Program Notes | Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances

Claude Debussy
Born: August 22, 1862 in St-Germain-en-Laye, France
Died: March 25, 1918 in Paris, France
Composed: 1891–94
World Premiere: December 22, 1894 in Paris, France; Gustave Doret conducted
Duration: 10 minutes
Instrumentation: three flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, four horns, two harps and strings

“L'après-midi d'un faune” (“Afternoon of a Faun”) is a poem by the French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898). Debussy's orchestral piece, though often mistakenly referred to by the name of the poem, is actually a prelude to the poem. The composer intended his music to be "a very free illustration and in no way a synthesis of the poem."

Written between 1865 and 1876, Mallarmé's poem is subtitled "Eclogue." He conceived it for the stage, intending that it be recited by an actor as a monologue.  One of its early titles was "Monologue d'un faune." In it, a faun dreams about the conquest of nymphs on a langourous summer afternoon.

Debussy was a highly literate musician and an excellent writer. By 1890, he had become a member of Mallarmé's inner circle. The subtle eroticism of Mallarmé's symbolist imagery in “L'après-midi d'un faune” inspired him to plan an ambitious musical triptych as incidental music. When the piece was announced in March 1894, it consisted of a Prélude, Interludes et Paraphrase Finale. Debussy either abandoned the later movements or compressed his ideas into the single ten-minute work that has survived. In that form, it received its first performance in December 1894, two years after he began work on it.

The Prélude is atmospheric, an evocation of the poem's lyrical spirit rather than a narrative representation.  Debussy’s music has two principal themes. The first, stated by the flute, is sinuous, lyrical, sensual. The second, which belongs primarily to the other winds, is more concrete. Throughout the Prélude, Debussy's effect is fragmentary. No real development of the themes occurs. With muted strings and horns, he captures the shimmering beauty of the summer's day. No brasses other than mellow French horns mar the subtle delicacy of the orchestration, whose rainbow of pastels beguiles our ears so seductively.

A free illustration of a poem
The atmospheric Prélude is an evocation of the poem's lyrical spirit rather than a narrative representation. Debussy’s music has two principal themes. The first, stated by the flute, is sinuous, lyrical, sensual. The second, which belongs primarily to the other winds, is more concrete. Throughout the Prélude, Debussy's effect is fragmentary. No real development of the themes occurs. With muted strings and horns, he captures the shimmering beauty of the summer's day. The mellow horns burnish the subtle delicacy of the orchestration, whose rainbow of pastels beguiles our ears so seductively.

George Duke
Born: January 12, 1946 in San Rafael, California
Died: August 5, 2013 in Los Angeles, California
Composed: 2011
World Premiere: September 24, 2011 in Los Angeles, California
Duration: 22 minutes
Instrumentation: woodwinds in pairs, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle bass drum, cymbals, guïro, shekere, claves, glockenspiel, marimba, 2 bongos, horn, jazz trio [piano, bass, drum set], harp, and strings

The late George Duke had a multi-faceted career as performer, composer, singer-songwriter, and producer. He started piano lessons at age 7, subsequently learning trombone as well. He studied trombone and composition at San Francisco Conservatory, with a minor in contrabass, earning both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. Duke soon became active in jazz and fusion circles, working with Cannonball Adderley, French jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, and stylistic polymath Frank Zappa.

Duke met Christian McBride in the early 1990s, and by 2002, McBride had joined the George Duke Band. Their relationship evolved into a close friendship, one of whose legacies is Dark Wood. The concerto comprises two movements that require the soloist to switch among upright bass, electric bass, and fretless electric bass. Both movements provide extensive opportunities for improvisation, over either minimal orchestra or repeated vamps. The score also allows for some improvised jazz piano solos.

Part one is atmospheric and cinematic, and unfolds in sections. Part two begins with a soulful melody that recalls the French ballads Edith Piaf made famous. Duke treats it as a subject for variations, transforming the theme in sequential sections that vary in mood, meter, and tempo. Duke’s synthesis of jazz orchestra with traditional symphony orchestra knits together seamlessly, making for an enthralling listening experience.

