Battle Creek Symphony
Saturday, October 24, 2009, 7:30 pm
W.K. Kellogg Auditorium
Women of Battle Creek Community Chorus
Battle Creek Girls Chorus
Lakeview High School Chorus
Derek Stults, Robert Burrows, Matthew Decker, percussion
with images from the Hubble Space Telescope

Planet Thunder

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing

Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Peck: The Glory and the Grandeur

Holst: The Planets

Russell Peck's exhuberant and jazzy concerto for three percussionists playing a stage full of instruments is as much fun to watch as it is to hear. Inspired by the mythological gods, Holst wrote The Planets to bring to life the personalities of the ancient heroes for whom they are named. The heart-pounding rhythms and evocative scoring of the Planets is enhanced by the riveting images from the Hubble Space Telescope in a brand-new photochoreography designed by Anne Harrigan.

Advance tickets start at just $7

"Planet Thunder," our first concert of the season, will stretch the power of sound out from our resonant W. K. Kellogg Auditorium all the way to the planet Neptune.

The first work, Russell Peck's "The Glory and the Grandeur" brings alive all kinds of percussive sounds in a blaze of positive energy.
Though Peck had earned a doctorate in musical composition at the University of Michigan and was launched on a successful career in composing for young people's concerts, by 1978 he had dropped out of music altogether to, as he put it, "make ending global starvation my sole priority, which I pursued at the United Nations."

By 1983 he had returned to serious musical composition--partly out of financial necessity, partly to create music with a message for the future of our planet. By the late 1980s, he had composed his most famous work, "The Glory and the Grandeur," a one-movement modern-style concerto for percussion trio and orchestra.

Our second work, "The Planets" by British composer, Gustave Holst, is a seven-movement work about our solar system. Though it was written between 1914 and 1916, it was not performed in its entirety until 1918, shortly before the end of World War I.

Holst first composed the work as a piano duet--except for the section based the planet Neptune, which he composed for solo organ. Holst himself went on to orchestrate the work, showing the definite influence of radical, modern composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.

Though he was a brilliant, educated man, Holst leaned more toward astrology than astronomy and even incorporated elements of horoscopes in the work. Another unexpected aspect is that the planets are arranged in order of their distance from the Earth, rather than their distance from the Sun. Thus the work begins with Mars, not Mercury, and ends with Neptune. (Pluto had not been "discovered" at that
point.)

"Mars, the Bringer of War," is written in quintuple meter and sounds amazingly futuristic. Holst emphasized brass, lower woodwinds and percussion instruments for this movement, and they all come together in a spectacular ending.

The next movement, "Venus, the Bringer of Peace," is as different from "Mars" as possible, for it is slow, sensitive, and features strings and includes beautiful violin and clarinet solos.

"Mercury, the Winged Messenger," forms a contrast to both "Mars" and "Venus," for it is fast and happy music which bounces along, never becoming loud, never remaining tranquil.

"Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity," is the best known of the movements of "The Planets," and was to provide a stirring melody for the poem, "I Vow to Thee, My Country." "Jupiter" is the middle movement in "The Planets" and is, in many ways, the grandest, most memorable section of the entire work.

"Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age," was apparently Holst's favorite movement. Somber and slow, "Saturn," like "Venus," is never self-proclaiming. There is a rhythmic beat throughout which keeps this movement grounded and serious.

"Uranus, the Magician," is more lively than "Saturn," and was actually quoted in "Star Wars," Episode VI: "Return of the Jedi."

And finally, "Neptune, the Mystic," as the concluding movement, is quiet and mysterious, making Neptune more distant and unknown than any other planet. Halfway through this movement a women's chorus sings faintly from off stage and, at the end, fades into silence as we, the audience reach the end of the solar system and move on into nothingness.

Linda Jo Scott, program annotator

Click here for a sneak peek at some of the NASA images that will be projected during the concert.

Click here to view a fascinating commentary on The Planets by Berlin Philharmonic Music Director Simon Rattle.

Video of part of The Glory and the Grandeur. This version is for wind ensemble, we will have the full orchestra playing with the percussion.

Derek Stults

Derek Stults is Principal Percussion with the Battle Creek (MI) Symphony and holds positions with The Evansville (IN) Philharmonic, Southwest Michigan Symphony, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.  He has also played with the Elgin Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, the National Repertory Orchestra, and this summer was a recipient of a percussion fellowship to attend the Tanglewood Music Center.  He has attended the Pacific Music Festival (Sapporo, Japan) and the Aspen Music Festival and School, and is a finalist and substitute with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, FL.  Earlier this year, Mr. Stults performed Michael Colgrass’ Pulitzer Prize winning quadruple percussion concerto, "Deja Vu," alongside Vadim Karpinos, Ed Harrison, and Robert Burrows.   

Mr. Stults has worked under internationally acclaimed conductors such as Valery Gergiev, James Levine, Mark Elder, David Zinman, and Kurt Masur. He earned a Bachelor of Music from the Hartt School, where he studied with Benjamin Toth, a Master of Music from DePaul University, where he was a student of Ted Atkatz and Eric Millstein, and a Professional Studies Diploma from Chicago College of Performing Arts, as a student of Vadim Karpinos and Ed Harrison.

Mr. Stults is currently on faculty at the DePaul University Community Music Division, the New Music School of Chicago, and works in Chicago Public Schools through MusiCorps, the music education and advocacy program of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. 

Matt Decker

Matt Decker is currently pursuing his Bachelors Degree at The Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, where he studies with Vadim Karpinos of the Chicago Symphony.   He is a substitute percussionist with the Battle Creek Symphony and the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic, as well as an Associate member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.  During the summers, Matt has attended the Round Top Festival-Institute in Texas studying with Tony Edwards and the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina studying with Eric Schweikert.  He has also studied with Ed Harrison of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, as well as Braham Dembar and Paul Berns of the Indianapolis Symphony.