to exploring new ways of bringing the classical music experience into the 21st century through innovative programming and marketing, creating community-oriented and socially-sensitive concert experiences, and utilizing social media and unique venues. Andrew is a firm believer in meaningful music education, having produced and written a number of original educational programs with orchestras.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1919, the Grammy and Juno-award winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is the third largest orchestra in Canada, the largest arts organization in Western Canada, and one of the few orchestras in the world to have its own music school.
Led by Music Director Otto Tausk since 2018, the VSO performs more than 150 concerts each year, throughout Vancouver and the province of British Columbia, reaching over 270,000 people annually. On tour the VSO has performed in the United States, China, Korea and across Canada.
The orchestra presents passionate, high-quality performances of classical, popular and culturally diverse music, creating meaningful engagement with audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Recent guest artists include Daniil Trifonov, Dawn Upshaw, James Ehnes, Adrianne Pieczonka, Gidon Kremer, Renée Fleming, Yefim Bronfman, Itzhak Perlman, Bernadette Peters, Tan Dun, and more.
For the 2020-21 season the VSO has created the innovative streaming service TheConcertHall.ca, a virtual home for a virtual season, where more than forty performances will be released throughout the year.
George Gershwin
(b. September 26, 1989 / Brooklyn, NY)
(d. July 11,1937 / Los Angeles, CA)
Rhapsody in Blue for piano solo and chamber orchestra (arranged by Iain Farrington)
George Gershwin (1898-1937) composed his Rhapsody in Blue in a matter of weeks, before its premiere in 1924. It was commissioned by the bandleader Paul Whiteman for his own ensemble, and was premiered at New York’s Aeolian Hall in a concert intended to showcase a new style of symphonic jazz. Gershwin entrusted the orchestration of his work to Ferde Grofé, the band’s pianist and arranger, who worked daily on the piece with Gershwin, completing it a mere ten days before the premiere. Whiteman’s ensemble consisted of 23 players, mostly winds and brass with violins, percussion and banjo. As is typical in Broadway and theatre bands, the three woodwind players managed between them an astonishing 17 separate instruments, a whole range of saxophones, clarinets, flute and oboe. In 1926, with high demand for the piece, Grofé re-scored the Rhapsody for a standard symphonic orchestra, incorporating full sections of strings, woodwind and brass. Gershwin would go on to compose numerous works for symphony orchestra designed for the concert hall, rather than for dance bands or jazz ensembles. This new chamber orchestra version, restoring the smaller scale of Whiteman’s band, but with the full range of orchestral colour familiar from the orchestral version and from Gershwin’s own works.
The Three Preludes comprise the only “concert work” for solo piano published during Gershwin’s lifetime. Gershwin gave the premiere performance on December 4, 1926 at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City. It was Gershwin’s intent to produce a set of 24 Preludes, in the manner of Bach and Chopin and planned to use the title ‘The Melting Pot’ – an apt description of his musical influences: ragtime, blues, jazz, classical music, and dance rhythms of many cultures. There is a Latin/Brazilian baião rhythm underlaying the first of the preludes, and a “sort of blues lullaby” in the second. The third, marked Agitato, sees a return of energetic dance steps as a finale. Gershwin dedicated the Preludes to Bill Daly, someone to whom the composer frequently turned for musical advice – a friend and frequent arranger, orchestrator and conductor of Gershwin's music.
George Gershwin composed An American in Paris in 1928. It evokes the sights and sounds of Paris in a brilliant and energetic symphonic poem. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, who gave the premiere in Carnegie Hall, New York. Gershwin was inspired to compose the piece by a visit to Paris, and included some genuine Parisian taxi horns that he had brought home with him. Although not specifically programmatic, the work follows the moods of an American visitor listening to the various street noises and observing the colourful scenes. Soon the music turns to the blues as the American becomes homesick, and the trumpet plays a melody of longing. However, the spirit of the city remains positive and the piece works through a succession of brilliant and witty episodes, before ending triumphant. This arrangement by Iain Farrington is for seventeen players, and was made in 2011 .
Notes compiled by Matthew Baird
Andrew Crust, associate conductor
Ian Parker, piano soloist
Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
Gershwin, Three Piano Preludes
I. Allegro ben ritmato e deciso
II. Andante con moto
III. Agitato
Gershwin, An American in Paris
It begins with a low trill and a sinuous upward glide to a wailing note from the clarinet. In 1924, Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue brought the spirit of jazz age to the orchestral stage. Celebrated pianist Ian Parker steps into Gershwin’s shoes as soloist with the VSO, and in the popular Piano Preludes. Conductor Andrew Crust also paints a musical picture of An American in Paris!
