The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra brings its tenth concert season to a close in a celebration of new life, heroism, and women with “Spirals.”  On May 7, the eve of Mother’s Day, the program begins at 7:00 PM at Transfiguration Episcopal Church in San Mateo; on Mother’s Day itself, the concert starts at 4:00 PM at First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto.

Featured on the program are three works by women:  Adrienne Albert’s stirring “Courage” fanfare; the dramatic 1873 “Faust” concert overture by Emilie Mayer, whose music is finally being widely played; and “Spirals” for solo strings and recorded music by the celebrated Icelandic composer Maria Huld Markan. Arvo Pärt’s achingly beautiful “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten” features the strings, and the 1916 First Symphony (the “Classical”) of Sergei Prokofiev shows the astonishing brilliance and maturity of the young Ukrainian composer.

You won’t want to miss “Spirals” as New Millennium celebrates on Mother’s Day weekend!

Saturday, May 7th at 7:00 pm
at Transfiguration Episcopal Church, 3900 Alameda de las Pulgas in San Mateo
Sunday, May 8th at 4:00 pm
at First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, 1140 Cowper St. in Palo Alto.

Music Director James Richard Frieman and The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra start off the Beethoven 250th Anniversary Year with a bang! It’s a special all-Beethoven concert on February 22 and 23.
Featured on the program is the mighty Symphony No. 3, which was published in 1806 as the “Sinfonia Eroica” or Heroic Symphony. This celebrated work, while rooted in the tradition of the Classical-era symphony, really “pushes the envelope” in terms of formal structure, harmonic innovation, psychological reach, and…well, length. It marks a turning point in Beethoven’s style as he explores new expressive possibilities that herald the Romantic period.

This “Beethoven 250” concert will also highlight concertmaster Colyn Fischer, playing the dazzling final Rondo movement from the Violin Concerto in D, the composer’s only concerto for the instrument.

Rounding out the program will be the magnificent Leonore Overture, No. 3, the best-known of the four (4) overtures that Beethoven composed for his only venture into the realm of opera, Fidelio; and the charming Andante in F for wind instruments, which was originally written to be played by an automated instrument, the mechanical organ.

Join us as we celebrate the beginning of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary in inimitable NMCO style at one of our two upcoming performances:

Saturday, February 22nd at 7:00 pm at Transfiguration Episcopal Church, 3900 Alameda de las Pulgas in San Mateo

Sunday, February 23rd at 4:00 pm at First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, 1140 Cowper St. in Palo Alto.

Join Music Director James Richard Frieman and The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra for a concert featuring “Bohemian Rhapsodies” – works inspired by Bohemia, its countryside and folk music along with music created by Bohemian and Czech composers.

We always enjoy the adventure of discovering composers that we haven’t encountered before, and we’re pleased to essay Vítzslava Kaprálová’s 1938 “Suita Rustica,” which draws much of its material from Bohemian folk song.  It’s full of an exuberant life-force and mastery of compositional technique that belies the young age of its composer, who finished this piece scarcely two years before her untimely death at the age of 25.

Mozart‘s “Prague” Symphony was indeed premiered in that city in 1787, probably because Mozart felt more at home with the residents of Prague than with the musical public in Austria or France.  The brilliant Symphony No. 38 in D, full of harmonic innovation and textural richness,  is one of his most popular symphonies.  It comprises only three movements instead of the usual four, but the elegant structural balance between the three movements makes the omission of the usual Minuet seem perfect.

The delightful “Three Dances” from Bedrich Smetana‘s opera “The Bartered Bride” capture perfectly the bursting spirits and country manner of the opera. The Polka, which closes Act I, accompanies the impromptu dancing of a group of villagers. Act II, set in a tavern, depicts the performance of a whirling Furiant. The Dance of the Comedians takes place in Act III when a circus troupe arrives in the village and performs a pantomime.

The Adagietto from Gustav Mahler‘s Fifth Symphony, a short, lyrical composition for strings and harp, is an introduction to the final movement of Mahlers Fifth Symphony.  It is frequently performed as an independent work and is the composer’s best-known piece. Hauntingly beautiful, it was written by Mahler as a love letter to Alma Schindler whom he married in 1902.

