A celebration of the concerto form, this program unusually presents three very different concertos on one program! Through these specific works, composers make broader human connections beyond the concert space.

Gershwin famously folded jazz—exploding in popularity at the time—into the orchestra with the piano at center. Brewbaker took inspiration from 12th-century poet Sufi, asking: Is the violinist playing the violin or the violin playing the violinist? Eliza Brown vividly connected, in one ten-minute soaring work, her mother’s favorite music with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, with the essence of both her own (and her mother’s) musical spirit.

Program

Eliza Brown: A Toy Boat on the Serpentine

UCDSO Competition Winner
To be announced.

Daniel Brewbaker: Playing and Being Played
with Rachel Lee Priday, violin

George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
with Erina Saito, piano

$12 Students and Children, $24 Adults (Reserved Seating)

About the Selections

Eliza Brown: A Toy Boat on the Serpentine (2019)

The Philadelphia Sinfonia Youth Orchestra commissioned A Toy Boat on the Serpentine in honor of my mother, Carol Brown, who served as President of Sinfonia’s board for many years. I knew I wanted to involve her in the process of composing the piece, and asked her to send me a list of musical pieces and moments within them that she finds particularly compelling. I analyzed the music on her list and found several musical ideas her examples had in common. These ideas, along with a few direct quotations culled from pieces on her list, became my guideposts while composing. The title is a quotation from the novel Orlando by Virginia Woolf, whose books my mother and I have discussed at length. It is taken from a moment in which Orlando, the title character, realizes (as a toy boat bobbing on a river sends her into ecstatic reflection) that her ability to notice and find meaning in the small details of daily life legitimizes her as an artist more than any external recognition of her work could. As I worked on this piece, I felt that its waves of motion and emotion matched this scene—which was apt, because finding meaning in the details of daily life is something at which my mother, like Orlando, excels.
      —Eliza Brown

Daniel Brewbaker: Playing and Being Played (2005)

Is the violinist playing the violin or the violin playing the violinist? 

George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

“It was on a train… that I suddenly heard—and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the Rhapsody in Blue, from beginning to end. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America—of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston, I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.”

“The Rhapsody in Blue represented what I had been striving for since my earliest composition. I wanted to show that jazz is an idiom not to be limited to a mere song and chorus.”

      —George Gershwin

About the Soloists

A consistently exciting artist, renowned globally for her spectacular technique, sumptuous sound, deeply probing musicianship, and “irresistible panache” (Chicago Tribune), violinist Rachel Lee Priday has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, among them the Chicago, Houston, National, Pacific, St. Louis and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, Boston Pops Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Germany’s Staatskapelle Berlin. Her distinguished recital appearances have brought her to eminent venues, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Mostly Mozart Festival, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series, Paris’s Musée du Louvre, Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and Switzerland’s Verbier Festival.

Passionately committed to new music and creating enriching community and global connections, Rachel Lee Priday’s wide-ranging repertoire and multidisciplinary collaborations reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives. Her work as soloist with the Asia / America New Music Institute promoted cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, combining premiere performances with educational outreach in the United States, China, and Vietnam. She has premiered and commissioned works by composers including Matthew Aucoin, Christopher Cerrone, Gabriella Smith, Timo Andres, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Cristina Spinei, Melia Watras, and Paul Wiancko. In 2022, she premiered a new Violin Concerto, “Kuyén,” written for her by Miguel Farías, which depicts the Moon in Mapuche mythology, with the UC Davis Symphony at the Mondavi Center.

Recent season highlights have included a duo recital with composer/pianist Timo Andres in Seattle and for the Phillips Collection, exploring the through-lines of American twentieth and twenty-first century violin and piano works, and a third tour of South Africa, where she appeared in recital and performed the José White Lafitte Concerto with the Johannesburg and Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonics. Upcoming and recent concerto engagements include the Portland Symphony, Springfield (MO) Symphony, Pensacola Symphony, Symphony San Jose, South Carolina Philharmonic, and Bangor Symphony.

