well thanks for visiting with us today my name's bill maher all the host on things they usually don't teach you and today once again our guest is hugo i catch from well from the washington so funny but also from california versus a hugo so nice to have you back on again you're getting ready to open up your new season we are and it's exciting to be here and i just have to make a disclaimer i wore this tie just for you tonight because i'm a big fan of you and your ties jerry jerry does a washington symphony once again has a real aggressive season and in the video we're going to be showing a video here and in the program the to give an idea of the people out there how gress of the program is and it's not just a bunch of and i nominee ten twelve fifteen years yeah i think we're in our maybe our twelfth season now that sounds about right ok and so i said but for the people the last time you were on here the ticket sales at the library  tenfold and that was a wonderful thing for not only the people in the community but for washington county because of the fact that it helps the symphony continue doing work thank you and those that tenfold was all new people so hopefully now they're believers they've they've like you and like me believe in this organization well the lay said the video that comes up i'm sure is going to win over a lot of people let's let's go well first thing let's talk about you for a minute ok once again just to reintroduce your local boy from mckee port i am i grew up in mckeesport and i had a lot of fine mentors there and i guess specifically to this and music i was always involved in music program there and some dear people that meant so much to me  me in so many ways and i thought they were just music teachers but they were teaching me about life and it just happened to be through music so i feel really lucky to come to come through a program that i didn't know till later these teachers put so much of their heart and soul into what they did and did so much work over and above the call of duty and it certainly it certainly shaped who i am today so yeah i grew up in mckeesport i always was in music at some level but i never thought i would do it for a living person and i didn't realize people actually did that i didn't know people did what they liked i thought you go to work and at some point after a year of computer science at college i was good in math so i thought well my dad does this and he's a good guy so i'll go into computer science and it never dawned on me to do what i liked and someone said you go why don't you go into music and a light bulb went off and i thought have someone's got to do it and so i did and i'm one of those lucky people that found out what i love doing and i figured out how to just keep doing it so i feel like a kid who is able to live as an adult doing what they love so how did it that what you were carnegie mellon i did i went to some very fine schools and great mentors i was fortunate enough  to go to carnegie mellon as you mentioned and i spent a couple summers at lake chautauqua so i performed with the opera up there and had wonderful eye opening experience is working with world class musicians and good people and i just kept doing what i loved i ended up going down to baltimore at the peak peabody conservatory at johns hopkins university find find conservatory of music second my master's degree there then i was looking for a doctorate because i loved school and i love to learn  and i figured i'd keep going to school until they tell me there's no more to go so i ended up going to west virginia university which has a fine music program as well so i got my my doctorate of music there and at that point there was no other schooling to do and i really had to grow up and get out into the real world so i did that well now you're done i cal you yes and was used plane positions you hold there well at california diversity of pennsylvania i had been there probably twenty years ago i think on my bicycle one day i was doing a bicycle trip and i thought oh i heard about this place cal state at that point of thinking and i thought oh i heard this is a nice teacher's college well the campus has changed incredibly since then it's all new it's beautiful technology is at the forefront of so much of what they do there and that has worked its way into our music program we have a commercial music technology major so you're part musician you're part techie if you will and all the mixed media like we see around this room  here people that really love the media and sinking video with audiotapes cetera it's part that and it's part business person so we call it music techie entrepreneur that's our major and we've found a real niche in the state system with that major it's  very cool i think had it existed thirty years ago i probably would have studied in it because it's for lack of better to better term a pretty sexy major so we've got a very we've got some very strong ensembles there great jazz ensemble big big wonderful choir that i direct and i have some smaller choirs as well and marching band and ice proof nice music program we're small but i think that's better we only take twenty a year so we have additions for this program and we may have forty or fifty people audition for twenty spots and that's a that's a nice position to be in and at a state school that's a pretty expensive major so we have to limit it to twenty a year so we're small but i think we're mighty and the fact that it's only twenty we know everyone and  we have quite a bit to do with there they're marching forward following their dreams and that's a nice position to be in well let's talk about the washington's of the day that's why we're here when did you get involved in the program well back in two thousand four i was asked to sing for them believe it or not not conduct but sing and i had made my living for twenty years as a singer and actor and i danced when i was thinner and more flexible than  but they asked me to sing and i sang i had a great time in the the man who started that washington symphony who conducted was dave owens and we became friends and talked about repertoire and symphony and he knew i conducted as well because at that time had just finished being the assistant conductor from keyscore symphony orchestra and i was a guest conductor for them and that went really well and then they opened up a position and i i threw my hat in the ring and the board said ok let's