Season Finale-Symphony Orchestra
Our season finale is an event that you definitely don’t want to miss, as we proudly feature the West Coast premiere of Mason Bates’ Resurrexit, an incredibly exciting and deeply moving work that evokes the dusty mystery of the Middle East with exotic modes and sonorities.
CYS is delighted to offer three senior soloist competition winners this year: Principal Flautist Diana McGrory will play the ultra-virtuosic Fantasie Brillante on Themes from Bizet’s Carmen, composed by François Borne in 1880, and SO violinist April Zhang will perform the first movement of Shostakovich’s haunting Violin Concerto no. 1. Esther Luan will complete our trilogy of concertos with the energetic and propulsive first movement of Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto. We close our season with one of the most beloved of orchestral masterpieces, the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. You will be spirited away to the last years of the Habsburg Empire as the orchestra delights you with waltzes and music from what is considered to be Strauss’s greatest operatic triumph, first performed in 1911 to universal acclaim. Don’t miss this exciting and extremely virtuosic final concert!
Leo Eylar, conductor
Diana McGrory, flute
April Zhang, violin
Esther Luan, violin
Bates: Resurrexit
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto no. 1 (April Zhang, violin)
Borne: Fantasie Brillante on Themes from Bizet’s Carmen (Diana McGrory, flute)
Khachaturian: Violin Concerto (Esther Luan, violin)
Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier
Graduating Senior Concerto Competition Winners
Esther Luan, violin, is a senior at Saratoga High School currently studying under Dr. Pasha Sabouri.
Diana McGrory lives in Menlo Park and is a senior at Woodside High School. She began playing flute at age 6 and has studied privately for 12 years, including the past 8 years with Jill Heinke.
April Zhang, 17, started playing violin at age 3 with Xiaoli Chen and currently studies with Pat Burnham. This is her second year in CYS and in the Senior Orchestra.
Graduating Senior Concerto Competition
The CYS Senior Orchestra holds an annual Concerto Competition in December, offering its current graduating seniors an exciting opportunity to showcase their talent on our season finale concerts in May. All three winners will debut in this concert.