Christian McBride
Born: May 31, 1972 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Composed: 2022
World Premiere: June 11, 2022 in Red Bank, New Jersey
Duration: 6 minutes
Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, extensive percussion [suspended cymbal, gong, triangle, wind chimes, orchestral bells, bass drum, snare drum, shaker, castanets, cymbal, temple bells, marimba, xylophone], drum set, harp, piano, solo double bass, and strings

When Christopher Komer was appointed the New Jersey Symphony’s Principal Horn in 2017, he suggested the idea of commissioning a jazz French horn concerto with a twist: four movements, four composers, and the addition of a jazz trio – piano, double bass, and drum set – to the orchestra. Komer selected the composers in collaboration with Xian Zhang and the Symphony’s artistic staff.

Komer asked each composer to find inspiration in the art of the Spanish surrealist master Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). A painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer, Dalí was celebrated both for his personal eccentricity and for the often hallucinatory character of his work. Komer summarizes, “Dalí is simply one of my all-time favorite artists, and I have always been fascinated by the methods of the Surrealists and their manifesto. I knew these four movements would be very different from one another, and wanted a common thread to connect them.” The musical result, Surreal Sketches, was a composite concerto with four diverse approaches to Komer’s challenge.

Komer is unusual among horn players in that he has always been involved in the worlds of both classical music and jazz. “I thought, this concerto would give me a chance to show off what I can do in both arenas,” he says. The incorporation of the jazz trio to the orchestra was directly related. “Since I wanted to improvise, it was important to have a good rhythm section behind me,” he explains. The jazz trio further links Surreal Sketches to the jazz world.

Christian McBride was the only one of the four composers Komer did not previously know. “He has a big band and a jazz trio, he’s won multiple Grammy awards, and I was always a big fan of his playing and his compositions,” he says. “I also knew he was classically trained, and thought perhaps he had not had an opportunity to write for full orchestra. I gave him free rein.” As his point of departure, McBride chose Dalí’s “Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon,” a 1941 canvas and one of many self-portraits he painted. Dalí described the painting as presenting his outer self: this was the glove, not the soul. Komer says that McBride’s Fried Bacon swings. “It’s down-home and blues-y; a bit like going to church down South on Sunday – but also like a party,” he observes.

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Born: April 1, 1873 in Oneg, Novgorod District, Russia
Died: March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California
Composed: 1940
World Premiere: January 3, 1941; Eugene Ormandy led the Philadelphia Orchestra
Duration: 35 minutes
Instrumentation: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, tubular bells, xylophone, tam-tam, glockenspiel, piano, harp and strings

During the summer of 1940, following an exhausting concert season, Sergei Rachmaninoff took refuge on the then-bucolic north shore town of Huntington, Long Island. He hoped to compose some music and regain his failing health. Though he survived until spring 1943, the work he composed that summer proved to be his last complete score. And a magnificent swan song it was. Rachmaninoff was deservedly proud of the new piece, writing excitedly on 21 August to his friend, Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Eugene Ormandy:

Last week I finished a new symphonic piece, which I naturally want to give first to you and your orchestra. It is called 'Fantastic Dances.' I shall now begin the orchestration. Unfortunately my concert tour begins on October 14. I have a great deal of practice to do and I don't know whether I shall be able to finish the orchestration before November.

I should be very glad if, upon your return, you would drop over to our place. I should like to play the piece for you.

Ormandy responded promptly, accepting the composer's invitation for the following week. By then, Rachmaninoff had changed the title to "Symphonic Dances."

While we know that Rachmaninoff flirted with the idea of presenting his new piece as a ballet -- choreographer Mikhail Fokine heard the piano version even before Ormandy did -- it is essentially a symphonic work that celebrates the lush orchestral palette for which Rachmaninoff is celebrated. At the same time, vigorous dance rhythms permeate its fabric in all three movements, providing forward momentum and catching us up in a whirl of mysterious, compelling sound.
 
The string parts to the Symphonic Dances are notoriously difficult, and a major challenge to the finest orchestra. There is a good reason: Rachmaninoff enlisted the assistance of the eminent violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler in editing the string parts, including all the bowings. Whereas the strings do not dominate the sound, their presence is a constant factor throughout the Symphonic Dances.

The first movement is dominated by a descending triad motive from which the balance of the musical material unfolds. Rachmaninoff takes superb advantage of his orchestral resources, continually surprising us with a panoply of percussion, woodwind and brass accents amidst the ongoing sweep of the strings. His unique stroke in this movement is the luscious solo awarded to alto saxophone in the more leisurely middle section. Precedent for using saxophone as a significant orchestral soloist lay in Bizet's L'Arlésienne Suites, Ravel's Boléro and his orchestration of Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Rachmaninoff's countryman Alexander Glazunov composed both a solo concerto for saxophone and a saxophone quartet. Still, the timbre is unusual: peculiarly close to the human voice, and vividly set with clarinet and oboe sharing a light accompaniment.

The central waltz opens with muted trumpets in an eerie reminder of the composer's Russian roots. Pizzicato strings establish the ghostly waltz rhythm; a free violin solo lends a folksy, half-gypsy facet to the music. Rachmaninoff focuses on individual instrumental colors, whose chromatic lines often seem like veiled threats undulating beneath the smooth exterior of the waltz. The brasses of the opening measures return periodically, as if to herald the sinister spirits that seem to underlie this disquieting dance. Metric vacillation from 6/8 and 3/8 to 9/8 and back again add to the haunting character.

Much has been made of Rachmaninoff's recurrent use of the medieval Dies irae chant in his music. The best known example is the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, but there are several other occurrences among the composer's works. Its presence in the finale to the Symphonic Dances has been called Rachmaninoff's last and definitive statement. An English horn solo also makes use of Russian Orthodox chant. The two ideas bind together with the composer's original material to build to a dynamic close.

The magnificence of Rachmaninoff's achievement in this thrilling work is the melding of balletic impulse and symphonic grandeur. Vastly more sophisticated than the heart-on-sleeve romanticism of the early piano concerti, the Symphonic Dances are a superb example of his mature orchestral style.

Recognized as one of classical music’s most compelling and imaginative conductors, Eric Jacobsen is celebrated for bringing fresh perspective to the orchestral repertoire while championing new music and partnerships across genres. Hailed by the New York Times as “an interpretive dynamo,” Jacobsen has earned an international reputation as both a conductor and cellist whose curiosity, warmth, and collaborative spirit create meaningful connections with audiences.

Jacobsen is Music Director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, where he continues to shape the orchestra’s artistic vision through adventurous programming, innovative partnerships, and dynamic performances. He also serves as Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, leading the ensemble in ambitious artistic initiatives and expanded community engagement since 2015.

As Artistic Director and co-founder of The Knights, the adventurous New York-based chamber orchestra created with his brother, violinist Colin Jacobsen, Eric continues to redefine the orchestral concert experience. What began as informal music-reading sessions among friends has grown into one of today’s most distinctive ensembles, celebrated for its fearless programming and genre-crossing performances. Under Jacobsen’s leadership, The Knights have built an acclaimed discography featuring longtime collaborators including Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Aaron Diehl, Gabe Kahane, and Anna Clyne, while continuing major artistic projects and residencies that expand the possibilities of the orchestral experience.

A lifelong collaborator, Jacobsen’s musical journey began as a young cellist in a deeply musical family. Together with his brother Colin, he co-founded the acclaimed string quartet Brooklyn Rider and toured internationally as a member of Silkroad alongside Yo-Yo Ma. These experiences continue to shape his belief that music is rooted in curiosity, conversation, and shared human connection.

In demand as a guest conductor, this season Jacobsen makes his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Nashville Symphony, returns to the New Jersey Symphony and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and continues ongoing relationships with the Chicago Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. He has also appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Grant Park Music Festival.

Whether leading a symphony orchestra, chamber ensemble, or multidisciplinary collaboration, Jacobsen brings storytelling, joy, and a spirit of discovery to every performance. His engaging approach invites audiences of all backgrounds into what he describes as “musical conversations,” making orchestral music feel immediate, welcoming, and deeply human. Jacobsen is married to GRAMMY Award-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, and together they have a daughter.

“Walking in Rhythm,” the ’70s soul-disco classic from Donald Byrd’s The Blackbyrds, was one of the first songs Christian McBride heard as a child on the Philly radio dial, a sound space and central hub of black culture. It was an enthralling tune for the young McBride, who had yet to realize his own musical calling. It’s a most poetic foreshadowing. Like Byrd, a forward-thinking visionary, McBride’s artistic wingspan is boundless. His fluidity and capacity to encompass all dimensions of his musical predilections with authenticity and ingenuity are rare achievements.