Since making her orchestral debut at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997, Rachel has performed with numerous orchestras across the United States, including the Colorado Symphony, Alabama, Knoxville, Rockford, Annapolis, and New York Youth Symphonies. In Europe and in Asia, she has appeared at the Moritzburg Festival in Germany and with orchestras in Graz, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where she performed with the KBS Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic and Russian State Symphony Orchestra on tour. She has toured South Africa extensively, and has given recitals in the United Kingdom at the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge.

Rachel Lee Priday began her violin studies at the age of four in Chicago, after she saw the sheep puppet Lamb Chop pretend to play the violin in “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along.” Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York City to study with the iconic pedagogue Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School. Her teachers and mentors include Itzhak Perlman, Catherine Cho, Won-Bin Yim, Robert Mann, and Miriam Fried. She holds a B.A. degree in English from Harvard University and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory. Since 2019, she serves on the faculty of University of Washington School of Music in Seattle as Assistant Professor of Violin.

Rachel Lee Priday has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Strad, Los Angeles Times and Family Circle. Her performances have been broadcast on major media outlets in the United States, Germany, Korea, South Africa and Brazil, including a televised concert in Rio de Janeiro, numerous appearances on Chicago’s WFMT and American Public Media’s “Performance Today.” She has also been featured on BBC Radio 3, the Disney Channel, “Fiddling for the Future” and “American Masters” on PBS, and the Grammy Awards.

She performs on a Giuseppe Guarneri violin (“filius Andreae”).

Erina Saito is an artist who interprets music with sensitive colors and emotions throughout her passionate and captivating performances. A native of Tokyo, Japan, Ms. Saito is an international soloist and collaborative pianist who has performed in Japan, the United States, Italy, and Switzerland. Her performance can be often heard on Capital Public Radio. 

As ​a soloist, Saito performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Sierra College Wind Symphony. She also performed Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Sacramento State Summer Symphony and the Sierra College Wind Symphony, and Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the Sacramento State School of Music Orchestra. Saito performed numerous premiers both as a soloist and collaborative pianist including a collaboration with Citywater, a modern chamber ensemble for Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State School of Music. ​

Saito is currently a faculty member at Sierra College and the artist faculty of the Orfeo International Festival in Italy. In addition, she taught piano classes at Sacramento State School of Music in 2019. She is also a member of the National Music Honor Society, Pi Kappa Lambda and the Music Teachers Association of California. Ms. Saito is regularly invited to adjudicate music competitions and festivals. She received her master’s degree in piano performance at Sacramento State School of Music. Saito mainly studied with Saori Shudo, Kumiko Ishidaira, Kirsten Smith, and Dr. Lorna Peters.

Throughout her childhood in Japan Saito has received numerous compositional prizes including a trip to Finland for her very first composition. Since her arrival to the United States, Saito has won numerous scholarships and awards. For instance, she was the winner of the Sacramento State Concerto Competition in 2012 and received an honorable mention of the UC Davis Concerto Competition in 2013. She was also the first prize-winner of the Student Performance Artist Competition for the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State in 2012 for playing Richard Cionco’s composition Postcards in which “R street” was dedicated to her. In addition, she was the winner of the same Student Performance Artist Competition the previous year 2011, and a Saturday Club Scholarship winner in 2010, as well as the winner of the Student of the Year Award for Sierra College’s Music Department in 2008. Saito has also performed with the Sacramento Philharmonic, the California Youth Symphony, Camellia Symphony Orchestra, and the Sacramento State Symphony Orchestra. As a collaborative pianist, her piano quartet won 1st prize for the A.J. and Susi Watson Student Chamber Music Competition Scholarship. The previous year, her piano trio was announced as the honorable mention of the same competition. ​

She truly enjoys traveling around the world and spending time with her family and friends sharing delicious food and drinks. Her favorite drinks are champagne and sparkling wine. Also, she likes taking a walk with her family on a beautiful day. She also loves singing, especially J-pop from 90’s and early 2000’s.