Symphony concert featuring Peanuts® Gallery airs on NorCal Public Media channels

In partnership with Northern California Public Media, the Santa Rosa Symphony's SRS @ Home virtual concert, recorded at the Green Music Center's Weill Hall on May 1 and premiered on YouTube on May 16, will air on NorCal Public Media channels KRCB 22 and KPJK 60 on Sunday, June 20, 2021 at 8:00 PM and Monday, June 21, 2021 at 7:30 PM, respectively. This concert, no longer available to the public, will air as the second concert in NorCal Public Media's Santa Rosa Symphony Presents series, reaching 2.8 million households in a nine-county region.

Celebrating Sonoma County, the orchestra will perform Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Peanuts® Gallery with acclaimed, San Francisco-based pianist Elizabeth Dorman in a concert that also features a reprise of Santa Rosa native Paul Dooley's Sonoma Strong, an SRS commission.

Lecce-Chong said, "Our season concludes with a bit of fun, gratitude and optimism. From Rossini's slapstick comedy overture to Zwilich's comics-inspired piano concerto, listeners of all ages will be smiling and chuckling along to the music with us. From a work inspired by our community's recovery from the 2017 Tubbs fire to one celebrating medical workers, we honor those who have kept our community safe through this time. And, ultimately, my colleagues and I will be performing with the fervent hope that this will be the last time we perform in the Green Music Center without our beloved audience."

SRS Artistic Partner Ellen Taaffe Zwilich met Santa Rosa icon and cartoonist Charles Schulz as she thanked him for featuring her flute concerto in one of his Peanuts® comic strips. As Composer Chair at Carnegie Hall, Zwilich wrote Peanuts® Gallery for a family concert to be performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. "I would never, ever write down to a child," she said in an interview with Lecce-Chong, adding that she would maybe write something shorter, but definitely something she herself would want to hear. Zwilich, who was the first woman to earn the Pulitzer Prize in Music in addition to a very long list of prestigious awards, highlights a different Peanuts® character in each of the work’s six movements. During the course of composing the light-hearted, yet complex piece, she and Schulz formed a close and lasting friendship.

Continuing with the local theme, the orchestra will perform a new arrangement by Paul Dooley of his Sonoma Strong to accommodate the smaller orchestra necessitated by COVID restrictions. The work, commissioned by the Santa Rosa Symphony, pays tribute to Dooley’s hometown's experience of the 2017 Tubbs fire, even calling for string players to assist with playing the increased number (22) of whirlies. A whirly is a flexible, tuned hose made of corrugated plastic that, when whipped around, makes an eerie, sustained tone reminiscent of a siren or the wind. The second part of the two-part work, according to Dooley, "expresses hope and rebirth and builds to a heroic climax."

Lecce-Chong added, “I think Sonoma Strong was always about something even bigger than our recovery from the horrific wildfires. It is a work that celebrates the strength of our community. Paul created a piece that focuses on our collective resiliency and creative capacity in the midst of tragedy. The support and commitment of our community to the arts has helped the Santa Rosa Symphony innovate and thrive during the pandemic, bringing the restorative power of music to all. I cannot think of a more perfect work to sum up our gratitude and hope as we complete this most unusual season of music.”

Pianist Elizabeth Dorman, who will perform Peanuts® Gallery on stage with the orchestra, has performed with the Louisville Orchestra, the Leipzig Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and Symphony Parnassus, as well as for interdisciplinary projects at the New World Symphony. Her live solo performances have been nationally broadcast on NPR and public radio. San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman has praised her “elegance and verve.”

Also included in the program are Gioachino Rossini's Overture to Il signor Bruschino and multiple Grammy-winning composer Michael Daugherty's Asclepius, Fanfare for Brass and Percussion.

Fittingly capping this final 2020-2021 SRS @ Home Season concert is Franz Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 45, Farewell, in which the orchestra members gradually peel off the stage in the last movement, leaving just two musicians on stage to finish the piece.

NorCal Public Media's KRCB broadcasts, over the air, on channel 22.1. Viewers can access it on channel 22 on Comcast Cable (high definition on channel 722), ATT U-verse, DirecTV and Dish. KRCB reaches audiences in Sonoma, Napa, Marin, San Francisco, Alameda, Solano, Contra Costa and the southern tip of Mendocino and Lake counties.

KPJK’s over-the-air channel number is 60.1. KPJK is channel 17 (717 for HD) on Comcast, 43 on ATT U-verse and DirecTV, and 60 on Dish. KPJK’s over-the-air coverage is more to the south (parts of Sonoma, Napa and Solano; all of Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties).