Paul Frucht's A MORE PERFECT UNION Makes New York Premiere in November

On Sunday November 19 at 3:00pm at the High School of Fashion Industries, the GVO presents American Vistas, a program inspired by visions of America and American music. The program, conducted by Music Director Barbara Yahr, includes the New York premiere of “Address the 50th Anniversary of the Selma March – Eulogy for Reverent Clementa C. Pinckney” from Paul Frucht's A More Perfect Union, an song cycle for baritone and orchestra based on the speeches of President Obama, featuring Metropolitan Opera Young Artist baritone Daniel Rich. The program opens with Missy Mazzoli's These Worlds in Us (2006), dedicated to her father, who fought in the Vietnam war, and concludes with Antonin Dvorak's iconic Symphony No 9, “From the New World”, celebrating the American idiom.

Tickets available at www.gvo.org

About Paul Frucht

His music has been commissioned and performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Atlantic Music Festival Orchestra, Chelsea Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Weill-Cornell Music and Medicine Orchestra, Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra, American Modern Ensemble, Asian American New Music Institute, Euclid Quartet, Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music, LONGLEASH Trio, New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute, Utah Arts Festival, Buffalo Chamber Music Society, Midsummer's Music, and the Eastern Music Festival among numerous other organizations. He is the winner of the 2023 Lake George Music Festival Composition Competition, the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Brian H. Israel Prize from the Society of New Music, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, Juilliard's Palmer Dixon, Arthur Friedman, and Gena Raps Prizes, and the American Composers Orchestra's 2016 Audience Choice Award.

His song cycle A More Perfect Union was commissioned for baritone Jorell Williams and the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra. The Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra led by Yuga Cohler gave the world premiere with Mr Williams in 2021. Mr Frucht and Mr Cohler collaborated on the work with Cody Keenan, Pres. Obama's chief speechwriter and the work was profiled in a NowThis feature.

Other recent works include Forever is Composed of Nows, commissioned and premiered by the Grammy-Award winning trio Time For Three in Ketchum, There Are Stars, for flute and string quartet commissioned by the Sonora Collective, and Finding Religion, commissioned for violinist Jeffrey Multer, cellist Julian Schwarz, and the Eastern Music Festival Orchestral led by Gerard Schwarz. Mr Frucht's 2013 piece Dawn, in memory of Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal, Dawn Hochsprung, honoring her legacy of courage and dedication to education, has been performed around the United States by the American Composers Orchestra, Atlantic Music Festival Orchestra, Bowling Green State University Orchestra, Chelsea Symphony, Eastern Music Festival Orchestra, and Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra.

Mr Frucht is the artistic director of the Charles Ives Music Festival, which he founded in 2015 to explore the rich history of Ives and his legacy in American music, with a particular focus on presenting the works of living American composers. Its educational programming, which brings artist-faculty from leading American orchestras and chamber ensembles to perform side-by-side with youth musicians. He has been a faculty member at New York University's Steinhardt School since 2015.

About Daniel Rich

Originally from Baltimore, baritone Daniel Rich is a member of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera. Last season, he covered the Count of Lerma in the company's revival of Don Carlo and made his Met debut as a Waiter in Der Rosenkavalier. For the 2023-2024 season he sings in two revival productions taking on the roles of Paris in Gounod's “Romeo & Juliette” and Chester in the Grammy award winning “Fire Shut Up In My Bones” by Blanchard. Credits for the 2022-2023 season include a debut as Valentin in “Faust” with Opera Baltimore and Orlando in a concert production of “Furiosus” a new opera in two acts by Roberto Scarcella Perino, in collaboration with New York University's Casa Italiana. In summer 2023, Daniel was a Filene Artist with Wolf Trap Opera singing a recital, a concert entitled “Night and Day, USA” with Steve Blier, as a soloist for Carmina Burana, and a role debut as Masetto in Don Giovanni. He performed in the workshop (2021), world-premiere (2022) and North Carolina Production (2023) of the Pulitzer Prize winning opera “Omar” by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels as Suleiman, Ben and John while covering the roles of Abdul and Abe.Past concert engagements include Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, works by Duke Ellington and Mary Lou Williams with Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hallaria concerts for Maryland Opera, Opera Delaware and performances with Capital Singers of Trenton, DC Strings Workshop, Baltimore Musicales, Opera Ebony, and Harlem Opera Theater. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in April 2019 as a soloist in Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. 

Mr. Rich is a past winner of the Harlem Opera Theater Vocal Competition, Mario Lanza Institute Vocal Competition, ALLTech Vocal Competition at The University of Kentucky Black Brilliance Art Song Competition, emerging artist prize winner of the inaugural Duncan-Williams Vocal Competition and most recently the first place winner in the pre-professional division of the George Shirley Vocal Competition.