New Name, New Maestro, New Works for Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center's Geffen Hall

The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center—an unfamiliar name for an orchestra that was around for over half a century, as the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra—and its new maestro, Jonathon Heyward, are playing a role in Lincoln Center’s attempt to draw a more diverse audience to its campus at West 65th Street and Broadway.

Tickets are not simply more affordable than they are for the New York Philharmonic or Metropolitan Opera but available on a Choose-What-You-Pay basis for every seat in Geffen Hall (which also began life with a different name, Philharmonic Hall, back in 1962).

Last week, before the ensemble kicked off its season, it took the opportunity to introduce the two contemporary composers whose works will be bookends for the season, with the conductor and a couple of musicians from the orchestra talking about their experience with it.

Heyward, whose posh accent from years in the UK belies his American roots in Charleston, SC, makes his debut as music director, though he previously conducted the group as Mostly Mozart, talked about taking on the position. (He also leads the Baltimore Symphony.)

“I think for me I felt honored and thrilled to be music director,” he said. “Whenever you take on this kind of responsibility, the very first important question you have to answer about your relationship between yourself and the orchestra.

“And I will never forget the first rehearsal--the common language that we spoke. The music-making came so natural that it felt like we had been working together for a long time. But then as I got to know them better, what I experienced consistently was their amazing flexibility: That doesn’t come naturally to every ensemble.”

The pleasures of playing with this ensemble were echoed by two of the orchestral players who were also on hand: Jasmine Choi, principal flutist, and Amy Kauffman, a first violinist. Choi talked about how special it is in many ways—including its tradition, culture and style of playing—while Kauffman spoke of how “inspiring and fresh” it is working with Heyward, “illuminating older pieces” by putting them next to newer ones.

The first two concerts of the season featured the North American premiere of Huang Ruo’s “City of Floating Sounds.” Born in China and now living in the US, the composer-pianist-vocalist has written a work that actually starts before the live performance in the concert hall, using an app for audience members to hear musical fragments from around the city.

The ensemble’s last two performances of the season, on August 9-10, feature the world premiere of Hannah Kendall’s “He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing.”

Kendall is a prominent young British composer now based in New York, who wrote the 11-minute piece, using her own unusual musical vocabulary, as a companion to another piece on the program, Schumann’s Second Symphony. Two pieces by Bach—the Keyboard Concerto in A and the “Ricercar a 6 from The Musical Offering,” as arranged by Webern— are also part of the concerts.

For more information about the remaining concerts from the Festival Orchestra, please see the website.

Photo: Principal flutist Jasmine Choi, Maestro Jonathon Heyward

Credit: Richard Sasanow