On the 1st 2nd & 3rd of February, 2007 Chris Martin will be the featured soloist with the Grand Rapids Symphony as he plays the Suite from the film ‘The Red Violin’ (1997) for Solo Violin, Timpani, Percussion, Harp, and Strings.

The Suite is one of five versions of John Corigliano’s Academy Award winning score to Francois Giraud’s film The Red Violin (his third movie score following Ken Russell’s ‘Altered States’, 1980, and Hugh Hudson’s ‘Revolution’, 1985).

The ‘Suite’ is a twenty five minute overview of several of the themes from the film score woven into a dramatic and coherent new entity. The film traces the life of an exemplary (and fictional) Nicolo Bussoti violin which is being auctioned off by expert Samuel L. Jackson in Montreal. The film follows the violin from its momentous and mysterious creation (revealed at the end of the film) through its various owners, an Austrian child prodigy (1792), a band of gypsy’s, a Paganini-like 19th century virtuoso in Oxford, England, to a Chinese pedagogue during the Cultural Revolution (1966). The Suite’s timeline is even less linear than the film’s, but the music, divorced from the images it was created to accompany, is every bit as powerful and moving on its own as pure music. As an aesthetic experience some may, in fact, find the Suite preferable to the film itself.

The February 1 & 2 shows will be performed at St Cecilia Music Society’s Royce Auditorium at 7:30 Thursday and 8 pm Friday, Saturday’s performance will be at 8 pm at the DeWitt Auditorium, Zeeland East High School. The Thursday and Friday shows will be followed by a reception upstairs at St Cecilia’s.

Tickets range from $22-$31 through Ticketmaster– group rates (15 or more) are available with some restrictions – Please contact Laura Martin at 616 443 6733 by January 19 for group rate information or with any other questions. more event details»