Ian Parker, piano
Magnetic, easy-going, and delightfully articulate, Canadian pianist/conductor Ian Parker captivates audiences wherever he goes. As a pianist, he has appeared with top Canadian orchestras including the symphonies of Toronto, Quebec, Vancouver, Victoria, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Orchestre Métropolitain, and the Calgary Philharmonic. In the U.S., orchestral highlights include the San Francisco, Cincinnati, National, Santa Barbara, Richmond, and Honolulu symphonies as well as the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom, to name just a few.
In addition to his work at the keyboard, Ian Parker is music director and principal conductor of the VAM Symphony Orchestra at the Vancouver Academy of Music. He is also artistic director of the Resonate chamber music series at the Kay Meek Centre in North Vancouver. An enthusiastic recitalist, Mr. Parker has performed across the United States, Europe, Israel, and throughout Canada on tours with Debut Atlantic, Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, and Piano Six.
Mr. Parker’s recordings include a CD with the London Symphony conducted by Michael Francis featuring three piano concertos: Ravel Concerto in G, Stravinsky Capriccio, and Gershwin Concerto in F, released by ATMA Classique, and an all-fantasy solo CD including fantasies of Chopin, Schumann, and Beethoven on Azica Records. Additionally, CBC Records released a recording of three Mozart concertos featuring Mr. Parker and his two cousins, Jon Kimura Parker and Jamie Parker, with the CBC Radio Orchestra and Mario Bernardi on the podium.
Born in Vancouver to a family of pianists, Mr. Parker began his piano studies at age three with his father, Edward Parker. He holds both the Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Yoheved Kaplinsky. While at Juilliard, he was awarded the Sylva Gelber Career Grant by the Canada Council for the Arts, presented annually to the “most talented Canadian artist.”
ianparker.ca
Andrew Crust, associate conductor
Andrew Crust has developed a versatile international career as a conductor of orchestral, opera, ballet and pops programs. Currently serving as the Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony in Canada, Andrew conducts a large number of subscription, pops, educational and contemporary concerts with the VSO each season. Andrew is the newly-appointed Music Director of the Lima Symphony Orchestra beginning in the 20/21, where he programs and conducts the Grand Classics, Pops and Educational series, featuring such soloists as Awadagin Pratt, Amit Peled and Katherine Jolly.
In the current and upcoming seasons Andrew will debut with the Arkansas and Vermont Symphonies as Music Director finalist, and with the San Diego Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic as a guest conductor. Other recent engagements include performances with the Winnipeg Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Bozeman Symphony and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie in Québec.
Andrew is a 2020 winner of the Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award. In 2017 he was awarded first prize at the Accademia Chigiana by Daniele Gatti, receiving a scholarship and an invitation to guest conduct the Orchestra di Sanremo in Italy. He was a semi-finalist for the Nestlé/Salzburg Festival’s Young Conductors Award competition, and was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic as a winner of the Ansbacher Fellowship, with full access to all rehearsals and performances of the Salzburg Festival.
Andrew is equally at ease in the pit, having conducted ballet with Ballet Memphis and the New Ballet Ensemble, and opera with Opera McGill, College Light Opera Company, Boulder Opera Company, and others. As a Pops conductor, Andrew has collaborated with such artists as Rufus Wainwright, Steven Page, Michael Bolton, Cirque de la Symphonie, and the United States Jazz Ambassadors. Andrew has also established himself as a conductor of films with orchestra.
Andrew served as Assistant Conductor of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra from 2017-2019 where he conducted around forty concerts each season. He stepped in last minute for a successful subscription performance featuring Bernstein’s Serenade with violinist Charles Yang. Andrew also served as Conductor of the Memphis Youth Symphony Program. As the Assistant Conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Maine from 2016-2018, he conducted a variety of concert series, helped coordinate the orchestra’s extensive educational programs, and helped lead a program for concertgoers under 40 called “Symphony and Spirits”.
Crust was the Assistant Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of the USA (NYO-USA) in the summers of 2017 and 2018, assisting Michael Tilson Thomas on an Asian tour, as well as Giancarlo Guerrero, Marin Alsop and James Ross at Carnegie Hall and in a side-by-side performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also served as Cover Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, San Diego Symphony and Nashville Symphony, Assistant/Cover Conductor of the Boulder Philharmonic and Assistant Conductor of Opera McGill.
