Trombonist shares the program with 'Zarathustra'
Garth Simmons solos, Giordano Bellincampi will be on the podium
By SALLY VALLONGO
BLADE STAFF WRITER
“Never look at the trombones. You’ll only encourage them.”
So said Richard Strauss.
Once he pulled tongue out of cheek, the German composer turned out plenty of great music with fabulous parts for the trombone, the brass instrument famous for the long moveable slide that helps players change pitch — and inspires new players.
For Garth Simmons, the urge to learn to buzz and slide came early.
Growing up in a musical family in Billings, Mont., he loved the Sunday evening TV
broadcasts of symphony concerts — especially when the camera panned the back rows and focused on the brass sections.
“It was as much a visual thing as musical,” recalls Simmons, today principal trombone for the Toledo Symphony and soon to be featured as a soloist.
“That slide really caught my attention. I had to get me one of those,” he said, laughing. “I marched right in and did it.”
Simmons will make his Classics Series debut as soloist Friday and Saturday in
a pair of 8 p.m. concerts in the Peristyle.
After earning music degrees at Northwestern University and the Eastman School of Music, and performing with many orchestras around the country, he joined the
Toledo Symphony roster in 2001. Today, he holds the Edward H. Schmidt Chair. Schmidt is the benefactor to whom both concerts are dedicated.
The concert is one of great challenge for the entire orchestra, although Simmons, also adjunct instructor at the Bowling Green State University College of Musical Arts, may rightly claim extra butterflies.
After opening with Samuel Barber’s succinct overture for the opera School for Scandal, the orchestra and Simmons — and guest conductor Giordano Bellincampi — will dive into what is widely regarded as the most difficult work written for trombone: the Christopher Rouse Concert for Trombone and Orchestra.
Written in 1991 as a commission for Joseph Alessi, principal trombone of the New York Philharmonic, it won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1993. Rouse was resident artist at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., where Simmons was a grad student at the time. His teacher played a recording of the Rouse composition for him.
“It’s quite a piece of work,” Simmons says, seriously. “It’s very difficult. It pretty much exploits and explores all the technical and musical extremes the instrument can produce.”
Because Rouse understood the trombone, Simmons, adds, “He pushes it the limits of what the horn can do.”
Symphony artistic administrator Merwin Siu contracted with Simmons to perform the work in 2006 — orchestras typically plan seasons way, way ahead — and to lead the orchestra, Bellincampi, whose 2005 appearance in Toledo drew high praise, was engaged, too.
It doesn’t hurt at all that Bellincampi, born in Rome but a resident of Denmark, is a trombonist.
Still, don’t expect him to conduct with his slide instead of a baton.
“Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to keep my trombone playing on a professional standard while conducting full-time,” the conductor said by e-mail. “I still have my instruments but I very rarely play them myself.
“I am looking forward to working with the Rouse concerto. It is very challenging for all of us on stage.”
Still, the Rouse is only the beginning of the musical challenge.
The entire second half is dedicated to the ground-breaking, iconoclastic tone poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra (“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”).
Written in 1896 as a setting for German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s book of the same name, its dramatic nine movements illuminate the author’s version of human development. Zarathustra — typically known as Zoroaster, an ancient Persian mystic and leader – represents for Nietzsche’s own rational philosophy.
In short, there’s a lot more music after the famous opening sun salute, made famous in the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Toledo Symphony’s Classics VII concerts will begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle. Tickets are $24-$51 at 419-246-8000 or www.toledosymphony.com.
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Contact Sally Vallongo at: svallongo@theblade.com.
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