Shelley Conducts Zarathustra

• You have heard the opening to Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra , but did you know it has nine spectacular parts? Experience them all.
• Composer Claude Debussy’s love for the ocean rises and falls in giant waves of sound in La mer. 
• Ian Cusson is a Canadian Indigenous composer whose music maps and explores the Canadian Indigenous experience.

Thus Spake Zarathustra has been an inspiration to other great composers like Aaron Copland and superstar movie score composer John Williams. The first section of this opus was famously used in 2001: A Space Odyssey and most recently in the very first trailer for the blockbuster film Barbie. From the moment you hear its opening low hum and those three crystalline trumpet notes, you will get why Zarathustra is one for the ages. 

We then move onto La mer by the French composer Claude Debussy, who once thought he would become a sailor but thankfully changed course and turned to music. But he always loved “my old friend, the sea; it is always endless and beautiful. It really is the thing in nature that best puts you in your place.” 

The evening is capped off with music by composer Ian Cusson, who explores the Canadian Indigenous experience, including the history of the Métis people and the intersection of Western and Indigenous cultures. 

Alexander Shelley leads the NAC Orchestra and musicians of the NACO Mentorship Program for the closing night of the season.

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The NACO Mentorship program is made possible in part through the generous support of the Friends of the NAC Orchestra.