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Joe Aiello

Dead Man Walking to Make Its Second Midwest Opera Appearance

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deadmanwalkingOn Wednesday, August 6, CNN reporter Moni Basu posted the online article “Dead Man Walking” nun: ‘Botched’ executions unmask a botched system.” The article refers to the experiences of Sister Helen Prejean, a Congregation of St. Joseph nun, who first wrote a groundbreaking, bestselling novel that went on to become the basis for the motion picture Dead Man Walking (1995) starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

Both the novel and the film tell of a Catholic nun’s stormy spiritual journey, a murderer on death row, the victims of his unthinkable actions, and society at large. In fact, the debate surrounding the works’ main theme is in the news in Ohio and elsewhere in the nation and speaks to our collective view on justice, compassion, the American legal system, and our role as citizens. Ministering to inmates on death row led to Sister Helen Prejean becoming a staunch advocate of abolishing the death penalty and developing a second, unwavering belief: America’s death penalty process doesn’t work.operadead

Composer Jake Heggie premiered the opera Dead Man Walking, his first opera, with a libretto by Terrence McNally; it premiered on October 7, 2000 at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco Opera. In 2001, Cincinnati Opera commissioned a second production of Dead Man Walking. On Friday, February 27 and Sunday March 1, 2015, Dayton Opera will present Dead Man Walking, making Dead Man Walking only the second presentation of the opera in the Midwest.

Dead Man Walking taps into one of the core issues of our day and the whirlwind of emotions that surround it. Whether you’ve thought about the death penalty or not, this opera is sure to open a path to your heart, soul, and mind. After all, isn’t that is what great art is all about?

The Great 1913 Flood

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Downtown Dayton, March 1913. MS-128, Miami Conservancy District Records, Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University

Downtown Dayton, March 1913. MS-128, Miami Conservancy District Records, Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University

A major natural disaster that tested, and proved, the courage, tenacity and foresight of the people of the Miami Valley

By Joe Aiello

© 2013, J.C. Aiello

 

I am a native Daytonian. As such, you might think it reasonable that I would know quite a bit about the Great 1913 Flood. And I do … now. But the first time I ever received any hard information about the flood was 1963, the year it celebrated its 50th anniversary. And I my twenty-third birthday.

I had recently graduated college and had started working for a company whose offices were located on the north side of Monument Avenue across the street from where Fifth Third Field presently stands. My particular office was on the second floor. One day, while on a long-distance call, I looked at the wall across from my desk, and something about it just didn’t look right. The wall was painted all one color, but the bottom two-thirds of the wall were pronouncedly darker than the top third.

When I had finished the call, I asked a fellow employee if he knew why the color varied.

“Sure,” he replied. “The 1913 flood.”

Then he explained. The building we were in had been in the flood, and the water had reached as high as the third floor and then some. It took a moment, but it finally hit me; if we had been standing in that office during the flood, we two would most likely have drowned. Over fifteen feet above street level!

That day sparked a curiosity in me about the Great Flood. However, it would be another 25 years before I would make a serious, focused effort to satisfy it.

1988 was the 75th anniversary of the flood. I spent a good part of that year researching and writing a script for a television documentary about it. What I learned in that process – about the flood itself, the effect it had on the people, the rescue and relief efforts and the steps undertaken to ensure that such a catastrophe would never again endanger the city or the valley in which it resides –  is something that everyone living here today should know.

Employing the same research sources I used in 1988 plus some I have since uncovered, here is what I learned.

 

Courtesy of the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources

Courtesy of the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources

An Environmental Trap

Look at Dayton and the Miami Valley today, and the last thing you might ever imagine is that it had once been the scene of one of the greatest natural disasters North America has ever endured.

Water has always been with us. According to scientific estimates, 300 million years ago Ohio and most of North America existed beneath a saltwater sea. It took a series of lengthy geological stages before that sea gradually dried up and land rife with developmentally early plant and animal life emerged in Ohio.

But there was still water, in the form of a river geologists called Tayes, that started in the Appalachian plateau and flowed across Central Ohio, creating hills and a valley. The Miami Valley.

About 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, there came more water, but in the form of two glacier-like Ice Sheets (the Kansas and the Illinois) and the Wisconsin Glacier. Each in turn scraped its way through the area damning the Tayes with sand and gravel, cutting new streams through the valley and filling them with glacial drift. The result was the Miami Valley’s present river system, an environment just waiting for a natural disaster to happen.

And it had ample opportunities.

Since 1805, numerous floods had descended on the Miami Valley; the 1805 flood alone buried Dayton streets under eight feet of water. Communities abutting the Great Miami River built levees out of dirt to counter the flooding. Under normal circumstances that alone should have been enough to solve the problem. If only the way the streams joined one another around Dayton had been different ….

Picture this: you’re holding a large, clear-rubber tube in your hand. Other, smaller tubes connect with it in three different places. Pretend the large tube is the Great Miami River flowing through Dayton, and the smaller, connecting tubes are the Stillwater and Mad Rivers and Wolf Creek. Got the picture? Now try to visualize the large tube bent in the shape of the letter “S” with the lower half of it narrowing to a little more than half the size of the opening at the top.

That was the Great Miami River in March, 1913. Two rivers and a stream joined to a twisted, narrowing large river in a region with a long and well-documented history of floods, setting the stage for a disaster of monumental proportions.

 

A Time of Change

It was 1913. Jesse L. Lasky had founded the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company and later helped found Paramount Pictures. The Indian‑Head Nickel came into circulation. The Sixteenth Amendment established income taxes, and the Seventeenth regulated senatorial elections by popular vote. Woodrow Wilson of Virginia was inaugurated as the twenty‑eighth President. In Ohio, James M. Cox, who had been publisher of the major local newspaper, became the newly elected, staunchly pro-business Governor. And Dayton adopted the City Commission/City Manager form of government.

1913 Dayton’s neighborhoods were populated by African-Americans, Bavarians, Irish, New Englanders, Pennsylvanians, Slavs and Southerners. Neighbors all, they shared a love for parades – hardly needing much excuse for participating in, or watching – parades, many of which crossed in or out of downtown Dayton on bridges over the Miami River.

