Author: Staff Report

Glens Falls Symphony will present a special performance of Lucinda y Las Flores de la Nochebuena by Evan Mack and Josh McGuire, American composers, librettists, pianists and friends. 

The opera stars of Seagle Festival, in Schroon Lake, NY along with our fully professional symphony musicians will present this coming of age, Christmas opera based on the Mexican folktale of the poinsettia.

Students from Queensbury, Lake George, Warrensburg, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Keene Valley, homeschool associations, and more will be attending this school-day concert at the Warrensburg Middle School/ High School Auditorium on Friday, November 17 with three 48 min performances starting at 9:00am.  

The Glens Falls Symphony takes great pride in the tradition of the children’s concert which shares music made on instruments with hundreds of years of history. Glens Falls is the smallest city in America to support a fully professional symphony, making this opportunity both unique, and important for the rural school districts it will be serving. “With an array of electronic devices and access to the internet, kids have so much at their fingertips” said Senator Betty Little.  “However, there is nothing like the sound of a live symphony.  The Glens Falls Symphony is phenomenal.  These students are in for a very special and memorable treat.”   

Executive Director Jennifer Brink says “Sharing the tremendous range of the orchestra sounds with young people who may never have heard these instruments before is a wondrous thing. We are delighted that after several years of planning, the children in our region can hear the talented musicians of the Glens Falls Symphony in a concert designed just for them. We hope to continue this program with new concerts each year so that the Glens Falls Symphony forms a critical piece of every local child’s cultural education. We feel we have a duty to share this great art with children, and to contribute to building the arts audiences of tomorrow.”

When asked about why he chose Lucinda for this program, Music Director Charles Peltz shares, everyone loves a unique Holiday gift and the Glens Falls Symphony is putting a bow on a special theatrical present for the children of our communities. Our colleague the eminently gifted composer Evan Mack has offered to co-produce with the Glens Falls Symphony his wildly successful children’s opera “Lucinda”.  We love his tuneful tale of old Mexico and the legend of the poinsettia.  The musicians of the orchestra are eager to make music- and magic! –  with Evan and the Seagle Colony as we bring to life this charming musical miniature.

Each character in Lucinda will be represented in brilliant fusion of the opera with a traditional children’s Mexican story regarding the birth of the poinsettia flowers! This could be the first and only opera that many Adirondack Park students experience. This beautiful opera educates children, touches their hearts and illuminates the understanding, and true meaning behind the power of gift giving. One objective of presenting live music by professional musicians in this way is to inspire more young people to take up band and orchestra instruments when the opportunity comes. 

The concert is supported by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. The Charles R. Wood Foundation, and the JM MacDonald Foundation. 

The 2023-24 Glens Falls Symphony 40^th Anniversary concert season is sponsored by Glens Falls National Bank. 

About Glens Falls Symphony 

Since Maestro Charles Peltz’ arrival in 2000, the fully professional Glens Falls Symphony has performed a dynamic repertoire, regularly including musical premieres and world-renowned guest artists while expanding musical offerings to include family concerts, summer pops programs and more. Cited as “one of the great orchestras of our country” by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Joseph Schwantner, the orchestra comprises professional musicians who come from all over the Northeast to perform.

About Seagle Festival 

Seagle Festival is the premiere opera and musical theater producing organization in the Adirondack Region of upstate New York, and the oldest and one of the most distinguished summer vocal training programs in the United States, founded in 1915 by renowned singer and voice teacher Oscar Seagle. Over our 100+ year history, Seagle Festival has transitioned from a successful family-run business to a well-established non-profit organization, run and staffed by leaders in the field of opera and musical theater performances and vocal training, and overseen by a committed and diverse board of directors.

The non-profit corporation Seagle Music Colony, Inc. doing business as Seagle Festival has deep roots in the town of Schroon Lake, New York but serves a much larger community of artists and staff that have participated or worked at Seagle Festival and now live and work across the country and around the world. The mission, vision and values of Seagle Festival include a commitment to the highest quality performances for our devoted audiences and top-notch vocal training for aspiring vocalists of all backgrounds and identities.

About Evan Mack

Believing that opera should be theater grounded in climatic expression that delivers larger-than-life stories and music that harnesses the full athletic thrill of singing, Evan Mack has devoted much of his compositional life to opera and song.  His first major operatic composition, where he served as both composer and librettist, was Angel of the Amazon.  “Angel” premiered in May of 2011 by Encompass New Opera Theatre at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City and was subsequently released on CD worldwide by Albany Records.  Two years later, Fresno State Opera Theater premiered The Secret of Luca. This was the first of several collaborations with librettist Joshua McGuire.  In August 2016, their American grand opera Roscoe premiered at Seagle Music Colony to rave reviews.  Roscoe received its orchestral world premiere with the Albany Symphony starring Metropolitan Opera star Deborah Voigt.  In between the two large scale projects, Mack & McGuire found time to write the first ever opera for Twitter #IsOperaDead – an opera in 5 acts lasting one minute and forty seconds.

