Coeur d'Alene Symphony Labor Day concert to feature 'Raindrops' premiere
The Coeur d’Alene Symphony, conducted by Jan Pellant, will perform the world premiere of "Raindrops" by local composer, Gary A. Edwards, at the Labor Day concert at 2 p.m. Sept. 2 in Coeur d’Alene City Park.
The "Raindrops" music begins with a piccolo suggestive of a drop or two of water. The drops quickly build into a rainstorm. The water falls upon the Rocky Mountains. In the music, the sound is like a stream, until the streams merge to become a torrent. Then these torrents merge to become mighty rivers. The rivers flow into lakes, more calm and serene, with occasional storms and wind and waves. The lakes again flow into rivers that cascade into the ocean. The ocean is represented in a vast musical swelling to mimic the eternal force symbolic of the creative force of the universe.
The ocean turns even more fierce as the music engages in crashes and clashes of dissonance where melody becomes lost in the cacophony of howling winds and rolling thunder. Then the rainstorm begins and evaporation occurs to start the whole cycle again. The raindrops music diminishes to one single piccolo fading out, symbolic of the potential for our water sources to dry up if we continue on the path of man-made destruction of the environment.
"Raindrops" is also symbolic of the human life cycle as we progress through life, coping with tragedy, humor and turbulence and joy, recycling into a new life for ourselves.
So the music flows like the natural rhythms of water upon the Earth.
Edwards grew up in Coeur d'Alene, graduating from Coeur d'Alene High School in 1959. He started playing string bass in the Spokane Symphony while enrolled in high school and the University of Idaho. He graduated from the Indiana University School of Music. He taught public school music and played in the Louisville Symphony. He also worked for 40 years as a social worker. His music has been performed in Washington and Idaho, Argentina, Russia and other countries. He has played in ensembles of various sizes from single to symphony; playing genres from rock to classical. He has written and recorded 10 music CDs and authored 17 books including eight musicals, three screenplays and the Qualchan opera, and composed hundreds of pieces of music and songs, including a string bass concerto, a piano concerto, viola sonata and many others. His musical "Christmas on the Concourse" premiered in Spokane in December 2015.
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Info: www.EdwardsMusicSite.com or email gedward@roadrunner.com
Contact office@cdasymphony.org for information about the Sept. 2 Labor Day concert.