Gidon Kremer, Julia Wolfe, ICE and More Set for BAC's Fall 2017 Music Lineup
By: BWW News Desk Jul. 12, 2017
Baryshnikov Arts Center's (BAC) Fall 2017 music presentations include BAC Salon: Telemann, Farrin, Wolfe + Prokofiev featuring the New York premiere of a work by Julia Wolfe (October 5 and 6); violin virtuoso Gidon Kremer performing Mieczyslaw Weinberg's 24 Preludes, Op. 100 (October 31 and November 1); and BAC Salon: Pauline Oliveros featuring IONE and International Contemporary Ensemble (November 28).
Performances take place either in BAC's intimate John Cage & Merce Cunningham Studio or Jerome Robbins Theater (450 West 37th Street, New York, NY). Tickets are now available for all performances, at BACNYC.ORG or 866.811.4111.
BAC Salon: Telemann, Farrin, Wolfe + Prokofiev
October 5 and 6 | Thursday and Friday at 7:30PM
John Cage & Merce Cunningham Studio | Tickets: $20
James Austin Smith, oboe; Todd Palmer, clarinet; ReBecca Anderson, violin; Ayane Kozasa, viola;
Joshua Roman, cello; Lizzie Burns, double bass
Program:
G. P. Telemann: Selections from Fantasias for solo violin
Suzanne Farrin: l'onde della non vostra for solo oboe
Julia Wolfe: Retrieve for cello and double bass
S. Prokofiev: Quintet in G Minor, Op. 39 for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and double bass
October 31 and November 1 | Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30PM
Jerome Robbins Theater | Tickets: $25
Russian-trained Latvian violin virtuoso Gidon Kremer returns more than a decade after his last BAC performance in 2006, when he played at the dedication of the Howard Gilman Performance Space. On October 31 and November 1, he will give the first U.S. performance of his own transcription (from cello to violin) of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's 24 Preludes. The Polish-born Soviet composer is "the latest in a series of more or less hidden 20th-century masters. . .whose music Mr. Kremer has discovered and championed" (The New York Times). Weinberg's music shares common ground with that of his friend and mentor Shostakovich, while maintaining its originality by incorporating myriad musical styles. A world-class artist who has performed on the great stages around the globe, Kremer's solo concert will be held in the intimate Jerome Robbins Theater.
Program:
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: 24 Preludes, Op. 100 (transcribed from cello to violin by Gidon Kremer)
BAC Salon: Pauline Oliveros
Featuring IONE and International Contemporary Ensemble in an Evening of Music and Conversation
November 28 | Tuesday at 7:30PM
John Cage & Merce Cunningham Studio | Tickets: $20
After Pauline Oliveros' death in November 2016, the experimental American composer's unfinished, collaborative intermedia opera continued to be a source of inspiration, imagination, and retrospection. Excerpts from The Nubian Word for Flowers, performed by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) under the direction of writer and sound artist IONE, offer a glimpse into the hybrid process of posthumous creation, and invite discussion around topics of creation and remembrance. BAC Salon is a series of concerts performed in an intimate salon setting.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
ReBecca Anderson is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Ida Kavafian and Pamela Frank. She is currently studying with Ronald Copes and Donald Weilerstein while pursuing her master's degree at The Juilliard School. Recent performances range from solo appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, contemporary music premieres with A Far Cry and eighth blackbird, and collaborative projects with Questlove and Ben FoldS. Anderson's solo appearances have taken her across the country as soloist with the Oregon Symphony, Olympia Sympony, and Columbia Symphony orchestras, and to Europe with a recital concert at the Conservatorio de Bologna in Italy. Most recently, she was a first prize winner at the 2013 American String Teachers Association National Solo Competition for senior division violin. Other awards include the 2008 National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts youngARTS Gold Award, which led to being named a Presidential Scholar in both the Arts and Academics and an invitation to perform at the Kennedy Center.
A versatile bass player, Lizzie Burns resides in New York City as a fellow of Carnegie Hall's Ensemble Connect, formerly known as Ensemble ACJW. She has performed domestically and abroad with The Knights and A Far Cry, makes regular appearances in Carnegie Hall, and can be seen at the Imperial Theater in The Great Comet of 1812. Burns has appeared at Yellow Barn, both as a summer participant and as an artist-is-residence, and has performed with the Borromeo String Quartet as a winner of their annual Guest Artist Award competition. Burns attended the New England Conservatory for her undergraduate studies with Donald Palma, and pursued her graduate studies at Boston University under the tutelage of Ed Barker.International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective committed to transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, ICE explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The ensemble's 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. A recipient of the American Music Center's Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, ICE was also named the 2014 Musical America Ensemble of the Year. The group currently serves as artists in residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' Mostly Mozart Festival, and previously led a five-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
IONE is a writer/director and improvising text sound artist. A specialist in dreams and the creative process, she has taught and performed throughout the world with her partner, the late Pauline Oliveros. As Artistic Director of Deep Listening Institute for 15 years, she oversaw a vibrant community of artists and musicians. As a former journalist she traveled and wrote for many national magazines, including Vogue, Essence, Oggi, and the Gannett Chain. Her works include the critically acclaimed memoir Pride of Family; Four Generations of American Women of Color, Nile Night, Remembered Texts from The Deep, Listening in Dreams & This is a Dream! She is playwright and director of Njinga the Queen King, (BAM's Next Wave Festival) the dance opera Io and Her and the Trouble with Him (Union Theater, Wisconsin), The Lunar Opera; Deep Listening For_Tunes, (Lincoln Center Out of Doors) and the experimental narrative film Dreams of the Jungfrau, shot high in the Swiss Alps. All feature music and sound design by Pauline Oliveros.
