This Is Minnesota Orchestra | Musical Menagerie with the Minnesota Zoo | Season 2 | Episode 3

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(dramatic orchestral music) This is Minnesota Orchestra.

(dramatic orchestral music) (orchestral music intensifies) - Hi everyone and welcome to today's Minnesota Orchestra young people's concert musical menagerie in partnership with our friends at the Minnesota zoo.

Today, we are so excited to present a program that really is about exploring the connection between music and animals.

Today we'll share music that is written for let's see, tropical birds, fish, bumblebees, brown bears, raptors, Amur tigers and I think white-cheeked gibbons as well.

Today we'll talk about how composers are sometimes inspired by music inspired by animals and their habitats.

We'll also talk about how some music inspires and evokes images of animals and their personalities and what they do.

So that very first piece is the preludium from Edvard Grieg's "Holberg Suite", and to my mind when I hear that music, I imagine the galloping of horses.

(imitates galloping horses) So now we go on our galloping through our musical journey today, we'll be joined by our friends from the Minnesota zoo, who will be both here in the hall live and also on the video.

I got to go to the zoo this winter, and I met all the animals that we're seeing on the program and I talked to all of the zookeepers, and I had the most amazing time.

And I learned so much, and one of the things I learned was how birds communicate with each other.

Let's hear a little bit more about that right now.

This space is so amazing, there's so many birds, where in the world are they from?

- We are essentially in Asia and South America.

So what you're gonna see in here is multiple species of birds from those two locations.

The temp in here is about 80 degrees, so it's very tropical inside.

We have about 80 birds in here and 30 different species.

So you're surrounded by a canopy of music essentially.

- [Sarah] So each bird has a unique song, can you describe some of the reasons birds sing?

(birds chirping) - [Angela] Birds sing to attract mates, they sing to protect themselves and protect their territory to keep others away.

They'll also sing to warn other birds around them that maybe a predator is nearby or there's some sort of danger coming.

And so their songs are extremely complex and they can have multiple songs of each species.

- [Sarah] Do you think they sing to show off or to?

- Absolutely, one of their number one reasons is to sing to show off, to say I have the best voice I have the best sounds and many times a lot of dancing goes along with it.

Each song is very unique to each bird.

However, each bird can have multiple songs and multiple variations of that song so it's very complex.

They have the ability to change tones and undulate simultaneously while changing pitches and notes.

- The songs are unique, but the sounds are unique too.

Can you tell me a little bit about the different sounds that birds can make?

- [Angela] We can get high pitch sounds.

(birds chirping) Low pitch, some birds sing more melodically, they have more of a sing-song.

(birds chirping) Otherwise some are more of a grunts or deep howling sound.

- It's so great to be here, it's like listening to a whole symphony of birds.

(birds chirping) It was amazing to see all those birds.

You know I forgot to introduce myself, I am Sarah Hicks, I'm your host and conductor and also your harpsichord player for this piece.

You know, so many composers were inspired by a birdsong, including our next composer Antonio Vivaldi.

His violin concerto "Spring" was written as sort of a musical picture that gives the listeners an image of murmuring streams and thunderstorms and birdsong.

Vivaldi imitated so many kinds of birdsong, chirping, twittering and warbling.

You'll hear these sounds played by our solo violin, Erin Keefe, and also by our other violins, Felicity James and Peter Maguire.

As you listen, I want you to think, what kind of bird do you picture making these sounds?

What does it look like and where does it live?

Let's hear what Vivaldi gave us.

("Spring") (musicians applauding) - Hi, everyone, I'm Carol Strecker, Director of Education, Events and Experiences at the Minnesota zoo.

We had a wonderful time hosting Sarah at the zoo.

And we're so excited to be here today to listen to the orchestra play great music connected with animals like this last piece by Vivaldi.

The orchestra is going to play a piece about the sea next, and while they get ready, I'm going to tell you a little bit about coral reefs.

Coral reefs, also known as rain forests of the sea, are some of the most productive systems on the planet.

Covering less than 1% of the oceans, they provide homes for more than 25% of the world's marine species.

