{"id":22222,"date":"2025-05-14T13:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T19:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/san-juan-symphony-presents-sues-musical-adventure\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T19:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T19:32:07","slug":"san-juan-symphony-presents-sues-musical-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/san-juan-symphony-presents-sues-musical-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"San Juan Symphony presents Sue\u2019s musical adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The San Juan Symphony will have two performances this weekend centered on Tyrannosaurus Sue, pictured on display in the Field Museum in Chicago. See details below. Courtesy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The upcoming San Juan Symphony Family Concert has to be the best musical buy in town. For $5 you get to hear a full symphony orchestra play a storytelling work that spans millennia.<\/p>\n

\u201cTyrannosaurus Sue!\u201d is a suite for orchestra that came about as a result of a remarkable real-world discovery, a bidding war among museums and a leap of imagination.<\/p>\n

\n

If you go<\/h4>\n

WHAT:<\/strong> San Juan Symphony Family Concert: Tyrannosaurus Sue! Thomas Heuser, conductor and narrator.<\/p>\n

WHEN:<\/strong> 4 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n

WHERE:<\/strong> Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, Durango; and Henderson Performance Hall, 4601 College Blvd., Farmington.<\/p>\n

TICKETS: <\/strong>$5.<\/p>\n

MORE INFORMATION: <\/strong>Visit www.sanjuansymphony.org<\/a>, call 382-9753, 247-7657 or (505) 566-3430.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Who is Sue and why is music dedicated to her?<\/div>\n

If you come from Chicago, you know that one of the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons is the pride of the Field Museum. The skeleton is affectionately known as \u201cSue.\u201d She was discovered in 1990 by paleontologist Sue Hendrickson while hiking in South Dakota\u2019s Cheyenne River Reservation. Immediately, the massive skeleton sparked world attention. A decade-long custody battle ensued, and Chicago\u2019s Natural History Museum won with an $8.4 million bid.<\/p>\n

Those are the historical bits of this story, because Chicagoans took their time to choose a nickname, and a musical tribute came a decade later. As a tribute to the woman who discovered the skeleton, the name \u201cSue\u201d won \u2013 with a caution: Even though the sex of a T. rex cannot be determined by fossilized remains, Sue became the chosen name. It stuck.<\/p>\n

The Field Museum website tells us that Sue was a very big girl: 42 feet long from nose to tail, about 13 feet high. It\u2019s estimated she weighed about 9 tons. Her largest tooth is a foot long.<\/p>\n

Sue\u2019s skeleton suggests she died in old age, 28 years in T. rex terms. Life expectancy seems to have been around 30 years. Apparently, dinosaurs, like trees, can be dated by ring patterns in bones. Sue\u2019s bones also reveal several calamities. In the musical tribute to her, you can hear all that drama. Check out the Field Museum\u2019s website and YouTube entries. Or, better yet, attend the SJS concert.<\/p>\n

American composer Bruce Adolphe specializes in original works for family audiences with interactive elements. Originally inspired by Leonard Bernstein\u2019s Young People\u2019s Concerts, Adolphe has created many different works he has hosted at Lincoln Center, where he is resident lecturer and director of family programs.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, when the Tyrannosaurus rex discovery swept the country, Adolphe was captivated. He composed \u201cA Crustaceous Concerto\u201d with a narrator in mind and various instrumental voices telling Sue\u2019s story. Unlike other works that introduce children to the voices of a symphony orchestra, Prokofiev\u2019s \u201cPeter and the Wolf\u201d or Camille Saint-Se\u00e1ns\u2019 \u201cCarnival of the Animals,\u201d Adolphe\u2019s concerto is a biography. The emphasis is on growing up, making mistakes and facing life\u2019s difficulties.<\/p>\n

\u201cTyrannosaurus Sue!\u201d had its premiere in 2000 when The Chicago Chamber Musicians performed at the Field Museum for the opening of Sue\u2019s exhibition.<\/p>\n

A narrator guides the audience through Sue\u2019s life. Music Director Thomas Heuser, an engaging storyteller if there ever was one, will briefly outline each of the seven sections: infancy, adolescence, the tumultuous teenage years when Sue competes for food with other prehistoric creatures, and finally, her old age.<\/p>\n

A trombone voices Sue\u2019s persona. In the three competitive sections, a clarinet, bassoon and French horn will voice the antagonists. In Section Six, the composer quietly alludes to the age of extinction. It\u2019s a beautiful tone poem with shadows and hope for the future. Section Seven, \u201cThe Dawning of a New World,\u201d introduces the miraculous age of human beings.<\/p>\n

Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concert in Durango, Farmington goes on a life span journey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1060,28,559,1885],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts-entertainment","tag-headlines","tag-music","tag-san-juan-symphony-orchestra"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22222"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}