Miller Theatre Presents A Composer Portrait Of BRIGHT SHENG, 12/5

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues its 20th season of Composer Portraits with Bright Sheng featuring Curtis 20/21 Ensemble, Thursday, December 5, 2019, 8:00 P.M. at Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street)

Tickets: starting at $20; Students with valid ID: starting at $7.

Bright Sheng is one of the foremost composers of our time. His emotionally-driven music ranges from dramatic to lyrical, with strong influences of the folk and classical music of Eastern and Central Asia. The MacArthur Fellow returns to Columbia-where he received his DMA in composition-for this Portrait of recent works. The program features the composer as pianist and conductor, as well as the marimba concerto Deep Red, performed by the talented Curtis 20/21 Ensemble.

PROGRAM:
Clearwater Rhapsody (2018)
Deep Red (2014)
Dance Capriccio (2011)
String Quartet No. 4 "Silent Temple" (2000)

ARTISTS:
Curtis 20/21 Ensemble
Bright Sheng, piano and conductor

Read a Q&A with Melissa Smey and Lara Pellegrinelli about this Portrait:
Bridging Traditions with Bright Sheng

Composer Portraits at 20

With this new season, Miller Theatre proudly celebrates the 20th season of its influential Composer Portraits series, called "indispensable" earlier this year by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. For twenty years, Miller Theatre's flagship series has fostered the creation of new work, served as an incubator for emerging artists and a champion of those not yet well known, and created a community of adventurous listeners.

Upcoming Portraits

CAROLINE SHAW: Attacca Quartet and Sō Percussion perform the Pulitzer-winning star composer's chamber music from the last decade (2/6)

OSCAR BETTISON: Alarm Will Sound returns to Miller to perform two of the British-American composer's recent chamber concertos (2/20)

DAI FUJIKURA: Champions of Fujikura's music, ICE performs a high-octane program, including a world premiere Miller commission (3/5)

MacArthur Fellow Bright Sheng was born in Shanghai, China, and moved to New York in l982. He is currently the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, and Y. K. Pao Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Sheng has collaborated with such distinguished musicians as Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Christoph Eschenbach, Charles Dutoit, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Slatkin, Gerard Schwarz, David Robertson, David Zinman, Neeme Järvi, Robert Spano, Hugh Wolff, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Yefim Bronfman, Lynn Harrell, Peter Serkin, Cho-Liang Lin, Evelyn Glennie, among others. He has been widely commissioned and performed by the top musical institutions in North America, Europe, and Asia, including the White House, the 2008 Beijing International Olympic Games, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Minnesota Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra de Paris, BBC Symphony, Hamburg Radio Symphony, Danish National Symphony, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, New York City Opera, New York City Ballet, and San Francisco Ballet.

Sheng's music ranges from dramatic to lyrical, and is strongly influenced by the folk and classical music tradition from eastern and central Asia. Since 2000, he has been studying and researching the music phenomenon of the Silk Road culture, and has served as the Artistic Advisor to Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project Inc.

As a conductor, Sheng has worked with such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic in Russia, Dortmund Philharmonic in Germany, China National Symphony, and has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center, among others.

Since 2011, Sheng has been the Founder and Artistic Director of The Intimacy of Creativity-The Bright Sheng Partnership: Composers Meet Performers in Hong Kong, an annual two-week workshop with a new approach to creativity.