West Virginia Symphony and Grammy Award Clarinetist Larry Combs to perform at Chuck Mathena Center April 3, 2009

West Virginia’s Symphony Orchestra will perform with solo clarinetist Larry Combs, Friday, April 3rd at the Chuck Mathena Center. This is the first orchestral performance to grace the stage since the opening of the CMC last summer. This performance will continue a tradition of classical music presentation that began on September 19, 1939, when 55 musicians gathered for their first rehearsal as the Charleston Civic Orchestra. Under the direction of William R. Wiant, their first concert was at Charleston's Municipal Auditorium on November 14, 1939.


Recent WVSO seasons have included collaborations with such world-renowned artists as violinist Midori, soprano Deborah Voigt, pianist Andre Watts, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Concert repertoire has included such challenging works as Richard Strauss's Don Quixote and Mahler's Symphony No. 5. The WVSO has risen to a new level of excellence and is hailed for exciting, dramatic concerts under the leadership of Artistic Director and Conductor Grant Cooper.


Mr. Grant Cooper officially began his duties as the 9th conductor in the WVSO's history on July 1, 2001. From 1997-2007, Mr. Cooper served as Resident Conductor of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, where he gave almost 600 performances, appearing to critical acclaim on all the major series. Mr. Cooper is also Artistic Director of the summer, Bach and Beyond Festival in Fredonia, New York.


Cooper was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of a professional opera singer. He sang and acted in his first opera at age four, and studied piano and music theory prior to college. After completing his degree in Pure Mathematics at the University of Auckland, his performing career took him to the major concert halls of the world from Beijing to London. Following a performance at Henry A. Wood Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall under conductor Claudio Abbado, Cooper was invited by Maestro Abbado to join the orchestra of La Scala as solo trumpet. Instead, Mr. Cooper accepted a fellowship from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council for study with Gerard Schwarz in the United States. This, in turn, led to performances in New York's Carnegie Hall and at Tanglewood under Arthur Fiedler, where he also performed as principal trumpet under conductors Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, and Sir Neville Marriner, among others.


The performance at the Chuck Mathena Center will include music from Light Cavalry Overture by Franz von Suppe (1819-1895), Symphony No. 8 in G, op. 88 by Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) and Concerto No. 1 for Clarinet and Orchestra in f minor, Op. 73 by Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) featuring former Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s clarinetist Larry Combs.


Mr. Larry Combs, a native of Charleston, West Virginia, joined the clarinet section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1974 and was appointed its Principal Clarinet by Sir Georg Solti in 1978. In his years as a member of the Chicago Symphony, Combs has made numerous solo appearances with the orchestra in works of Copland, Mozart, Brahms-Berio, Debussy, and Corigliano and has performed under the direction of Solti, Barenboim, Abbado, Giulini, Boulez, Levine, Bernstein, Leinsdorf and many others. He’s been featured many times on CSO tour concerts performing Morton Gould's arrangement of "Chicago" for clarinet and orchestra.


In 2002, he received his second Grammy Award for his recording of Richard Strauss' Duett-Concertino with CSO Principal Bassoon David McGill and Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His recent recording of music for winds and strings by Mozart with the Chicago Chamber Musicians was nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award. Combs retired from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, this past June receiving the CSO’s prestigious Theodore Thomas Medallion for Distinguished Service. Larry Combs is currently Professor Clarinet at the De Paul University School of Music.


Tickets for this performance are $22 and $20 for adults and $12 for students, plus tax and ticketing fees. Tickets are available online 24 hours a day at chuckmathenacenter.org, by phone at 304.425.5128 or at the CMC Box Office Monday through Friday 9am to 5pm. Chuck Mathena Center is located at 2 Stafford Commons, Princeton, WV.


Touring performances by the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra are made possible through the generous support of a variety of funders, including the Daywood Foundation, the Herscher Foundation, the James and Ruth Kessler donor-advised fund of the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation, the Jacobson Foundation, the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.