Page 36 - Phil opening night program digital final

Meet

E lena Roussanova

Composer (bio on page 14)

Steven has been a longtime friend and champion of your music, and
he had asked you several times about expanding Festival Celebration
Music for full orchestra. How did A Festival Fanfare finally come to be?

Festival Celebration Music was originally commissioned by the Las Vegas Music Festival in 2000. I
started composing it just after my graduation from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. The
piece was scored for full orchestral brass and percussion.

Over the years, there were conversations about adapting the piece for different ensembles. Steven
had also asked me a few times whether I might consider creating a version for full orchestra. At the
beginning of this year, he asked me once again and finally, I said, “Okay, okay, I’ll do it!”

Steven is a wonderful friend of our family. Over the years, I’ve often asked for his musical advice,
and he has always been very helpful. He is also a very kind and wonderful human being.

When I began working on the new version, I wanted to create something that would suit the Phil
and its particular orchestral sound and musicians. The strings and woodwinds brought so many
new colors. Although it’s built from the same musical material, it began to feel like a new piece!
Since it had become something new, Steven and I also decided it needed a new name: A Festival
Fanfare.
I was asked to write it at the beginning of 2026, but between teaching at Berklee and working on
other compositions, I really had to find the time to create it. For a composer, though, the creative
mind is always working. I might be cooking or helping my child with homework and suddenly think,
“That in measure 26—it should be an oboe solo!” When I’m in the process of creating something,
the material I’m working on is always in the back of my mind.

What was it like returning to this music more than 25 years later and
reimagining it for a full orchestra?
It was a chance to reimagine everything in a bigger format. When you are working with a big
symphony orchestra, you have an incredible opportunity to use and blend all these colors and
palettes of sound. As a composer, you hear an entire picture of the score in your head, with all the
little nuances and details. It’s almost like being a cook: you take one bite and think, “It needs a little
of that spice, or even an extra ingredient.” You are constantly recreating the recipe.

34 ~ Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra