Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra continues “Women Pioneers” premiere initiative

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - The Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra is continuing its “Women Pioneers Commissioning Project” with a second performance that took place on Saturday, March 7, and featured renowned composer Gala Flagello.

The concert performed four orchestra works, including the world premiere of Gala Flagello’s “Athena.” Oboe players Sharon Lacey and Kelly Diaz Seitz were the featured soloists in Viet Cuong’s “Extra(ordinarily) Fancy - Concert for Two Oboes,” while Bradley Welch was the guest organist in Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, ‘Organ Symphony’” to end the evening.

Performing a newly commissioned world premiere alongside well-known pieces, for Music Director Fouad Fakhouri, felt like a gamble at first. However, the January installation of this commissioning initiative went quite well, he said.

The idea of having pieces that are popular or well known - audiences have heard those pieces before - in combination with a new piece by a new composer who was in the audience as well, I think that really really worked quite well and it served to break the...I wouldn’t say monotony, but everything was almost similar with regards to opera or the operatic music or opera-related pieces, and then we had this world premiere in the middle, which really sort of shifted the focus of the audiences.

For Gala Flagello, composer of the newly premiered “Athena,” the vague guidelines Fakhouri set for her composition were both exciting and scary.

Fouad gave me no real parameters besides duration, which is both really exciting as a composer and also a little bit scary because you have to sort of construct your own rules to the game of the piece. For me, what I decided to do was write a piece that I felt would showcase each individual instrument family of the orchestra, so that every performer really got their moment to shine.

Flagello completed “Athena” in about two months. As the composition was specifically going to be for an orchestra, Flagello chose an idea that was “extra musical, something that I could pull some really compelling imagery from,” she said. Athena sprang to mind, and the piece was born, inspired by the Greek patron of both warfare and wisdom. The two concepts are quite different, Flagello explained, and so she chose to bring this difference to the forefront by writing a melody that would gradually change over time.

I decided to first write that melody - that was the first step, and I had to plan how that transformation was going to happen. You’ll hear, when the piece premieres, that the piece starts really low and rumbly and almost kind of menacing in the double bass section and the cellos. This is a great piece for any audience member who’s a lover of strings, and low strings especially. They kick off the piece with this sort of mysterious, low melody that in that state is representative of Athena as the goddess of warfare. And then we move on through to that melody getting lighter and brighter and higher in a bunch of the other instrument families, so the woodwinds, the higher strings, and eventually the brass.

While the planning process is one of Flagello’s favorite parts of composing, she also finds that the process of writing music as a whole is a great outlet to achieve two goals: first, to share her experiences, and second, to provide her audience with a “space to reflect.”

I really love to express myself through music. I know that might sound basic, but I think writing music is such a beautiful outlet for sharing my experiences with performers and audience members, but also providing the audience a space to reflect: a space for joy, a space for delight, and that is what I hope to do every time I write a piece.

The Women Pioneers Commissioning Project joins many other past and present initiatives, some of which Flagello has worked on, in its goal of spotlighting underrepresented communities.

One of my recent favorite initiatives that I’ve worked with is called “Diversify the Stand.” That was back in, I want to say, 2021, and organizations like that I think are doing really amazing things in making sure that people of all different backgrounds and all different kinds of voices and styles are represented in new music.

In the journey both to express herself and to connect with the audience, Flagello considers audience feedback an essential part of the process: reactions, questions, and conversations sparked. For her, music is not a one-way street, but rather a channel through which to connect and converse with the community.

I think music is a conversation, and as a composer, even though we oftentimes work all alone, in silence, in a room by ourselves, music is about being a community and forming a community with other people. So that sort of thing is really important to me.

The next and final installment of this project will feature composer Brittany Green and her piece “Black Dandelions: An American Triptych,” taking place on Saturday, April 25 at First Baptist Church. You can read more about the music programmed for this concert and purchase tickets on WFSO’s official website.