They provide services for some of our most beloved ocean friends, like clownfish, sea stars, sea turtles and sharks.

The Minnesota Zoo's tropical reef represents an indoor Pacific reef, hosting species native to the tropical waters of Southeast Asia.

These amazingly diverse reefs are home to nearly 3000 species of fish, and almost 700 species of coral.

And did you know corals are actually animals, not plants?

- I didn't know before but I know now.

I learned so much about reefs.

Thank you so much, Carol for showing us about reefs.

So, sometimes, you know composers were inspired by their habitats, such as reefs, and now we're gonna talk about one such composer, her name is Grace Williams, and she wrote a piece called "Calm Sea in Summer".

She creates the sound of a calm sea by writing a piece that's very slow, it has smooth legato notes.

It also has a gentle up and down melody that sounds like the rolling of waves.

And so it's a very gentle piece that we'll also see images of fish from the Minnesota zoo, Atlantic tropical reefs floating gently by beautiful corals as we listen to this piece.

Let's listen and look.

("Calm Sea in Summer") So we're standing in front of some grass but what is special about this area in the zoo?

- This time of year, it might not look that interesting, but there's a very good chance that there are endangered rusty patch bumblebee queens, dreaming under those grasses right now.

What's pretty neat is just a few years ago, this area around our parking lot here at the Minnesota Zoo was really just lawn grass.

It wasn't habitat, it wasn't home to our native pollinators, but by installing rain gardens with native plants in them, like the big blue stems and monarda we were able to provide homes to these things.

We started seeing these endangered species like rusty patch bumblebees, and so many other insect pollinators start to show up.

It's this great story of, if you build it, they will come.

So we're helping the pollinators right here at the Minnesota zoo.

- So we talk about being busy as a bee, where does that come from?

Are bees really busy?

- Oh, of course, they're busy, they've got a lot of work to do, moving pollen from plant to plant, fertilizing those future seeds and future fruits.

Species like honey bees, those workers might visit over 5000 flowers in a day.

So obviously, they're quite busy moving those wings and making that funny sound that we associate with them.

- [Sarah] So how do they make that buzzing sound?

- Basically moving their wings as fast as they are.

And what's pretty neat is that some of them even buzz their wings at different frequencies, number of crops rely on specific insect pollinators like bumblebees, because if those flowers aren't vibrated at just the right note, tomatoes, for example, need to be vibrated at that middle C, otherwise, they're not gonna even release their pollen.

So that's why we really need a lot of our native pollinators like bumblebees, who are buzzing at just the right frequency to do their thing.

- Bees are so important for the ecosystem, they do so much for humans, and so it seems only right that we help them and support them.

And we're so lucky to have the Minnesota Zoo doing this really important conservation work.

It was so interesting talking to Cale about these pollinators and the keys that they buzz in.

Well, I guess if the tomatoes are a C, I'm wondering if the cucumbers also need to be buzzed to a C and maybe the apple pollinators buzzed to an A.

In any case, our musical pollinators will be buzzing to many, many notes, our woodwind quintet is getting ready to play one of the most famous pieces about animals and that is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's, "Flight of the Bumblebee".

Now, Rimsky-Korsakov creates the buzzing of the bee by writing a really fast melody with lots of chromatic notes, that's all the notes in a scale or if you were playing a piano it'll be all the black and white notes there.

As you listen I want you to also notice that it sounds like the bee is buzzing from here to there and here to there, and that's because the instruments are passing the melody back and forth.

I would say that there's many arrangements of this piece, my favorite one is with four tubas.

This one will be a little bit different though, here are the woodwind quintet playing the "Flight of the Bumblebee".

Let's hear the musical buzzing.

("Flight of the Bumblebee") - So we have our three Alaska brown bears here at the Minnesota zoo.

The one right here in front is Kenai, and then behind him, the lighter one is Sadie, and the one laying down behind us is Haines, and they're over here because we put a little extra food out for them this morning.

This time of year they like to be sleepy, of course, they don't truly hibernate, it's called a torpor, they don't do it as much as they do in the wild, because we give them enough food here, so they don't have to worry about that.

