Two Premieres for Douglas Lowry

   It’s a big weekend for University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music dean Douglas Lowry.
   Two world premieres isn’t bad, and that’s how many Lowry works will get their first hearing as the fall concert season unfolds.
   At 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Music Hall, the Cincinnati Symphony led by music director Paavo Järvi will open their 2003-04 season with Lowry’s "Exordium Nobile" ("Grand Opening").
   The Starling Chamber Orchestra will premiere Lowry’s "The Meadow Ground" at 7 p.m. Sunday in CCM’s Corbett Auditorium.
   Lowry can thank Flora for the CSO commission.
   Having heard that Lowry was a composer, Järvi approached him last fall about writing a work to kick off the new season. Lowry sent him some scores and a CD. What caught Järvi’s ear was "Fanfare for Flora," a work Lowry wrote in 1999 in honor of the benefactress of the Flora L. Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California.
   Järvi wanted the music to be "celebratory," at least the opening part, said Lowry. "’After that, you can do anything you want,’ he said."
   Not satisfied with "anything you want," Lowry pressed Järvi to help evolve a concept for the work.
   "It’s like someone who’s done a portrait," said Lowry, CCM dean since the fall of 2000. "The challenge was to figure out a way to write something that’s a little more akin to my style but doesn’t sound like it’s off the track. You can’t write something that is regal sounding, then get off on a blitz of atonality. I asked him, What do you like about this ("Fanfare for Flora")? He said, "Well, it’s kind of American sounding.’"
   Lowry decided to picture the changing American psyche.
   "I had no trouble with a kind of dramatic narrative. I thought of the last two or three years and the last 20-25 years, the state of the country when my parents grew up."
   You will hear it in the music, he said. "I have the fanfare (about two and a half minutes), then a very brief transition in which the melody of the fanfare is somewhat fragmented. There is a brief elegy as if to say, 'Things aren’t what they used to be.'"
   After some "very fast music," there’s "a crashing dissonance that you can interpret as you will. It has a lot of energy, then it compresses."
   The 12-minute work is scored for large orchestra with lots of percussion. "The mallet players will have a lot to do," he said.
   Formerly associate dean of USC’s Thornton School, Lowry somehow finds time to compose (he likes to do it "very early in the morning," beginning about 4:30 a.m. he said). He has written several works for Music from Angel Fire, a summer festival in Taos, New Mexico, and for the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, including incidental music for Joseph McDonough’s "One," to be given its world premiere this fall.
   Lowry’s growing discography includes "The Blue Mazda," a CD of cabaret songs featuring the Ensemble Freiburg and soprano Maria-Cecilia Bengtsson out this fall on Summit Records.
   Guest artist on the CSO concerts is Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk in Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante. The program will conclude with Shostakovich’s powerful Symphony No. 5
   Lowry’s "The Meadow Ground" is based on an Iroquois legend. The Starling program also features Vivaldi’s "Four Seasons" choreographed by Daniel R. Simmons with members of the Otto M. Budig Academy of Cincinnati Ballet. Starling director Kurt Sassmannshaus conducts.
   Lowry’s "Exordium Nobile" is part of Cincinnati’s Festival of the New, a showcase of new visual and performing arts being held through mid-October in celebration of the opening of the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art.
(first published in The Cincinnati Post Sept. 11, 2003)