Dvorák‘s Symphony No. 6 was premiered by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra on March 25, 1881, in Prague.  Dvorák wrote the symphony in four movements with many similarities to symphonies by Brahms and Beethoven and references to Czech folk tunes. We will perform the second movement, Adagio in Bb major, a loose rondo of variations within sections that ends with pianissimo woodwinds.

We will also feature the Finale of Dvorák‘s Serenade in D-minor, Op. 44, a work composed in two weeks in 1878, which was well-received and praised by Brahms. The Finale begins with a lively polka-like theme that returns at intervals interspersed with new material, followed by the reappearance of the first movement march right before one last polka.

Celebrate Bohemian music of the classical kind with us at one of our two performances:

Saturday, November 2nd at 7:00 pm at Woodside Village Church, 3154 Woodside Road, in Woodside.

Sunday, November 3rd at 4:00 pm at First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, 1140 Cowper St. in Palo Alto.

Join Music Director James Richard Frieman and The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra for a concert featuring pianist Karina Tseng, winner of the 2019 Young Artists Concert Competition. Ms. Tseng will perform the first movement of Camille Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22.

The program also features works composed as an homage to childhood, many originally written as piano works for young musicians.

The Toy Symphony is a cheerful work for chamber orchestra and toys that has been variously attributed to Haydn, Haydn’s brother, Mozart, and Mozart’s father. More recent scholarship suggests the piece was actually the work of Edmund Angerer, an Austrian monk.

Maurice Ravel‘s “Mother Goose Suite” was originally composed for piano four hands for two pianists aged six and seven. The work is based on well-known fairy tales including Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, and Beauty and the Beast. Ravel’s delicate and elegant orchestration has made this piece a concert hall favorite.

Claude Debussy‘s piano suite “Children’s Corner” was dedicated to his three year old daughter, and contains movements evoking childhood subjects such as “Serenade for the Doll” and “The Snow is Dancing.” The six short, charming pieces depict favorite toys and range from hushed lullabyes to popular jazz dance tunes.

Student of Saint-Saëns and teacher of Ravel, Gabriel Fauré also composed a suite for piano four hands in honor of a child, in this case, the daughter of his mistress. Fauré’s music in this suite begins with the very famous lullaby “Berceuse” and concludes with a rollicking Spanish dance.

Celebrate the artistry of young musicians and the creative inspiration of childhood at one of our two upcoming performances:

Saturday, June 1st at 7:00 pm at Transfiguration Episcopal Church, 3900 Alameda de las Pulgas in San Mateo Sunday, June 2nd at 4:00 pm at First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, 1140 Cowper St. in Palo Alto.

Join us as Music Director James Richard Frieman leads The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra in a concert of music inspired by the English countryside.

The concert will feature concertmaster Colyn Fischer in Ralph Vaughan Williams‘ celebrated tone poem “The Lark Ascending“, which evokes the bucolic atmosphere of English countryside as it was in the early 20th century.

Also featured on the concert are Gustav Holst‘s “A Somerset Rhapsody” based on three folk songs from the county of Somerset and “An English Suite” for string orchestra by Sir Hubert Parry, one of England’s most inventive composers and a teacher of both Vaughan Williams and Holst.

Rounding out the program are two works by George Butterworth: the idyllic “On the Banks of Green Willow” and “A Shropshire Lad“, an orchestral epilogue to the composer’s achingly beautiful song cycle on poems of A. E. Housman.

The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of Music Director James Richard Frieman, will perform “A Musical Mystery Tour,” featuring music representing the unknown, the magical, and the mysterious.

The highlight of this autumnal concert is Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36, more popularly known as the “Enigma Variations.” The theme and variations that musically describe many of Elgar’s acquaintances are based on a hidden “dark saying” which has not been definitively identified since the work was first performed in 1899.

This concert will feature other works inspired by magic and spirits, including Edvard Grieg‘s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” Charles Gounod‘s “Funeral March of a Marionette,” and Modest Mussorgsky‘s “A Night on Bald Mountain.”

The concert will also feature New Millennium’s Concertmaster Colyn Fischer in the delightfully spooky “Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint-Saens.

