Events

ANNA CLYNE (b. 1980)
PIVOT (2012)

Written for the London Sinfonietta, Anna Clyne’s PIVOT grew from her fascination with motion and reorientation: how a single idea can shift perspective without losing its core. Continually shifting textures and repeating gestures, the piece focuses on structural change and continuity, with musical ideas returning in altered perspectives rather than developing through traditional thematic transformation.

AMY BEACH (1867–1944)
Gaelic Symphony (1894)

Amy Marcy Cheney was descended from early New England colonists. Her father was a manufacturer and importer of paper and her mother was a singer and pianist. Amy's musical talent became evident quite early; she began to sing at the age of one, and by the time she was four was able to play her own compositions on the piano.

After her family moved to Boston in 1875, it was suggested that she be sent to Europe to study, but her parents felt that the local teachers were entirely satisfactory. She was given extensive training in piano, and was guided to a self-study course in composition. (She learned orchestration by translating the treatise on the subject by Berlioz.) She began performing publicly at the age of six, and made her professional debut in Boston when she was sixteen. She had many acquaintances in Boston's literary and musical communities, including Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a prominent physician and amateur singer and pianist. They were married in 1885, after which time she concentrated on composing, and limited her performances to occasional charity concerts and premieres of her new compositions. Out of respect and love for her husband, she used as her professional name Mrs. H.H.A. Beach. After the death of Dr. Beach in 1910, she resumed her performing career, traveling to Europe to promote her compositions. She returned to America at the outbreak of World War I and toured extensively. During the 1920s she made several more trips abroad.

Although Beach's compositional style was influenced by the German-trained Boston musicians of her youth, she also accepted Dvorak's recommendation that American composers should seek to forge a national music out of their own folk music, just as nationalist composers in Europe were doing. Beach felt that for New Englanders Dvorak's suggestion of using African-American and Native American melodies was not satisfactory. Instead, she looked to the heritage of songs from the British Isles which the early colonists had brought with them. When she began to compose her only symphony in 1896, she used a collection of old Irish melodies as her main source of thematic material. "Their simple, rugged, unpretentious beauty led me to... try to develop their ideas in symphonic form," she wrote. "The work was so fascinating that I decided to systematize it seriously, and the 'Gaelic' symphony is the result. Most of the themes are actual quotations from this collection of folk music and those which are original I have tried to keep in the same idiom and spirit."

The symphony has a very traditional structure, but its overall effect is more like a series of tone paintings. The first movement takes its turbulent mood and some of its thematic material from a song Beach had composed in 1890, "Dark Is the Night," to a text by W.E. Henley. The second movement is a gentle siciliana with a lively middle section whose theme is actually a transformation of the outer sections. The slow movement uses two Irish songs, one somber, one soaring, each serving as countermelody to the other. The finale returns to "Dark Is the Night." This time the song supplies material for an expansive march.

SERGIE RACHMANINOFF (1873–1943)
Piano Concerto No. 2 (1900-1901)

The dismal premiere of his First Symphony in 1897 threw Rachmaninoff into a three-year bout of writer’s block. Finally, at his family’s urging, he consulted with Parisian psychologist Dr. Nikolai Dahl in January 1900. The doctor’s immediate assignment: write the new piano concerto promised to the London Philharmonic when Rachmaninoff appeared with the orchestra in 1898.

Through Dahl’s combination of enlightened discussion and rudimentary hypnosis, Rachmaninoff overcame his writer’s block and found a new voice as a composer—one with a perfect knack for unforgettable tunes, dazzling pianistic effects, an effortless flow of ideas, and a very suave sense of style. His close contemporary and antithesis, Igor Stravinsky, later called it a switch from a very young composer to a very old one. This was not meant as a compliment. In fact, written during the heyday of wild and radical new music by Debussy, Mahler, Stravinsky, Strauss, Ives, and Schoenberg, Rachmaninoff’s second concerto was proudly old-fashioned, and, to the chagrin of his avant-garde contemporaries, it quickly became the most beloved concerto of the twentieth century.

