Monthly Presentations

Join us for a series of presentations by our members —
Free and open to the public!

Held the second Monday of every month except July and August (unless otherwise noted below)
Social Time: ~7:15PM (PDT)
Presentation Time: 7:30-9:00PM

November Presentation: Adrian Dee — Flute Concerto No. 2

ZOOM LINK

Meeting ID: 869 9773 9502

Click button at time of presentation to watch.

Adrian writes: I’ve been second flutist with the Newport Symphony (Newport, OR) for about 26 years and I love it. They are my second family. I also play with the Allegro con Flauto flute quartet and the Rose City Flute Choir in Portland, and am active with flute clubs on the local and national level. I started arranging pieces for flute choir some years ago, and only started composing original works in the past few years. I had the great pleasure of premiering my own first concerto (“Fantasy”) with my home team, the Newport Symphony, in December 2021. My second flute concerto is more academic than the first. I wanted to challenge myself to be more formal with the structure so I wrote a real sonata-form first movement, an A-B-A second movement, and a set of variations for the third movement. The entire piece runs about 22 minutes. It is scored for solo flute, 5-part strings, and harp. The style is basically tonal, metered (with some irregular meters), and melodic. I borrowed ideas from Beethoven, Mozart, and Rachmaninov. Nothing “cutting edge” here, just fun joyful music.

More details! The first movement uses a driving 7/8 rhythm throughout (2-2-2-3) and opens with an exuberance of intervals, with harmonic movement using a motivic major second. The B theme is gentler and more linear. The development explores material from both the A and B themes and wanders into different keys, before returning us to the home key at the recap. Slightly altered intervals greet us at the recap, taking the flute all the way up to the top of the range. There is a short cadenza followed by a coda based on the A theme intervals. In the second movement, I set the mood by using the same interval Mozart used to open the second movement of his clarinet concerto: a rising perfect fourth, sol-do. The rest of the melody is mine, in a gently rocking four, where Mozart’s was in three. After the first statement of the whole melody, the harp then gets to shine for a moment while the flute plays a counter-melody. The B section is a slow melody in the relative minor, followed by an arching bridge back to the main melody, with counter-melody and ornaments in the strings. The third movement takes the B theme from the second movement, perks it up, and gives it a bit of an Irish flair. This becomes the theme for the variations that follow. One variation revisits the 7/8 rhythm from the first movement, thus uniting the three movements into one package. The final variation becomes a cadenza, finishing with the final statement of the ending of the main theme.

2022-2023 Presentations to come:

December 12: Greg Steinke — 20th c. Composers We Need to Remember & Cherish

January 9: Mark Vigil — His New Symphony No. 1

February 13: Adam Eason — His New Piano Album

March 13: Christina Rusnak — TBA

April 10: David Jones — His Orchestra Dissertation: “Nothing So Exquisite”

May 8: Thomas Proctor — His Choral Symphony

June 12: Walter Saul — His Preludes and Fugues: “From Alpha to Omega”

Past Presentations (video now available):

2022-2023 Season video links
October 10, 2022: Liz Nedela — Across Cultures Through Music

September 12, 2022: David Haney — Circadian World Clock

2021-2022 Season
June 13, 2022: Dr. Walter Saul — “Quiltings”