7 ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY CIVIC SYMPHONY: 104TH SEASON Christopher Stanichar is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Aberdeen University-Civic Symphony at Northern State University since fall 2018. He is the Director of Orchestral Activities, Professor of Strings and Music History. He holds a B. Mus. in Composition from Central Washington University, and a M. Mus. in Music History and Orchestral Conducting from the University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music), as well as a D.M.A. in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Cincinnati. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Slovakia and the former Conducting Assistant for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Stanichar is the Music Director of the Worthington Area Symphony Orchestra (Minnesota), and is a frequent guest conductor and clinician, as well as a published composer through Trevco-Varner Press, Edizioni Musicali Eufonia, and Murphy Music Press. Christopher Stanichar, Director and Conductor CONCERT III: “VOICES OF FREEDOM” SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024 (7:30 PM) JEWETT AUDITORIUM GUEST ARTISTS: NSU Concerto-Aria Winners (TBA) Sometimes composers must find ways to use music as a voice for protest when words are not possible. AUCS performs two works written by composer’s who lived under adversity, but spoke their truth through the orchestral voice… AUCS will open this concert with Florence Price’s Dances in the Canebrakes. Florence Price (1887-1953) was an African American composer who wrote a prodigious amount of music, most of which was forgotten until her manuscripts were discovered in 2009. Price faced numerous personal and social challenges as a Black woman in a white male dominated field, yet she rose above it all, composing music that speaks to her African American experience. Dances in the Canebrakes is one of her last compositions and evokes the ragtime era of Scott Joplin with jaunty rhythms and nostalgic harmonies. The other work on this program is Dmitri Shostakovich’s monumental fifth symphony, which the composer described as “A Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism.” Composed in 1939, Shostakovich wrote this symphony to save his career and life. Shostakovich garnered the unwelcome attention of Josef Stalin, who was displeased with Shostakovich’s subversive and dissonant opera, Lady Macbeth of Minsk. Stalin was so displeased that he got up during the performance and left the theater—a clear signal that Shostakovich could lose everything, including his life. So, Shostakovich turned his attention to his fifth symphony to try to make amends for his “mistake.” Shostakovich’s fifth symphony is lyrical, tragic, and expresses his deepest angst and political dissidence, and has a pseudojoyful ending. Soviet audiences recognized the power of this music, and the “Forced Celebration” that ends the symphony as code for Shostakovich’s disdain for the Soviet dictator. This AUCS program will also feature the two student winners from this year’s NSU Concerto-Aria contest. PROGRAM: Florence Price (arr. William Grant Still): Dances in the Canebrakes Concerto-Aria Winners (TBA) Dmitry Shostakovich: Symphony no. 5 in D minor, op. 47 Aberdeen University-Civic Symphony is a treasure to the community of Aberdeen and to the state of South Dakota. The AUCS exists through the effort of many individuals, and we are so happy to have you as a part of our audience. To all of you, I offer a fortissimo: THANK YOU! And on behalf of the AUCS, I look forward to seeing you at our concerts. Musically yours,
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