DAN WELCHER'S FIFTH SYMPHONY

A symphony for 30 years of musical friendship

Dan Welcher writes a symphony about music for conductor Peter Bay

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, April 26, 2009

A year ago, composer Dan Welcher predicted he might have conversations like the one he is having now — the one where someone asks him what his Fifth Symphony, which will be premiered by the Austin Symphony Orchestra this weekend, is all about.

"I knew when I went to work on (the symphony) that I was going to have this conversation over and over again," he says with a grin over lunch recently, taking a break between his busy professorship at the University of Texas' Butler School of Music and recording his new weekly music program for classical music radio station KMFA.

The answer?

"This is about me wanting to make a statement about music itself," he says. "And I've wanted to do this all my life."

It's not entirely just music about music. It's music about a 30-year friendship between two musicians.

With his Fifth Symphony, Welcher is honoring his good friend Peter Bay, Austin Symphony Orchestra conductor. The two have been friends since 1979. And Bay is celebrating his 10th season with the orchestra. So what better way to honor a conductor friend — one who has already conducted eight other pieces of yours — than to give him a sweeping, brand-new symphony to premiere?

"I'm very excited for us to have been given the honor of unveiling Dan's new symphony, one that he wrote for the ASO and me in mind," Bay says. "It's one of his best creations, and it means so much to me to have been entrusted with such an important premiere."

Though Welcher describes his latest symphony as a classic four-movement symphony with no narrative theme, the composer did include a few compositional nods to his friend and to the city they fondly call home.

Using a well-known theoretical system for converting alphabetic letters to pitches, Welcher derived the symphony's second movement from the letters "Peter Bay." The result is a bluesy sequence that as it ascends in tempo and complexity suggests a very Austin sight: the bats swirling out from underneath the Congress Avenue bridge.

"I've spent several months with it, and every time I have a closer look at it I find more and more in it," Bay says in an e-mail. "The orchestral colors he creates, the wonderful lyric melodies, the dynamic contrasts and the overall proportions of each movement. There is a dramatic flow to each movement, a sense of fun and adventure, humor and seriousness."

Welcher and Bay met 30 years ago at the Aspen Music Festival, where Welcher was on the conducting faculty and Bay was a conducting student. The two formed a fast bond, starting a discussion about music that has not stopped to this day.

Among the dozens of commissions Welcher has received, he's written works for the Boston Pops, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Guggenheim Foundation, and his work has been performed by more than 50 orchestras including Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, and the Atlanta Symphony.

Although it's arguably the first time in living memory the Austin Symphony Orchestra is premiering a symphony by an Austin composer, the cost of the project is underwritten by an independent consortium of local donors. The nonprofit KMFA spearheaded the fundraising drive that began nearly a year ago. To date about $40,000 toward the $50,000 goal has been raised, with donations ranging from as little as $50 to as much as $5,000.

The commission fee represents not just payment for a year of the Welcher's time, but also the expensive typesetting and printing costs involved in producing music scores for the multitude of orchestra instruments.

"This was easy for us to support," says KMFA general manager Joan Kobayashi. "I see it as part of our role as an advocate for classical music and for living composers. Communities can so easily take for granted what's in their own backyard. But there's great musical talent here."

Tonight, KMFA will feature an extended interview with Welcher and Bay on the program "Classical Austin."

Welcher has been a part of developing, not just contributing to, Austin's composing talent. At UT, where he holds an endowed professorship in composition, he founded and continues to lead the New Music Ensemble. At every one of the ensemble's concerts, Welcher includes a new piece by a UT student composer. And at KMFA he founded and continues to host "Knowing the Score," an award-winning program that offers an accessible avenue to music by living composers.

Born in Rochester, New York, in 1948, Welcher considered being a writer when he was a teen before he decided to study bassoon and piano, earning degrees at Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. After graduating, he played principal bassoon for the Louisville Symphony Orchestra for a few seasons before landing at UT in 1978. He was assistant conductor for the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1990.

If people have recently asked Welcher whether his Fifth Symphony contains a story or references a poem, it's not by accident. In more than 100 works of music he's written, Welcher has told many stories and painted a musical picture or two. For the Honolulu Symphony, where Welcher was composer-in-residence in the early 1990s, he penned "Haleakala: How Maui Snared the Sun," a tone poem recounting a Hawaiian legend. (It was narrated by actor Richard Chamberlain, a longtime resident of Hawaii, and is available on Naxos Records.) "Music for Chameleons," a short piece for percussion, takes off from the Truman Capote story of the same name. And his overture "Prairie Light" is based on three Georgia O'Keeffe paintings from the noted artist's early years in Texas.

"For a long time, I've wanted to write a piece of music that's not based a story," Welcher says.

Perhaps that story is the one Welcher is living himself.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699