George Hanson, the Tucson Desert Song Festival’s executive director, offers 10 reasons why Tucsonans shouldn’t miss the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3 “Kaddish.” TSO will perform the work 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 19, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 21, featuring a larger orchestra, a narrator, the TSO Chorus and Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus and a pair of top-flight vocalists.
10. You just can’t miss this historic first-ever performance by TSO of the profound, probing, questioning and ultimately satisfying work by America’s most influential musician.
9. TSO’s “Kaddish” Symphony is the first large ensemble event of the Sixth Annual Tucson Desert Song Festival, celebrating Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday.
8. The composer’s daughter, Jamie Bernstein, will narrate her own reconstructed version of her father’s words that contrasts and balances the text of the Kaddish prayer sung by soprano and chorus. Bernstein also serves as the festival’s Artist in Residence.
7. An hour before each performance, I will join TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez and Jamie Bernstein onstage for the preconcert talks that will shed a little light onto Bernstein the man.
6. The TSO Chorus, under Director Bruce Chamberlain, will sing Bernstein’s intricate choral writing. It’s a choral group that’s up to the task.
5. Renowned soprano Kelley Nassief joins TSO, fresh from her recent award-winning recording of “Kaddish” with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony.
4. Your TSO/”Kaddish” ticket stub grants free admission to a unique symposium with Jamie Bernstein, Dan Asia, Matthew Mugmon, Gil Ribak and myself: “Leonard Bernstein’s Jewish Heritage,” at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 22, at the Tucson JCC, 3800 E. River Road. Seating is limited and registration is required; 299-3000.
3. Beethoven’s stirring Overture to “Fidelio” opens the concert. It’s a work that tells a story of struggle and redemption, a perfect pairing to the “Kaddish.”
2.TSO’s deep relationship with Gustav Mahler continues: Gomez has chosen the Adagio from Symphony No. 10 as an emotional prelude to “Kaddish,” the work described by New Yorker magazine as “the work in which Bernstein came closest to his Mahlerian ideal.” (New York Philharmonic this summer closed its Bernstein festival with the “Kaddish” Symphony.)
And the No. 1 reason: To paraphrase Rabbi Hillel the Elder: “If not you, WHO?”
