NSO family concert a twinkling success

What does the color green look like to you?

For National Symphony Orchestra associate conductor Barry Jekowsky, who directed a family concert on color and light Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts, it looks like spring, with the trees and flowers coming to life after a cold winter’s sleep. But green can evoke so many images, Jekowsky added, and invited the audience members to let their imaginations dive into green while the NSO played an excerpt from Michael Torke’s contemporary composition “Green.”

Green was not the only color Jekowsky introduced through musical instruments. The trumpets shot out red. The trombones blue. And together they made purple, which he applied to the canvas of John Williams’ expansive “Liberty Fanfare.” He described with words what it might feel like to be an immigrant coming to America on a boat sailing into New York Harbor. Lady Liberty. Free at last. Glorious land. And then the orchestra represented the same imagery in music.

The theme of the concert — the play of color and light — was inspired by the tradition of visual arts in Maine, said Jekowsky, who admired the beauty of Maine’s unique landscape when he visited the state as a boy. The program of immensely upbeat music illustrated Jekowsky’s points and was greatly entertaining. Aaron Copland’s “Hoe Down,” from the ballet, “Rodeo,” danced with the yellow of hay, the blue of denim jeans and the gingham of skirt-swinging fun.

And, of course, there was George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and the fluttering, delicate tones of Edvard Grieg’s “Morning” (from “Peer Gynt”).

Robert Rodriguez’s “A Colorful Symphony” was the centerpiece of the hour-long concert. Jekowsky brought Rodriguez into the concert hall via phone from Texas, where the composer lives. Rodriguez described for the audience the background of the composition. He explained that it had been inspired by the children’s tale, “The Phantom Tollbooth,” by Norton Juster. The tonal system of music allows a piece to have color, added Rodriguez, whose voice was friendly and relaxed. Jekowsky invited the audience to ask the composer a question, and when no one responded, he moved on to a winning performance of the symphony, which included apt narration provided by Jack Perkins and Wes Sanders.

The concert ended with John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” which had many children and adults gleefully bouncing in their seats. The event, which was the second in a series of NSO public concerts during a 10-day residency in Maine, was a twinkling success. With any luck, it will inspire locally organized concerts geared toward younger audiences and families.