Scott Wheeler Premieres Two Operas, Including Newest NAGA, Today

On the heels of releasing his latest album Portraits & Tributes, award-winning composer/conductor/teacher Scott Wheeler celebrates two new major works to be performed in fall 2016: Naga, his fourth opera, set to a libretto by Cerise Jacobs, premiering September 10-17 in Boston; and Songs To Fill The Void, a three-song cycle set to poetry by Robert Barefield, premiering October 2 in New York City at Weill Recital Hall. In addition, the New Juilliard Ensemble conducted by Joel Sachs will present his chamber symphony City of Shadows on October 1.

Hailed for his vocal and operatic music, Wheeler continues to find surprising new connections between modern musical language and traditional classical technique. "It is exciting to launch the new season with two premieres," says Wheeler. "The premiere of Naga at Boston's Cutler Majestic Theater is the culmination of a long and rich history with both Cerise Jacobs and Emerson College. I am proud to be able to invite audiences to such a special place to hear such an extraordinary operatic collaboration."

Presented by ArtsEmerson, Naga is set to a libretto by Cerise Jacobs, co-commissionedby Friends of Madame White Snake and Boston Lyric Opera, designed and directed bythe multi-media visual artist Michael Counts, and creatively produced by Beth Morrison Projects. It marks Wheeler's fourth opera, succeeding others commissioned and presented by the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theatre, Washington National Opera, NewYork City Opera, Forth Worth Opera, and Boston Conservatory Opera. According to Wheeler, it was Verdi and Puccini's dramatic subtlety more than their vocal thrills that attracted him to opera. "The avoidance of the vulgar, the ability to mingle comedy and tragedy, the pervasive sense of musical and dramatic irony, achieves as much rich humanity as the most elegant string quartet."

The following month on October 1, the New Juilliard Ensemble performs the chamber symphony City of Shadows at Juilliard's Paul Hall. Dedicated to Kent Nagano, City of Shadows was written for the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and became a sort of universal urban portrait. As one of the great composers of song working today, Wheeler transforms poetry into music that is universal, uplifting, and profoundly beautiful.

On October 2, baritone soloist Robert Barefield and pianist Carolyn Hague perform the New York premiere of Wheeler's Songs To Fill The Void along with songs by fellow American composers on themes of love and loss. The concert is the latest incarnation ofthe 19-song album Songs To Fill The Void (Albany Records) released in May 2016.

"I'm both thrilled and honored to have collaborated with Scott Wheeler, whom I believeto be one of the great composers of song working today," says Barefield. Wheeler notesthat "the collaboration between myself and singer/poet Robert Barefield is a way to bringthe singer-songwriter tradition into the classical world."

In 2014, Barefield and Hague commissionEd Wheeler to set music to three poems writtenby Robert about his partner of 19 years, Stephen Mazujian. The three-song cycle startswith "Angkor Wat" narrating the story of Stephen's sudden death. "We Spoke of Music" combines aspects of "Das Wandern," from Schubert's cycle Die schöne Mullerin and"Listen to My Heart" by David Friedman, and talks about the love that Robert andStephen shared for music. "This song is a lighthearted consideration of how music helpedto bring together two men with very different musical backgrounds," says Wheeler.

"Unfathomable" is set as a passacaglia, "which I intended as a musical depiction of thetimelessness of love." Informed by the technique of his mentor Virgil Thomson,Wheeler's natural and lucid text-setting has been described as "gorgeously elegiac...lilting and tender" (Boston Phoenix).

Following another path pioneered by Thomson, Wheeler recently released Portraits &Tributes (Bridge Records, 6/3/16), an aphoristic gallery of piano portrait pieces featuringpianist Donald Berman. According to the Boston Globe, it "offers a stream of fresh andinventive ideas, with hints of minimalism and ragtime...an enjoyably miscellaneous feel."

The recording is complemented by the video documentary Portraits: The Piano Music ofScott Wheeler produced by filmmaker Fern Lopez. Slated for an August 2016 release oniTunes, it spotlights the portraiture process. According to Lopez, "most documentariesare just advertisements. This one asks a question: what exactly is a musical portrait? Can it really depict the person?"

A distinctive voice of true integrity, Wheeler is a continual point of reference forcontemporary music. According to Gramophone, "the music of Scott Wheeler is rich injust those qualities which we admire in ourselves and adore in others. It is warm,earnestly and ardently tonal, with an elusive lyrical quality that makes it classical musicfor sure." Wheeler draws from the dramatic works of Stephen Sondheim and Cy Coleman, chamber works of Lee Hyla and Arthur Levering, and formal expressivity of his enviable set of teachers: Lewis Spratlan, Arthur Berger, Olivier Messiaen, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Virgil Thomson. Elements of shifting tonality, sound and texture, dramatic timing, and narrative combine to create a musical language all his own.

About Scott Wheeler

Wheeler (b. 1952) is a Boston-based award-winning composer, conductor, and teacherwith a multi-faceted career. Although his chamber and orchestral music shows anomnivorous range, it is his prominent profile as a composer of vocal and operatic music that defines his career and artistic personality. His operas have been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, New York City Opera, Washington National Opera, and Fort Worth Opera. He has received awards and commissions from the Koussevitsky Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, AmericanAcademy in Berlin, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Bogliasco Fellowship, Tanglewood, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony, as well as the Stoeger Prize forexcellence in chamber music from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Wheeler's latest recording Portraits & Tributes (Bridge Records, 2016) features his piano portraits and tributes performed by Donald Berman. His current projects include a set of songs on texts of Paul Muldoon, the new opera Naga with libretto by Cerise Jacobs will premiere by Beth Morrison Projects and Friends of Madame White Snake at Boston's Cutler Majestic Theatre, and a new ballet with choreographer Melissa Barak. Wheeler was recently featured on the Brooklyn Art Song Society's "IN Context Series," is an Affiliate of NYU's Center for the Ballet and the Arts, and is Senior Distinguished Artist in Residence at Boston's Emerson College, where he teaches musical theatre and songwriting. scottwheeler.org

AUG | Portraits: The Piano Music of Scott Wheeler

iTunes release of documentary film by Fern Lopez

SEP 10-17 | Naga

Naga. World premiere of Wheeler's new opera with libretto by Cerise Jacobs.

Commissioned by Friends of Madame White Snake and Boston Lyric Opera. World

premiere by Beth Morrison Projects and Friends of Madame White Snake. Presented by

ArtsEmerson. Conductor Carolyn Kuan, designer and director Michael Counts.

Cutler Majestic Theater, Boston, MA.

OCT 1 | City of Shadows

New Juilliard Ensemble conducted by Joel Sachs. Paul Hall at The Juilliard School,

New York, NY.

OCT 2 | Songs To Fill The Void

New York premiere of Wheeler's Songs To Fill The Void performed by baritone Robert

Barefield and pianist Carolyn Hague. A concert benefiting the charity Global ADE.

Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY.

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