Abroad, he has led concerts with the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Italy, Hamburger Symphoniker at the Mendelssohn Festival in Germany, the Moravian Philharmonic in the Czech Republic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile in Santiago.
As an arranger/orchestrator, Andrew is currently working with Schirmer to make orchestrations of a set of Florence Price’s art songs, has orchestrated works by Alma Mahler and Prokofiev, as well as many pops and educational selections.
Andrew is dedicated to exploring new ways of bringing the classical music experience into the 21st century through innovative programming and marketing, creating community-oriented and socially-sensitive concert experiences, and utilizing social media and unique venues. Andrew is a firm believer in meaningful music education, having produced and written a number of original educational programs with orchestras.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1919, the Grammy and Juno-award winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is the third largest orchestra in Canada, the largest arts organization in Western Canada, and one of the few orchestras in the world to have its own music school.
Led by Music Director Otto Tausk since 2018, the VSO performs more than 150 concerts each year, throughout Vancouver and the province of British Columbia, reaching over 270,000 people annually. On tour the VSO has performed in the United States, China, Korea and across Canada.
The orchestra presents passionate, high-quality performances of classical, popular and culturally diverse music, creating meaningful engagement with audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Recent guest artists include Daniil Trifonov, Dawn Upshaw, James Ehnes, Adrianne Pieczonka, Gidon Kremer, Renée Fleming, Yefim Bronfman, Itzhak Perlman, Bernadette Peters, Tan Dun, and more.
For the 2020-21 season the VSO has created the innovative streaming service TheConcertHall.ca, a virtual home for a virtual season, where more than forty performances will be released throughout the year.
George Gershwin
(b. September 26, 1989 / Brooklyn, NY)
(d. July 11,1937 / Los Angeles, CA)
Rhapsody in Blue for piano solo and chamber orchestra (arranged by Iain Farrington)
George Gershwin (1898-1937) composed his Rhapsody in Blue in a matter of weeks, before its premiere in 1924. It was commissioned by the bandleader Paul Whiteman for his own ensemble, and was premiered at New York’s Aeolian Hall in a concert intended to showcase a new style of symphonic jazz. Gershwin entrusted the orchestration of his work to Ferde Grofé, the band’s pianist and arranger, who worked daily on the piece with Gershwin, completing it a mere ten days before the premiere. Whiteman’s ensemble consisted of 23 players, mostly winds and brass with violins, percussion and banjo. As is typical in Broadway and theatre bands, the three woodwind players managed between them an astonishing 17 separate instruments, a whole range of saxophones, clarinets, flute and oboe. In 1926, with high demand for the piece, Grofé re-scored the Rhapsody for a standard symphonic orchestra, incorporating full sections of strings, woodwind and brass. Gershwin would go on to compose numerous works for symphony orchestra designed for the concert hall, rather than for dance bands or jazz ensembles. This new chamber orchestra version, restoring the smaller scale of Whiteman’s band, but with the full range of orchestral colour familiar from the orchestral version and from Gershwin’s own works.
The Three Preludes comprise the only “concert work” for solo piano published during Gershwin’s lifetime. Gershwin gave the premiere performance on December 4, 1926 at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City. It was Gershwin’s intent to produce a set of 24 Preludes, in the manner of Bach and Chopin and planned to use the title ‘The Melting Pot’ – an apt description of his musical influences: ragtime, blues, jazz, classical music, and dance rhythms of many cultures. There is a Latin/Brazilian baião rhythm underlaying the first of the preludes, and a “sort of blues lullaby” in the second. The third, marked Agitato, sees a return of energetic dance steps as a finale. Gershwin dedicated the Preludes to Bill Daly, someone to whom the composer frequently turned for musical advice – a friend and frequent arranger, orchestrator and conductor of Gershwin's music.
George Gershwin composed An American in Paris in 1928. It evokes the sights and sounds of Paris in a brilliant and energetic symphonic poem. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, who gave the premiere in Carnegie Hall, New York. Gershwin was inspired to compose the piece by a visit to Paris, and included some genuine Parisian taxi horns that he had brought home with him. Although not specifically programmatic, the work follows the moods of an American visitor listening to the various street noises and observing the colourful scenes. Soon the music turns to the blues as the American becomes homesick, and the trumpet plays a melody of longing. However, the spirit of the city remains positive and the piece works through a succession of brilliant and witty episodes, before ending triumphant. This arrangement by Iain Farrington is for seventeen players, and was made in 2011 .
Notes compiled by Matthew Baird
