In this time of social distancing, we can still “meet” new people and get to know others better!  With that idea in mind, we are beginning a series of emails to introduce you in various ways to RSO musicians. 

Take a look at Kathleen Theisen!

Kathleen is the RSO’s keyboard player (piano, celeste, organ & harpsicord) and has been playing with the RSO for eight years. View videos of her her work below:

Meet Jorge Avila! Jorge has been the RSO concertmaster since 2009.

Access a variety of virtual fitness classes for free through the link here!

Good news! You can still get your daily dose of JOY by taking a class live or on-demand. Let’s keep JoyRiding together!

Click here for available classes.
Use code JoyRide79 to join as our special guest!

Check out live footage of the San Diego Zoo’s favorite animals from the comfort of your own home!

Click to view the live cameras here.

Recess Playworks is offering “Curbside Pickup Kids Activity Kits”. These kits include art projects and other activities to keep your children entertained. No need to leave your car, we will run the kit out to you! We are also offering free online art instructional videos. For the latest offerings, visit Instagram. Or order kits online!

Contact: 203-244-5928

During this time of extreme health concerns, resulting in restricted gatherings and cancelled performances, the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra invites you to enjoy a series of select past performances as we look forward to bringing you more great live music in the not too distant future!
 
And what better piece to start our series than Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1!  This recording is from the RSO’s October 2018 concert at the Anne S. Richardson Auditorium at Ridgefield High School, under the direction of Maestro Yuga Cohler. Click the button below to listen to the piece and see the program notes for insight into Beethoven’s wonderful First Symphony.  Enjoy the RSO!

LISTEN NOW!

PROGRAM NOTES
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) – Symphony No. 1, in C Major, Op. 21Adagio molto – Allegro con brio
Andante cantabile con moto
Menuetto: Allegro molto e vivace – Trio
Finale: Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace

With his First Symphony, Beethoven staked his claim as a rightful heir to the Classical symphonic tradition. After its premiere, at a typically gargantuan benefit concert in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 2 April 1800, the critic of the influential Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung wrote of the work’s ‘considerable art, novelty and wealth of ideas’, adding that its only flaw was ‘the excessive use of wind instruments, so that there was more Harmonie [wind-band] than orchestral music as a whole’. He also complained of the poor quality of performance, especially in the slow movement, where rhythm and ensemble became sloppy. Unconfirmed reports suggest that other listeners were fazed by the off-key opening. But, unlike some of Beethoven’s radical early piano sonatas, the First Symphony, in the ceremonial, trumpet-and-drum key of C major, contained little to alarm an audience who by 1800 had absorbed the challenges of Haydn’s and Mozart’s late symphonies.

The young Beethoven had produced a stream of brilliant compositions for the piano during the 1790s. But he was understandably far more circumspect when it came to the string quartet and the symphony, the two most elevated Classical genres, and the ones in which Haydn, still at the height of his powers, especially excelled. Beethoven began to sketch a symphony in C major in 1795–6, then abandoned it when he struck an impasse with the finale. Some time in the autumn of 1799, while he was grappling with the Op. 18 String Quartets, he re-used part of the jettisoned first movement as the finale of a new symphony, and composed the other three movements from scratch. 

The First Symphony’s notoriously oblique beginning, with wind and pizzicato strings – a novel and striking colouring – proposing first F major, then G major (not the expected ‘home’ key of C major), has in fact even more daring precedents in the music of C. P. E. Bach. But Beethoven sustains the air of expectancy by continually avoiding the chord of C major in its strongest (‘root’) position; and there is an exhilarating sense of release when the introduction propels itself without a pause into the crisp, martial theme of the Allegro con brio. This speaks the language of the Classical comedy of manners as perfected by Haydn and Mozart, albeit slightly roughened by the young composer’s trademark trenchancy and the urgency of his musical argument. It is also more densely scored than anything in Haydn’s and Mozart’s symphonies, with the winds and strings often used in antiphonal blocks. Throughout the movement Beethoven makes inspired play with the three elements of the main theme: a descending scale flourish, peremptory dotted figures and an upwardly striding arpeggio. Boisterous conviviality is briefly threatened when the second theme – a graceful dialogue between flute and oboe underpinned by the first theme’s rising arpeggio – darkens mysteriously into the minor key in cellos and basses against a plangent oboe descant. The triumphant fortissimo recapitulation of the main theme is a characteristic Beethoven ploy, as is the flamboyant coda that resolves the movement’s harmonic tensions by distilling the main theme into its most elemental form.

For his first symphonic slow movement, Beethoven eschews the ruminative depths he had plumbed in the adagios of several early sonatas and chamber works and writes a graceful, pawky F major Andante cantabile con moto that initially pretends to be a fugue. (The musicologist Donald Francis Tovey and others have pointed out the music’s kinship with the playful, fugally inclined Andante of Beethoven’s contemporary C minor String Quartet, Op. 18 No. 4.) At the start of the recapitulation Beethoven delightfully enriches the fugal weave with a skittish new counter-melody. The solemn pianissimo drum rhythms that underpin the closing theme become more assertive in the development, which slews round into the rich and remote-sounding key of D flat major.

