KVIE to air Auburn Symphony documentary

A documentary about the Auburn Symphony is set to air soon on KVIE Channel 6 – on the ViewFinder program on March 30 at 7 p.m., April 1 at 4 p.m., April 2 at 7:30 a.m. and April 3 at 6:30 p.m. The documentary will also be available to stream on these dates on the KVIE website: www.kvie.org/programs/viewfinder/. "We are excited to announce that our documentary, 'Auburn Symphony: Scaling the Heights,' will soon reach the local PBS audience of 2 million households," said Symphony Board President Stephanie Snyder. "When we could not perform during the 2020 season, we created an hour-long documentary, a poignant story that begins with the tragic loss of our beloved Maestro Michael Goodwin and culminates with the orchestra, led by Maestro Peter Jaffe, taking on the huge challenge of performing Richard Strauss' 'An Alpine Symphony,' performed at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis in May 2017." "An Alpine Symphony" is a late masterwork of the composer, a tone poem for large orchestra that depicts Strauss' real-life experience spent climbing an alpine mountain from daybreak to the following nightfall, and all the wild, natural events he experienced. It is a reimagining of those events in musical terms. Jaffe recalled his experience of climbing the performance mountain. "What a pinnacle achievement! Tackling Strauss' 'Alpine Symphony' is a challenge for any orchestra – to conquer all the virtuosic musical demands and to amass the extraordinarily large group of musicians that the work requires," Jaffe said. "But what remains equally vivid in memory is the amazing and heartwarming collective will of the Auburn Symphony. They campaigned for us to perform this masterpiece – they even formed a sort of 'posse' to convince yours truly. Our bass clarinetist built the wind machine. Our brass principals were dynamo recruiters. The orchestra wanted it with all their musical hearts, and they truly reached the summit." The documentary was edited to fit KVIE's 26-minute time spot by Tommy Merry, of Tommy Merry Productions, the symphony's videographer for the last seven years. Snyder noted that Merry carefully studied the interviews in the original documentary and chose the words that helped create the shape of the visual story. "We expect our greater Sacramento KVIE viewing audience will experience the ViewFinder documentary as interesting and inspirational," she said. "The story of the Strauss performance symbolically mirrors the Auburn Symphony's own story – a unique gem of a community orchestra continuously scaling its own performing heights for over 30 years." The sponsors for the documentary re-edit project are Neva and Gerald Kesselring, The Arts Council of Placer County, city of Auburn, Placer Business Alliance and Visit Placer. "We are extremely grateful to our sponsors for allowing us to pursue this unique opportunity and share our story with a broad audience," said Symphony Executive Director Anne Brown. "We are indebted to their generosity." AUBURN SYMPHONY ON KVIE To livestream the program's premiere March 30 at 7 p.m., go to https://www.kvie.org/live/. To stream the documentary on demand on all four air dates, visit: www.kvie.org/viewfinder/. The program will also be available to stream on the free PBS Video app. For more information, visit auburnsymphony.com or call 530-823-6685.