A Human Experience Program Notes
A Human Experience | May 17th, 2025 | 7:00 PM | Union Colony Civic Center
Program Notes by Nicholas Gilmore, Dylan Fixmer, and Anna Clyne
Becky Kutz Osterberg is a versatile freelance musician performing both acoustic and electric cello. She is Principal of the Fort Collins Symphony, Principal of the Greeley Philharmonic, Principal of Steamboat Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Principal of the Cheyenne Symphony. Other orchestra and opera ensemble performances include the Colorado Symphony, Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Opera Colorado, Colorado Bach Ensemble, Colorado Ballet, Larimer Chorale and Laudamus Chorale.
Mrs. Kutz Osterberg received her Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance from the University of Southern California as a student of Ron Leonard, retired Principal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and her Master of Music in Cello Performance from the University of Akron, Ohio where she studied with Michael Haber and Richard Weiss. Additionally, she studied Orchestral Excerpts and post graduate work with Daniel Rothmuller, retired Associate Principal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Beyond her classical experiences, Mrs. Kutz Osterberg has performed with a wide variety of artists including Josh Groban, Guns and Roses, Sarah McLachlan, Mannheim Steamroller, Kaleo, Frank Sinatra Junior, Ten Tenors, Sarah Brightman, Wu-Tang Clan, and a 60-city national tour with John Tesh. She has recorded for independent studio producers in both Colorado and California. Mrs. Kutz Osterberg is a founding member of Synesthesia, an eclectic mix of Flute, Clarinet, Electric Cello, and Ukulele playing a wide variety of musical styles.
Her instructional experience includes teaching and ensemble coaching for more than 25 years. Mrs. Kutz Osterberg has an established private cello studio in Fort Collins and in Steamboat Springs. She has coached cello andchamber music at various summer festivals including Western State in Gunnison, CSU in Fort Collins, and Arrowbear Music Camp in Southern California
Colorado-based composer, musician and educator, Dylan Fixmer, is a genuine and passionate artist whose works reflect his diverse music career. Classically trained at University of Colorado and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Fixmer’s music is inspired by the beauty of nature and the human spirit, and draws upon a multitude of musical styles and traditions. Recent works include commissions and premiers from Ópera Guanajuato, the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra, the Front Range Chamber Players, the University of Northern Colorado Arts Through Lines Series, the Crested Butte Music Festival, The Burroughs, Towards a Shining Light, the Old Machines Duo, UCHealth, and the Laramie County Community College.
Fixmer is currently the Composer in Residence for the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra who premiered his Concerto for Violin: In Memory of Terri Sternberg with violinist Sarah Off, “which received a rapturous reception” (The Times of London) on September 24, 2022, and his Seven Symphonic Portraits: A Weld County Reflectionon October 14, 2023.As a multi-faceted and imaginative composer, Fixmer writes for multifarious contexts from orchestral and traditional solo and ensemble work, to theater, choir, film, and narrative including music for the birth center at the UCHealth Greeley Hospital, the soundtrack for the audio book Adventures of a Mystic Warrior by Robert Rocco D’Ordine, and author Craig Child’s multi-media production “Dark Night.” Fixmer’s Four Portraits for Strings was selected as Editor’s Choice by J.W. Pepper in 2023 and his music has been featured and premiered internationally on Colorado Public Radio Denver and CPR Classical, Radio Classique - Paris, The Times of London, and Le Figaro. An active and dynamic performing artist, Fixmer currently performs with his band “Traditionish”, in addition to various solo and ensemble performances. He has appeared with artists from Glen Valez and Loire Cotler to Blackie O’Connell and Cyril Cyril O Donoghue to Gao Hong, and in performance venues from the Lauderdale House in London and Boettcher Hall in Denver to the IBar Ranch in Gunnison. He has recorded numerous albums including Embodying Rhythm Marimba Ensemble’s Music for Everyday Life and Traditionish’s self-titled album.
Fixmer is a faculty member of Music Composition at the University of Northern Colorado.
Cosí fan Tutte Overture (5’)
The works of W. A. Mozart are no stranger to the world’s stages and have been rightfully popular for well over two hundred years. His opera Cosi fan tutte (All Women are Like That) was the third collaboration with renowned librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte and was only performed 5 times when it debuted due to the death of Emperor Joseph II, and only a handful of times after that. The opera was not performed in the United States until 1922 at the MET. The plot of the comedy is filled with disguises, seduction, pranks, and general joviality. After a short introduction, the overture launches into a presto that sets the stage for the coming lightheartedness of the opera.
