Bellevue Philharmonic sets weekend of music

Renowned American composer-conductor Aaron Jay Kernis will be the featured star on the podium of the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra on Nov. 22-23, when he leads the orchestra in his own “Musica Celestis for Strings,” as part of a masterworks series program in the Meydenbauer Center Theater.

And the orchestra’s popular “A Little Night Music” series of intimate music-and-wine evenings in the Bellevue Arts Museum continues Nov. 21 with two well-known Northwest pianists: Judith Cohen and Dean Williamson, playing Ravel’s charming “Mother Goose Suite” for One Piano, Four Hands.

Kernis is one of today’s most successful, listenable composers for orchestra, with a long list of awards headed by a Pulitzer Prize and commissions from such organizations as the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

In the Bellevue Philharmonic’s program, Kernis also is set to conduct three other American works: Bernstein’s jazzy “On the Town” Overture, Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” and Kevin Puts’ 1997 Marimba Concerto, inspired by Mozart’s music (with Naoko Takada, marimba soloist).

Cohen, who tours and records internationally, will also be heard in works of Scarlatti, Debussy, Ravel, Schulhoff, and Ginastera in the “A Little Night Music” series event. Williamson, her partner that evening in the Ravel suite, frequently has been featured as both conductor and pianist. He now is artistic director of Opera Cleveland, and is scheduled to conduct Seattle Opera’s upcoming “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Pianist Robert Taub, originally scheduled to perform Nov. 21, will instead be featured in a Beethoven recital in the May 15th (2009) “A Little Night Music” series.

Hear Kernis with the orchestra at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 22, 2 p.m. Nov. 23, in Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Theatre ($10-$38, 425-455-4171 or www.bellevuephil.org). The Cohen/Williamson “A Little Night Music” performance is set for 7:30 p.m. Nov. 21 in the Bellevue Arts Museum ($7-$20, as above).

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