But we wanted make sure everybody could see them up and moving a little bit, because most of the time, they're gonna go right down to that den and go to sleep for.

- Oh, they go to sleep.

And what are they like?

Do they have different personalities?

- [Ben] They behave similarly in that they're bears but then their personalities are really different.

- [Sarah] This is Kenai right here, what's he like?

- [Ben] He is kind of the goofy little brother of the group.

- [Sarah] And then we have Haines.

- [Ben] Haines is kind of the easygoing peacekeeper.

- [Sarah] And then what's Sadie like?

- [Ben] Sadie's in charge of everything.

(Sarah laughs) It's the long and short of it, she's in charge of everything.

- [Sarah] And do they all get along?

- [Ben] They play, they play a good amount.

The boys wrestle quite a bit like brothers would do, Sadie puts up with Kenai but she's not a big fan.

- [Sarah] Are they all the same age?

- They're really close to the same age.

They were all orphaned in Alaska, we were really fortunate that they were put together when they were probably around six months old.

- [Sarah] Okay, so they were really young.

- [Ben] Yeah, as far as they know they're a litter.

- So it's so interesting that like humans, all bears have different personalities.

You have the instigator, you have the peacekeeper, the rambunctious one, but it's also wonderful that they all get along together.

It was so much fun to meet those bears and their personalities.

You know, just like bears have different personalities, music can have different personalities as well.

In fact, our next composer, Maurice Ravel wasn't inspired by bears but he was inspired by personalities.

In fact, he wrote each movement of his piece, "Le tombeau de Couperin" in memory of one of his friends.

The movement we're about to play starts and ends with sort of fast bubbly music, in between, you'll hear something slower and gentler.

So it's almost like there's two personalities in the music.

So as you listen, I want you to think what those two personalities might be, does it remind you of the bears we just saw?

Or maybe it reminds you of some other animal or even a person.

Let's find out.

("Le tombeau de Couperin") - We're here at the Minnesota trail at our bald eagle exhibit.

And our bald eagle is under human care, because she is not able to fly.

She has a previous wing injury so she would not be able to survive out in the wild.

- [Sarah] So this is a magnificent bird.

The bald eagles are some of the biggest birds in the world.

- [Pujita] They are.

Bald eagles can weigh up to 15 pounds and they have a wingspan of up to seven feet.

- So I often see them at this time of year flying over lakes and rivers, is this where they like to fly?

- They do, they like to nest in areas where there're consistent water sources.

So these guys are great hunters, they will catch their prey, which a lot of times is fish in mid swim, so they'll swoop down into the rivers and lakes and catch that prey.

- [Sarah] Wow, so they sweep down, I hear they fly at really high heights.

- Because of their large wingspan, they are able to use thermal currents and actually catch those and then soar up to 10,000 feet.

Because of their wingspan, they are able to soar and actually not even flap a single wing during that point.

- [Sarah] That's as high as an airplane.

And that must be an amazing view from up there.

- [Pujita] It's just beautiful to watch.

- A bird like Gladys, she's a Eurasian eagle owl.

This used to be the largest species of owl in the world.

And being an owl she's not gonna do a lot of soaring.

She is instead going to do a lot of, she's a little bit more of a stealth hunter, I like to think of owls as like the ninjas of the bird world so she's not gonna spend a bunch of times soaring, but when she does fly, that's where the owls get special.

So owls, have the structure their feathers completely different from basically any other bird out there.

Owls have this incredible ability because of the structure of their feathers to fly silently.

So when she flaps her wings, it still will make a little bit of noise, but when she's gliding, like if she's like, oh, I hear that mouse, she pops out of the tree and flies down without flapping her wings at all, completely silent.

So she's got a couple structures on her feathers that help her do that.

When you're close enough you can see, just that (indistinct) feather right there, it looks like it's frayed a little bit.

And that's the way her feather's supposed to be.

That's one of the things that helps (indistinct) the sound of the wind as it goes over her feathers.

So that's Gladys' flying.

She's not gonna soar majestically in the sky, instead, she's gonna find a nice perch to sit up on, and wait and watch, and then she's gonna (muffled speaking).

