Broadcasts of the 2006-2007 77th season for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra will be heard usually on the last Sunday of the month, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The concerts, under the baton of Music Director Jason Weinberger, (left) are recorded by KUNI in the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls (unless noted). Here's the 2006-07 schedule.

Check the broadcast schedule on KHKE.

Listings updated 8/9/06.
 

2006-2007 Season on KUNI!
Typically, the last Sunday of each month, 11:00 a.m to 1:00 p.m.

Oct. 8, 2006--Concert recorded Sept. 17, 2006: Three's Company/Chamber Music/Hear Music Director Jason Weinberger on clarinet and WCFSO Principal Cello Jonathan Chenoweth with special guests in an afternoon of chamber music trios. Among the selections will be Beethoven’s delightful trio, the earliest known work for the combination of clarinet, cello, and piano as well as the suite from Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale in the composer’s intimate arrangement for clarinet, violin, and piano. This concert of trios is completed by the jazzy and neo-classical Concerto a tre for clarinet, violin, and cello by the superb and under-recognized American composer Ingolf Dahl.

Oct. 29, 2006--Concert recorded Oct. 7, 2006: From Russia with Love/Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg/The Washington Post calls her “One of the few classical artists who must be experienced in person.” One of the most important figures in the music world, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg joins the WCFSO for a thrilling performance of Tchaikovsky’s soaring Violin Concerto. This exciting event also features one of Igor Stravinsky’s most colorful and evocative ballet scores, Petrouchka. Hear the virtuosic musicians of the WCFSO as you never have before in this magical and haunting dance of folklore and passion.

Nov. 26, 2006--Concert recorded Nov. 11, 2006: A Heavenly Voice/Classical Concert/The WCFSO’s exploration of the great symphonist Gustav Mahler under the direction of Music Director Jason Weinberger continues with this performance of the Fourth Symphony. Widely viewed as the composer’s most accessible work, the Fourth seems attuned to the sounds and sensations of nature, an element of the performance that should dovetail with the vivid air and color of fall in the Midwest. Soprano Courtenay Budd, who the San Francisco Classical Voice calls “a real find…with a gorgeous liquid high range”, will join the orchestra for the final movement of Mahler’s symphony as well as one of the great American works for voice and orchestra, Samuel Barber’s heartfelt depiction of his childhood in Knoxville: Summer 1915. A suite of orchestral dances by Bach rounds out this diverse and delightful evening of music.

Dec. 24, 2006--Concerts recorded Dec. 8-9, 2006: Holiday Pops/A crowd pleaser for Holiday Pops 2004, vocalist Nola Shepherd returns to be part of the WCFSO’s annual gift to Cedar Valley music lovers. There’ll be familiar traditional and contemporary selections. Of course everyone looks forward to the last few minutes of the concert as the audience joins voices to sing some beloved carols and tunes. If you haven’t experienced this family favorite, make this the holiday season you give yourself a present.

Jan. 28, 2007--Concert recorded Jan. 12, 2007: All That Jazz/Chamber Orchestra/The spotlight falls on the WCFSO’s own Principal Oboe Tom Barry – on sax! – in several jazzy works for chamber orchestra including Milhaud’s ballet La Creation du Monde and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera. Other members of the symphony’s wind and brass sections will swing in pieces by Copland and Ives, both influenced by America’s native music of improvisation and rhythm, jazz.

Feb. 25, 2007--Concert recorded Feb. 3, 2007: American Sounds/Continuing a recent WCFSO tradition of featuring the sounds of our nation in an all-American program, this evening highlights two well-known Americans and one you might enjoy getting to know a little better. In contrast to his compatriots Aaron Copland and John Williams, Irving Fine is not famous or widely-performed but his Music for Orchestra will capture your imagination with its uniquely American voice and inventiveness. Randy Grabowski, Principal Trumpet of the WCFSO comes to the front of the orchestra to tackle John Williams’s challenging Concerto for Trumpet. The concert concludes with Copland’s classic music from the ballet Billy the Kid.

Mar. 18, 2007--Concert recorded Mar. 3, 2007: The Dance of Politics and Art/Classical Concert/The music of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich is impossible to understand separate from the backdrop of political circumstances in Russia during his lifetime. A Soviet composer seeking creativity despite the incessant scrutiny and threat of Stalin’s repressive regime, Shostakovich managed against all odds to give his emotions and passions universal musical form. Nowhere is this more clear than in his Fifth Symphony, an astonishingly complex and powerful response to Stalin’s criticism. Haydn is another composer whose music is inseparable from politics, though in his case the relationship is represented by the artistic freedom given the composer by his benevolent patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. This all-orchestral program is rounded out by the suite from Erik Satie’s ballet Parade, a French work from the early 20th-century whose scandalous use of popular music landed its composer in jail labeled as a "cultural anarchist."

Apr. 29, 2007--Concert recorded Apr. 7, 2007: Danse Francaise/Classical Concert/The final concert of the WCFSO classical season features music that will dance right off the stage. Bizet’s opera Carmen, famous for the sultry vocalizations of its heroine, also displays the French interest in Spanish dance and rhythm. Maurice Ravel, more open than many other composers to outside influence in his music, takes in jazz and a number of other styles in his Concerto in G. Watch the fingers of 25-year-old rising piano phenom Orion Weiss, awarded a 2002 Avery Fisher Career Grant, dance across the keys as he performs this delightful 20th-century concerto. Schumann’s Second Symphony, one of his brightest and most energetic, will provide an apt ending to this classical season of dance and movement in music.

May 27, 2007--Concert recorded Apr. 28, 2007: Spring Pops/PDQ Bach with Peter Schickele - The Vegas Years/If you enjoyed getting to know the composer Peter Schickele during his acclaimed Music Alive residency with the WCFSO in 2004-05, then you’ll love hearing him in his other guise as the long-lost son of Johann Sebastian Bach. The New York Times says, “As a musical humorist, Mr. Schickele is without peer and irreplaceable.” This program features P.D.Q.’s shameless oratorio, “Oedipus Tex,” and Schickele’s infamous “Songs from Shakespeare,” in which some of the Bard’s best-known speeches are dropped into a seething vat of 1950’s pop music styles. Experience classical music’s answer to The Marx Brothers!