Projects

MEDEA

An overpowering fusion of three interacting elements: the music for Medea by Samuel Barber for symphony orchestra, dance inspired by the ballet created by Martha Graham and the text of the play by Euripides. — Full program. 90+ minutes without intermission.

Note: “MEDEA is ultimately the story of a woman. A powerful woman who has been disenfranchised by those with power; a foreigner who is deprived of rights, home and family; a once-beloved figure who, when stripped of her rightful place, takes hideous revenge through what she feels is the only means left to her. It must be acknowledged that this story bears unfortunate relevance for our present time…”

Full Program Note

Mozart and Salieri

Music by Rimsky-Korsakov. Text from the play by Pushkin, in a new English translation by Mark Mandarano.

For chamber orchestra, tenor and baritone. 30 minutes. In concert, makes a program together with a Salieri overture and a Mozart symphony. In concert or on stage, a double-bill with one of Mozart’s shorter operas.

“Pushkin’s beautiful poetic language, though in the form of a play, comes across more as a meditation or an interior reflection on events, wherein this fictional version of Salieri seeks to justify his feelings. From his point of view, he labored and sacrificed and lived an upstanding, morally just life, but the reward he sought to earn – musical genius – seems to have been given to the wrong man...”

Full Program Note

Captain Millennium who could travel through time with a time machine; Professor Quark, the mad scientist on a quest to chemically separate the beat from the meter; Miss Ophelia, the librarian so in love with books that the characters would appear on stage; Sir Alfred Spielbrick, the cinema director who brought a grand vision to life on stage…All of these characters and more have sprung to to life in concert halls from California to New York to Texas straight out of the fertile imagination of Mark Mandarano. If your orchestra wants newcomers to fall in love with music as they laugh and learn and enjoy the togetherness of a magical concert experience, these Family Concert programs will do the trick!

Schumann — Fugues on B-A-C-H

Chamber orchestra or 13 solo instruments. 25 minutes. View Program Note.

Wagner - wesendonck lieder

For soprano and 13 solo instruments — arranged for the same instrumental ensemble as Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. 25 minutes.

mozart - adagio and Fugue in C minor

For ten solo instruments or chamber orchestra. 8 minutes.

ravel - pantoum

Arranged for 11 solo instruments. Music from Ravel’s Piano Trio. Originally belongs to a Sinfonietta of Riverdale four-part commission of new arrangements of music by Ravel and Debussy. My fellow arrangers were David Bruce, Alan Fletcher and Roger Zare.

two chorales

Chorales by J. S. Bach and Cesar Franck (from Prelude, Chorale and Fugue) arranged for chamber orchestra or 15 solo instruments.