NY Philharmonic Performs Zosha Di Castri's LINEAGE And Nadia Sirota Hosts Di Castri's Kravis NIGHTCAP SERIES Concert, April 27-29

From Thursday, April 27 to Saturday, April 29, 2023, the New York Philharmonic will present its first-ever performance of a full orchestral work by New York-based, Canadian composer Zosha Di Castri at the Wu Tsai Theater in David Geffen Hall.

The program includes Di Castri's Lineage, Brahms' Violin Concerto, and Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra, conducted by Jonathon Heyward and featuring violinist Christian Tetzlaff. Di Castri will curate an evening of the Kravis Nightcap Series on Saturday, April 29, 2023 at 10:30pm, hosted by Nadia Sirota, at the Kenneth C. Griffin Sidewalk Studio.

Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as a composer who "balances her forces impeccably, keeping a listener both surprised and engaged at every turn," Di Castri wrote Lineage as a reflection upon the meaning of "return." Describing her work as "a reimagining of places and traditions I've only known second-hand," Di Castri said about her inspiration, "I was interested in exploring the idea of what is passed down. As a kid, I loved listening to my grandparents tell stories about 'the-old-country' or of life in the village or on the farm. These tales were at once so real through their repetition, and yet at the same time were so foreign and removed from my own personal experience."

Co-commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, and Boosey & Hawkes as part of their New Voices collaborative composer project, Lineage is a piece that has been programmed many times by orchestras worldwide. At the heart of the composition, Di Castri "hoped to create a piece in which certain elements are kept constant while others are continually altered, adopted, or are added on, creating an ever-evolving narrative." She further added, "I was interested in the idea of a landmark or point of origin, which remains steadfast, yet also evolves subtly over time. The constant nature of this rootedness is what allows us to orient ourselves; it serves as a bearing when navigating the many branches of uncharted possibility. It is also the measuring stick by which we gauge how far we've come and how far we've yet to travel."

In addition to the NY Philharmonic performances, Di Castri will curate an evening of the Kravis Nightcap Series on Saturday, April 29, 2023 at 10:30pm at the Kenneth C. Griffin Sidewalk Studio in David Geffen Hall. The program will involve conversations about musical inspiration and collaboration and will showcase composer/performers working at the intersection of multiple musical practices. Hosted by Nadia Sirota, Di Castri's evening will include her work, alongside compositions by Alicia Hall Moran, Hugo Morales Murguía, Anna Webber, Tom Waits, and Diego Espinosa Cruz González.

Vocalist Alicia Hall Moran and percussionist Diego Espinosa Cruz González perform the New York premiere of "This is the moment you long for" for voice and clock chimes on timpani, a movement from Zosha Di Castri's song cycle In the Half-light (2022), premiered last year by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Barbara Hannigan, with text by Tash Aw. Anna Webber contributes her hypnotic, micro-looping Idiom VII for solo tenor saxophone, and Espinosa explores the radical use of percussive air via an invented instrument created by Netherlands-based Mexican composer Hugo Morales Murguía in Modes of Assisted Ventilation, for intubated flute and electronics. Webber and Espinosa join Moran for her flowing Ginza Samba for saxophone, voice, and improvised percussion, based loosely on the Vince Guaraldi tune, but with words by poet Robert Pinsky.

Miniatures from composer Sam Yulsman's Encyclopedia of Longing then receive their world premieres, performed by Sam joined by the rest of the band. Yulsman studied composition with Zosha Di Castri at Columbia University. The entire ensemble joins for collaborative covers of songs by Tom Waits, including "Clap Hands" and "Temptation." The evening closes with Espinosa and Di Castri's collaboration, how many bodies have we to pass through, from her 2019 JUNO-nominated album, Tachitipo (New Focus Recordings). Watch the music video for how many bodies have we to pass through.

Performance Details
Thursday, April 27, 2023 at 7:30pm
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, NY
Link: https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/Tickets/SelectSection?Perf=5655&seat_curve=true
Tickets: $63.50 - $198.50

Friday, April 28, 2023 at 8:00pm
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, NY
Link: https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/Tickets/SelectSection?Perf=5656&seat_curve=true
Tickets: $48.50 - $148.50

Saturday, April 29, 2023 at 8:00pm
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, NY
Link: https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/Tickets/SelectSection?Perf=5657&seat_curve=true
Tickets: $69.50 - $219.50

Program:
Brahms - Violin Concerto
Zosha Di Castri - Lineage
Lutosławski - Concerto for Orchestra

Jonathon Heyward, conductor
Christian Tetzlaff, violin

Saturday, April 29, 2023 at 10:30pm
Kravis Nightcap: Zosha Di Castri
Kenneth C. Griffin Sidewalk Studio, David Geffen Hall, NY
Link: https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/Tickets/SelectSection?Perf=5774
Tickets: $35 (General Admission)