A violinist turned violist, Ayane Kozasa was inspired to dedicate herself to the alto clef during her undergraduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She earned a graduate degree from the Curtis Institute of Music as well as a further master's degree from the esteemed Kronberg Academy Masters School in Germany. Kozasa's solo career took off when she won the 2011 Primrose InternationAl Viola Competition, where she also captured awards for Best Chamber Music and Commissioned Work Performances. Following the competition, she joined the Astral Artists Roster and became a grant recipient from the S&R Foundation, an organization recognizing and supporting young aspiring artists of all mediums. Most recently, she commissioned a work by Brooklyn composer Paul Wiancko for viola and cello, which she premiered in Washington D.C. at the S&R Foundation.
Driven by his strikingly uncompromising artistic philosophy, Gidon Kremer has established a worldwide reputation as one of his generation's most original and compelling artists. He has championed the works of Russian and Eastern European composers and performed many important new compositions, several of which have been dedicated to him. His name is closely associated with such composers as Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pa?rt, Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, Edison Denisov, Aribert Reimann, Pe?teris Vasks, John Adams, Victor Kissine, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, Leonid Desyatnikov, and Astor Piazzolla. It is fair to say that no other soloist of comparable international stature has done more to promote the cause of contemporary composers and new music for violin. Kremer has recorded over 120 albums, many of which have received prestigious international awards in recognition of their exceptional interpretative insights. His long list of honors and awards include the Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis, the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Moscow's Triumph Prize, the Unesco Prize and the Una Vita Nella Musica - Artur Rubinstein Prize. In 2016 Kremer received a Praemium Imperiale prize that is widely considered to be the Nobel Prize of music.
Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016), composer, performer and humanitarian, was an important pioneer in American Music. Acclaimed internationally, for six decades she explored sound - forging new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching, and meditation she created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly effects those who experience it and eludes many who try to write about it. Oliveros was honored with many awards, including four honorary doctorates, grants, and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cistern, or in the studios of a West German radio station, Oliveros's commitment to interaction with the moment was unchanged. She could make the sound of a sweeping siren into another instrument of the ensemble. Through Deep Listening Pieces and earlier Sonic Meditations, Oliveros introduced the concept of incorporating all environmental sounds into musical performance. To make a pleasurable experience of this requires focused concentration, skilled musicianship, and strong improvisational skills, which are the hallmarks of Oliveros's form. She built a loyal following through her concerts, recordings, publications, and musical compositions that she wrote for soloists and ensembles in music, dance, theater, and inter-arts companies. She also provided leadership within the music community by acting in an advisory capacity for organizations such as The National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, and many private foundations. She served as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College. Oliveros was vocal about representing the needs of individual artists, about the need for diversity and experimentation in the arts, and promoting cooperation and good will among people. She founded the Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, and now Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer.
Clarinetist Todd Palmer has appeared as soloist, recitalist, chamber music collaborator, educator, arranger, and presenter in a variety of musical endeavors around the world. A three-time Grammy nominated artist, he has appeared as soloist with the Atlanta, Houston, BBC Scotland orchestras; St. Paul, New York, Cincinnati, Montréal, and Metamorphosen chamber orchestras, as well as many others. He has collaborated with many of the world's finest string ensembles such as the St. Lawrence, Brentano, Borromeo, Pacifica, Daedalus, and Ying quartets, and has also shared the stage with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Elizabeth Futral, Heidi Grant Murphy, and Dawn Upshaw, and many other notable instrumentalists. He has championed Osvaldo Golijov's Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind around the world and commissioned the theater work Orpheus and Euridice by Ricky Ian Gordon, which was presented by Great Performers at Lincoln Center in 2005. He was a winner of the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, and has participated in numerous music festivals in the US and abroad.
Joshua Roman, former principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, is a TED Fellow and nationally renowned soloist whose performances embrace music from Bach to Radiohead. Before making it as a successful soloist, Roman began his career at age 22 as principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony. He has since earned national renown for performing a genre-bending repertoire. Roman is also a composer, collaborator (most recently with Anna Deavere Smith), educator (via his Popper Project video series), and curator (Artistic Director of Seattle Town Hall's TownMusic series). He has performed all over the world-from refugee camps and HIV clinics in Africa to the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and the U.S. State Department (with Yo-Yo Ma for national and international leaders). He plays an 1899 cello, lent to him by Giulio Degani of Venice.