 

A Perfect Storm

The weather during the week of March 17, 1913 was dry and windy. Droppings from horses and horse-pulled buggies left city streets crying for a good washing. People were wishing for rain. And rain it did.

Huge air masses from Canada, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Plains converged on Ohio dropping between one and two inches of rain on Easter Sunday, March 23, and another two to five inches on Monday, March 24. The river began to rise … slowly … steadily.

 

An Apathetic Reaction

On River Street (today known as Riverview Avenue in the section of Dayton called Lower Riverdale) that Monday, the City of Dayton was having trouble at the storm sewer pumping station there and reported it to the Dayton Power and Light Company. Whenever the river was above the storm sewer outlet, the station’s function was to pump all the rain water that fell in Lower Riverdale directly into the river.

Two Dayton Power and Light Company service employees corrected the trouble, then walked back up the north levee to the Main Street Bridge. At that time the river was six to eight feet below the top of the levee and reportedly rising one foot an hour. Despite this, neither service employee thought that there was any danger of a flood.

Given the area’s flood history, most Daytonians were more curious than concerned; many gathered at the levees to watch the water rise. Few thought, or knew, they were actually risking their lives. They had seen high water before. They did what they had historically done; they returned home and waited for the water to subside.

However, this time was far different than anything that had gone before. Between nine and 11 inches of rain on ground saturated with melted ice and snow would become almost four trillion gallons of water, about the same amount as one month’s worth of water flow over Niagara Falls.

One reason why, perhaps, many people weren’t worried was that 1912 had seen the development of a flood control plan scheduled for implementation in 1913. The contract was completed, men hired, and equipment positioned. Had it been implemented, the plan would have controlled floods with a flow of up to 90,000 cubic‑feet‑per‑second. Had it been implemented ….

Next – A Titanic Terror (Continue reading…)

The Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra presents Resurrection Symphony

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Facing Life’s Challenges: A Musical Guide to Dealing with It All

I have a personal mantra: Nothing’s Ever Easy.

There aren’t web pages enough for me to catalog all of the instances in my own life where fate intervened, and I snapped defeat from the jaws of victory rather than the other way around.

I’ll share one with you.

After having caught nine innings of a baseball game, I came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth (I was much younger then, you understand) with two outs and our leftfielder standing on third, the result of two-strike curveball he’d slammed off of the centerfield wall.

I hit a line shot that caught the opposing team’s pitcher just above his sternum and bounced weakly off into the grass on the third base side of the diamond. Stunned by what was, in fact, the equivalent of a bunt, the other team’s third baseman started a late charge toward the ball. Our leftfielder ran towards the plate and the game-winning run, and I took off for first victory as good as in my grasp.

Here’s a rule of nature: catchers aren’t particularly fast runners, especially after having caught for nine innings. As first base loomed before me, almost as in a dream I saw something fluttering in the air above my head and slightly to my side. It was the baseball!

Here’s another rule: never slide headfirst into first base; scientific study has proven it to be actually a slower way of reaching the bag than simply running as fast as you can toward it. And I contributed to that body of scientific evidence, reaching the bag with my knurled fingertips scant seconds after the opposing first baseman had slammed his glove with the ball inside it right onto the top of my head. Hard!

Here’s a rule of baseball: Rule 4.09 – A run scores when a runner touches home plate before the third out is made, EXCEPT that no run can score when the third out is the result of a force play, or when the batter is put out before reaching first base.

Nothing’s Ever Easy. Life is a synonym for challenge. And that challenge is universal; we are all allergic to it. All.

I know of a man whose life was perhaps one of the most challenging ever lived. He grew up a Jew in a mostly Christian country, where all the old prejudices and hatreds toward Jews were rife.

He had to struggle to make ends meet. Some say that, when he eventually converted to Christianity, he did so to get a better paying position. No one bothered to determine if he really wasn’t only following through on a change in his beliefs.

Christopher Chaffee, Associate Professor of Music at Wright State University provides this insight into the man: As a conductor he ruled with an iron will and overturned many long-standing traditions. He banned the rowdy fan clubs of star singers, stopped performances when audience members talked, and closed and locked the doors to the hall once a performance began, leaving latecomers stranded in the lobby…was equally demanding on the musicians, and the quality of his opera productions and orchestral programs soared to new heights.

He was a composer whose own wife joined with the music critics in deriding his compositions as manufactured, out-of-date, and distraught.

And, as if that weren’t enough, his five-year-old daughter died.

His music reflects his emotional roller coaster ride, taking listeners to “heights of pleasure and happiness to the depths of despair, many times…” (Chaffee). And one of his symphonies, his second, in particular depicts musically the challenges we all face. Life-and-death challenges, religious and philosophical challenges, the challenges we face simply to stay alive and those we face when we ponder life and the sense, or insanity, of it all.

Here’s how the composer himself described his second symphony:

“It is the hero of my First Symphony whom I bear to his grave, and upon the clear recollection of whose life I gaze from a higher vantage point. At the same time, there is the great question: ‘Why hast thou lived? Why hast thou suffered? Is all this only a great and ghastly joke?’ We must solve these problems in one way or another, if we are to continue living – yes, even if we are to continue dying! He in whose life this call has once resounded must give an answer; and I give this answer in the last movement.

Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra
“Resurrection Symphony”
Friday, May 11 & Sat­urday, May 12 ~ 2012
Schuster Center, 8 pm
Click for Tickets

“The second…movement is a recollection – a sunny scene, from the life of this hero. It must have happened to you once – you have borne a dear friend to his grave, and then, perhaps on your way homewards, there has suddenly appeared before you the image of a long-past happiness, which now enters into your soul like a sunbeam- marred by no shadow – you can almost forget what happened! That is the second movement.

“Then, when you awaken from this nostalgic dream and must return to life’s confusion, it may easily occur that this perpetually moving, never ending, ever incomprehensible hustle and bustle of life becomes eerie to you, like the movement of dancing figures in a brightly lighted ballroom into which you must gaze out of the dark night – from so far that you do not hear the dance music any more. Life becomes senseless to you then, a ghastly apparition from which you, perhaps, recoil with a cry of disgust. This is the third movement!

“What happened to me with the last movement of the Second Symphony is simply this: I …was forced…to express my feelings and thoughts in my own words. It was at this time that…I attended…memorial services. The mood was very much in the spirit of the work I carried inside of me. At this point the choir from the organ loft intoned…Rise Again! Like Lightning this hit me: everything became clear and distinct before my soul.”

The confusion had dissipated. Everything had become clear. Finally, Gustav Mahler had understood the reason for the challenges of life and the approach for dealing with them.

On Friday, May 11 and Saturday, May 12 at 8 pm in the Schuster Center, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra will present Resurrection Symphony, the final concert in this season’s Classical series. DPO Music Director Neal Gittleman will host a Take Note Talk in the Mead Theatre at 7pm and provide you with in-depth background into this glorious musical work, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection.

Soprano Ilana Davidson and mezzo soprano Susan Platts will join Neal, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Dayton Philharmonic Chorus directed by Hank Dahlman for Mahler’s groundbreaking Second Symphony and take you on a universal, spiritual odyssey of life, death, and resurrection.

And help us all perhaps face life’s challenges.

With hope.

 

Polyester Pants, Platform Shoes (and Chest Hair) Are Back!

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DPO presents Disco Ball featuring Jeans ‘N Classics

It was the last mass popular music movement driven by the post-World-War-Two baby boom generation. It was Disco, a genre of dance music influenced by Latin, funk, and soul music with a steady four-on-the-floor beat and a heavy, syncopated bass line.

Those of you who lived through it need no history lesson; you lived (and danced it). For those of you who didn’t, here’s a quick primer.

Songs – Rock The Boat, Kung Fu Fighting, Walking in Rhythm, Rock Your Baby, Love’s Theme, TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia), Get Down Tonight, That’s the Way (I Like It), (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty, I’m Your Boogie Man, Keep It Comin’ Love, Love Is the Message, Bla Bla Diddly, Shaft, Never Can Say Goodbye, Billie Jean, You’re Gonna Miss My Lovin, Hot Stuff, Grease, Disco Inferno, You Sexy Thing, Dancing Queen,You Keep Me Hangin’ On, Only the Strong Survive, Message to Love, Soul Makossa, Keep on Truckin’, The Love I Lost, Dance Dance Dance, You Should Be Dancing, Stayin’ Alive, Night Fever, More Than A Woman, I Just Want to Be Your Everything,(Love Is) Thicker Than Water, Shadow Dancing, The Hustle, Love to Love You Baby, Could It Be Magic, Dancing Machine, You’re the First the Last My Everything, Fly Robin Fly, Le Freak, Good Times, Everybody Dance, Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough, and A Fifth of Beethoven.

Artists – Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, The Trammps, Van McCoy, Gloria Gaynor, The Village People, Chic, The Jacksons, the Chambers Brothers. Sly and The Family Stone, Isaac Hayes, Willie Hutch and the Philadelphia Sound, M.F.S.B, Giorgio Moroder, The Supremes, Jerry Butler, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Manu Dibango, Eddie Kendricks, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Hues Corporation, Carl Douglas, The Blackbyrds, George McCrae, Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra, The Three Degrees, Van McCoy, LaBelle, Silver Convention, Chic, and Michael Jackson.

Films – Saturday Night Fever, Thank God It’s Friday

TV shows – Soul Train, Disco Step-by-Step Television Show, Disco Magic/Disco 77, Soap Factory, Dance Fever

Disco clubs (“Discotheques”) – Studio One (L.A.), Leviticus (New York), and The Library (Atlanta).

Dances – the Bump, Penguin, Boogaloo, Watergate, Robot, and The Hustle (in three flavors: Brooklyn, New York, and Latin).

Fashion – Expensive and extravagant: for the girls sheer, flowing Halston dresses; for the guys shiny polyester pointy-collared Qiana shirts (open at the chest), double-knit polyester shirt jackets with matching trousers (leisure suits); and necklaces and medallions (guys and gals).

Disco TV Theme Songs – S.W.A.T. , Charlie’s Angels, NBC Saturday Night At The Movies , The Love Boat, The Donahue Show, CHiPs, The Professionals, Dallas, Kojak, 20/20, and The A-Team.

Whether you missed – or made – the original 70s Disco scene, you can experience it anew on Saturday, April 28 at 8 pm in the Schuster Center, when Assistant Conductor Patrick Reynolds and the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra present Disco Ball Featuring Jeans ‘N Classics, the final concert in this season’s Rockin’ Orchestra Series. They will recapture the mood and feel of the Disco “Daze” with twenty huge chartbusters and lots more.

Peter Brennan’s Jeans ‘n Classics is a winner. Since its inception, it has been a star performer in the arts and entertainment scene. Its concept of combining rock musicians and headlining stars with world-class symphony orchestras has drawn record-setting capacity crowds.

I asked Peter Brennan, founder of the rock ensemble Jeans ‘N Classics, why disco – a remnant of our musical past – is more influential than we might think. Here’s his reply:

“What a terrific question this is. When Disco came out, I was a guitarist in a rock band, immersed in the likes of Queen, Yes, Pink Floyd and, of course, was appalled at this unsophisticated drivel (just like all the other self respecting ‘rockers’)! This threatened everything we’d come to know and love…our world so to speak. Also – the very notion of dancing – well that simply wasn’t something one did.

“We weathered the storm, so to speak, and in came the ’80s, and a glorious era of ‘pop’ erupted the likes of which we haven’t seen since.

“All these years later, after having written a Disco show for orchestra, I am almost bemused at the naiveté of my opinion of that era and its music; it has totally changed over the years, because I’ve changed.

“Hindsight is always 20/20, and I think Disco had such strong Euro Beat and Latin influences, especially initially (before the Bee Gees had their mega moment) that such current house music, club music trends owe their roots to it.

“The last ten years of pop divas and dance acts – Kylie Minogue, Brittany Spears, even Katie Perry – have certainly come out of that genre’s influence. And I suspect, while not as sophisticated, a lot of hip-hop rhythms being Afro – Cuban have done their homework on the Disco days. But enough of the armchair musicologist.

“What really hits me on a pure gut level is the great rhythm section work – drummers (real ones) and fabulous bass players laying it down so brilliantly.

“Some fantastic big sounds – sort of Motown and R&B, but more electric and eclectic. And some of the acts that initially I didn’t want to hear, but now am so impressed by. Earth Wind and Fire; The Trammps; Giorgio Moroder; The O Jays, and yes The Jacksons. Michael was a part of the style and carried it with him.

“There was also a mood, a vibe, and the music made people happy – not a bad thing at all really.

“We all feel great, when we play the Disco show with Jeans ‘n Classics. It is, I guess, our ultimate ‘Guilty Pleasure’.”

Mine, too, Peter.

Now where did I put my old white-with-chocolate-striped open-collared shirt, dark brown polyester bell-bottom pants, 2-inch high white plastic belt, coffee-with-cream-colored sports jacket, and gold chains….

 

Coal Dust in Her DNA – DPO presents Grammy-Award-winning singer in Kathy Mattea: From the Heart

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Kathy Mattea

She has never had a movie made about her. No Sissy Spacek to portray her. But, like Loretta Lynn who has, Kathy Mattea has a familial heritage that stretches back to America’s coal-mining regions. And a musical heritage and style that, like Lynn, includes country and gospel, but woven in with folk and bluegrass.

Suzy Bogguss, Alison Krauss, Jackson Browne and Crosby, Stills and Nash are just a few of the artists with whom Kathy has collaborated. In her 28 years on the music scene, she has recorded 30 hit singles and 17 albums, including Goin’ Gone, Come From the Heart, 18 Wheels and A Dozen Roses, Burnin’ Old Memories, and Where’ve You Been.

And winning two Grammys for her efforts, the first in 1990 for Best Female Country Vocal (Where’ve You Been), the second in 1993 for the gospel-oriented Christmas album Good News.

On the way to becoming a star, Kathy joined a West Virginia University bluegrass band, dropped out of WVU, moved to Nashville, worked as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame, backed-up Bobby Goldsboro on vocals, and sang demos for songwriters and publishers.

She is no stranger to hard work; it’s in her genes.

Raised near Charleston, West Virginia, Kathy’s mining heritage is thick: both her grandfathers were miners, both her parents grew up in coal camps, and her mother worked for the local miner’s union. Her father was saved from the mines by an uncle who paid his way through college.

Oddly, she wasn’t exposed to much traditional mountain music. But when she was 19 years old she heard Dark as a Dungeon and began quietly cataloging mining and mountain songs she would someday record.

When Kathy was about nine, 78 miners were killed in The Farmington Disaster, near Fairmont, West Virginia. In 2006 the Sago Mine Disaster killed 12 West Virginia miners. “I thought, ‘Now is the time to do these songs’,” Kathy remembers.” The Sago disaster propelled Kathy back in her memory to what she had felt at that moment in her life, and she thought, “‘I need to do something with this emotion, and maybe this album is the place to channel it’. And so I knew the time was right.”

The album was COAL.

It was a life-altering decision, one that would forever change the way Kathy thought about music and singing. “This record reached out and took me. It called to me to be made,” Kathy states. “If you go through your life and you try to be open, you try to think how can you be of service, how can your gifts best be used in the world…if you ask that question everyday, you find yourself at the answer. And it’s not always what you thought it would be when you asked.”

She found herself discovering a part of herself she had never known before. “I had to unlearn a lot about singing. These songs are about getting out of the way; it’s about being with the song, opening a space and letting the song come through you.”

“I wanted some labor songs, some songs that articulated the lifestyle, the bigger struggles, and I wanted a wide variety musically,” Kathy notes. “Most of all, I wanted it to speak to the sense of place and the sense of attachment people have to each other and to the land.” She chose songs by such celebrated songwriters as Jean Ritchie, Billy Edd Wheeler, Hazel Dickens, Si Kahn, Utah Phillips, Merle Travis, and Darrell Scott.

Kathy says she’s had good luck picking songs because she goes with her gut. “I’ve found so much of my voice through interpreting other people’s songs, it’s like a marriage,” Kathy remarks. “I’m breathing something into the song, collaborating with the writers on bringing something forth.”

Kathy has played with guitarist Bill Cooley for 20 years and calls him “my silent partner, my unspoken collaborator on everything I do… I have been orbiting around him, musically, for a long time.”

Kirk Albrecht at minor7th.com describes Cooley as “… a guitarists guitarist, like Vince Gill, who seems to be at home in most any style.”

Versatility, the hallmark of any busy sideman, has been the stock in trade of a career that has seen Bill touring and recording with the likes of country icon Merle Haggard, country-pop diva Reba McEntire, traditionalist Alan Jackson and rockin’ singer-songwriter Hal Ketchum, as well as the eclectic, genre-crossing Mattea.

A native of Santa Barbara, CA, Bill moved to Nashville in 1985. A dozen years later he was called “one of Nashville’s most respected sidemen” by Guitar Player Magazine.

A native of Nashville, David Spicher is the son of session fiddle king Buddy Spicher. He has performed with Crystal Gayle, Pam Tillis, the Jerry Douglas Band, Carolina Rain, Jim Lauderdale, Nickel Creek, polka queen Lynn Marie, the Nashville Symphony, John England & the Western Swingers, and his family’s own Nashville Swing Band.

Eamonn O’Rourke (fiddle, mandolin, vocals) was born in County Donegal, Ireland. In 1993, Eamonn moved to New York. Working with a wide variety of artists throughout the United States and Canada, he was blessed with the chance to study with the great Mark O’Connor and cultivated a successful career as a session musician.

On Friday, May 4 and Saturday, May 5 at 8pm in the Schuster Center, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra will present Kathy Mattea: From the Heart, the final concert in this season’s SuperPops series, featuring Kathy, Bill, David, and Eamonn.

And quite a few other musicians on vocals.

“I think there’s a mystery there,“ Kathy says, “that somewhere in me, in my DNA, there’s my great grandmother singing, and my grandmother, and my people, singing through me, with me.”

 

Super Heroes in Our Midst

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DPO presents Spotlight: DPO Quartet and Principals

DPO's "Supergroup"

Look. Up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’ a…bird and a plane.

Darn!

Ever since I was a kid, I have looked forward to seeing, and yet never actually have seen, a Super Hero. The flying kind or otherwise. I have seen a Super Chief (actually, I’ve ridden on one out of L.A.), a Super Bowl game, and a Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious movie. But not one Super Hero.

I have, however, seen and heard in person several Super Musicians. Dizzy Gillespie, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Jim Croce, Rachel Barton Pine, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. All are, or were, big stars at the top of their craft. None had to sneak into a telephone booth and change clothes to let people know they had big-time musical game. Pass them on the street, and you’d have no way of knowing they were extremely special, talented people.

Until you heard them play.

And we have in our midst some musical super heroes of our own. If you have attended a Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra (DPO) concert, you have heard these heroes play before. You may not have noticed them specifically, because they most likely were performing as members of the larger group.

Unlike Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm, they haven’t gone on any scientific missions to outer space during which – after exposure to cosmic rays – they gained superpowers and became Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, or The Thing.

The DPO’s musical super heroes had their power all along. And there are six of them. I like to think of them as the Supergroup.

Like any super hero, our six had to undergo a severe trial to prove their worth. Nothing that involves fire, explosives, metallic weapons, or death rays, but something much more challenging for a classical musician.

A blind audition.

Prospective members of the DPO and prospective Principal (read: first chair) musicians receive 10 excerpted musical selections each out of which they’ll play three or four in the first blind audition round (5-7 minutes) of music for a particular instrument.

And they must perform it for judges who can only hear the musician play; they cannot see the musician, so as not to be swayed by any factor other than the musician’s sheer ability both to correctly read and perform the music.

It requires perfect knowledge of the music and steely control of one’s nerves and emotions to win an audition.

Each blind audition round per instrument starts with 10 applicants in a group; the judges pick one musician from each group.

In the second blind round all surviving first-round applicants are in the same group from which judges select the three best. In the third and final blind round judges select the one musician who is the best of the final three.

It takes on the average 12 to 20 auditions for an applicant before landing the average DPO musician’s job.

A professional musician for over 20 years at the time, Bill Slusser, DPO second violin/librarian practiced for two years before auditioning for the DPO. Two years and 22 auditions later, Bill landed his current position.

On Thursdday, April 26 at 6:30 pm in the Renaissance Auditorium of the Dayton Art Institute, the DPO will present Spotlight: DPO Quartet and Principals, the final Special Event of the season. And the Supergroup will perform works by a super grouping – Mozart, Britten, and BRAHMS.

Q: Who, exactly, are the Supergroup?

Jessica Hung

A: Jessica Hung, Kirstin Greenlaw, Sheridan Currie, Andra Padrichelli, Eileen Whalen, and John Kurokawa.

Violinist Jessica Hung of Chicago is Concertmaster of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. Jessica also serves as Concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra and previously held the same position in the Chicago Civic, Northwestern University, CIM, and Ashland Symphony Orchestras, as well as the post of Assistant Concertmaster with the Akron Symphony Orchestra.

After winning selection by audition, Jessica performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood Music Center. Her orchestral endeavors have brought her to such venues as Carnegie Hall in New York and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Kirstin Greenlaw, Principal Second Violin of the Dayton Philharmonic, maintains an active performing and teaching schedule in the Dayton and Cincinnati areas. Between performances with the Duveneck String Quartet in Cincinnati and the Dayton Principals quartet, she is active in the SPARK program through the Dayton Philharmonic.

Kristin Greenlaw

She has served on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and as concertmaster and soloist with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra. Now in her seventh year on the faculty of the Opera Theatre and Music Festival of Lucca, she is acting chamber music coordinator for the Festival. She is also a grand prize winner of the Carmel Chamber Music Competition and graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy

Sheridan Kamberger Currie is the Principal Violist of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. She has performed as chamber musician throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe and has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras since her concerto debut in 1997. In 1998 Ms. Currie was the Time Warner String Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and the winner of the Nakamichi Viola Concerto Competition there. Other competition awards include first prize in the 1998 Geraldine B. Gee International Viola Competition, where she also won second prize in 1995 and 1997.

Andra Lunde Padrichelli, Principal Cellist of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, has played in the Fort Worth Symphony as Assistant Principal and has played in the Cincinnati Symphony. She has received many awards, including First Prize in the New York ASTA competition in 1997.

Her tenure with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra has given her opportunities to collaborate with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax as well as performing chamber music and extensive orchestral solos.

Eileen Whalen

Eileen Whalen, the Principal Oboist of the Dayton Philharmonic, has served as the Principal Oboist of the Honolulu Symphony and the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic and has performed with the New Jersey, Colorado, and Jacksonville Symphonies, among others.

In addition, Ms. Whalen is the Principal Oboist of the Glimmerglass Opera Orchestra, with whom she has performed on an Emmy-nominated PBS Great Performance broadcast, has recorded for Chandos records, and has been heard regularly on NPR’s World of Opera.

John Kurokawa is the Principal Clarinetist of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he has held since 1995. A former student of Edward Marks and Ronald de Kant, he holds degrees in woodwind performance from Bowling Green State University (specializing in clarinet, flute, and saxophone) and clarinet performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

John Kurokawa

Kurokawa has been a featured soloist with the Dayton Philharmonic, performing the concertos of John Adams and Mozart. He has performed with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and participated in the orchestra’s recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. He is also the Principal Clarinetist of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and spends the latter part of his summers performing in the Lakeside Symphony Orchestra.

See the extremely tested, tried, and talented Supergroup with the DPO on April 26 in Spotlight: DPO Quartet and Principals.

Just don’t expect to see a bat signal in the spotlight….

 


Six Degrees of Three Titanic Russian Composers, Kevin Bacon Notwithstanding

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DPO presents Sons of Russia and Tchaikovsky’s Final Statement

In 1994, Kevin Bacon stated that he had worked with everybody in Hollywood or someone who had worked with them. That spawned a trivia game known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Pioneering scientific research has suggested that all human civilization is a small-world type of network typified by short path lengths. Six Degrees is based on the small-world phenomenon and presumes that you can link any movie actor through his/her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps.