Zosha Di Castri - "this is the moment you long for" from In the Half-light (2022) [New York Premiere]
Alicia Hall Moran, voice; Diego Espinosa Cruz González, percussion

Alicia Hall Moran - Ginza Samba (2011)
Alicia Hall Moran, voice; Anna Webber, saxophone; Diego Espinosa Cruz González, percussion

Anna Webber - Idiom VII (2022)
Anna Webber, tenor saxophone

Hugo Morales Murguía - Modes of Assisted Ventilation (2014)
Diego Espinosa Cruz González, for intubated flute and electronics

Sam Yulsman - Excerpts from Encyclopedia of Longing (2023) [World Premiere]
Sam Yulsman, piano; Alicia Hall Moran, voice; Anna Webber, saxophone; Diego Espinosa Cruz González, percussion

Improvisations on Tom Waits
"Clap Hands"
"Temptation"
Alicia Hall Moran, voice; Anna Webber, saxophone; Diego Espinosa Cruz González, percussion; Sam Yulsman, piano

Zosha Di Castri & Diego Espinosa Cruz González - how many bodies have we to pass through (2019)
Diego Espinosa Cruz González, percussion

Zosha Di Castri, a Canadian "composer of riotously inventive works" (The New Yorker), currently lives in New York. Her music has been performed across Canada, the United States, South America, Asia, and Europe and extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance that encourage audiences to feel "compelled to return for repeated doses" (The Arts Desk). She is currently the Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University and a 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson fellow.

Zosha's current projects include a large chamber work commissioned by the LA Phil and conducted by John Adams, receiving its premiere in spring 2024; a new work for Ekmeles, premiering April 2023; and a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress for percussionist Steve Schick and ensemble.

Zosha recently completed In the Half-Light, a song cycle for soprano Barbara Hannigan, with libretto by Tash Aw, premiered by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; time>>T. - - I. - - M.(time) - -E, a commission for a large chamber ensemble commissioned and premiered by the Grossman Ensemble in Chicago; Hypha, a quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and Pentimento, a miniature for orchestra commissioned by the WDR Sinfonieorchester for its 75th anniversary.

In July 2019, Zosha's Long Is the Journey, Short Is the Memory for orchestra and chorus opened the first night of the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Karina Canellakis with the BBC Symphony and BBC Singers. Other large-scale projects include a 25-minute piece for soprano, recorded narrator and orchestra entitled Dear Life, based on a short-story by Alice Munro, and an evening-length new music theater piece, Phonobellow, co-written with David Adamcyk for the International Contemporary Ensemble with performances in New York and Montreal. Phonobellow features five musicians, a large kinetic sound sculpture, electronics, and video in a reflection on the influence of photography and phonography on human perception.

Zosha's orchestral compositions have been commissioned by John Adams, the Toronto Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Esprit Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and the BBC, and have been featured by the Tokyo Symphony, Amazonas Philharmonic, and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, among others. She has made appearances with the Chicago Symphony, the LA Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in their chamber music series, and has worked with many leading new music groups, including Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, Ekmeles, Yarn/Wire, the NEM, Ensemble Cairn, and JACK and Parker Quartets.

Other recent projects include a commission titled Hunger for the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal with improvised drummer, designed to accompany Peter Foldes' 1973 eponymous silent film; a string quartet for the Banff International String Quartet Competition, a piece for Yarn/Wire for two pianists, two percussionists, and electronics premiered at Zosha's Miller Theatre Composer Portrait concert, a solo piano work for Julia Den Boer commissioned by the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust Fund, a piano/violin duo with violinist Jennifer Koh, and a string octet premiered by JACK Quartet and Parker Quartet at the Banff Centre. She was the recipient of the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for her work Cortège in 2012, and participated in Ircam's Manifeste Festival in Paris, writing an interactive electronic work for Thomas Hauert's dance company, ZOO.

Zosha's debut album Tachitipo was released on New Focus Recordings in November 2019 to critical acclaim, and the title track was nominated for The JUNO Awards' 2021 Classical Composition of the Year. Tachitipo was named in Best of 2019 lists by The New Yorker, I Care if You Listen, AnEarful, Sequenza21, and New York Music Daily, and praised as "a formidable statement. It is so comprehensively realized, institutionally ratified, and sensitive to the creative exigencies of the 21st century that one wants to send a copy of it to the publishers of textbooks for music history survey courses in the hope that it will be included in a last chapter or two." (I Care if You Listen)

Zosha is a recipient of the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship and was an inaugural fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris in 2018-19. She completed her Bachelors of Music in Piano Performance and Composition at McGill University, and her DMA in Composition at Columbia University. Born in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada, Zosha currently lives with her family in New York City. Learn more at www.zoshadicastri.com.

*Photo Credit: David Adamcyk