Orpheus Opens Season with Andre Watts Tour and Vijay Iyer Premieres

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra opens its 2017-2018 season on Thursday, October 26, 2017 at 8:00 p.m, presenting a performance in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall. The orchestra is joined by virtuoso pianist André Watts for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9, K. 271 "Jeunehomme." The program also includes Beethoven's Symphony No. 1, and The New York premiere of Vijay Iyer's Asunder.

Iyer explains that "Asunder seeks to elicit unlikely or even impossible unities in the traditional orchestra formation. This objective is approached by reassembling instruments into unusual groupings while specifying a literal 'balance of power' among groups, and ceding a certain amount of control of the flow of events to the players."

This program is also presented on Thursday, October 12 at 7:30 p.m. at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska; Saturday, October 14 at 8:00 p.m. at the Norton Center for the Arts' Newlin Hall in Danville, Kentucky; Sunday, October 15 at 4:00 p.m. at the Loeb Playhouse in West Lafayette, Indiana presented by Purdue Convocations; Sunday, October 22 at 3:00 p.m. at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center; and Friday, October 27 at 8:00 p.m. at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, PA, with Janice Carissa as piano soloist.

Program Information
Thursday, October 26, 2017 at 8:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall
ORPHEUS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
André Watts, piano

VIJAY IYER - Asunder (New York Premiere)
MOZART - Piano Concerto No. 9, K. 271 "Jeunehomme"
BEETHOVEN - Symphony No. 1

Ticket Information
Subscriptions for Carnegie Hall concerts can be purchased by visiting orpheusnyc.org or calling 212-896-1704. Single tickets for the October 26 performance, priced from $12.50 to $115, are available for purchase at the Carnegie Hall box office at 57th and 7th, can be charged to major credit cards by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, or by visiting the Carnegie Hall website at carnegiehall.org.

About André Watts
Andre? Watts burst upon the music world at the age of 16, when Leonard Bernstein chose him to make his debut with the New York Philharmonic on one of the orchestra's Young People's Concerts, which was broadcast nationwide on CBS. Two weeks later, Bernstein askEd Watts to fill in last minute for the ailing Glenn Gould in performances of Liszt's E-flat Concerto with the New York Philharmonic, launching Watts' career.

A perennial favorite with orchestras throughout the US, Watts is also a regular guest at the major summer music festivals including Ravinia, the Hollywood Bowl, Saratoga and Tanglewood. He has appeared frequently on television, on numerous programs produced by PBS, the BBC, and the Arts and Entertainment Network. His 1976 New York recital on Live From Lincoln Center was the first full-length recital broadcast in the history of television, while his performance at the 38th Casals Festival in Puerto Rico was nominated for an Emmy Award in Outstanding Individual Achievement in Cultural Programming.

Watts' extensive discography includes recordings of works by Gershwin, Chopin, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky for CBS Masterworks; works by Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and Chopin for Angel/EMI; and the concertos of Liszt, MacDowell, Tchaikovsky, and Saint-Saëns on the Telarc label. He is also included in the Great Pianists of the 20th Century series for Philips. In May 2016, Sony Classical released ANDRE WATTS - The Complete Columbia Album Collection, which features all of the concerto and solo recordings Watts made for Columbia Masterworks. The 12-CD set includes his legendary recordings of concertos by Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Liszt with conductors Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Erich Leinsdorf and Thomas Schippers, and solo works by Liszt, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Chopin and Gershwin.

Among his many honors, Andre? Watts received a 2011 National Medal of Arts, given by the President of the United States to individuals who are deserving of special recognition for their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support and availability of the arts in the United States. In June 2006, he was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl of Fame to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 10. He is also the recipient of the 1988 Avery Fisher Prize. At 26, Watts was the youngest person ever to receive an Honorary Doctorate from Yale University and he has since received numerous honors from highly respected schools including the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University, The Juilliard School, and the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Watts was appointed to the Jack I. and Dora B. Hamlin Endowed Chair in Music at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in May 2004.

About Vijay Iyer
Grammy-nominated composer-pianist-scholar Vijay Iyer's career has spanned the sciences, the humanities and the arts. He has been voted DownBeat Magazine's Artist of the Year three times - in 2016, 2015 and 2012, and was named DownBeat's 2014 Pianist of the Year, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, and a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist. Iyer has released twenty albums covering diverse terrain; his five most recent albums are on the ECM label.