Masquerade (5’)
Masquerade draws inspiration from the original mid-18th-century promenade concerts held in London’s pleasure gardens. As is true today, these concerts were a place where people from all walks of life mingled to enjoy a wide array of music. Other forms of entertainment ranged from the sedate to the salacious with acrobatics, exotic street entertainers, dancers, fireworks and masquerades. I am fascinated by the historic and sociological courtship between music and dance. Combined with costumes, masked guises and elaborate settings, masquerades created an exciting, yet controlled, sense of occasion and celebration. It is this that I wish to evoke in Masquerade
Symphonic Dances (36’)
Most music lovers and concert goers know Rachmaninoff as one of the greatest pianists of his time. He is well-known for his strong Romantic voice in his compositions, even into the 20th century, and enjoyed a busy conducting career. Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances was originally written in 1915 as a ballet score and was given to dancer-choreographer Mikhail Fokine, who rejected it. After moving to New York, the composer revisited the work and took great detail in its orchestration. Well known players including virtuoso violinist Fritz Kreisler and Broadway composer and arranger Robert Russel Bennett were consulted on the playability and appropriateness of the orchestration. The three-movement work brings out the lush chromaticism of Rachmaninoff’s musical creativity, rich orchestration, and travels through waltzes, ghostly dances, a quote from his own Symphony No. 1, and the “Dies Irae” chant for the dead.
Concerto for Electric Cello (29’)
Commissioned by Becky Kutz Osterberg
Concerto for Electric Cello was commissioned by cellist Becky Kutz Osterberg to bring awareness to and help destigmatize depression and create hope, solidarity and community for those struggling with depression. The piece in three movements, portrays Becky’s experience with life-long depression from her struggles with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, guilt, shame, confusion, debilitation and despair to finding hope, purpose, and self-worth.
The first movement, entitled “No Light at the End of the Tunnel,” is framed within a highly modified sonata form with swirling and repetitive motifs and disjunct open melodies which serve to portray the numbness, lack of joy and the emptiness of depression. Electronic effects such as distortion, phaser and reverb and extended cello techniques like excessive bow pressure, playing with the stick side of the bow and uncontrolled vibrato are used to portray feelings of frustration, confusion and debilitation. The first movement also introduces a sorrowful melody used in the second movement as a way to foreshadow the feeling of insignificance and self hurt. Harmonically the first movement employs two synthetic modes to create the feeling of “no light” and neo-tonal progressions to portray the orchestra (world) moving forward without the soloist (self).
The second movement, entitled “It’s just me... but who am I,” is an adagio-andante-adagio movement that deals with repression, self hurt, confusion/debilitation and disconnectedness. Again, synthetic modes are employed to create a lush extended harmonic landscape beneath sweeping soloist melodies. The electronic effects used throughout this movement focus on creating a sense of the vastness of feeling insignificant through the use of echo, distortion and flanger effects. This movement also features the English horn and harp as soloist voices, representing figures in Becky’s life who have helped her in times of need.
The third movement, entitled “Hope, Out of Darkness,” generously funded by North Range Behavioral Health, focuses on the ongoing healing process. This movement utilizes modal expansion in two harmonic areas in a palindromic-rondo form (intro-A-B-A’-C-B’-A-coda). This form is meant to mimic EMDR therapy techniques used in behavioral health medicine and the Tai Chi philosophy of Yin and Yang by portraying the cyclical nature of depression and mental illness and working from Becky’s description of the healing process coming in like “waves on ocean tides.” The electronic effects in the movement include a pulsating effect called tremolo as well as distortion, phaser, flanger and overdrive to illustrate the struggle and difficulty involved in the therapeutic process. The movement ends not with a triumphant splash, but a calming stillness after the last surge, suggesting that mental health is not a point of heroic arrival, but a breath of relief for those brave enough to face the waves.
The performance of this piece is meant to also facilitate a dialogue around the spectrum of experiences associated with depression. By presenting Becky’s personal experiences with depression and her journey through the healing process and utilizing the medium of solo electric cello and symphony orchestra, we hope to offer this piece as a show of solidarity to those struggling with mental illness and as a call to our communities to reconsider preconceived notions about the nature of mental health.
Commissioners
North Range Behavioral Health
The Ken and Myra Monfort Charitable Foundation
Weld Community Foundation “Arts Alive” Grant
Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra
Chamber Orchestra of the Springs
Daniel Rothmuller
Doug Merek & Susan Cook
Danielle Anich-Thomas and Douglas Thomas
Fred Jennes & Helen Reed
Warren Luce & Valerie Davia
Sponsors
Jason and Amy Brown
Lisa Spencer
Agrelius Family
Beth Vanderborgh
Tom and Jeanie Osterberg
Mark Miller
Coral Sowel - in memory of Marc Cherron