Although Beethoven dubbed the third movement ‘Menuetto’ – either from convention, or with his tongue in his cheek – what he wrote was a scherzo of coursing energy and explosive dynamic contrasts, a natural consequence of Haydn’s rude shake-up of the traditional minuet in his ‘Surprise’ Symphony and the first and last of his Op. 76 String Quartets. In the second half Beethoven wrenches the music into D flat major (shades here of the second movement) before returning to the home key via a hushed, tense sequence of modulations. 

From its tiny, stuttering introduction – the kind of ‘blurt-it-out-then’ joke Haydn liked to reserve for his codas – to the unscheduled last-minute entrance of a march for toy soldiers, the Finale is one of Beethoven’s most teasingly amusing creations. His main agent of comic suspense and subversion is the rising scale which the violins initially have such difficulty completing. In the development this propels the music to the surprise key of B flat for a bout of mock-heroics, before being turned upside down in a jousting match for first and second violins. Then, just as the woodwind are engineering a poised, Mozartian lead back to the recapitulation, the irrepressible agent provocateur scampers in before we realize it, with a gleeful irreverence.
 
Program notes © Richard Wigmore

About the Band

The Prospect Band is a five piece band featuring lead vocalist Thomas D, lead guitarist, and backing vocalist Ryan Carnage , bassist Max Shapiro, organist Rachel Wise and Jeff Bonistalli on the drums.  The Prospect Band plays a wide range of music from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, today’s hits and original music. After the bands success of their first studio album, ‘The Pink Album,’ they set out to record the album ‘Made For Greatness.’ Both albums are now available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming platforms. A third album is now in the works. The Prospect Band is available to play private events, weddings, concerts, and parties at The Prospector Theater or they can travel to you for your event needs! They have a repertoire of over 150 songs but can play other tunes at your request, and can even write custom songs for your musical desires! All proceeds benefit The Prospector Theater and the mission of providing meaningful employment for adults with disabilities. Email events@prospectortheater.org for booking information. 

Watch The Prospector Band:

ACT of Connecticut and The Ridgefield Playhouse live-streamed a star-studded performance on Friday, March 20th at 8pm. Celebrity performers included Stephen Schwartz, Debbie Gravitte, ACT’s own Bryan Perri, Laura Woyasz, Matt Farnsworth, Juliet Lambert Pratt, Sam Gravitte, and Daniela Sikora.

The show was performed and streamed live from ACT of CT (without a live audience). Performing “Beautiful City” from GODSPELL was Broadway legend Stephen Schwartz (composer of WICKED, PIPPIN, GODSPELL to name a few). Also performing was Bryan Perri (JAGGED LITTLE PILL), Tony Award Winner Debbie Gravitte, Sam Gravitte (WICKED), Matt Farnsworth (CATS, SUNSET BOULEVARD), Laura Woyasz (WICKED, ACT’s LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), Juliet Lambert Pratt (LES MISERABLES, ACT’s MAMMA MIA), Daniela Sikora (Ridgefield Chorale). ACT’s Artistic Director Daniel C. Levine hosted the show along with Ridgefield Playhouse Executive Director Allison Stockel and ACT’s Executive Director Katie Diamond. Ridgefield’s First Selectman Rudy Marconi made an appearance as well.

Watch live the replay below or visit ACT of Connecticut’s Facebook page!

AND STAY TUNED! There will be more live-streamed events to follow from ACT of Connecticut in the weeks to come.

Take a look at some of the most famous museums in the world, including tours of the British Museum in London, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam without even leaving your couch! Brought to you by TravelandLeisure.com and Google Arts & Culture.

Click here to take a look at all tours available to you from home!

Be delighted by the antics of our sea otters or mellow out to the hypnotic drifting of our jellies. With ten live cams to choose from, you can experience the wonder of the ocean no matter where you are!

Access the live animal cameras here!

The Aldrich will be activating digital platforms with content to bring access to art and artists to you! Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the most up to date content and Museum news and follow the hashtag #MuseumFromHome to view digital content from museums around the world.

READ: My Favorite Artwork | Frank Stella

WATCH: Eva LeWitt: Untitled (Mesh A–J)

WATCH: Frank Stella’s “My Favorite Artwork” in T: The New York Times Style Magazine 

Aldrich at Home Activity: Weather Report artist Kim Keever–inspired Jar Experiment

As we all adjust to our “new normal” of homeschooling and #socialdistancing, we want you to know, we are here for you.

We are excited to launch online class programs at Recess Playworks. Our first program is STEM education: Coding for Kids.

Interested? Contact us at (203) 244-5928 or info@recessplayworks.com.

Though RPAC’s doors are closed, we have online resources available for those wishing to continue their art education! Through our online workshop series, you’ll be able to engage in step-by-step tutorials with our talented artists and instructors.

Photoshop Basics, Parts 1 and 2 are taught by co-owner and Resident Artist, Greg Mursko. Join him as he guides you with live video instruction through the basics of Adobe Photoshop CC every Monday.

Visit https://bit.ly/specialworkshops for more information.

Teaser: https://youtu.be/UalqxF5jkyI