Iyer is the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University. His works have been commissioned and premiered by Brentano Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Jennifer Koh, Matt Haimovitz, Imani Winds, American Composers Orchestra, A Far Cry, Silk Road Ensemble, Leopoldinum Chamber Symphony, and others. His many collaborators include musical innovators Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, Butch Morris, George Lewis, Reggie Workman, Oliver Lake, Amina Claudine Myers, Craig Taborn, Tyshawn Sorey, Ambrose Akinmusire, Matana Roberts, Miya Masaoka, Mari Kimura, Dead Prez, Himanshu Suri aka HEEMS of Das Racist, and Talvin Singh; filmmakers Haile Gerima, Prashant Bhargava, and Bill Morrison; choreographer Karole Armitage; poets Mike Ladd, Amiri Baraka, and Robert Pinsky; and novelist Teju Cole.

In 1998, Iyer received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he focused on embodied music cognition. He has published articles in Journal of Consciousness Studies, Wire, Music Perception, JazzTimes, Journal of the Society for American Music, Critical Studies in Improvisation, Harvard Design Magazine, the anthologies Arcana IV, Sound Unbound, Uptown Conversation, and The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies. Iyer is the Director of the International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music at The Banff Centre, was the 2015-16 Artist-in-Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and served as Musical Director for the 2017 Ojai Festival.

About Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra creates extraordinary musical experiences that enrich lives and empower individuals through collaboration, innovation, and a passion for artistic excellence. Orpheus strives to be the world's premier chamber orchestra by performing music at the highest level, challenging artistic boundaries, inspiring the public to think and work with new perspectives, and building a broad and active audience in New York City and around the world.

A standard-bearer of innovation and artistic excellence, Orpheus was founded in 1972 by a group of like-minded young musicians determined to combine the intimacy and warmth of a chamber ensemble with the richness of an orchestra. Orpheus performs without a conductor, rotating musical leadership roles for each work, and striving to perform diverse repertoire through collaboration and open dialogue. The ensemble has commissioned and premiered over 45 original works. Orpheus's recordings include the Grammy Award-winning Shadow Dances: Stravinsky Miniatures for Deutsche Grammophon, and over 70 other recordings for DG, Sony Classical, EMI Classics, BMG/RCA Red Seal, Decca, and others, including its own label, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Records.

Orpheus presents an annual series at Carnegie Hall and tours extensively to major national and international venues. The 2017-18 Orpheus series in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall features pianist André Watts; Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk in his first appearance with Orpheus; classical trumpet soloist Tine Thing Helseth in her Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage debut; and violinist Lisa Batiashvili in her first appearance with Orpheus. As part of Orpheus' ongoing American Notes commissioning initiative, two new pieces - by Indian-American jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, and award-winning Chinese composer Shuying Li - are additionally featured in the 2017-18 season.

About Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Educational Initiatives
Orpheus has trademarked its signature mode of operation, the Orpheus Process, an original method that places democracy at the center of artistic execution. It has been the focus of studies at Harvard University and of leadership seminars at IBM, Morgan Stanley, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital, among others. Orpheus aims to bring this unique approach to students of all ages through its worldwide education and engagement programs: Access Orpheus-NYC, Orpheus Music Academy, and Orpheus Leadership Institute.

Access Orpheus-NYC shares the orchestra's collaborative music-making process with K-12 public school students from all five boroughs in New York City. While New York is among the cultural capitals of the world, many schoolchildren are underserved in arts participation. Access Orpheus-NYC helps to bridge this gap with in-class visits, invitations to working rehearsals, instrument discovery days, and free tickets for performances at Carnegie Hall.

The Orpheus Music Academy encompasses Orpheus' programs for intermediate and advanced music students. Orpheus musicians share their artistry, expertise, and collaborative approach to music-making through masterclasses with Orpheus musicians and guest artists, side-by-side workshops, and residencies on tour. In 2018, Orpheus is proud to launch Orpheus@Mannes in partnership with the Mannes School of Music. Providing a week-long immersion in the Orpheus Process for conservatory-level students, Orpheus@Mannes is the first program of its kind to focus exclusively on conductorless orchestra training and artistic leadership for the next generation of orchestral musicians.

The Orpheus Leadership Institute brings the Orpheus Process to the private and nonprofit sectors and educational institutions to empower the leaders of tomorrow through collaborative management training. Teams of all kinds participate in customizable programs to gain insight from Orpheus' democratic process and develop essential skills in communication, collective ownership, and creative problem solving.