San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon, and Wu Man Nominated For Grammy Award

San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon, and Wu Man were nominated for Best Orchestral Performance today.

Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony's recording featuring Bay Area composer Mason Bates's three largest electro-acoustic orchestral works on the Orchestra's SFS Media label has been nominated for a 2017 Grammy Award in the category Best Orchestral Performance. The album features the first recordings of the SFS-commissioned The B-Sides and Liquid Interface, in addition to Alternative Energy. These three works illustrate Mr. Bates's exuberantly inventive music that expands the symphonic palette with sounds of the digital age: techno, drum 'n' bass, field recordings and more, with the composer performing on electronica. MTT and the SFS have championed Mr. Bates's works for over a decade, evolving a partnership built on multi-year commissioning, performing, recording, and touring projects. SFS Media has previously garnered eight Grammy Awards.

In January 2017, SoundBox - the San Francisco Symphony's experimental performance venue and late-night live music series - presents two performances co-curated by Mason Bates and Edwin Outwater and exploring music written in response to natural settings. These performances will culminate in the SFS premiere of Bates's The Rise of Exotic Computing for sinfonietta and laptop. For more information about SoundBox visit SFSoundBox.com.

James Conlon and LA Opera's recording of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles nominated in two categories: Best Opera Recording and Best Engineered Album, Classical

LA Opera Music Director James Conlon conducts the world premiere recording of composer John Corigliano and librettist William Hoffman's The Ghosts of Versailles on this two-time Grammy nominated album released on the Pentatone label. The opera marks James Conlon's second recording with LA Opera that has been acknowledged by The Recording Academy; Mr. Conlon previously received two Grammy Awards for Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording for conducting LA Opera's recording of Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.

The Ghosts of Versailles features Patricia Racette in the leading role of Marie Antoinette and Broadway legend Patti LuPone as the Turkish entertainer Samira. The cast also includes Robert Brubaker, Joshua Guerrero, Christopher Maltman, Lucas Meachem, Renée Rapier, Brenton Ryan, Lucy Schaufer, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Stacey Tappan, Guanqun Yu, and the LA Opera Chorus & Orchestra.

The production was recorded live at LA Opera during performances in February 2015 and the recording was engineered by Mark Donahue & Fred Vogler.

Pipa player Wu Man featured on the Silk Road Ensemble's recording Sing Me Home, nominated for Best World Album, and in The Music of Strangers, nominated for Best Music Film

The Silk Road Ensemble's Grammy Award nominated recording Sing Me Home, on Sony Music Masterworks, features a piece composed by Wu Man titled "Green (Vincent's Tune)" performed by the SRE with vocal octet Roomful of Teeth. Wu Man composed the piece in 2003 based on a melody sung by her then four-year-old son Vincent. Wu Man wrote in the liner notes for the album, "I composed this piece from Vincent's tune as a means to remember those wonderful times we spent together and I named the piece "Green" after my favorite color. Green represents the spring when everything grows and life renews itself full of energy and enthusiasm."

Sing Me Home is the companion album to the documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, also nominated for a Grammy in the category Best Music Film. Following Wu Man on a journey through her Chinese homeland, The Music of Strangers was directed Morgan Neville and produced by Caitrin Rogers for the Tremolo Productions label.

Wu Man is a principal member of the Silk Road Ensemble, a musical collective formed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 2000. SRE has brought together more than 70 performers and composers for performances, recordings, and the creation of new music. Wu Man and the SRE recently completed a tour of Asia, and they next perform with the Mark Morris Dance Group at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH on January 6 and 7.

Wu Man has been nominated for five Grammy Awards. Most recently, in 2014, her recording "Our World in Song" was nominated in the Best World Album category.

Judith Sherman, producer of Jennifer Koh's Tchaikovsky: Complete Works for Violin & Orchestra, nominated for Producer of the Year, Classical

Violinist Jennifer Koh, conductor Alexander Vedernikov and the Odense Symphony Orchestra's Tchaikovsky: Complete Works For Violin & Orchestra, released on Cedille Records, is among eight recordings for which producer Judith Sherman has been nominated for a Grammy in the Producer of the Year, Classical category.

On her first-ever recording of Tchaikovsky's music, Ms. Koh performs the Russian Romantic composer's complete works for solo violin and orchestra with Mr. Vedernikov and the Odense Symphony Orchestra including the Violin Concerto, with which she won the 1994 International Tchaikovsky Competition. Also on the recording are Sérénade mélancolique in B Minor, Op. 26; Valse-Scherzo, Op. 34; Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; and Alexander Glazunov's orchestration of Souvenir d'un lieu cher, Op. 42.

Ms. Koh met Mr. Vedernikov in 1992, when she was 15 years old, as her conductor in the last round of Moscow's International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians. In 1994, she went on to earn the top prize awarded at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, where she played the Tchaikovsky and Brahms concertos and won three special prizes, including for the best performance of the Tchaikovsky. Ms. Koh's relationship with the Odense Symphony Orchestra also dates to 1992, when she performed as soloist in the Nielsen Violin Concerto. She went on to record the concerto with the orchestra for her debut album in 1996, led by Osmo Vänskä.

Ms. Sherman has produced eight of Ms. Koh's albums for Cedille, including Bach and Beyond Part I, Two x Four, Signs, Games + Messages, Rhapsodic Musings, and the Grammy nominated album String Poetic.

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