Since then, Christian McBride has blazed an extraordinary trail as one of the most preeminent musicians of his time. Over the last three decades, the 11x GRAMMY winner has made momentous advances as a dynamic musician and recording artist, a prolific composer-arranger-producer, a distinguished curator of culture, and a dedicated educator and mentor. A prolific bandleader, McBride’s ensembles are each distinctive extensions of his tremendous threshold of creative inspiration, which span and synthesize straight-ahead, experimental, free-leaning jazz, funk, soul, Latin, hip hop and rhythm and blues. His celebrated groups — Inside Straight, The Christian McBride Big Band, Ursa Major, Christian McBride’s New Jawn, The Christian McBride Trio, and A Christian McBride Situation — have not only enjoyed consistent critical acclaim, but they have also emphasized his role as an early presenter of rising stars, like saxophonist Nicole Glover, pianist Christian Sands, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, and drummer Ulysses Owens Jr.

McBride’s staggeringly diverse career also includes the role of host of NPR’s public radio program Jazz Night in America as well as The Lowdown: Conversations with Christian on SiriusXM. McBride also holds artistic director titles at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, the TD James Moody Jazz Festival, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), and JAZZ HOUSE KiDS. In 2026, he will launch the first ever McBride’s World at Sea cruise, with all of his various bands and loads of special guests onboard.

Several of those paths converge on his forthcoming album, Without Further Ado, Vol. 1. For the first time in its recorded history, the 17-piece Christian McBride Big Band turns the spotlight over to a host of special guest vocalists, and McBride has assembled a jaw-dropping array of talent for the occasion, calling in collaborators from the worlds of jazz, rock, R&B and soul: Sting, Andy Summers, Samara Joy, Dianne Reeves, José James, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Jeffrey Osborne, and Antoinette Henry.

McBride is an entire artist whose colossal sound, strikingly vast body of work, and huge strides within the realm of artistic directorship are denotative of a self-identified perpetual student, whose love of learning feeds his passion, and whose passion has led a generation of musicians — within jazz and beyond. Singular in his torch-bearing role, he takes none of it for granted.

“My career is no longer for the benefit of just me.”

From the beginning, McBride was primed for the multidimensional success — and responsibility — he has acquired, with mentorship and a deep sense of community serving as the central pillars of his professional path. The principal preceptors in his life established well-laid groundwork as it relates to what it means to be a part of genuine musical comradeship, the seeking and implementation of wisdom, and what it looks like to pay it all forward.

For McBride, his point of departure is the musical indoctrination of Philly Soul. His mother, an impassioned audiophile and educator; his father, a talented bassist who most notably played with Cuban percussion legend Mongo Santamaria; his uncle, a prominent radio promotions insider; and his great uncle, also a bassist — each played profound roles in the development of McBride’s insatiable eagerness in his own musical aspirations. The sounds of producers Gamble & Huff and Thom Bell, as well as the catalogues from the Stax, Motown, and Atlantic labels, enveloped his psyche at a time when Black music and culture were steadily becoming mainstream, global influences. Black radio and television were increasingly significant, Soul Train was a nationally syndicated hit, and its theme “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),” by Philadelphia International Records house band MFSB, served as a major example of the city’s creative and cultural gravity.

McBride experienced a childhood acutely reflective of these events and phenomena, spending significant time in the back stages of live concert venues with his soul-steeped family. Through the cultural tutelage of his uncle, McBride would find himself having up-close and personal experiences with a panorama of musicians, from The Isley Brothers to Dizzy Gillespie, before he reached middle school. His discovery of his idol, James Brown, at ten years old — the year he received his first bass — served to further tighten the bond between nephew and uncle, and would prove to have had a fated undercurrent in the years that would follow.

After attending The Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), an arts magnet school in South Philadelphia whose alumni also includes Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots, Joey DeFrancesco, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, McBride moved to New York City in 1989. The turn of the decade would usher in a class of up-and-coming talents who, over the course of the 1990s, would prove to be essential to the decade’s hallmarks and an extension of one of the most vibrant eras in jazz since the 1960s. From the time McBride entered the halls of The Juilliard School, he was already on the radar of musicians like future mentor Wynton Marsalis, as well as Terence Blanchard, Joe Henderson, and Hank Jones.

