OYStrs Youth Ensemble Board

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OYStrs Youth Ensemble

Youth Ensemble Audition Material

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Alan Rawson first pursued his music interests in his junior year in high school as a self-taught folk guitarist, recorder player, and madrigal singer. Classical Violin studies were begun at Cañada Junior College in Redwood City California, since their program did not include Country and Western fiddling. He received his Bachelor of Music and Master of Arts degrees from San Francisco State University and completed his doctorate degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder in violin performance studying with Oswald Lehnert while developing a passionate interest in Rocky Mountain cycling and cross country skiing. He has served on the music faculties of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota and the University of Idaho in Moscow, and is currently on extended  leave from  Minnesota State University Moorhead where he directed the University Orchestra and taught upper strings. He was concertmaster of the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony for twenty years and appeared as a featured orchestral soloist several times performing works by Tchaikowsky, Mozart, Sibelius, and Bruch, among others. Since moving to the Northwest in 2004, Alan has been an active performer and organizer of music projects and workshops for students and adults. He and his wife, Sandy have given numerous recitals on college campuses and community performing arts series across the United States and Canada, specializing in Romantic and early twentieth-century works for violin and piano. The Rawsons now reside in Chimacum, WA where they teach and perform out of their home.

contact Dr. Alan Rawson

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Upcoming events

Mad Dogs and Englishmen 

music of

Percy Grainger, Cyril Scott, and Frederick Delius

Two Firm Concert Dates:

Friday, October 3, 2 pm and  Sunday, October 5, 4 pm

Alan and Sandy Rawson will present an afternoon concert of violin and piano duo music at their Chimacum home in a program that brings together three friends and their eclectic interests for the theme, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, music of Percy Grainger, Cyril Scott, and Frederick Delius. Conservatoire trained outside of England in the late 1800s (Delius in Leipzig, Grainger and Scott of the “Frankfurt School"), the three share inspiration deriving from the literature of England, Norway, Denmark, Germany and France, medieval romance, North American Indians and former plantation slaves, the Florida landscape and the Scandinavian mountainscape.

 

The program will begin with a selection of Grainger arrangements of traditional English and Irish folk songs including Shepherd’s Hey, Molly on the Shore, My Robin is to the Greenwood Gone and others. Scott’s Tallahassee Suite, dedicated to the violinist Efrem Zimbalist, captures the English love of escape in the atmospheres of the southeast United States.

 

Frederick Delius is the subject of the program’s second half. Best known for his impressionistic orchestral works and operatic interludes (A Walk to the Paradise Gardens, Prelude to Irmelin, and several others), his style is one of consuming chromaticism, rich in tonal colors, motivically inspired from his years spent in the Florida orange groves. He was considered by the legendary English conductor and Delius champion, Sir Thomas Beecham as “the last great apostle in our time of romance, emotion and beauty in music.”

 

The Rawsons will perform a transcription of the famous Intermezzo from Fennimore and Gerda, and conclude the program with his first violin sonata completed in 1914, exquisitely written, hypnotic and mesmerizing.

 

An assortment of Sandy’s traditional Afternoon Tea fancies will follow the program.

 

Admission is by advanced paid reservation, $20 per seat. Seating is limited. Please RSVP no later than Monday, September 22 by contacting Alan Rawson, email rawson@waypoint.com or phone 379-3449.  

Checks should made payable to: Dr. Alan Rawson, 10318 Rhody Drive, Chimacum WA 98325

Upon payment receipt, a confirmation email will be sent including directions.

(title inspired from 1932 Noel Coward song, "Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun")

 Recent Concerts:

OYStrs Youth Ensemble Spring Concert

June 20 at Seaport Landing in Port Townsend

and

June 21 at the Rawson home

Pictured from left to right performing at the Rawson home: 

Elizabeth McKinnon, Sydney Sharpe, Kim Walters, Ian Rawson, Christina Walters, and Madeline Levy

Program Copy 

Press release with details about their spring program

Rawson Duo Programs:

Tales of the Vienna Woods

violin and piano works by

 Schubert, Johann Strauss Jr., Fritz Kreisler and more

Friday, May 16, 2 p.m.

and

Sunday, May 18, 4 p.m.  

Program Copy

From Russia with Love

 violin and piano treasures of a bygone era

music by

Mussorgsky, Balakiriev, Rimsky-Korsakov, 

Rachmaninov, Komitas, Kachaturian

and Tchaikovsky

April 11 & 13

Program Copy

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  The French Connection

February 15 & 22, 2008

 Program Copy

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Nordlys

(Northern Lights: Scandinavian Masterworks for violin and piano)

December 21 & 28, 2007

(Listen to a sample of their CD recording of this project)

(Nordlys Program Copy)

CD available for purchase

A celebration of Johann Sebastian Bach

(program copy)