Silvie Jensen, mezzo soprano

Mezzo soprano Silvie Jensen always knew that she wanted to be a singer, and recalls knowing as early as age 4 or 5. “The voice is everyone’s first instrument, and the depth of emotion one can express with it is what drew me to singing,” she says.

Silvie will perform in the finale of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 (the song, Das himmlische Leben, which presents a child’s vision of heaven), and in his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) four-song cycle at Symphony Parnassus’ season-opening concert on Sunday, Nov. 6 (3 p.m.) at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.

“I love this music very much for the beauty of the melodies,” she says, “and for the depth of feeling — sad, happy, loving and tender, harsh and wounded, optimistic, yet despairing…and for its masterful use of the colors of the orchestra. I feel ecstatic being able to sing it.”

Silvie says she feels honored to perform with Symphony Parnassus. “I hope our performance moves people deeply,” she says. “The last line of (Mahler’s) Fourth Symphony says ‘The voices of the angels stir the senses, so that everyone awakens in joy.’ I hope both audience and performers will be so stirred, that we will all awaken into joy together!”

A native of Hollister, Calif., she currently lives in San Francisco, after having moved back from New York City last year to be closer to family and to participate in the Bay Area’s vibrant arts scene. She has sung with San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera, plus she has performed with many opera companies and symphonies in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and on tour and at festivals in Canada, Spain, and the Czech Republic.

She began singing seriously at age 10 and later went to Columbia University and also studied at the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College of Music in New York. A highly sought oratorio soloist, she won 2nd place in the 2014 Oratorio Society of New York Solo Competition, and that year also made her solo debut at Carnegie Hall in a sold-out concert of Handel’s Messiah.

Stefan Cwik, composer

In The Sword in the Stone, a concerto for English horn and orchestra, composer Stefan Cwik uses the solo instrument as the “voice” of Merlyn the wizard, leading the way for magical adventures with talking animals and daring knights as he educates the future King Arthur in this famous story.

“The first thing I thought of with ‘The Sword in the Stone’ is that it has to be light, because the English horn is not a loud instrument,” he said, describing Merlyn’s voice as “low and lyrical, can be seductive, but is not shimmery or pretty.”

The challenge, he said, was for the English horn and the orchestra to “have a conversation without the soloist being drowned out.”

Cwik, 29, is no stranger to Symphony Parnassus, which has premiered his Concert Dances for Orchestra, as well as his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. He has a degree in composition from San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a master’s degree in composition from the Juilliard School in New York, where he won the Juilliard Orchestral Competition for two consecutive years.

Originally from Chicago, Stefan came to San Francisco to study guitar performance at the conservatory, but found his true calling when he switched to composition. He cites influences such as Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Britten, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. He also likes a lot of American folk music, which finds its way into his compositions.

Though other members of his family played instruments, he is the first to have pursued a musical career. The son of a lawyer (his father), and a retired judge (his mother), Stefan said he feels fortunate that his parents valued education and encouraged his interest in music. He studied trumpet and guitar growing up. “I am lucky,” he said. “I got the extra push to do it, but no one ever had to make me practice. I always wanted to do it.”

Stefan Cwik, Stephen Paulson, and Russ deLuna discuss Cwik's English horn concerto during rehearsal

Russ deLuna, soloist

Russ deLuna, who performs the English horn solo in composer Stefan Cwik’s “The Sword in the Stone,” has been playing music since childhood, but his appearance with Symphony Parnassus marks several “firsts”: It is his first time working directly with a composer; his first time premiering a brand new work as soloist; and it is his first time as a soloist with conductor Stephen Paulson, his friend and fellow double-reed colleague at the San Francisco Symphony. 

“It’s fun to see (Steve) use his talents in a different way other than the bassoon,” Russ says. “It’s kind of a blast to watch him conduct. He’s a great musician.”

Russ calls Steve, principal bassoon with the Symphony, one of his “favorite players” in the orchestra, with whom he chats a lot about, well, music, but what else? Making reeds, a time-intensive side job and hobby for the double-reed players. The English horn, which is “not English, and not a horn,” Russ jokes, is the alto instrument of the oboe family.

English horn soloist Russ deLuna during rehearsal

He says he is excited to work with Cwik—also a colleague at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music—and is enjoying the process of being the first soloist to interpret the adventurous new piece in which, according to the composer, the English horn takes on the voice of Merlyn, the famed wizard of Arthurian legend.

“It’s so fun to know that I am the first to ever play it,” Russ said.      

Russ, a member of the San Francisco Symphony since 2007, occupies the Joseph and Pauline Scafidi Chair. He has appeared as soloist in such pieces as “Quiet City,” by Aaron Copland, and “The Swan of Tuonela” by Jean Sibelius. He played recently with the New York Philharmonic, and this summer, performs as a member of the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Matsumoto, Japan.

Elena Ariza, soloist

Cupertino teen to perform Dvořák concerto on March 20

The cello—beautiful but unwieldy—seems like an unusual instrument for a child to start playing when she is barely out of diapers.

But when you grow up in a musical family and they need a cellist for the piano trio, why wait?

Elena Ariza

Elena Ariza, now 17, began cello lessons when she was just 4 years old.

It turns out her mom, Nagisa, a professional pianist and piano teacher, wanted Elena to join her and Elena’s older brother Yujin, a violinist, in a trio, so Elena began lessons. She seemed to have found her instrument right away.  

“I think it really fits me,” she says. “I like the register of the instrument…I guess the cello is more like human voice. It speaks to me more.”

Elena is due to graduate in June from Menlo School in Atherton, Calif., and has been very busy this winter, flying across the country from one music school to the next for a half-dozen auditions to determine where she will advance her already impressive music career.   

On March 20 (3 p.m. at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco), she will share the stage with Symphony Parnassus to perform what she calls the “king of all cello concertos,”—the Dvořák Cello Concerto.

“I really love how it expresses everything from noble character to depression and mourning,” she said, “and how it has a lot of variation inside the concerto.”

She is thrilled to be performing with Symphony Parnassus. “It’s a really great honor to be given this opportunity,” she said. “It’s not often as a high-schooler that you get to perform solos with an orchestra.”

This is her fourth performance of the Dvořák piece.

Elena—winner of the 2015 Parnassus-San Francisco Conservatory of Music Competition—has won many other prizes, including the Music Teachers National Association’s California State Competition, Menuhin-Dowling Competition, and the Diablo Valley Orchestra and South Valley Symphony Concerto Competition. She studies cello with Eric Sung in the SFCM Pre-College Program, and plays with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.  

As a chamber musician, Elena plays in the Cambiata String Quartet, which was featured on the NPR radio program “From the Top,” and won first place in the Sacramento State Chamber Music Competition in 2015.

Elena lives in Cupertino with her parents, who emigrated from Japan in 1993 to the South Bay and have been there ever since. Her dad, Michiharu, is a software engineer, and, like his musical wife, seems to have passed down his gifts to his children: son Yujin, 21, has a computer science degree (from Columbia University) and is now studying for a master’s degree in violin performance at Julliard School of Music; Elena, in addition to her musical interests, lists computer science as her favorite subject at school. “I really enjoy coding,” she says. “It feels like a type of puzzle-solving. I get addicted when trying to figure out a glitch in a program.”

She shows equal excitement for cello playing, especially when it involves performing with an orchestra. “It’s very exhilarating,” she said. “Sitting in front of orchestra, I feel like there is this great powerhouse behind me. It’s always a great experience to collaborate with orchestra and conductor.”