Another musician who had his ears set on McBride was alto saxophonist and former Jazz Messenger Bobby Watson, who welcomed McBride to New York City by offering what would be his debut gig. By 1990, McBride was touring regularly with the likes of Watson, Freddie Hubbard, and Benny Golson, as well as fellow rising stars like Roy Hargrove, which allowed for consistently holistic musical adventures. Foremost within a cohort of young musicians who would have a most unique opportunity to work alongside wish list-worthy jazz originators and craftspeople, McBride became a bridge between the music he found inspirational to his development and the vast, burgeoning sounds of his generation.

That same year, McBride would get one of several calls of a lifetime from bass legend Ray Brown, a dynamic and soulful architect of the double bass, principal in the overall evolution of the rhythm section. Their relationship would manifest through both mentorship and collaboration, with Super Bass, a brilliant concept project featuring McBride, Brown, and luminary bassist John Clayton. Between his own recordings for Verve and his special collaborative projects, McBride was arguably poised to become the busiest sideman of his generation, working alongside Milt Jackson, George Duke, J. J. Johnson, Hank Jones, and McCoy Tyner.

Toward the latter part of the decade, after curating a series of master classes at Berklee, McBride accepted the position of Artistic Director at the University of Richmond. By the turn of the 2000s, he was at the creative helm of the jazz programs at Richmond, Jazz Aspen, and The Brubeck Institute. McBride’s artistic acumen and talent for cultivating meaningful programming and performances opened a superabundance of doors, and he continued to widen his capacity to serve an almost unfathomable number of roles.

In the mid 00’s, McBride would make tremendous breakthroughs as a paramount leader in jazz ambassadorship and cultural curation, guiding some of the most premiere programs in the world. In 2004, musician and historian Loren Schoenberg implored McBride to come onboard as co-executive director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. A tremendous venture, and the most significant cultural position he held up to that time, through acts of community-building and partnering and curating, McBride assisted in building Harlem’s first-of-its-kind jazz museum from the ground up, while helping to reconnect one of jazz music’s most vital artistic hubs to its vibrant citizenry.

The following year, he would assist as an advisory board member and artistic director in building out Jazz House Kids, a leading community arts organization based in Montclair, New Jersey founded by his wife, vocalist Melissa Walker. Soon after, McBride would receive yet another trajectory-setting opportunity, this time taking on the role of Creative Chair for Jazz at the LA Philharmonic in 2006, curating twelve concerts per season between the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall. Established as a two-year term position, McBride welcomed the opportunity, and during his first summer as creative chair, presented his musical hero, James Brown.

A native of Kansas, New Jersey Symphony Principal French Horn Chris Komer began his studies at Wichita State University with Nick Smith. He later studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Rick Solis and at the Manhattan School of Music with David Jolly.

A New York City resident, Komer is at home playing all types of music in all types of settings, and he has become one of New York City’s most sought after freelance hornists. From the concert hall (in addition to the New Jersey Symphony, he has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony and Houston Symphony) to the jazz club (he has performed with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Chico O’Farrell Orchestra, Chuck Mangione, Marta Topferova and Gary Morgan’s Panamericana) to the recording studio (he has appeared in recordings for J. J. Johnson, McCoy Tyner, Harry Connick Jr., Natalie Cole, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Audra McDonald, Celine Dion, George Michael, Luther Van Dross, Chaka Kahn, 16 major motion picture soundtracks and hundreds of TV themes and commercials) to Broadway (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Candide, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Music Man, La bohème, South Pacific and West Side Story), his versatility is second to none.

He has appeared with many successful chamber groups including the Burning River Brass, Meridian Arts Ensemblethe Aspen Wind Quintet, Music from Marlboro, Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, Extension Ensemble, Canadian Brass and Hexagon.

His hobbies include drum and bugle corps (he is a former member of the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps in Concord, California), playing jazz piano, motorcycling, hiking and camping. He has founded a performing artists’ retreat in the Rocky Mountains called the Artist’s Refuge at Thunderhead.

In 2009, he released his first solo piano CD, “Travlin’ Music,” featuring all original music; he is working on a second album.