- Then she can glide.

- She can just glide right.

- Wow.

Not making that noise though, huh, Gladys.

- No.

(laughs) (owl hoots) - Yes, that would be very counterproductive.

- Yeah.

- When it would come to hunting.

- So is she discussing her displeasure right now by, or just sort of.

- Basically she was raised around people, so she will always make that sound.

It's a baby, but like a begging noise.

- Oh.

(owl hoots) (Sarah laughs) - It's kind of her way of being like, hey, hey, you should give me a tree, I'm being good.

(owl hoots) (laughs) - It was really exciting to meet the raptors or the birds of prey at the Minnesota Zoo.

They really have these enormous wings that allow them to swoop and glide and soar so gracefully.

Our next piece was inspired by the majestic bald eagle and its habitat which is usually around lakes and streams.

The composer Jack Stamp, has written for us a new piece called "Eagles on Red Cedar Lake" for the Uptown brass quintet, which is made up of members of the Minnesota Orchestra.

As you listen now I want you to notice right off the very first tune is this majestic tune for horn and trumpet.

And later on, I want you to imagine that you're soaring like an eagle, as the melody soars over the energetic rhythm of the trombone and the tuba.

Let's take flight.

(metal clinking) ("Eagles on Red Cedar Lake") - Look it's a tiger.

- [Zookeeper] Currently we have three tigers at the zoo, we have one male and two females.

This is Callisto, she's one of our four year old female tigers.

- [Sarah] What kind of tiger is she?

- [Zookeeper] She's an Amur tiger.

- [Zookeeper] So it's the same thing as Siberian tiger, the name kind of changed because their range has been so restricted to along the Amur river on the eastern side of Russia.

- How many of them are there out in the wild?

- There are about 500 Amur tigers in the wild.

- Oh, wow.

- [Zookeeper] They're one of the biggest tiger species, so they can get up to about five to 600 pounds.

- [Sarah] And they're so beautiful.

- [Zookeeper] Mm hmm.

- [Sarah] And in the wild tigers are great predators, they have these huge paws and these powerful jaws.

So how do they stalk and then capture their prey?

- So they're excellent at stalking their prey, that's one of their best attributes, they will hide in the grass or behind trees, for their size for being three to 500 pounds, they're quite stealthy.

And even sometimes when we're calling them in from exhibit if they're hiding from us and playing, a lot of times, we don't hear them, and they just show up right there.

So even as.

- That must be a little scary.

- Yes, even as keepers, I will admit, like they can even sneak up on us too, that's how good they are.

- [Sarah] What's that chase like?

- They get as close as they can, because then they'll have the best success.

So they kind of hide in the grass, they kind of hide behind the trees.

And it's kind of funny, you kind of think how on earth does an orange cat with black stripes hide from anybody?

And it's actually very beneficial, because with the shade that comes through the trees in the forest, they blend in really, really well, with those stripes and that orange coloring.

They're very, very quiet, prey usually doesn't hear them coming and then all of a sudden they pounce.

So they can run to 30 to 40 miles an hour.

- So they can go from zero to 30 really quickly then.

- Yes.

And they're very good at jumping, so there's a common misconception, you always read that tigers can jump 30 feet, that's forward, so that's not straight up in the air.

So when they're running and they have momentum and they take a leap, they can jump about 30 feet forward.

So that's another advantage.

- [Sarah] 30 feet?

- [Zookeeper] Mm hmm.

- Wow, Callisto is out there and I can imagine her, stalking and then pouncing all of a sudden, I would not wanna be chased by a tiger.

This is my amazing and magical creature, his name is Pinkerton and he comes with me all over the world as I travel for work.

He didn't get to come to the zoo though, so he didn't see the tigers that I saw, which is probably okay, he would have been scared of the tigers.

In any case, I did not see the tigers stalking their prey at the zoo, although I know that they're great hunters, and that they can be stealthy and speedy all at the same time.

When I use my imagination and listen to our next piece, which is called "Fire Dance" by Anthony DiLorenzo, in my mind, I picture the intensity and the excitement and the speed of a tiger chase.

