Performed by The Toledo Symphony on May 29 & 30, 2026 at The Peristyle

An American in Paris 
George Gershwin (1898-1937)       

An American in Paris tells the story of an American experiencing the wonderful vitality of the “City of Light,” while longing for the familiar sights, smells, and especially, the jazz, of home. 

George Gershwin composed this piece after visiting Paris in 1928, where he went to study with the renowned composer, Maurice Ravel. While in Paris, Gershwin met with a number of other artists of note, including Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Ezra Pound. Of course, some composers (and critics) took mild offense at the idea that Gershwin could go to Paris for a few weeks, stay in the best hotels, and then have the temerity to think he captured the city’s essence! Many of these others had been there for decades (Virgil Thomson comes to mind). However, a number of Gershwin’s contemporaries – among them, William Walton, Jacques Ibert, and Darius Milhaud – also greatly admired his work. 

In the original program note written for the premiere of An American in Paris, Gershwin explains: “My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere.” Continuing in this spirit, the tone poem moves through various musical scenes. Elements of blues music represent “our American friend [succumbing] to a spasm of homesickness … [however] nostalgia is not a fatal disease … [and the American is] once again an alert spectator of Parisian life … the street noises and French atmosphere are triumphant.” 

An American in Paris is divided into five sections, which create an overall arc. The first section introduces a “walking theme,” with a moderate allegretto grazioso tempo. This breaks into a sudden rush that moves us to the next theme, marked subito con brio. Stylistically, Gershwin here gives a nod to his contemporaries, the popular French composers Debussy and Ravel, featuring the woodwinds, but then adds in pitched taxi horns. (While working on this section, Gershwin had to have his friend Mabel Schirmer, who spoke fluent French, accompany him to various auto shops in search of taxi horns that honked the correct notes.) 

Musicologist Mark Clague points out that most orchestras don’t use correctly pitched taxi horns because of the unclear markings in the score. Clague explains that this lack of clarity comes from Gershwin being comfortable in more than one style of music. “I think it has a lot to do with George’s own movement from the popular sphere to the classical sphere … and the different attitudes about what musical notation is. Is it a kind of road map, or is it sort of the gospel truth? He had to adjust to that, and … in certain ways he didn’t need to explain it, because he was going to be there to tell people what to do.” 

The second section references American blues music, complete with the use of the twelve-bar blues form, syncopation, and solos for the trumpet, saxophone, and drums before returning to the opening soundscape. In the last section (marked Grandioso), Gershwin layers the blues theme over the walking theme. 

Gershwin wasn’t shy about announcing his work on An American in Paris, and as word got around, he played it for whomever would listen. This prompted quite a number of visits from friends and fellow composers interested in the project. One such visit was from two young pianists, who had played in Lady, Be Good! in London a few years earlier. One of the two, Mario Braggiotti, describes the encounter: “His hair was all sort of up, what I call ‘the composer’s expression.’ He was busy writing his American in Paris. I went in [and] I said, ‘Mr. Gershwin, my name is Mario, this is Jacques. We are music students, and we just would like to meet you.’ ‘Well, boy, that’s fine. Just come right in!’ He was very welcoming and very charming. We walked in and there was his Steinway piano, right in the middle of his room. And I noticed on the piano a collection of taxi horns, those old fashioned ones they used on the Battaille de la Marne, which you pressed [or] squeezed. There were about twenty of them, just laying there. I hadn’t been to New York for a few years and I thought maybe this is a new eccentricity, or fad. I didn’t know what to make of it. After asking about the horns, Gershwin said ‘Well, I’ll tell you. In my opening movement of American in Paris, I’d like to get the traffic sounds of the Place de la Concorde during rush hour. I’d like to see if it works. I’ve just written the first two pages, the opening of American in Paris. Now, Jacques, you take this horn. This is, I think, an A-flat, and Mario, take this, an F-sharp. Now, I’ll sit down and play and when I go this way with my head you go: WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! Like that, in that rhythm.’ So, I took the horn. There we stood, very nervous, and excited. And for the first time anywhere, we heard the sound of the opening bars of American in Paris. The lanky American walking down the Champs-Elysées. He captured the atmosphere, the feeling, the movement, the rhythm so perfectly.” 

Musicologist Walter Rimler points out that though An American in Paris depicts “the experiences of a grown man in a city renowned for its sophistication, musically it has the feel of a return to childhood.” Between the walking theme in the beginning, the melodic flourish at the end of the section that is akin to a thumbing of a nose, and the blues with their dash of comedy, this certainly feels true. 

Gershwin continued to work on An American in Paris once he’d returned home. While he worked, his friend and fellow composer Kay Swift described the process as “delving beyond gloom to get to joy, and the resulting music, like the city it depicted, was radiant … Listening to An American in Paris was like revisiting the most intensely pleasurable moments of youth.” 

Fidl-Fantazye, orch. Samuel Adler 
Noah Bendix-Balgley (b. 1984) 

Violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley is the first concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, and tours regularly as a soloist and chamber musician. He began playing at the age of four, and holds degrees from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the Munich Hochschule. Bendix-Balgley is a laureate of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, and has also won top prizes at the Long-Thibaud Competition in France and the Postacchini Competition in Italy.  

Klezmer has been part of Bendix-Balgley's musical life since childhood, and he has performed with the klezmer group Brave Old World. He composed his Fidl-Fantazye: A Klezmer Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in 2016. It was orchestrated by Samuel Adler and Bendix-Balgley premiered it the same year with Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony (where he served as concertmaster from 2011-2015).  

