Symphony-goers in Seattle are set to get a preview of the future this week.
Seattle Symphony’s incoming music director, Xian Zhang, will conduct three performances that will take the audience on a tour of the solar system with Gustov Holst's The Planets.
With Billy Child's "Diaspora" opening the performance, audiences will have the opportunity to experience an instrument not often heard on the classical stage: the saxophone.
“People are not that scared of new music in Seattle, which is very nice to hear,” Zhang told KNKX.
‘Looking forward to this moment’
It was in band class in middle school when Steven Banks started playing the saxophone. Some of his first opportunities to play in front of an audience were at church. As he grew older, he kept practicing and improving to the point where he could study the instrument in college.
“I had two tracks that I was thinking about,” said Banks. “I was either thinking about going down the jazz track or the classical track, and I decided to go the classical route. It 100% feels more true to who I am.”
Looking back, Banks said part of learning the saxophone was studying the instrument’s early history.
“The saxophone was patented in 1846 and it was actually invented to be in the orchestra,” Banks said. “[Inventor] Adolphe Sax was trying to solve the problem of getting a low instrument that would have some dexterity,” Banks said.
Now in his early 30s, and based in North Carolina, Banks has built a reputation as a highly-decorated classical saxophone player and composer. A couple years back, he collaborated with jazz pianist Billy Childs on a piece inspired by the verse of three Black poets. It’s called "Diaspora."
Banks calls it a musical way of chronicling the Black American experience.
“It starts with a childlike tune that one might imagine hearing or seeing children play on the shores of Africa,” Banks said. ”Throughout the piece you can almost feel the ships coming toward the shore, and you feel the journey from Africa to the United States.”
Banks says “Diaspora” concludes by reflecting the struggles of the Civil Rights era “and then it ends with a really hopeful orientation towards the future.”
He said performing the piece is very personal.
“Many times I think, as a Black man in America, a certain tragedy might happen or something happens in the news, or something happens to you personally, and you have this sort of anger, and you're not well. It's like, ‘what can I do with this?’” Banks said. “And there are moments in this piece where I'm always looking forward to this moment to play like ‘I know I can get it out right here.’”
‘A jazzy moment’
This weekend will be the first time Banks has performed "Diaspora" in Seattle. But it’s not the first time he’s shared the performance stage with Zhang.
“Her smile coming back at you when you're performing makes you play better, and makes all the musicians feel like they're a part of something really important and joyous,” Banks said. “And that's what I really love about working with Xian is that it makes the music, no matter what it's about, it makes it feel like a celebration.”
Zhang starts her tenure as music director of Seattle Symphony this fall. She has been a guest conductor here off and on for more than a decade. She previously worked with Banks several times, including at Mostly Mozart Festival in New York.
“He completely opened my eyes, in many ways, about the saxophone,” Zhang said.
At this weekend’s "Diaspora" performance, Banks, as soloist, will be front and center on stage. But about two-thirds of the way through the piece, he makes his way toward the back of the stage. Zhang said it’s a moment when she becomes part of the audience.
“There's a little duet section. It's like a love song with the piano. There's a piano solo with the saxophone alone,” Zhang said. “I would call that a little bit of a 'jazzy moment', because he walks over there to the piano. They play a duet. I don't conduct, I don't do anything. I just stay there and listen.”
Zhang said she could see the saxophone playing a more prominent role in classical music, “if the composer is as good as Billy [Childs].”
This emphasis with new compositions like the one from Childs and Banks is likely to continue under Zhang’s leadership.
‘A rich palette’
Alongside with new works, Zhang will continue with audience favorites. The second half of this weekend’s performances will be a piece that’s been performed here for decades: Gustav Holst’s The Planets.
“I think it's one of the best examples of using ‘full force orchestra’,” Zhang said. “I mean, it's a huge orchestra. There are two sets of timpani and two tubas. What piece has two tubas?"
The Planets was written more than a century ago. It offers a tour through the solar system decades before space flight began. The inspiration for The Planets, music historians believe, was thought to be mostly from astrology. And as the story goes, it was never a personal favorite of Holst, but became the English composer’s most enduring work.
“You get such a rich palette and such a series of different colors of each movement,” Zhang said.
And the colors will not just be in musical form. It will be a multi-sensory experience for symphony-goers, with satellite images of the planets from NASA, projected above the orchestra, in time with the music.
“Usually it's the other way around,” Zhang said. “When you do film music, actually, the conductor would follow a soundtrack. For us, for the conductor, it makes much more musical sense.”
This weekend’s concerts are likely to be an indicator of what’s to come over the next five years for the Seattle Symphony: a priority on trying new things, to attract a more diverse audience.
“I really would love it if the younger audience would come. I’m talking not only just about children but young professionals, college students in their 20s, or young professionals in their early 30s,” Zhang said. “If they come to the concert, I want them to feel inspired, to feel moved.”
Seattle Symphony presents The Planets and “Diaspora” Thursday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon at Seattle's Benaroya Hall.
The schedule for the upcoming symphony season is set to be unveiled Thursday.