So as you listen I want you to think if there's anything in the music that reminds you of tigers pouncing or chasing or maybe you picture something else?

And then I wanna wonder, what is it in the music that evokes those images?

Let's use our imaginations as we listen.

("Fire Dance") Hey guys, look, there's a pair of gibbons.

(gibbons singing) - Tia is the white one and she's our female, and she's about 26 years old, Bailey is the male, he is black and he's about 24 years old.

Tia has been at the zoo her entire life and Bailey has been here most of his life.

- So gibbons are not monkeys?

- [Delaina] They are not monkeys, gibbons are in the ape family.

- [Sarah] Gibbons are really intelligent, and they have a very complex communication system.

- They are incredibly intelligent primates.

So in the wild, the call serves many purposes, they have a wide range in the canopy forest and they can actually tell the call of their family members and their mate no matter where they are.

So it's used for them as a way to communicate and stay together.

Their vocalizations can also be used as a way for those animals to protect territory, to warn others off from their area and keep the boundary.

- [Sarah] And do the male and female sort of harmonize together?

(gibbons hollering) - So they have each a unique song between each pair and family group that they can recognize no matter where they are.

(gibbon hollering) Their song usually starts out with the male, with a lower tone and he has some more hoops and hollers, and then the female will jump in and she has some higher pitch tones and a longer range.

(gibbon hollering) And they call back and forth responding and harmonizing with each other, usually with the female reaching her peak tone and then the male will end with his lower holls.

(gibbon hollering) They are very in sync.

- We are so lucky to hear them communicating to each other.

And I think it's amazing how so many animals in the natural world harmonize together.

(gibbons hollering) You know, the gibbons makes such unique sounds, and we were so lucky to hear them live at the zoo, and they really are that loud, it's amazing.

Now I don't know of a composer who has written anything that imitates the calls of a gibbon, at least not on purpose, but I know a lot of composers who have written for solo instruments that have dialogues with each other like the gibbons do.

Our next piece is by Steve Reich, and it's a duet for two violins and string orchestra.

You'll hear our two solo violinist, Erin Keefe and Felicity James really have a musical dialogue where they pass the melody back and forth, they'll finish each other's phrases and have a call and response just like the gibbons.

As you listen, I want you to think about what these instruments might be saying as they talk to each other and to the orchestra.

Let's listen in on this musical conversation.

(dramatic orchestral music) (footsteps thudding) (papers rustling) (dramatic orchestral music) (musicians applauding) (dramatic orchestral music) - What an amazing look back at the animals we've met today.

You know, seeing the animals and listening to the music connected with them really makes me think about how special animals are, and how important it is that we all do what we can to care for them.

We can do that by working together to protect the environment we share.

- It's so important to take care of the world around us that we share with these animals.

Thank you so much, Carol, for being here, and to all of your colleagues at the Minnesota Zoo for showing us around and introducing us to the animals.

We had a great time meeting everyone.

I think our audiences did too.

Thanks so much.

So today we saw how some composers are inspired by animals and their habitats, but we also learned that we can use our imaginations to see and feel and hear music in our own way.

And that's the great thing about music, composers might give us clues as to what they're trying to communicate, but we can interpret things in our own unique ways, and be creative as we perform and listen to music.

So as you listen to our last piece, I want you to think about what you hear in the music.

Maybe it brings to mind an image of one of the animals we visited, or maybe it sounds like a different animal altogether, or maybe it just makes you feel excited about this wonderful, vibrant world that we all share.

Whatever you feel, or see or hear, there're no right or wrong answers, and that is the amazing freedom that music gives us.

Thanks so much for joining us today.

I hope you had a good time, I had a good time, I think the orchestra had a good time.

We all had a good time.

And I hope you enjoy our last selection which is the thrilling finale to Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's "Sinfonietta No.1".

I'm so glad we shared this time together my friends.

Until the next time, stay safe and stay well and I hope to see you really soon.

(air whooshing sound) ("Sinfonietta No.1") (background noises) (dramatic orchestral music) (dramatic orchestral music)

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