Oboist James Austin Smith performs equal parts new and old music across the United States and around the world. Smith is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Chamber Music Society Two), International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Talea Ensemble, Cygnus and Decoda, and a regular guest of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He is a member of the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and the State University of New York at Purchase and co-Artistic Director of Tertulia, a chamber music series that takes place in restaurants around New York City. Smith's festival appearances include Marlboro, Lucerne, Chamber Music Northwest, Schleswig-Holstein, Stellenbosch, Bay Chamber Concerts, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, OK Mozart, Schwetzingen, and Spoleto USA; he has performed with the St. Lawrence, Orion, and Parker string quartets and recorded for the Nonesuch, Bridge, Mode, and Kairos labels. His debut solo recording Distance will be released in early 2015 on South Africa's TwoPianists Record Label.
Mieczyslaw Samuilowicz Weinberg was born in 1919 in Warsaw. He made his first public appearance as a pianist at the age of ten, and two years later became a student at the Warsaw Academy of Music, then under the direction of Szymanowski, where he took piano lessons from Josef Turczynski. His graduation in 1939 was soon followed by Hitler's invasion: he fled eastwards, taking shelter first in Minsk, where he studied composition with Vassily Zolotaryov. Two years later, as Hitler pushed into Russia, Weinberg again fled, this time finding work at the opera house in Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. It was there, in 1943, that he sent the manuscript of his newly completed First Symphony to Shostakovich in Moscow. Weinberg received an official invitation to travel to Moscow, where he was to spend the rest of his life. Weinberg's association with Shostakovich was not based only on mutual personal esteem. Shostakovich often spoke very highly of Weinberg's music, calling him "one of the most outstanding composers of the present day." Shostakovich dedicated his Tenth String Quartet to Weinberg, and in 1975, although terminally ill, he found the energy to attend rehearsals for the premiere of Weinberg's opera The Madonna and the Soldier. Weinberg's identification with Shostakovich's musical language was such that to the innocent ear the best of his music might also pass muster as very good Shostakovich. Weinberg stated: "I am a pupil of Shostakovich. Although I have never had lessons from him, I count myself as his pupil, as his flesh and blood." But there is much more to Weinberg than these external similarities of style, although his music - some of which achieves greatness - has yet to have the exposure that will allow his individuality to be fully recognized. It also embraces folk idioms from his native Poland, as well as Jewish and Moldavian elements, and towards the end of his career he found room for dodecaphony, though usually set in a tonal framework. His evident taste for humor, from the light and deft to biting satire, was complemented by a natural feeling for the epic: his Twelfth Symphony, for instance, dedicated to the memory of Shostakovich, effortlessly sustains a structure almost an hour in length, and Symphonies Nos. 17, 18 and 19 form a vast trilogy entitled On the Threshold of War. The list of Weinberg's compositions is enormous and deserves serious investigation both by musicians and record companies: there are no fewer than 26 symphonies. The last to be completed, Kaddish, is dedicated to the memory of the Jews who perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. Weinberg donated the manuscript to the Yad va-Shem memorial in Israel.
Julia Wolfe's music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them. She is a 2016 MacArthur Fellow. Her concert-length oratorio, Anthracite Fields for chorus and instruments won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for music. Other recent projects include her evening-length Steel Hammer for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and singers, currently touring in an expanded theatrical form with director Anne Bogart and her Siti Company; it received its New York premiere at BAM's 2015 Next Wave Festival. Wolfe's body concerto riSE and fLY was commissioned by the BBC and performed last season by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The New York Philharmonic recently announced her new evening-length commission for orchestra and women's chorus that will premiere in Fall 2018. Wolfe has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. Wolfe's Cruel Sister for string orchestra was commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and received its US premiere at the Spoleto Festival. Fuel for string orchestra is a collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison. She has also collaborated with theater artist Anna Deavere Smith, choreographer Susan Marshall, designers Jeff Sugg and Jim Findlay, and director François Girard, among others. In 2009, Wolfe joined the NYU Steinhardt School's composition faculty. She is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music collective Bang on a Can. Her music is published by Red Poppy Music (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc.
ABOUT BARYSHNIKOV ARTS CENTER (BAC)
BAC is the realization of a long-held vision by artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov to build an arts center in Manhattan that would serve as a gathering place for artists from all disciplines. BAC's opening in 2005 heralded the launch of this mission, establishing a thriving creative laboratory and performance space for artists from around the world. BAC's activities encompass a robust residency program augmented by a range of professional services, including commissions of new work, as well as the presentation of performances by artists at varying stages of their careers. In tandem with its commitment to supporting artists, BAC is dedicated to building audiences for the arts by presenting contemporary, innovative work at affordable ticket prices. For more information, visit www.bacnyc.org.
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