What gets to me is the assumption that this type of game is new and surfaced as the feedback to Bacon’s quote.

Au contraire!

It has its roots in 1840 Russia, the year and the place in which the first of three of the most titanic, groundbreaking composers who ever lived first saw daylight. In order by date of birth they are Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Sergey Prokofiev. And the links that connected them all were their nationality and a school.

And a fantastic talent for musical composition.

Look at the thumbnail of each composer’s life, and see if you can connect the dots between them.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Let’s start at the beginning with the composer whose works we immediately recognize when we hear them: Tchaikovsky.

The son of a mining engineer to whom he never truly warmed, Tchaikovsky grew up learning to play piano and speak different languages by both the family governess and his mother, whom he lost in his early teens to cholera. In 1862 Tchaikovsky was one of the first to enter the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the attitudes of many of the school’s faculty as conservative as its name. Then, as if fate were on his side and anti-faculty, the school hired him as a teacher of harmony. Harmony!

Some 15 years later, Tchaikovsky wed a young woman who had been a student of his, a marriage that lasted less than one month. So much for harmony.

He composed a massive body of work, compositions that remain to this day a beloved part of the Russian repertoire. Fantastic rumors and folk tales to the contrary, Tchaikovsky died in 1893 of the same disease that took his mother – cholera.

Next up: Rimsky-Korsakov.

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov

Rimsky-Korsakov (born 1844) came from money and an old-line military family. For many years, he was in the Russian navy in one capacity or another – cadet, officer, and administrator. In that time had sailed, seen the world, and taken up composing as a hobby. He wanted to write music that would provide Russia a unique nationalistic musical identity.

Neither his administrative, nor his musical capabilities, went unnoticed. Barely a hand at composing, he nonetheless received appointment to the St. Petersburg Conservatory as a professor of – of all things – composition! A start-up operation at the time, the Conservatory needed funding in the worst way, and his family’s many wealthy connections doubtless played a larger part in his selection to the faculty than his composing skills.

But the old adage “those who can do; those who can’t teach” didn’t apply to Rimsky-Korsakov. He read and studied along with his students (probably both longer and harder than), becoming one of the most unique and innovative Russian composers.

BTW: Prokofiev was a student of his.

Sergey Prokofiev

Speaking of which, the music of Sergey Prokofiev (1891) has proven itself to be lasting in spite of the fact that it is some of the world’s most singularly demanding, conventional and in the same breath advanced, audacious, sarcastic, unsure, and outspoken ever written.

Intelligent beyond his years, Prokofiev studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and transformed what he had learned plus what he had already known into a career as a pianist and composer, a career that – in 1917 – was steamrolled by the immense socio-political weight of the Bolshevik (read: Communist) Revolution.

Reading the writing on the political wall, Prokofiev emigrated first to America then Europe, unable to please concertgoers with works some of which actually parodied them and just missing a chance to become a successful and socially chic pianist in exile. First mistake.

Tail between his legs, Prokofiev returned to what was in 1936 the Stalin-dominated U.S.S.R hopeful to wow the Communist leadership with his music. Second mistake.

The Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra is holding a three-concert homage to these three titans of Russian music.

Jessica Hung

On Thursday, April 12 and Saturday, April 14 at 8 pm in the Schuster Center, the DPO will present Sons of Russia, the seventh concert in this season’s Classical Series, featuring Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with DPO concert master Jessica Hung as soloist, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the Pathetique.

On Friday, April 13 at 8 pm in the Schuster Center, the DPO will present Tchaikovsky’s Final Statement, the fourth and final concert in this season’s Classical Connections Series, featuring Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker ballet and Symphony No. 6, the Pathetique.

So, have you connected the dots yet? What things do all our composers have in common? They were all Russian. They all had to prove themselves musically. They all attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Three degrees of separation. Not six. Okay; that’s the bad news. The good?

No Kevin Bacon….

 

DPO presents Celtic Vistas with Cathie Ryan

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Dayton, the Celtic heart of Southwest Ohio.

No, I didn’t believe it either. Then I did a little poking around. It seems that there might be justification for such an expression.

For instance, there is the Annual Dayton Celtic Festival, which last year featured the Celtic (kel-tick, not sell-tick) bands Gaelic Storm, The Fuchsia Band, The Elders, Scythian, and Enter the Haggis (I’m not touching this one…).

Then one of my favorite haunts, The Dublin Pub, has a unique two-day St. Patrick’s Day celebration. The day before the feast day, March 16, the Pub holds rehearsals and calls it St. Practice Day. March 17, St. Patrick’s Day itself, is an all-day music festival starting at 7 am (!) that this year featured such Celtic groups as Bob Ford & The Ragamuffins, Castle Close, and the Miami Valley Pipes & Drums.

And Cityfolk hosts an annual Celtic Series.

But ever asked yourself what, exactly, is Celtic music? Answer Irish music, and you’d be right, sort of. If your ancestors were from Ireland, then you’re Celtic. The same holds true for folks from Scotland, of course. And Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Brittany, Galicia, Cantabria, Asturias (Spain) and Portugal!

Still think Celtic music is just Irish music?

The term Celtic music derives from the music industry and encompasses a wide spectrum of music types that grew out of the folk musical customs of Celtic people.

So, say Celtic music, and you’re referring to both traditional music passed on literally by word of mouth as well as popular music that is recorded. It’s the music of the people of all 10 of those countries I referred to previously and whatever unique qualities each country’s music possesses.

Today, it’s become a great deal more than that.

Celtic music has incorporated elements from New Age, smooth jazz, folk rock, folk-punk, pop, rock, reggae, electronica, metal, punk, hip hop, Latin, and Andean. The new term for all of this is Celtic fusion (as opposed to confusion).

And, to further cloud the situation, if you write it and record it in a Celtic language, you can call it Celtic music.

All that aside, if you want to hear some of the very best Celtic music, you need to be at the Schuster Center at 8pm on either Friday, March 16 or Saturday, March 17 for the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra’s (DPO) presentation of Celtic Vistas with Cathie Ryan.

