Southern Arizona Symphony hosts Tucson teen, new Gershwin-inspired work

Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra opened its 2023-24 season last weekend with the Arizona premiere of a work its composer wants to see played around the country in the next year.

The concert on Sunday, Oct. 8, at the northwest side’s St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church also included a marimba concerto performed by a Tucson teen.

Pusch Ridge High School senior Campbell Stewart, 17, a winner of SASO’s 2023 Dorothy Vanek Concerto Competition, joined the orchestra for Brazilian composer Ney Rosauro’s Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra. Stewart double-fisted twin mallets to bring out the exuberant Brazilian and jazz motifs and catchy melodies of Rosauro’s richly percussive and technically challenging work.

Stewart is a longtime student of Tucson Symphony Orchestra principal percussionist Trevor Barroero — who also won the SASO concerto competition when he was a teen — and has won a number of local, regional and national competitions, including landing first chair last spring as principal percussionist with the Arizona All-State Orchestra.

Stewart’s performance followed Peter Boyer’s new piece “Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue,” a piece Boyer composed for pianist Jeffrey Biegel. Biegel was supposed to perform it with SASO on Saturday, Oct. 7, and Sunday, but canceled last week due to a family emergency. Los Angeles pianist Bryan Pezzone filled in at the last minute, Boyer told Sunday’s audience.

Boyer said Biegel, who conceived the work, wanted him to compose a piece that would honor Gershwin’s 1924 jazz-influenced “Rhapsody in Blue” and celebrate America’s spirit and optimism.

“Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue” is colored with jazz and blues and bursts of jubilation that SASO Conductor Linus Lerner coaxed from the brass and strings. The infectious melodies ping-pong moments of solace from Stewart’s piano solos and brilliant loudness of the brass.

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Pezzone created beautifully melodic moments of quiet reflection that were interrupted by pulsating percussion and sweeping cinematic strings swallowed by the shuddering thump, thump of a drum beat.

In the audience that loosely filled St. Andrew’s sprawling sanctuary, you found yourself alternating between wanting to tap your toes to wanting to put your hand over your heart and pledge allegiance. But in the end, you couldn’t help but soak in all the beauty of Boyer’s piece and hope that other people around the country also can experience it.

Boyer said 52 orchestras in 48 states have committed to performing “Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue” in the next year, when Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” turns 100.

Lerner bookended the concert with two Gershwin works, the swingy jazz Overture to “Funny Face” and “A Symphonic Picture” from Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess,” arranged by Robert Russell Bennett.

“A Symphonic Picture” featured some of the opera’s biggest songs, including “Summertime,” and as Lerner bopped and hopped while he conducted the piece, you felt like you were experiencing the greatest moments from the opera without actually seeing it.