The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of Music Director James Richard Frieman, presents a showcase of musical talent featuring the winner of this year’s Young Artists Concerto Competition, Abigail Leong. Ms. Leong’s musical artistry and technical prowess will be on full display in the first movement of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B Minor.

The program will also include a pair of double concertos featuring orchestra members: Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola and Cimarosa’s Concerto for Two Flutes and Orchestra.

Concertmaster Colyn Fischer and Principal Viola Donny Lobree will perform Mozart’s wonderful work for violin, viola, and chamber orchestra written in 1779 when the composer was in his early twenties.

Domenico Cimarosa’s delightful Concerto for Two Flutes and Orchestra, composed in 1793, will be performed by the New Millennium Orchestra’s flute section, Margaret Warton and Kay Saito Shafi.

Finally, the Kona Woodwind Quintet featuring members of the orchestra’s wind and brass sections will present Northern California composer Michael Kibbe’s Woodwind Quintet #4.

To celebrate the joyous arrival of spring, the New Millennium Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of Music Director James Richard Frieman, will perform works inspired by birds and birdsong.

The program will feature Stravinsky’s fabulous Firebird Suite from 1919 along with works by Delius, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky inspired by birdsong. Also on the program is the first movement of Haydn’s Symphony #83, “The Hen,” and Ottorino Respighi’s delightful Suite “Gli Uccelli” (The Birds).  ElmerBernstein’s moving Suite from “To Kill a Mockingbird” completes the program.

Enjoy a lively evening featuring two of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “middle period” masterpieces with the New Millennium Chamber Orchestra, Music Director James Richard Frieman, and pianist and recording artist Louise Costigan-Kerns.

Leading off the concert is the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, which Beethoven wrote as a showcase for himself: it would turn out to be the last work that he performed in public as soloist. Ms. Costigan-Kerns, a renowned soloist, accompanist, educator and coach, lends her many talents to enliven the maestro’s voice in this strong and delicate concerto.

The second half of the program features the great Symphony No. 7 in A Major. One of Beethoven’s own favorite works, the 7th Symphony’s velocity, lyricism and energy are contagious for both the performer and the listener. The composer once wrote “I write what I feel,” and we invite you to join us and feel the power, passion and indomitable spirit of this great symphony!

Join Music Director James Richard Frieman and the New Millennium Chamber Orchestra as they mark the conclusion of NMCO’s fifth season with “Women Composers: A Celebration.” This mini-festival of music by female writers, both historical and current, spans nearly two centuries of musical history, ranging from the German Romantic tradition to the highly-diverse musical culture of the present day. Three of the works are for solo instruments and orchestra:

• NMCO Concertmaster and fiddle champion Colyn Fischer essays “The Blue Room,” a passionate, electrifying two-movement violin concerto by the young Chicago-born composer Reena Esmail. She writes: “The title was taken from a poem called White Key, by the Poet Laureate of California, Carol Muske. The line reads, ‘…like the light on the bed / In the blue room where I last held you.’ The poem is such a poignant expression of love and loss and has resonated with me for years, since the day I first heard it.”
• Margaret Warton, NMCO principal flautist, plays Cecile Chaminade’s virtuoso showpiece, the “Concertino” for flute and orchestra, one of the best known and most beloved works in the flute repertoire.
• Donny Lobree, NMCO principal violist, is featured in a work by the award-winning Bay Area composer Nancy Bloomer Deussen, “Mulholland Recollections.” This piece has been re-scored by Nancy expressly for Donny and NMCO from a movement of her earlier Clarinet Concerto.

The orchestra will also play two fanfares from the year 2000 by California composers: Adrienne Albert’s inspirational Courage and Jacqueline Hairston’s Trilogy on Spirituals – Fanfare, commissioned by the Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic.

Mark your calendar now for this exciting and adventurous program of music by some outstanding female composers!

