MUSIC

The ROCO Season Finale Concert features dynamic guest conductor, Robert Moody (pictured), clarinet soloist, Nathan Williams, and Pulitzer-nominated composer, Jose Bowen. Sunday April 10, 2011 at 6:30pm at Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens.

River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) ends its 2010-2011 season with a flourish by welcoming back guest conductor Robert Moody, who will conduct Beethoven’s lively Symphony No. 7, Copland’s Concerto for Clarinet, performed by ROCO principal clarinet, Nathan Williams, and Jose Antonio Bowen’s Pulitzer-nominated Symphony No. 1.

Guest Conductor Robert Moody, is a ROCO audience favorite. He is Music Director for the Winston-Salem Symphony (North Carolina), Artistic Director for Arizona Musicfest, and Music Director for the Portland Symphony Orchestra (Maine).

Jose Antonio Bowen is Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts and Professor of Music at Southern Methodist University. He has published over 100 articles in the Journal of Musicology, The Journal of Musicological Research, Performance Practice Review, and many others, is editor of the Cambridge Companion to Conducting (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and he received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for work on his book, The Conductor and the Score: A History of the Relationship between Interpreter and Text from Beethoven to Wagner.

His compositions, conducting, and playing are featured on numerous recordings. In 1984, while still an undergraduate at Stanford University (where he earned 4 degrees), Dean Bowen wrote Symphony No. 1. It was first performed by the Stanford Symphony in 1984, and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1985. Dean Bowen will be at the April 10th concert at Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, as will a group of SMU alumni.

ROCO’s principal clarinet, Nathan Williams is in his third season with ROCO. Mr. Williams is Assistant Professor of Clarinet at The University of Texas in Austin. Hailed by critics as “outstanding for his musicality, breath control, robust, and brilliant tone, and flawless technique,” and “a stellar musician, capable of the most exquisite and expressive playing,” Nathan has appeared as concerto soloist and performed throughout the United States and all over the world. Nathan was Co-Artistic Director for the 2010 International Clarinet Association ClarinetFest, hosted by the Butler School of Music in July, 2010.

ROCO Season Finale Scheduled Program:

Beethoven Symphony No. 7
Jose Antonio Bowen Symphony No. 1
Copland Concerto for Clarinet, performed by Nathan Williams
And a surprise piece not listed in the program