The Centenary Youth Orchestra (CYO) will present its fall concert, “Storybook,” on Monday, Nov. 9, at 7:30 p.m. in Anderson Auditorium at Centenary’s Hurley School of Music. The program features the world premiere of Chasing Churches by Centenary professor emeritus and CYO founder Dr. Todd Gabriel, alongside music from Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite and Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. It will be narrated by Centenary Chief Financial Officer and retired Col. Robert Blue. The concert is free and open to the public.
Gabriel wrote Chasing Churches for strings and chimes and dedicated it to current CYO conductor Dan Santelices. The piece loosely reflects Santelices’ freelance musical life, traveling to perform for church services, weddings and funerals at houses of worship across the Ark-La-Tex and beyond.
“The chimes reflect the tolling of the bells announcing the hour,” said Gabriel. “Their prominence is almost that of a solo instrument, even though there is little to no change in pitch.” A sustained theme resembling a hymn tune is also embedded in the texture of the strings.
“I am excited for our orchestra to perform and be able to tell a story through their music,” said Santelices. “I am equally excited and proud to perform Dr. Gabriel’s piece that he was inspired to write and dedicated to me. He is a dear friend and was most instrumental in founding the CYO.”
The orchestra will also perform three movements from Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite (Ma Mère l’Oye): “Pavane of Sleeping Beauty,” essentially a lullaby; “Tom Thumb,” which captures the melancholy of a boy lost in the woods; and “The Fairy Garden.” A personal favorite of Santelices, the suite is musical storytelling at its finest and deeply moving.
The concert concludes with Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, one of the best-known stories set to music, in which individual instruments and instrument groups represent each character. Along the way, listeners get to know the personality and sound of each instrument. Narrator Robert Blue is a well-known community theater actor whose most recent credit was the lead role of Davenport in A Soldier’s Story. The concert marks his first speaking role with an orchestra.
The CYO provides college-level playing experiences for advanced instrumentalists ages 13 and above. CYO members perform repertoire for strings, woodwinds and brass in both chamber and large-scale orchestral settings. For more information, contact Santelices at 318-773-8673 or [email protected], or the Hurley School of Music office at 318-869-5235.