give this let's give this  a shot so i've been there now eleven hundred eleven years something like that maybe they're thirteen years old and i've been there a levy of the thirteen something like that but you mention an exhibit a bumpkin's and i'm going to embrace that because i think one of the wonderful things about the washing symphony orchestra it is like i like the andy griffith show you have all these wonderful people you know who love what they do and if you've ever been to a business where you feel like you just the longer you're part of the family or or  they treat you so why you think wait a minute this is a business there i feel so special that's what we try to do with all our audience members we say come on in you are special this is a giant living room and we're going to listen to all this great music together and put up your feet an easy chair and enjoy so yeah i guess that's the bumpkins that i will embrace well and our congressman tim murphy helped that out a little last season and he came in and played did  teen and we did a little he had some corny jokes and put on straw hats and he certainly let us hair down and had some fun but that's exactly what we do we have fun we do great music we truly try to put the best product out that we can and we're very proud of that but we have a lot of fun doing it there's nothing stuffy about what we do and we have we have a great time and i love what you said about aggressive programming yeah it's very active it's not passive well let's play some music and sit on  new we're going to look at this as an event every concerts and it's vent that has a personality that has a real geist of its own well i have to admit my wife got involved a few years ago just to be involved in knowledge i think she might be a vice president i'm not sure but the bottom line is i have the opportunity to to go with her to in fact go prior to the concert while she was setting things up outside i usually come in  listen while you're preparing it's phenomenal i mean it's like you said these are a bunch of musicians that have spent their life becoming familiar with their instruments and in fact becoming very good with  instruments but you have another program also you have a side by program that students can get involved yes absolutely are our orchestras made up of community people you write adults who maybe have day jobs but they have this love of playing an instrument that they play for years we offer that to student players as well we encourage students players to come see us perform we always have free tickets available for music students any music student comes they could see the concerts for free if there are students that want to play we have a february concert where they play side by side with the orchestra members in addition we have a number of students that play regularly with us they're just regular members because their school orchestra or their program they just want to do more there are those  overachievers that can't get enough of it so we encourage the youth because we know that the people behind these cameras and the people doing the editing here at peter's township high school all the students they are going to be the music lovers in the patrons of the arts ten fifteen twenty years from now so we want to to vait that ok well i'm going to ask you we have a video coming up here and i'm going to ask you to give a really short description of what what this is about well this is a wonderful project we had a concert last year which was a space themed concert and we had a local think believe is twenty two years old now he wrote space music and what we took is we had worked with it with a filmmaker ron haggis and and he choreographed beautifully these images from the international space station and video and some images from the hubble hubble telescope and we did this wonderful mixed media production of music and video together and we projected it for the audience and we've since made a video that's up on you and it's breathtaking images and music i think suits it perfectly well i think my term might be found to be incorrect whenever the people see this so we'll go ahead and let you view the video and we'll come back on the other side possibility of running a program well i tell you we put this video on our facebook page as well as our you tube channel and our website and watch them dot org and someone picked it up someone saw and thought how interesting and i got an e mail from i believe was an assistant conductor at the erie philharmonic and he said we want to do this we want to we want to project it and perform it so that was pretty cool and daniel meyer is the conductor there so he's he's pretty big time in the music world  he's a big name so that was it was interesting to see that already through social media etc someone picked up this video and thought what an interesting project so that's a nice little feather on or cap that someone else thought hey i like what they're doing yes social media is amazing how you get you past your local boundaries i i sold a motorcycle a couple years ago and a person from the university of arkansas bought it he was dating a girl for who was a teacher of a penn state and said i'm coming through you mind if i stop become on the world get five more and it does as much as media seems to in fact stop us from actually communicating face to face there are some benefits to it and this is certainly going to be one of them quality and i think that that was one of the nice things whenever i saw it the other day as i said it you know it's going to take up a large portion of the program but it's worth it there are some things that are worth taking up time for and this is one of them thank you when we talk about the programs coming up ok you have four programs on this season you do one every couple months the one coming up in october though is your start off yes can you give us a little feed on what that's going to be like yes well we had a campaign some years ago that we used for last years called something wonderful washington something wonderful washington symphony orchestra well this concert is something wicked so we're going with a hollowing themed concert but not your typical you know dress up as a  vampire and poke fun at them we've got some truly terrifying music we're going to focus on we have two new pieces of music that we're going to be performing i went on you tube again with social media and i said