If you want evidence of Las Vegas’ wide spectrum of cultural offerings, look no further than our full complement of orchestras. They not only take up residence in our concert halls, but also appear at our colleges, various outdoor venues, and even on the Strip.
The nine-year-old Nevada Chamber Orchestra, or NCO, thrives on that variety of different venues. And on June 8, they’ll headline the Summerlin Library Theater for a special program celebrating its principal conductor and artistic director, Gregory Maldonado.
"I decided, hmm, the concert falls on my birthday, so why not have a birthday bash featuring composers who share birthdays with me?" said Maldonado. "Two of the three composers [whose] works we'll be performing actually have birthdays on June 8 as well: Tomaso Albinoni, a baroque-era composer, and Robert Schumann, a romantic composer."
The third featured composer, Richard Addinsell, may not have shared the others' birthdate, but Maldonado thought his work was special enough to not only include in the June 8 program, but pitch to his NCO colleague Hermann Brumm. Though he rarely solos live, and usually plays violin for the orchestra, Brumm heard the piece in Maldonado's car and was immediately smitten by it.
"One of my favorite composers is Gustav Mahler, who never wrote a piano concerto," said Brumm. "But had he, it would bear a striking resemblance to this piece, and that's why I fell in love with it. It's incredibly romantic. It's quite challenging — there are arpeggios. But it's also very touching and very moving. And that, for me, was the perfect combination of a piece that I wanted to perform in front of an audience."
Maldonado formed the NCO in 2016 to celebrate chamber music, a form of classical music that usually limits the performance of each part to one player/instrument, and typically plays in smaller groups at smaller venues. He saw a void in the Las Vegas orchestral landscape. "I thought what was missing was a small, mid-sized group to play chamber music, and music written for smaller-scale orchestras," he said.
Both music teachers, Maldonado and Brumm strive to keep chamber music in the cultural conversation, both in performance and education spaces. "With chamber music [and] baroque music, I see a sense of purity in it, a sense of rawness that I don't get from some of the larger works [and] orchestral works," said Brumm. "And I do oftentimes feel that [chamber and baroque music is] quite disregarded in some of the larger ensembles."
NCO will end its season with an afternoon program featuring American composers on July 4 at the Queensridge community near Summerlin.
Gregory Maldonado, principal conductor and artistic director, Nevada Chamber Orchestra; Hermann Brumm, violinist/pianist, Nevada Chamber Orchestra