Their Christmas opera for children, Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena is quickly becoming a holiday standard with yearly productions by San Francisco Opera, Opera in the Heights and Fresno State Opera, who commissioned the opera.  The one-act opera The Ghosts of Gatsby premiered by Samford Opera in Birmingham, AL in 2019 and won the National Opera Association’s Argento Chamber Opera Competition. Mack & McGuire’s latest, Yeltsin in Texas! premiered in 2020 by TCU and Opera in the Heights. It’s now in development to become a musical comedy!

Evan Mack has proven as deft at song writing as he is in opera.  His song A Little More Perfect is a setting of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s final paragraph of the Marriage Equality Decision by the Supreme Court in 2015.  Premiering at Seagle Music Colony in 2015, it has quickly become a favorite of many baritones including Michael Mayes, Daniel Okulich and Michael Miller to name a few.  The song had its professional premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2016 and the orchestral premiere at the Fort Worth Opera Festival in 2017.  His new cycle If Only Lenny Were Here, which celebrates the life of Leonard Bernstein had its world premiere with the Schenectady Symphony in October of 2018. 

Evan was named “2018 Professional of the Year” by Musical America, was a composing fellow at the John Duffy Composers Institute and a resident artist at Yaddo.  He is currently published with Hal Leonard, Alfred, and Amazon.  Evan is a Teaching Professor at Skidmore College. He lives in Ticonderoga, NY with his wife, Kristin and two sons, Carter and Henry.

About Joshua McGuire 

Joshua has written librettos for The Secret of Luca, (based on the novel by Ignazio Silone) and Roscoe (based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner William Kennedy) with music by Evan Mack. In October 2016, Roscoe received a full performance by the Albany Symphony featuring soprano Deborah Voigt in the lead role of Veronica. His collaboration with Mack also produced Lucinda y Las Flores de la Nochebuena, a children’s opera commissioned by the Fresno State Opera Theatre. Since premiering in 2016, the opera has played for over 25,000 children, including annual performances by the San Francisco Opera Guild. Mack & McGuire’s one-act opera The Ghosts of Gatsby, based on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, won the the National Opera Association’s 2019 Dominick Argento Prize for contemporary opera, with subsequent productions by Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory and Opera Las Vegas, among others. 

Yeltsin in Texas! — a comedy about the fall of the U.S.S.R. commissioned and premiered by Opera in the Heights and Texas Christian University in February 2020 — is currently being expanded and developed into a full-length musical theatre piece with The Blueprint Project. McGuire is currently developing A Nearer Mother with Evan Mack (based on the life of AIDS activist Ruth Coker Burks), as well as a multimedia opera entitled Siddhartha (after the novel by Hermann Hesse) with composer Murray Hidary.

In 2015, McGuire was commissioned to write a libretto for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, and the resulting one-act opera, Alexandra, with music by David Clay Mettens, was premiered at the Kennedy Center. He is also the author of The Secret of Music: a look at the listening life, a book of essays on music and mindfulness. McGuire is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, Opera America, and the the American Center for New Works Development.  

McGuire currently teaches at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. He studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he pursued Master’s work in both guitar and orchestral conducting, holding assistantships in both areas. As an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, he took the Bachelor of Music summa cum laude as well as High Honors in English Literature for his thesis on musical structures in the work of James Joyce. He currently resides in Nashville with his wife, pianist and conductor Jennifer McGuire, their son Thomas, and a basset hound.

Contact the symphony to reserve your seats for your school, organization, association, church group etc. Good seats still available. Transportation funding available by request. 

CONCERT PROGRAM:

Lucinda y Las Flores de la Nochebuena by Evan Mack and Josh McGuire
9:00am / 10:30am / 12:15pm Friday November 17, 2023 
Opera Singers Conducted by Richard Kagey, Seagle festival 
Orchestra Conducted by Charles Peltz
Warrensburg Middle/High School Auditorium

Visit the Symphony website at www.theglensfallssymphony.org
Call the Symphony office at 518-793-1348
Mailing address: Glens Falls Symphony, PO Box 2036, Glens Falls NY 12801
Office Location: Upstairs in the LARAC Building, 7 Lapham Place, Glens Falls NY 12801