For years, El Paso, Texas-based cellist Zuill Bailey was a regular on the Green Valley concert series and with Tucson’s St. Andrew’s Bach Society.
This weekend, he makes his debut with the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra.
“We are very excited,” SASO Music Director Linus Lerner said. “He’s is a really great player. I heard some of his CDs; he’s very musical. I am very excited to have him playing with us.”
Bailey, in his first Tucson area performance since he played Bach in St. Andrew’s Bach Society’s 2018 summer series, will perform Dvorák’s Cello Concerto in B minor on a program that also includes Dvorák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor.
The concert opens with Tucson composer Daniel Asia’s “Gateways,” a piece Asia wrote on commission from the Cincinnati Symphony in 1995 to mark the orchestra’s centennial.
Asia said the orchestra was looking for a fanfare to follow Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which the orchestra commissioned in 1942 as part of a fanfare commissioning project to commemorate the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Copland’s enduring work was the final one premiered by the orchestra in 1943.
Asia, who this spring is winding down his 30-plus-year teaching career at the University of Arizona School of Music, added a little oomph and zing to the definition of a fanfare.
“It has some funky stuff,” he said, describing “funky” as bluesy baritone nods, with percussion and brass and some big band flare “because I always liked big band.” There’s also some sweet stuff, he added.
“I packed a lot into a 5½-minute piece,” he said.
The work ends with a “zinger” inspired by Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” that Asia joked he “changed the notes to protect the innocent.”
“It’s a very interesting short piece,” Lerner said. “It’s very rhythmic. It reminds me a little bit of Stravinsky.”
Lerner anchored the concert, “Asia & Dvorák,” with the 19th century Czech composer’s Seventh Symphony, which is often overshadowed by Dvorák’s No. 9 “From the New World.” Musicologists, though, say the Seventh is Dvorák’s finest symphony.
“It’s a fantastic symphony,” Lerner said. “It reminds me a lot of Brahms in complexity and harmonies. And it is very uplifting.”
SASO will perform the concert twice this weekend: at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 16, at SaddleBrooke’s DesertView Performing Arts Center, 39900 S. Clubhouse Drive; and at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 17, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 7575 N. Paseo Del Norte on Tucson’s northwest side. Tickets are $35 for SaddleBrooke through dvpac.net and $25 for Tucson through sasomusic.org.
In April, Tucson Symphony Orchestra is performing Asia’s “At the Far Edge” on a program anchored by Holst’s “Planets.”
