You can be forgiven if your stomach begins to growl and you get a hankering for beef while listening to tonight’s Everett Symphony concert.
On the menu for this performance is composer Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo” symphony, whose pop culture reference will forever be associated with the “Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner” ad campaign.
In addition to whetting your appetite with that piece, the orchestra will also entertain with Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2, Opus 30.
Featured soloist for the evening is clarinetist Sean Osborn who will perform Copland’s “Concerto for Clarinet.”
Osborn made his recital debut at age 17 at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 1989, he became the youngest clarinetist in the history of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
A gifted composer as well, Osborn has been heard on National Public Radio and many other venues.
The Everett Symphony Orchestra’s musicians are playing for free and donating their performance fees to benefit the symphony.
“The reason we are playing for free is that we love playing music with conductor Paul-Elliott Cobbs,” principal cellist Cami Davis said. “He is a genius at finding the music in every piece there is and translating that to what we need to know to make it happen.”
Davis said the musicians are also unified in their goal to keep symphonic music in the community.
“Having a symphony in the town of Everett, it’s certainly a golden gift,” Davis said. “You have to have something beautiful in your life, particularly in times like these.”
The recession has hit hard at the Everett Symphony, where declining ticket sales and a drop in corporate and private donations are forcing the symphony to make some painful cutbacks to save the orchestra.
Though the family and children’s programming will continue, the Everett Symphony decided this week to cancel the rest of the adult concert season after tonight’s concert.
Key staff positions also have been cut, most notably the symphony’s music director, Paul-Elliott Cobbs, who has been at that post for more than 25 years and has taken the symphony to international levels, with performances in Europe and a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall in 2006.
Cobbs, 58, is the music director and the symphony’s conductor. He will conduct tonight’s concert.
“American Idols” featuring clarinetist Sean Osborn begins at 8 tonight at the Everett Civic Auditorium, 2415 Colby Ave., Everett. Tickets are $18 to $38. Call 800-595-4849 or go to www.everett symphony.org or in person at the box office. A pre-concert talk with conductor Cobbs will start at 7 p.m.
Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424; goffredo@heraldnet.com.
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