Bendix-Balgley writes:  

“The idea of a klezmer violin concerto was one I had for a while, since I was looking for a virtuoso piece in the Klezmer style to play with orchestra. My original thought was to commission the work from another composer, but I was encouraged by my father and by Maestro Manfred Honeck to write the work myself. I decided to write a virtuosic violin fantasy accompanied by full orchestra. I am extremely grateful that the wonderful composer Samuel Adler agreed to orchestrate the piece for me, realizing a full version of the violin and piano score that I composed.  

“I grew up around klezmer music and it had a significant influence on my musical upbringing. My father, Erik Bendix, is a dance teacher who specializes in Eastern European folk dancing. He is an expert on Yiddish dance, so as a child I often listened to recordings of klezmer music or heard live bands play at workshops and festivals where my father taught. I began picking up Klezmer tunes shortly after I had started playing the violin. To this day, playing klezmer music is a wonderful counterweight to my classical playing, since it allows the performer to improvise and embellish on the spot. Developing this freedom helps me play with greater flexibility and imagination within the stricter structures of classical repertoire. Klezmer music is vividly emotional, ranging from deeply mourning improvisations to the irresistible drive of its fast dance music.  

“My first question when composing the klezmer concerto was whether to use existing traditional klezmer melodies to compose my own. I decided to compose my own tunes in the style of traditional ones I have learned over the years. 

“The Fidl-Fantazye is constructed in three movements that are played without pause. Each movement is a medley of different dances. After a short orchestral introduction, the violin enters alone, playing a simple Khosidl tune. A Khosidl is a slow and heavy line dance in the old Hassidic style. This is followed by a Doina, a Romanian-style improvisation over of a held harmony, the first of three Doina sections in the piece that serve as transitions. The melody of the next section uses my musical translation of the name Samuel: E-flat (eS in German), A, E-natural (Mi in solfege), C (Ut in solfege), E, A (La in solfege). My middle name is Samuel and I was named after my great-grandfather, Samuel Leventhal, who was a violinist. Like me, he went to Germany to study violin, and following his studies he joined the Pittsburgh Symphony. He was later concertmaster of the Hartford Symphony. Because of my connection with him as well as the happy coincidence that Samuel Adler is the orchestrator of this work, the musical version of the name felt like a nice dual homage. This motive appears throughout the work in different forms.  

“The second movement opens with another Doina that features a duet with solo viola. This leads to a slow Nigun or Lid, a wordless song which then becomes a Hora, a slow dance in three. Here I incorporate small quotes from Mahler’s 5th Symphony, the work in the second half of the concert on June 17th. Gustav Mahler incorporated klezmer tunes and elements into a number of his works (mostly famously in the 3rd movement of the 1st symphony). Here my quotations of his melodies came from the question: what if the classical melodies in Mahler’s 5th symphony had been inspire by klezmer tunes? What would those tunes have sounded like? So in the last movement of the Fantazye, I incorporated some Mahler into a version of Hora, and wove more Mahler into my version of Freylekhs. 

“The third movement is an extended medley of fast tunes, alternating between full orchestra and smaller ensembles within the orchestra. Throughout I wanted the solo violin to trade off tunes with individual members of the orchestra. At the end, the full orchestra joins in, with a wild race to the finish.” 

Bendix-Balgley's Fidl-Fantazye is scored for three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings, and solo violin.  

Adventures on Earth (ET) 
John Williams (b. 1932) 

Most famous as a composer of film music, American composer John Williams has had an incredibly successful career spanning more than 50 years. He is the laureate conductor for the Boston Pops Orchestra, and also conducts the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has won numerous awards including the National Medal of Arts, a Kennedy Center Honor, the Olympic Order. He has also won and been nominated for so many Academy Awards that he is the Academy’s most-nominated living person.  

Williams has composed music for over 100 films and has shared a decades-long collaboration with director Steven Spielberg. Their projects include Schindler’s List, E.T., Jaws, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Munich, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, and more. Williams’ most famous scores also include Star Wars, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman: The Movie, and Home Alone. His concert music includes two symphonies and concertos for various instruments. Williams also composed and arranged Air and Simple Gifts for the first inaugural ceremony of President Barack Obama.  

Williams holds honorary degrees from over 20 American universities and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009. His 1982 score for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is one of his most popular works and has been arranged as a concert suite. In the original version, he struggled to make sections the correct length for the film, and Spielberg liked the score so much that he edited the film to fit Williams’ score, which won an Oscar.  

Williams’ score calls for three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta, and strings.  

Cadillac Ranch  
Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) 

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Cadillac Ranch 

*Note provided by the composer 

Cadillac Ranch (2024) for orchestra was commissioned by the Amarillo Symphony in celebration of its 100th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of “Cadillac Ranch.” My composition is inspired by “Cadillac Ranch,” a public art installation created in 1974 by the modernist architects Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, then known as Ant Farm. Located near the old Route 66 on the desolate outskirts of Amarillo, Texas, “Cadillac Ranch” consists of 10 Cadillac cars, dating from 1949 to 1964. The Cadillacs are symmetrically buried in a straight line nose-first in the dirt with the classic tailfins of each car pointed toward the sky at the exact same angle. This monument to the American road trip has attained iconic status and is visited every year by millions of travelers from around the world. 

Cadillac Ranch for orchestra (2024) is structured as a theme and variations divided into an introduction with 10 variations, one for each Cadillac, performed without pause. First heard in the introduction performed by the string section, the main musical motive consists of four notes upon which the entire work is based and rhythmically echoes the 4 syllables of the title “Ca-dil-lac Ranch.” Like the 10 Cadillacs, musical pitches are often presented in 10-tone rows or rhythmic pulses in groupings of 10. In each of the 10 variations, I paint a unique soundscape that alludes to popular and contemporary musical idioms associated with each Cadillac era.

– Michael Daugherty  

CADILLAC RANCH (1974) 
Amarillo, Texas