1140 Cowper Street, Palo Alto

Join Music Director James Richard Frieman and the New Millennium Chamber Orchestra as they mark the conclusion of NMCO’s fifth season with “Women Composers: A Celebration.” This mini-festival of music by female writers, both historical and current, spans nearly two centuries of musical history, ranging from the German Romantic tradition to the highly-diverse musical culture of the present day. Four of the works are for solo instruments and orchestra:

• • NMCO Concertmaster and fiddle champion Colyn Fischer essays “The Blue Room,” a passionate, electrifying two-movement violin concerto by the young Chicago-born composer Reena Esmail. She writes: “The title was taken from a poem called White Key, by the Poet Laureate of California, Carol Muske. The line reads, ‘…like the light on the bed / In the blue room where I last held you.’ The poem is such a poignant expression of love and loss and has resonated with me for years, since the day I first heard it.”
  • Innovative “OutBach®” pianist Donna Coleman brings her rendering of Clara Wieck Schumann’s only complete work for piano and orchestra, the Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7. This wonderfully imaginative virtuoso masterpiece is all the more astonishing when we consider that Clara completed it when she was just 17 years old!
  • Margaret Warton, NMCO principal flautist, plays Cecile Chaminade’s virtuoso showpiece, the “Concertino” for flute and orchestra, one of the best known and most beloved works in the flute repertoire.
  • Donny Lobree, NMCO principal violist, is featured in a work by the award-winning Bay Area composer Nancy Bloomer Deussen, “Mulholland Recollections.” This piece has been re-scored by Nancy expressly for Donny and NMCO from a movement of her earlier Clarinet Concerto.

The orchestra will also play two fanfares from the year 2000 by California composers: Adrienne Albert’s inspirational Courage and Jacqueline Hairston’s Trilogy on Spirituals – Fanfare, commissioned by the Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic.

Mark your calendar now for this exciting and adventurous program of music by some outstanding female composers!

3900 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo

The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra conducted by James Richard Frieman presents “Winter into Spring”, featuring fiddle champion and NMCO concertmaster Colyn Fischer.

This concert, part of our 2016-2017 season, celebrates the changing of the seasons, featuring works depicting the beauty, cold, and wild storms of winter followed by the joyous awakening of spring.

Violinist Colyn Fischer will lead the orchestra in Vivaldi’s “Winter” and “Spring” concertos from “The Four Seasons. The program also includes Ernest Bloch’s rarely-heard “Hiver (Winter)” and “Printemps (Spring)” and music by Prokofiev, and Delius, bringing to life the sounds of the seasons by highlighting different orchestral musical palettes and traditions. The concert will conclude with Schumann’s “Spring” symphony, the rousing and joyful Symphony No. 1.

3900 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo

1140 Cowper Street, Palo Alto

Join The New Millennium Chamber Orchestra; its dynamic Music Director, James Richard Frieman; and internationally acclaimed pianist Donna Coleman as we play J.S. Bach’s Concerto in D Minor and Brahms’s Second Symphony. Dr. Coleman will also play the “The Alcotts” movement from Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata.

Award-winning Philadelphia-born pianist Donna Coleman has spent the last twenty-two years in Australia where she created the OutBach® project that explores relationships between Indigenous, art, and popular music and makes performances in unexpected locations and combinations, including the world-first piano and didgeridoo duo collaborations and performances of concerti by J.S. Bach with guitars and didgeridoo instead of the traditional string orchestra.

Coleman’s performance research on American music produced world acclaimed recordings of works by Charles Ives (Et’Cetera Records Amsterdam), by composers associated with the Ragtime tradition (ABC Classics Sydney), and her own label OutBach® Music released Don’t Touch Me, the Danzas Cubanas by Ignacio Cervantes (2010) and The Lost Lady (2015). Her recording of Ives’s “Concord” Sonata received France’s Diapason d’Or and Editor’s Choice, and Christian Tarting’s review for Diapason magazine claims, “this Second Pianoforte Sonata . . . finds here its most convincing recorded version, due to its assertion, the assurance in its manner of effectively carrying out each detail, its analytical finesse.” James North writing for Fanfare found “Donna Coleman’s performance of Ives’s First Sonata is grand and sweeping, strong and confident, filled with charm and overflowing with joy. It immediately becomes my preferred version.”