Featured on more than forty compilations of Celtic Music, Ryan has produced a critically acclaimed body of discography that includes Cathie Ryan, The Music of What Happens, Somewhere Along the Road, and The Farthest Wave.

Her recording successes notwithstanding, Ryan believes that there is nothing like a live show, being with an audience, and sharing the music. “That is the best part of being a singer and writing songs,” she states.

If you follow Irish music, you’ll remember Ryan being in the famous Irish music collection, A Woman’s Heart – A Decade On, placing her amongst Irish music’s finest female vocalists and songwriters. It was the first time Americans were featured in the series, and she shared the honor with Allison Krauss, Dolly Parton, and Emmylou Harris.

Irish America Magazine voted Ryan one of the Top 100 Irish Americans. Chicago’s Irish American News honored her as Irish Female Vocalist of the Decade, and the LA Times recently named her, “One of the leading voices in Celtic music.”

No less stars in their own right, the members of Ryan’s band know – and perform – the genre brilliantly.

As a young child, New-York-born Matt Mancuso (fiddle, trumpet, octave mandolin, guitar, vocals) got his introduction to Irish Music from his father Pete, a respected guitarist and record producer. Mancuso studied with the renowned musician and teacher Maureen Glynn and went on to compete in the prestigious All Ireland competitions, placing second in three consecutive years. Not bad for an Italian-Irish American in what can be a very closed musical society.

The star fiddle player in Lord of the Dance and a founding member of the rousing ensemble The Mickey Finns, Mancuso has taken star turns in tours with Irish super-group Grada.

Percussionist Brian Melick’s career in World Music spans over 30 years and includes playing with a diverse range of musicians, being featured on over 250 commercial recordings, and sharing his love of percussion both as an educator and a consultant to school arts programs.

Dancers from The Richens/Timm Academy, one of the most recognizable and respected names in the world of Irish dance, will join Ryan and the band on stage.

So, whether or not you’re Irish the rest of the year, come to the Schuster Center and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with the DPO, Assistant Conductor Paddy O’Reynolds (the rest of the year, he’s Patrick Reynolds), The Richens/Timm Academy dancers, and Cathie Ryan and her band, for the very best music from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Brittany….

No matter. It’s all good.

It’s all Celtic.

DPO presents Queen: A Rock and Symphonic Spectacular (Ticket Contest)

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(see ticket give-away details below)
So, you want to start a rock band? The four of you’ve got piano, drums, bass, and lead guitar covered. And you all do vocals…well. All you need is a name. Let’s see…how ‘bout Smile? Yeah, that’s it, Smile. That’s a name that will echo down the corridors of time and everyone will know and remember. Smile.

Sounds a bit on the weird side, eh? Who in their right mind would ever name a rock band Smile?

Guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, that’s who. Names sound familiar? They should, and they are because of a fan of theirs, a pianist by the name of Farrokh Bulsara. Brian and Roger played in a band called – wait for it – Smile.

Farrokh was certainly no dummy. He joined the band, and his first order of business was to change its name…and his. Taking his inspiration from the line “Mother Mercury, look what they’ve done to me” in the song My Fairy King, he renamed himself Freddie Mercury. And he came up with a new name for the band, one he thought “…very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid. It’s a strong name, very universal and immediate.” The name? Queen.

And history proved the band to be everything Freddie felt its name implied.

As music lovers, we tend to make things easy on ourselves and pigeonhole our favorite performers into narrow, easily defined categories. That is one thing no one will ever be able to do with Queen.

Follow the band’s musical progression.

When Queen formed in London in 1971 (John Deacon, replacing Smile bassist Tim Staffell, joined Freddie, Brian, and Roger), it began performing tunes influenced by progressive rock, but the band steadily moved forward into more predictable and marketable songs, adding more diversity and inventive styles into its music.

In 1973 the group launched its debut album named (what else?) Queen, influenced by heavy metal and progressive rock. With 1974 came Queen II (clever titling, what?), that featured lengthy, complicated sections, a fantasy-theme to some lyrics, instrumental genius, and The March of the Black Queen, a six-minute-long marathon with no song structure or chorus.

The members were becoming musicians.

Ragtime, heavy metal, ballads, British music hall, and Caribbean music all found their way into the group’s 1974 Sheer Heart Attack album. Testing the water with these diverse genres, Queen began to move away from its progressive roots toward a more airplay-friendly style. And the cut Killer Queen became the group’s breakthrough hit, rising to number two in the UK and number 12 in the United States.

In 1975 A Night at the Opera carried on the musical experimentation Sheer Heart Attack had begun. One of Freddie Mercury’s compositions even featured a harp and vocal harmonies dubbed over. Another song, Bohemian Rhapsody, became the only single ever to sell a million copies…twice, prompting the group to produce a video to go with the single. A video some have touted to have been the first “true” music video ever produced.

1976 saw Queen recording A Day at the Races; inspired by gospel, the album’s big hit Somebody to Love featured Mercury, May, and Taylor singing on multiple tracks to create the sonic illusion of a 100-voice gospel choir.

The 1977 studio album News of the World featured songs written for live performance, including We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions. Doubtless the group couldn’t foresee these two cuts becoming lasting international sports anthems.

1978’s Jazz included the hit singles Fat Bottomed Girls. Another notable track from Jazz, Don’t Stop Me Now, provides another example of the band’s energetic vocal harmonies.

In 1984 The Works featured the successful single Radio Ga Ga, not to be confused with, well, you know…

1986’s A Kind of Magic included another musical breakthrough; Who Wants to Live Forever? featured an orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen.

Music of Queen

Queen released The Miracle in 1989, which used a pop-rock sound mixed with a few heavy numbers and produced the hit I Want It All.

In 1991, Mercury died of bronchopneumonia, a complication of AIDS, and Deacon retired in 1997. For the last two albums made while Mercury was still alive, the band credited all songs to Queen, rather than specific members of the group, freeing them of internal conflict and differences.

