PROGRAM NOTES
Ave Maria is excerpted from Sergei Rachmaninov’s acapella choral composition All-Night Vigil, Op. 37, which premiered on 23 March 1915 in Moscow. The piece consists of settings of texts taken from the Russian Orthodox All-night vigil ceremony. It has been praised as Rachmaninov’s finest achievement and “the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church”. It was one of Rachmaninoff’s favorite compositions and the composer requested that its fifth movement (Nunc Dimittis) be sung at his funeral.
Scott Hartman heads the trombone department at Yale University. Scott is a founding member of the Yale Brass Trio, Proteus 7 and Four of a Kind and is also a member of the Summit Brass, the Brass Band of Battle Creek and the Millennium Brass. He began his chamber music career as a member of the famed Empire Brass.
As a chamber musician and/or soloist, Scott has been a feature performer with many major United States symphony orchestras – including the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Symphony, Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony and many more. Abroad, Mr. Hartman has been a soloist with orchestras such as the BBBC Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic, the Caracas Symphony, the Simone Bolivar Symphony, the National Symphony of Taiwan and the Korean Orchestra in Seoul, Korea.
Each summer, Mr. Hartman performs and coaches brass chamber music at the Norfolk Chamber Festival, the Chautauqua Music Festival and the Raphael Mendez Institute. In addition to teaching and performing, Scott runs a publishing company for brass music, Firebird Editions, and has developed and produces his own line of Hartman mouthpieces. For more information, go to www.slushpump.com