i'm going to look for scary orchestral music with a choir and i found this piece that was really really wonderful it's called through the rising and i didn't know the composer graeme plowman but he writes film score and video game music and he's over in britain and i tracked him down i said hey we want to do this and he said cool and i said yeah i don't i don't have the music for it i did it on the computer etc i said for can you scored for the orchestra he said yeah i'll do that and and then that's the easiest things happened so with this wonderful piece we're doing with one hundred ten choir members from cal you i'm going to bring a giant choir over to sing this it's exciting we have another new piece we're doing an album an overture to an opera and it's called the hellbound heart so it's pretty spooky stuff if you remember the movie hellraiser nes that's all there is so it's kind of scary stuff but we are doing some lighthearted things on this concert like music from the musical wicked so it's not all dark and gloomy and it's fun and we've got some students from the city school at  the douglas school m n s and they have a special effects department where they do prosthetics and you know all the horror movie kind of thing so we're going to have roaming zombies in the area for this concert so we're really embracing that dark and scary thing and you know they are paying more to see them that's right it's like i said it's an event it's not a concert it's an event well you know these concerts are held to trinity high school and whenever i was peter's here i happened to have the luck of being in the county car choir and  band and christmas time is a special time because whenever we did our concert way back when before the earth's crust cold we had the opportunity to be down there and we sang  you have that coming up you on your christmas program you do the all lou chorus and i hit it brings back memories these kids think that the memories they're getting today they'll never tomorrow will be gone and that's not the case because every time i hear that i always think about how the choir and the response now the response is something that i want to talk about because last year whenever i was down there a lot of people were baffled why whenever you do the all new chorus people  will you please explain why that tradition and like i said i have to admit our our generation has failed in passing traditions on to our children but need this is a i heard a lot of older folks my age and above that which means they're really old  not understand why that why people were standing would you please explain that what we have this all star choir singing and they'll be members from peter's township high school and trinity encana mcmillan and the fourteen schools in washington county singing and we usually end the concert with this wonderful tradition of the  course and as you mention the audience usually stands you think why do you stand for something while it's going on while the story goes that apparently king george at the first performance of messiah stood and ever everyone does what the king does and so everyone stood there are rumors that he had a wedgie in his britches but i don't know if that's true but in any case it was a tradition started by the king everyone likes did that and apparently so it goes since then everyone stood for the holiday of course it's just a tradition and it's a nice way that we get a standing ovation so i i worked out right yeah right into the end yeah it works but then later said these are the traditions the people always wonder why you know all of what are they doing and that's it but it is also in respect to the music yes you know because that is such a dynamic piece and it just it deserves to be stood for i mean that's that's just it absolutely and i think certainly king of kings lord of lords et something to do with it as well and that's that's nice that i sent him a sentiment i think well we have a location let's talk about the how people get to the concert now you can buy tickets if they're available at the door yes you can but we have a new system now it's really easy clicks and you go on our website and you buy tickets on our website it's super easy or you do is print out a little thing bring and they scan your your computer printout and it's easy as it doesn't cost anything  extra and it's very easy to get tickets now and for that christmas concert we have two performances once on a saturday night and so if you want to have dinner in a nice day to go to the concert you're good to go or sunday afternoon so if you want to go after church or after lunch you can and you can go on sunday and that's trinity high school we have a large parking lot it's free parking it's level parking we'll have christmas carolers at the entrances and we always have something in the environment whether it's zombies or christmas carol well let me just real rapidly you have your february fourteenth and that is the side by side concert so we'll have students from different schools join us and that concert is called love hurts so we're looking at wonderfully romantic music that sometimes has sad or tragic endings if you think of romeo and juliet love story we're playing music from the red violin the movie there are some of us just in that mood for music we're doing for that ok and the last one for honor and glory for on are and glory we're going to end with the eighteen twelve overture so get ready to hold on to your seats they'll be some big bangs and exciting music no doubt that's going to be very heroic music we're doing victory at sea there's a lot of wonderful music we're doing there that i wouldn't say it's patriotic per se because it's sometimes russian music and sometimes it's finnish we're doing finland but very powerful inspirational music so we want the people to mark their calendars for something wicked on october eleventh ho ho ho with the ws so on december sixth and seventh the love hearts on february fourteenth what an appropriate date and for honor and glory may second y it's always wonderful to have your program thank you once again for coming on and hopefully everybody will finally realize what a gem the washington seventy is thank you look forward to seeing you sometime in the very near future i'm sure ok thank you very much for coming today and watching things they usually don't teach you believe me if you go to these concerts you'll learn a lot thanks a lot