On Saturday, March 10 in the Schuster Center at 3pm and 8pm, ­as part of their Rockin’ Orchestra Series, Assistant Conductor Patrick Rey­nolds and the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra present Queen: A Rock and Symphonic Spectacular. With guest artists Music of Queen, a full rock band and stars from the London West End smash hit musical We Will Rock You, the DPO and over 70 performers on stage will perform all of Queen’s classic hits, including the hit singles I mentioned previously.

And keep the hit-making trail Freddie and the boys started blazing 40 years ago alive.

And hotter than ever.

See more details at the Dayton Philharmonic Website

Ticket Contest

The anticipation for this show was so high that the 3/10 8pm show was SOLD OUT!  So, DPO just added a matinee show for 3pm on 3/10… and we have ticket pairs for that show to give away!  Starting on Wednesday February 29th, we’ll announce one random winner every day for the following 7 days!  All you have to do isthis article and share with your FB friends, and then comment below and name your favorite Queen song.  Good luck!

UPDATE:

And… Congratulations to our winners – enjoy the show!

Heather Chandler
Jennifer Larew
Brian Kesson
Gina Kay Landis
Dan Forshaw
Jamie Werling
Mike Reitz

Time to Put on the Ol’ Ruby Slippers – DPO Presents Wizard of Oz with Orchestra

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FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS – leave a comment below the article.  We’ll announce FOUR winners on Wednesday 2/15 for the 2/17 show.  GOOD LUCK!

It has been called a “timeless” motion picture. Because it is.

Produced in 1939 and televised at least once annually since 1956, the movie claims a truly rabid, multi-generational audience. Why? Because, as Steven Tyler of Aerosmith once observed, we’re all kids at heart. And we all love music…and fantasy.

On Friday, February 17 and Saturday, February 18 at 8pm in the Schuster Center, Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Music Director Neal Gittleman will conduct the entire score to the MGM film The Wizard of Oz as it projects on a large screen above the orchestra, providing orchestral accompaniment to the film with the soundtrack stripped of all orchestral music; only the actors’ dialogue and vocals remain.

Many of us know the words to the movie’s songs by heart, the result of anywhere from one to 55 years’ worth of exposure. E.Y. Harburg’s lyrics set to Harold Arlen’s music with Herbert Stothart’s Academy Award winning (for Best Original Score) incidental music and instrumental underscore (some of it based on the songs, some borrowed from classical composers), are as familiar to us as our own family (hence, the derivation of the term).

With its use of Technicolor film, extraordinary characters, fantasy storytelling, and special effects, The Wizard of Oz won two Academy Awards and was nominated for Best Picture of the Year (Frankly, my dear, it lost to Gone with the Wind). And, believe it or not, it was a box office failure at first, failing to earn back the studio’s investment. In time, the trend reversed, and later re-releases compensated MGM for its initial poor showing.

It has become one of the most famous films ever made. The Library of Congress named it the most-watched motion picture in history. Viewer/critic polls often rank it as one of the Top 10 Best Movies of All-Time. And, of course, it is the source of many memorable quotes: I’ll get you, my pretty…and your little dog, too!; Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore; and There’s no place like home, to name a few..

This Kettering Health Network SuperPops Series concert reprises (always loved the sound of that word: re-pree-ses), or brings back, the event, originally performed before a sold-out Mead Theater in the Schuster Center in November, 2006. It was The Bomb. I know. I was fortunate to be there with my extended family, and we – along with the overwhelming majority of other attendees – sang our little hearts out. Most of us were even on key!

There’s an old axiom familiar to we Writers Guild members: “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage,” meaning “you can’t damned well make a movie without a screenplay!” Strangely, it sometimes works the other way around: “It may be on the page, but that’s no guarantee it’s gonna’ make it to the film.” In short, the film winds up markedly different than the source text, in this case L. Frank Baum’s book.

Here’s what’s different. And, since we all know the movie so well, I’ll just cover what was in the book that got changed.

In the book, Oz was a real place. Glinda the Good Witch of the North had no name; she was actually two people, Glinda the Good Witch of the South and the Queen of the Field Mice. There were places called the China Country and people called the Hammerheads. The Wicked Witch of the West was only mentioned several times before she appeared one chapter towards the end. Dorothy rescued her friends, not the other way around. And she wore silver shoes, not ruby slippers.

Other than that….

Director Victor Fleming filmed the Oz sequences in three-strip Technicolor; the opening/ closing credits, the Kansas sequences, and Aunty Em’s appearance in the Wicked Witch’s crystal ball in black and white and colored them using sepia tone.

The Beverly Hillbillies pater familias Buddy Ebsen was originally cast as the Tin Man and joined the cast in recording the film’s songs in a studio before principal photography began. Then, problem of problems, Ebsen got sick…from the aluminum powder makeup of all things, and MGM dropped him from the cast and replaced him with Jack Haley.

But Ebsen’s singing voice stayed in the soundtrack.

The beauty of having watched a film like The Wizard of Oz sooooo many times as quite a few of us have is that, when we hear a song from the film, we can just about place it in its proper sequence in the story. Read the list of songs in sequence as they are heard in the film, and see if you remember where (i.e., which scene) each song was sung:

Over the Rainbow; Come Out, Come Out…; It Really Was No Miracle; We Thank You Very Sweetly; Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead; As Mayor of the Munchkin City;  As Coroner, I Must Aver; Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead (Reprise; don’t you just love that word?); The Lullaby League; The Lollipop Guild; We Welcome You to Munchkinland;  Follow the Yellow Brick Road/You’re Off to See the Wizard; If I Only Had a Brain; We’re Off to See the Wizard; If I Only Had a Heart; We’re Off to See the Wizard (Reprise); If I Only Had the Nerve; We’re Off to See the Wizard (Reprise); Optimistic Voices (background chorus);The Merry Old Land of Oz; If I Were King of the Forest.

A word about classical music in the film: an arranged version of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain is heard during the scene in which the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion rescue Dorothy from the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle.

So, grab all your Janet Weiss and Brad Majors costume paraphernalia…no, no, that’s the other long-running film.

So, even though we‘re not in Kansas anymore, we can all get to downtown Dayton for Wizard of Oz with Orchestra.

And we won’t need to wear ruby slippers to get back home.

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