Arts Chorale

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The University of Michigan Life Sciences Orchestra will kick off its tenth season of blending art and science with its first world premiere: a trio of songs, two of them about the University, arranged for chorus and orchestra.

Written by Bill Brehm, one of U-M’s most prominent alumni and donors, the songs will be the centerpiece of the LSO’s free concert on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010 beginning at 4 p.m. in Hill Auditorium.

All are welcome to attend and no tickets are required for the concert, which will feature five other pieces that, together with the Brehm songs, represent a journey through America. The journey will begin with remarks by U-M Medical School dean James O. Woolliscroft, M.D.

The LSO will be conducted by music director Robert Boardman, a doctoral student in the U-M School of Music, Theatre and Dance’s orchestral conducting program, and husband of a physician assistant in the U-M Health System.

The orchestra will play Brehm’s songs 'My Michigan', 'All Over Again', and 'Sing of Michigan' -- the world premiere of the songs in new orchestral arrangements set by Daniel Holgate. The orchestra will be joined by the U-M Arts Chorale, a U-M student choir conducted by Mark Marotto.

Brehm, who is chairman emeritus of SRA International and a former assistant secretary of defense, adapted the two U-M songs from patriotic pieces he had written earlier, both of which had been performed by choirs affiliated with the U.S. Army. The new lyrics, and a new middle section to one song adapted from a century-old U-M college tune, pay tribute to Brehm’s beloved alma mater.

In 2004, Brehm and his wife Dee donated $44 million to the U-M Medical School to fuel the search for a cure for Type 1 diabetes, which Dee Brehm has battled since her own college days.

Their gift helped build the Brehm Tower, an addition to the U-M Kellogg Eye Center that will open later this winter and house U-M’s eye clinics and operating rooms, research laboratories and the Brehm Center for Type 1 Diabetes Research and Analysis.

Brehm’s close ties with the U-M life sciences community make his music an appropriate choice for the LSO, which is made up of amateur musicians who are also faculty, staff, students and alumni from all areas of the U-M health and medical community.

For the Jan. 10 concert, the LSO will also play three other pieces by American composers and two pieces by European composers with strong American ties. The afternoon will begin with optimistic and brassy “Fanfare for the Common Man”, by Aaron Copland, followed by the lush third movement of the Symphony No. 4 by Charles Ives featuring the LSO strings.

LSO Assistant Conductor Avlana Eisenberg will then conduct the tuneful, rarely performed “American Suite” (1895) by Antonin Dvorak, based on African American and Native American themes that the Czech composer sought out in his attempt to discover an American classical music.

Following the Brehm songs and a brief intermission, the LSO will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Gustav Mahler's birth by taking on the first movement of his 'Resurrection' Symphony No. 2, a movement that stands alone under the name “Totenfeier”. Mahler conducted the American premiere of his Second Symphony in 1908, while serving as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic.

The concert will close with “Rainbow Body” by Christopher Theofanidis – the most-played orchestral piece by a living composer today. Based partly on a medieval religious chant by German female mystic Hildegard von Bingen, the piece also invokes the Buddhist idea that an enlightened being is, upon dying, absorbed into the universe as energy and light – a rainbow body.

For more information on the concert or the LSO, visit www.umich.edu/~lsorch, send e-mail to orchestra@umich.edu, or call (734) 936-ARTS.

The LSO is part of the Gifts of Art program, which brings the world of art and music to the U-M Health System. The orchestra was founded in the spirit of the U-M effort to encourage collaboration, community and creativity beyond the traditional boundaries between academic disciplines in the basic sciences, health sciences, health care, engineering, social science and the humanities.