JoAnn Falletta Conducts the Orchestra Now in NYC Premiere of Works by Penderecki, Holst, and Adams

JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, returns to guest conduct The Orchestra Now (T?N) for the third consecutive year in a special concert at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall on December 14. The program will be highlighted by the NYC premiere of Penderecki's Double Concerto with the BPO's concertmaster and principal cellist, Dennis Kim and Roman Mekinulov, in addition to Holst's celebrated The Planets and Adams' popular Short Ride in a Fast Machine.

As with all T?N concerts, the performance will be illuminated with brief remarks by T?N's enthusiastic musicians, many of whom will be on hand to speak with audience members during intermission.

T?N at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall Thu. Dec 14, 2017 at 7:30 pm

John Adams' quite famous Short Ride in a Fast Machine, born from a quick ride in a friend's impressive Italian sports car that Adams describes as "rather terrifying," opens the concert with an exciting, orchestral fanfare set in the minimalist style for which Adams is well-known. The work was a commission celebrating the opening of the Great Woods Festival in Massachusetts in 1986.

The next work, Penderecki's Double Concerto, was dedicated to violinist, violist, and conductor Julian Rachlin, who suggested a piece in which he could play and record both solo parts on violin and viola, similar to Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante. The piece premiered in fall 2012 and was later adapted for violin, cello, and orchestra, as performed by T?N. The concert culminates in what the composer, Gustav Holst, referred to as a "series of mood pictures."

The Planets is a seven-movement orchestral suite written at the end of World War I. The work is based on the astrological character of each of the planets, excluding Earth and also Pluto, which had not yet been discovered (and was subsequently downgraded to a dwarf planet). The suite was originally scored as a piano duet, except for Neptune, which was scored for organ to attain the necessary mysterious tone Holst desired. However, Holst later scored the The Planets for orchestra, a format that launched its popularity.

The Orchestra Now JoAnn Falletta, conductor
Dennis Kim, violin, concertmaster of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
Roman Mekinulov, cello, principal cellist of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
Bard Festival Chorale
Adams: Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Penderecki: Double Concerto (NYC Premiere)
Holst: The Planets

Tickets, starting at $25, may be purchased online at lincolncenter.org, by calling CenterCharge at 212.721.6500, or in person at the Alice Tully Hall box office on Broadway at 65th Street. The Orchestra Now

The Orchestra Now is a group of some 80 vibrant young musicians from more than 12 different countries around the globe, whose goal is to make orchestral music relevant to 21st-century audiences. They are lifting the curtain on the musicians' experience by sharing their unique personal insights in a welcoming environment. Hand-picked from hundreds of applicants from the world's leading conservatories - including The Juilliard School, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and the Curtis Institute of Music - the members of T?N are not only rousing audiences with their critically acclaimed performances, but also enlightening curious minds by presenting on-stage introductions and demonstrations at concerts, offering program notes written from the musicians' perspective, and connecting with patrons through one-on-one discussions during intermissions.

Conductor, educator, and music historian Leon Botstein founded T?N in 2015 as a master's degree program at Bard College, where he also serves as president. The Orchestra is in residence at Bard's Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, offering multiple concerts there each season as well as participating in the annual Bard Music Festival. The Orchestra also performs numerous concert series at major venues in New York, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a schedule of free performances across New York City boroughs. T?N has collaborated with many distinguished conductors, including Fabio Luisi, Neeme Järvi, Gerard Schwarz, and JoAnn Falletta. For upcoming activities and more detailed information about the musicians, visit theorchestranow.org.

JoAnn Falletta JoAnn Falletta is music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and principal guest conductor of the Brevard Music Center. Upon her appointment to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1999, Maestro Falletta became the first female conductor to lead a major American ensemble. She has since been credited with bringing the BPO to a new level of national and international prominence, demonstrated by BPO performances on national broadcasts of NPR's Performance Today, SymphonyCast, and international broadcasts through the European Broadcasting Union. Ms. Falletta has guest conducted over a hundred orchestras in North America, and many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. In 2017-18 she will guest conduct orchestras in Japan, Mexico, Spain, Berlin, Ireland and across the US.

She has served as a Member of the National Council on the Arts, was recently elected as a member of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the recipient of many prestigious conducting awards. Her discs for the Naxos label have won two Grammy Awards and ten Grammy nominations.This season, she will be featured on Naxos recordings of music by Kodaly and Wagner with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, a recording of music of Franz Schreker with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and her fifth world premiere disc of Kenneth Fuchs' music with the London Symphony.

For more information, visit www.joannfalletta.com.