Mark Inouye
Mark Inouye
Mark Inouye

On September 22, 23 and 25 at Davies Symphony Hall, Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will perform Aaron Copland’s Quiet City featuring SFS English Horn Russ deLuna and Principal Trumpet Mark Inouye. These concerts also feature Copland’s Organ Symphony with guest soloist Paul Jacobs. Jacobs will have performed the Organ Symphony with MTT and the SFS at Davies Symphony Hall on September 3 and on tour in Lucerne on September 11. Opening these concerts is Lou Harrison’s A Parade, a work commissioned by the SFS in 1995 and dedicated to Michael Tilson Thomas. Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 closes out the performances. This is the first of three concert weeks to feature San Francisco Symphony musicians as soloists.

SFS Principal Trumpet Mark Inouye has been a member of the SFS since 1999. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School where he played with the New York Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic as a student. He served as co-principal trumpet with the New World Symphony and principal with the Charleston Symphony before joining the SFS. He appeared as soloist in Wynton Marsalis’s video production Marsalis on Music and was a soloist with the Tanglewood Wind Ensemble under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. He was a founding member of the Juilliard Jazz Sextet at Lincoln Center and a guest performer at the Hollywood Bowl in the Playboy Jazz Festival. He is also an active composer. His work Tribute to Beaky, for trumpet, bass, guitar, and percussion, was performed in the SFS Chamber Music Series in April 2009. His debut jazz CD is available at www.inouyejazz.com.

Michael Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas

SFS English Horn Russ deLuna joined the Orchestra in the 2007-08 season. For the prior twelve years he was the Principal Oboe of the Atlanta Opera and the Columbus Symphony in Georgia and English Horn for the former Atlanta Ballet Orchestra. He performed as a regular substitute with the Atlanta Symphony (ASO) and has toured and recorded extensively with them. In his last season in Atlanta he appeared with the ASO as Principal Oboe for its tour to the Ojai Festival and for the opening concert of the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. While a student at Northwestern University he performed as a member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and was called on to sub with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As an educator he has given master classes most recently at the Manhattan School of Music. He has also been Artist-in-Residence at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival for nine years and was on the faculty of Columbus State University and Emory University.

Paul Jacobs made his San Francisco Symphony debut in April 2009. He currently serves as chairman of the organ department at The Juilliard School and was recently appointed to the Yale School of Music Board, where he will assist in advising the president of Yale University in matters relating to both the School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music. In November Jacobs will perform the Copland Organ Concerto with MTT and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and re-inaugurate the newly reinstalled Kuhn organ at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall where he will perform Bach’s monumental Clavier-Übung III. Naxos will release his recording of Messiaen’s Livre du Saint Sacrement on September 28.

Monica Turner
Contributor to Stark Insider for tech, the arts and All Things West Coast for over 10 years.