AMES, Iowa – Guest conductor Alison Gaines will bring the best of Russian masterpieces to Ames City Auditorium for the inaugural concert of the Central Iowa Symphony’s 18th season at 7 p.m. Sunday,
October 17 in Ames City Auditorium, 515 Clark Avenue.

The concert program, The Music of Russia, is Gaines’ audition for the permanent position of conductor and music director for the community orchestra. Gaines is music director for the Rockford (Illinois) Symphony Youth Orchestras and is completing her doctoral work in orchestral conducting at the University of Kansas. She is one of two candidates participating in a year-long selection process that will determine who will become Central Iowa Symphony’s sixth director since the orchestra was created in 1987.

“There is such a large repertoire of great orchestral music that has come out of Russia since the late 1800s that I wanted to feature some of the best of their contributions with the CIS audience,” Gaines said.
The program will feature three compositions:

• Overture to the Opera Russlan and Ludmilla by Mikael Ivanovitch Glinka, often called “the father of Russian music,”
• Symphony No. 5 by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, which showcases a bold Romantic style, and
• Piano Concerto No. 2 by Dimitri Shostakovitch, a modernist 20th century piece written as a birthday present for the composer’s son and included in Disney’s recent film, “Fantasia 2000.”

Joining Gaines to perform the concerto will be pianist Michael Linville. As a pianist, he has performed with groups across the United States such as the San Francisco Symphony, the Florida Orchestra and the Honolulu Symphony and his recorded repertoire includes chamber, orchestral and solo music. Linville is director of admissions for the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida, where he also conducts the symphony’s “South Beat” percussion ensemble and various chamber performances.

“Michael Linville is a man of many talents and I think our CIS audience will be pleased,” Gaines said, adding that he studied composition and harp at Peperdine University in California and majored in percussion at the University of Southern California.

According to Gaines, the October 17 program traces a clear change in philosophy in Russian music. She said that Russian composers wanted to break away from just imitating the western style of composition and find their own unique style. Glinka’s overture includes the use of Russian folktales and melodies, while Shostakovitch worked for artistic freedom under the Stalinist regime to become one of the greatest symphonists and string quarter composers of the 20th century. The Tchaikovsky symphony shows the transition between these earlier and later styles.

Gaines has some familiarity with Ames audiences. Last year, she was interim director of orchestra at Iowa State University. Previously, she was music director for the Philharmonic Orchestra of Kansas City and
also was music director for the Atchison/Benedictine Community Orchestra in Kansas. Before she began her conducting career six years ago, she was a full-time professional bassist. Gaines will present Concert Conversations, an informal discussion about the evening program, at 6:15 p.m. in the Council Chambers. Tickets are $12 for adults, $11 for seniors (ages 65 and older) and $5 for students, and may be purchased in advance at Big Table Books and Rieman Music in Ames, or at the door. To place credit card orders, call Ames City Auditorium offices at (515) 239-5360. Season ticket order forms are available on the Central Iowa Symphony web site at: www.cisymphony.org.

Central Iowa Symphony is a 70-member community orchestra comprised of professional musicians, music educators, exceptional student performers and accomplished amateurs from Ames and central Iowa. The October 17 performance is funded, in part, by a mini-grant from the Ames Commission on the Arts.

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