The work’s popularity goes far beyond the concert stage; its melodies have been made ubiquitous through their use in movie soundtracks and derivative works on the radio. The second theme of the Allegro scherzando made a fortune for Buddy Kay and Ted Mossman (but not Rachmaninoff) as “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” (The best-known recording was by a young Frank Sinatra in 1945, two years after Rachmaninoff’s death.) The Moderato theme (first introduced by the strings) was the basis for another Sinatra song, 1941’s “I Think of You.” Perhaps most familiar, though, to today’s audiences is the Moderato theme’s appearance in Eric Carmen’s 1975 ballad, “All By Myself.”

Carmen calls Rachmaninoff, “his favorite music,” and with its unabashed Romanticism and the virtuosity demanded of the soloist, this showstopper has become a perennial audience favorite.

BSO conductors have programmed Rachmaninoff’s masterpiece nine times since 1952; the last performance in September 2017 with pianist Andrew von Oeyen, under the baton of Anne Harrigan.

The concert will showcase 80 minutes of music and will include a 20-minute intermission.

Whenever you want! Seriously, the tradition of clapping only at the end of pieces was only for a short time in the history of music. Typically, people like to clap after a great solo in a jazz tune, an impressive dance move, or after a great movement (section) in a symphony. If you really like a piece, clap at the end of the movement and yell "encore" if you want to hear more. (We love playing encores!)

Reserved Seating:

Tier 1 ticket - $80
Tier 2 ticket - $73
Tier 3 ticket - $64
Tier 4 ticket $48

Under 30/Student:

Tier 2 ticket - $42
Tier 3 ticket - $37
Tier 4 ticket - $27

*all ticket prices do not include box office fees

Tickets start at $48 for adults and go up to $80 based on the seat location. The least expensive seats are in the back of the balcony and the front row closest to the stage.

Here are some other helpful tips you should keep in mind:

• New this year, we've introduced the Young Friends Program to eliminate barriers for younger audience members.
• Interested in additional savings? Buy a subscription! Contact us at 406-252-3610 or visit our offices at 2820 2nd Avenue North and we'd be more than happy to find the best deal for you. Subscriptions for our 2026–2027 season are available!
• If you’re a student, veteran, or active duty military, be sure to bring your student/VA/Military ID for great discounts!

Third-party tickets are not accepted. All tickets must be purchased through the Alberta Bair Theater Box Office.

More than anything, we want you to have fun and express your own style when you come to the Billings Symphony, so dress in a way that works for you. Some people love dressing up and going out—if that’s you, do it and you won’t be the only one, we promise. If you prefer to be more casual, then you probably won’t be the only one dressed casually, either. In short, you do you, and we’re just glad you’re joining us.

On-Street Parking

On City streets, there is both metered parking and posted parking. Metered parking times range from 2 hours to 10 hours and is free after 5 pm and on weekends.

There are two free handicap parking spots on the corner of North Broadway in front of U.S. Bank.

Garages

Park 1
Credit/Debit Cards Only. Located at 2912 Third Avenue North and is open to the public 24-hours per day – the office is open Monday through Friday, from 10:30am-6:30pm. There is free parking on Sundays.

Park 2
Credit/Debit Cards Only. Located at 2651 First Avenue North, Park 2 is open to patrons 24-hours per day – the office is open from 7:15am – 11:00pm, Monday through Saturday.

Park 3
Accepts Cash. Located adjacent to City Hall at 210 North 27th Street and is open 7am-11pm – the office is open Monday through Friday from 10:30am – 6:30pm. There is free parking on Sundays.

Park 4
Located at 515 North 31st Street. The garage and office are open only Monday through Friday from 5:30am – 9:30pm. After 9:30pm, parkers are unable to remove their vehicles from the garage.