Samuel Jones

Image (Left): Its the only picture weve ever had taken. One of Capotes Christmas memories. Truman Capote, age 7, with his beloved elderly cousin, Sook Faulk. Image (Right): A memory of a memory. Photograph of cast members Michael Waddington (Capote as a boy) and Kristi Trimble (Sook Faulk), reproducing the pose of the iconic original picture. From... the premiere production by the Deep Ellum Opera Theatre, Dallas, TX, Dec.-Jan., 1992, Susan Dormady Eisenberg, a regular arts blogger for the Huffington Post, recently wrote a fascinating article about A Christmas Memory, the opera Samuel Jones composed based on the beloved story by Truman Capote. Besides telling the interesting story of how Jones came to write the opera, the article makes a compelling case for the operas holiday suitability. [Participants (l. to r.): Doug Scarborough, soloist in Jones Trombone Concerto; Walter Simmons, musicologist and keynote speaker; John David Earnest, Prof. and composer in residence at Whitman College; Yaacov Bergman, music director of Walla Walla Symphony; and Samuel Jones.] Walter Simmons, the musicologist regarded by many as the most significant chronicler of the American Tonalist composers, has honored Jones by placing him in the Featured Composer section of Simmons influential website . Simmons, the author of the books Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers and Voices of Stone and Steel: The Music of Schuman, Persichetti, and Mennin, has written a perceptive introduction to Jones body of work and an appraisal of his place in the continuum of the neo-romantic ethos into the 21st Century. In February 2015 Simmons gave the keynote address inaugurating a week-long Festival of Samuel Jones music given by Whitman College and the Walla Walla Symphony held in Walla Walla, WA. In this Festival 10 of Jones compositions were performed, culminating in a performance of his Trombone Concerto by Doug Scarborough, accompanied by Yaacov Bergman conducting the Walla Walla Symphony. Samuel Jones has recently completed ...Read More