Tai still a win for Symphony
Producing concerts is an adventure, as any orchestra manager or conductor will tell you.
Violinist Jennifer Koh, the Spokane Symphony’s scheduled soloist for Friday’s performance, suffered a burn in an accident at home late last week. She hoped to recover to perform Szymanowski’s Concerto No. 1 here, but Monday morning she was forced to cancel.
Fast action by Music Director Eckart Preu and symphony personnel produced a replacement already known to Spokane audiences.
Violinist Tai Murray will perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto on a program that will also include Zoltan Kodaly’s “Hary Janos” Suite and Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. Preu will conduct.
Murray played Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s violin concerto with the symphony in 2004. When Preu learned of Koh’s accident, Murray was one of his top choices as a replacement.
“I am very eager to hear her play something from the standard repertoire like the Mendelssohn, since she played so beautifully in the Korngold concerto, something a little out of the ordinary,” Preu says.
“The Mendelssohn doesn’t stylistically fit into the ‘Slavonic Soul’ theme we announced for this concert,” he adds, “except for one important connection: the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim. He played many concerts with Mendelssohn and played Mendelssohn’s Concerto many, many times, helping to make it the popular concerto it remains today.
“I think the classical freshness of Mendelssohn will fit especially well between the populist Kodaly and the brainy and intricate Bartok.”
Like Koh, Murray was born in Chicago and made her professional debut with the Chicago Symphony. She holds an Artist’s Diploma from Indiana University, where she studied with Franco Gulli.
Murray lives in New York, where she recently completed her studies for the Juilliard School’s Artist’s Diploma while working with the Juilliard Quartet’s violinist Joel Smirnoff.
She has won several competition prizes, including the inaugural Sphinx Competition, a Detroit-based contest designed to promote the concert careers of young black and Hispanic performers.
When Murray last played with the Spokane Symphony two years ago, she said she had dreamed of playing the violin since age 2.
“I began begging my mother for a violin,” she recalled. “I don’t know why the violin was such an attraction. Maybe I had seen one on television or heard one on a recording. Finally, when I was 5, my mother bought me one.”
Murray first performed with the Chicago Symphony when she was 8. She has since appeared with major orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the St. Louis Symphony, and is a member of New York City’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
She will join host Verne Windham in Classical Chats, the symphony’s pre-performance conversation, today at 12:15 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall. The 30-minute program will be televised on City Channel 5.
On Friday, pianist Kendall Feeney, head of Eastern Washington University’s Contemporary Ensemble, will discuss the music on the program as part of the Gladys Brooks Pre-Concert Talks series in the INB Performing Arts Center auditorium at 7 p.m.