178 Clinton St. at Brewster Ave., Redwood City

1100 Elder Ave., Menlo Park

Fiddle champion Colyn Fischer play’s Mark O’Connor’s phenomenal crossover hit “The Fiddle Concerto” for violin and orchestra. This work has received more performances than any violin concerto written in the last 50 years. Drawing on classical influences and fiddling traditions from the U.S. and abroad, this hallmark piece has thrilled audiences all over the world since its premiere in 1992.

Also on the program is NMCO conductor James Richard Frieman’s “When September Ends: Concert Variations on a Theme of Billy Joe Armstrong,” the celebrated songwriter, guitarist, singer and driving force behind the Bay Area’s legendary band Green Day for more than twenty years. In addition to this exciting premiere, jazz artist Don Penderplays his haunting ballad “Something to Live For” in an arrangement for strings, harp and baritone sax. The concert is rounded out by Frieman’s tribute to Prince, truly one of the great musical geniuses of our time.

199 Churchill Ave., Woodside

1305 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto

The featured work for our March concert is Mozart’s celebrated Requiem. We will perform a remarkable completion of this masterpiece by Mozart scholar and musicologist Robert D. Levin. This edition premiered in 1991 and contains new musical material, including an Amen fugue (based on Mozart’s own sketches) at the end of the Lacrymosa, as well as new realizations of the Osanna fugues in the Sanctus/Benedictus. Levin also made improvements in part-writing and orchestration which lend greater clarity and transparency to the work.

Also on the program are Toward the Unknown Region, a “festival” cantata for chorus and orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams, poetry by Walt Whitman, and Beethoven’s overture to The Creatures of Prometheus.

Our soloists for this concert are a set of highly respected West Coast musicians, all of whom perform extensively in the Bay Area and beyond: Claire Kelm, soprano, Danielle Sampson alto, Elliott Encarnación tenor, and Nikolas Nackley, bass. Performer’s bios are posted to the BCG Blog.

For this collaborative performance, James Richard Frieman, NMCO’s Music Director, will conduct the Mozart Requiem, and Sanford Dole, BCG’s Artistic Director, will conduct the Vaughan Williams and Beethoven.

The world premiere of “Gloria” for mixed chorus and chamber orchestra, composed expressly for NMCO by the Bay Area’s own
award-winning composer, Nancy Bloomer Deussen
Featuring the Masterworks Chorale Serenade, Bryan Baker, Artistic Director
Beethoven Symphony No. 8 F Major, Op. 93.

James Richard Frieman, conductor
• Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with Claire Kelm, soprano
• Barber: Violin Concerto with Colyn Fischer, violin
• Copland: Clarinet Concerto with Rachel Dusenbury, clarinet
• Copland: Dances from Billy the Kid and Variations on a Shaker Melody

Join the New Millennium Chamber Orchestra, led by Music Director James Richard Frieman, for an evening of Andalusian gypsies, Catalonian gardens, birdsong at sunrise and spurned ghostly spirit lovers as we perform music from the pens of the 20th-century Spanish masters.

Our festival of Spanish Masterpieces features acclaimed classical guitarist Paul Psarras performing Joaquin Rodrigo’s celebrated “Concierto de Aranjuez.” Also on the program: Joaquin Turina’s electrifying and rarely-performed “Danzas Fantasticas,” an orchestral suite fromManuel de Falla’s signature ballet “El Amor Brujo” and Isaac Albeniz’ atmospheric “Recuerdos de Viaje (Travel Memories).” Come hear how these composers effortlessly capture the passion, grace and flavor of their native Spain.

In addition, New Millennium is proud to present Martha McGee, the winner of the NMCO Concerto Competition for Young Artists, playing the brilliant finale from Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor.

Join the New Millennium Chamber Orchestra as we remember “The war to end all wars” with music of the composers who fought in and lived through the most devastating conflict the world has ever known. Orchestral music of war, remembrance and peace commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I.

Selections from…
Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”
Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A Pastoral Symphony”
Rudi Stephan’s “Musik für Orchester”
Gerald Finzi’s “Requiem da Camera”
Cecil Coles’ “Behind the Lines”
Charles Ives’ “War Songs”
Maurice Ravel’s complete “Le Tombeau de Couperin”
George Butterworth’s “The Banks of Green Willow”