Musical fireworks: EYSO concert to be broadcast by WFMT beginning July 4

While packing your picnic supplies for the holiday weekend, tune your radio to WFMT 98.7 to hear the broadcast of a recent Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestra performance titled “Lincoln Portrait — A Bicentennial Musical Tribute: 1809-2009” at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 4, and repeated at 10 p.m. Thursday, July 9. The recording also will be broadcast via live streaming at www.wfmt.org.

The March 15 concert, led by EYSO music director and youth symphony conductor Randal Swiggum, features narration of Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” by Illinois Circuit Court Chief Judge F. Keith Brown (son of media personalities Betty and Floyd Brown of Elgin).

Judge Brown played string bass and piano in high school under Maestro Douglas Steensland, founding conductor of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra. “Lincoln Portrait” incorporates stirring words by Lincoln himself.

Tom Moroz, flute soloist and 2008-09 EYSO Philharmonia Young Artists Concerto Award winner, performs Stamitz’s G Major flute concerto. Other selections include:
 
• “Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man”: Although not written specifically about Lincoln, its noble and heroic theme captures Lincoln's mythic status and his humble origins.
 
• Verdi: “Overture to La Forza del Destino (The Power of Fate)” — the only opera Lincoln ever saw. The dramatic overture transports the listener to the 1860s, when it was written.
 
• Jerry Bilik’s “American Civil War Fantasy”: This piece combines more than a dozen melodies from the Civil War and Antebellum South into a tone poem about the war itself.
 
New conductor
EYSO announces the selection of a new conductor for its Prelude Orchestra, Daniel Beder.

“I am personally very excited about Daniel — and our entire staff and board are thrilled to have a teacher and musician of his caliber joining our organization; I know you will join me in welcoming him to the EYSO,” Swiggum said.

Beder teaches orchestra at Gregory Middle School in Naperville, plays cello in the Jan Sobieski String Quartet, and maintains a private cello studio. Originally from Wisconsin, he played in the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, the largest youth orchestra program in the country.

He is a graduate of Oberlin College, where his degrees are in music history and theory, and mathematics. He received his music education certification at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and was a graduate student in music education at New York University, where he was named an assistant conductor.

Season auditions
The EYSO still has a few instrument openings for the 2009-10 season, says Kathy Matthews of St. Charles, executive director. Auditions will continue by appointment until all openings are filled. Interested string, woodwind, brass and percussion players should call the EYSO office at (847) 841-7700 to learn about possible openings for their instrument. Video auditions also will be accepted. Audition requirements, as well as an application, may be found on the EYSO Web site at www.eyso.org, or you may request an application by phone. There is a $45 audition fee.

The EYSO, an in-residence ensemble in the Arts Center at Elgin Community College, is home to four orchestras and a brass choir with nearly 300 students from 60 communities.