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Music

Second candidate to lead symphony

Heuser is joined by violin soloist Fain
San Juan Symphony music director candidate Thomas Heuser holds music degrees from Vassar College, Indiana University and the Cincinnati Conservatory.

The second candidate for music director of the San Juan Symphony is a lucky guy. Thomas Heuser will conduct a musically-rich and comfortably-familiar program Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, first in Durango and then in Farmington. Heuser lives in San Francisco and holds music degrees from Vassar College, Indiana University and the Cincinnati Conservatory.

Heuser will be joined by Tim Fain, a young violinist who packs his Juilliard degree with a long list of international appearances with name orchestras and a 1717 Gobetti violin. Fain also has an interesting film score credit – soloist for “Black Swan,” the 2010 movie in which Natalie Portman won an Oscar.

Opening with Ravel’s lush “Alborada del Gracioso,” roughly translated as a morning song of a jester, the orchestra will unfold a work the composer originally conceived in 1905. It started out as a piano suite, and 15 years later, Ravel reinterpreted the Alborada for orchestra.

A few years later, 1922, Ravel did something similar when he orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky’s piano work, “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The big, 10-section piece follows Mussorgsky’s design, reflecting on an exhibition of paintings and drawings by a friend in 1874. The artist, Victor Hartmann, has been long forgotten except for Mussorgsky’s piano suite and Ravel’s memorable orchestration.

In the middle, Heuser will lead the San Juan Symphony in Dvoràk’s Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 53, with soloist Fain. The Boston Globe describes Fain as the “charismatic young violinist with a matinee idol profile, strong musical instincts and first rate chops.”



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