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ACO's 2006-07
Season Six World Premieres at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center; Orchestra Underground in NYC & Philly; Derek Bermel is Composer in Residence
ACO's home base series, its 20th season presented by Carnegie Hall, includes three performances. In Zankel Hall, ACO kicks-off its fourth year of Orchestra Underground in two concerts, October 13 and March 26, subtitled "Composers OutFront!" Featured composer-performers include world premieres by composer-bass clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, composer-conductor Brad Lubman, composer-violist Kurt Rohde, and composer-pianist Vijay Iyer, with additional premieres and performances by Michael Gatonska, Michael Gandolfi, composer-electric guitarist Steven Mackey, composer-harpsichordist Harold Meltzer, and Tania León. Since ACO launched Orchestra Underground in 2004, the series has played to sold-out houses and attracted new listeners, stretching the definition of the symphony orchestra through non-traditional instrumentation and spatial orientations, technological innovation, and multimedia collaborations. ACO's Carnegie series culminates April 27 in Stern Auditorium, with "An Adams Apple: John Adams at 60," an all-Adams concert with the composer conducting. Soloists are violinist Leila Josefowicz in Adams's Violin Concerto and baritone Eric Owens in The Wound Dresser. ACO enters into a new collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center, November 16 - 18, with three performances of a program that explores the intersection of jazz and the orchestra, featuring music by George Gershwin, Charles Mingus, John Lewis, and the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by ACO's Music Alive Composer in Residence Derek Bermel.
Orchestra
Underground:
Oct. 13,
2006 at Zankel Hall, NYC; Friday, October 13, 2006 at 7:30pm in Zankel Hall, ACO kicks-off its season with the first Orchestra Underground "Composers OutFront!" concert. Three newly commissioned world premieres are on tap: Underwood Emerging Composers Commission-winner Michael Gatonska, Evan Ziporyn and Brad Lubman, as well as inventive music by Michael Gandolfi and the ever-surprising Charles Ives. Continuing ACO's forays into multidisciplinary collaboration, the concert includes contributions from video artists Ean White and Boom Design Group, composer-percussionist Susie Ibarra, composer-singer Corey Dargel, as well as amplified cello soloist Lauren Radnofsky. In addition to being featured as composer, Brad Lubman conducts, in his ACO debut.
Michael Gandolfi's As Above receives its New York premiere. Gandolfi has an ongoing interest in the musical possibilities of theater, film, and the physical sciences. Created in collaboration with video artist Ean White, As Above will be presented with a "live" performance of the video element by White, with the screen integrated into the ensemble, "allowing the ensemble to be free from the constraints of a 'fixed track,'" says the composer. Gandolfi's music has been performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, among others. He is a faculty member of the New England Conservatory of Music and the Tanglewood Music Center. Ean White has developed video, sound, conceptual and performance art installations for over twenty years, collaborating with Mobius Artist Group, Boston Performance Artists and others. He is on the faculty of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and holds a teaching residency at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.
Lauren Radnofsky has played cello in the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Lucerne Festival, and the Contemporary Festival of Havana, Cuba. She is co-founder and cellist of Brad Lubman's Electric Fuzz, and in the fall of 2006 will guest direct Musica Nova at the Eastman School of Music.
ACO and Jazz at Lincoln Center Nov. 16, 17 & 18, 2006 at Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall, NYC ACO teams-up with Jazz at Lincoln Center in a new partnership to explore the intersection of jazz and the symphony. The collaboration extends ACO's interest in breaking-down barriers between the world of improvisation and the orchestra-an interest that led ACO to undertake the Improvise! festival two seasons ago, and to previous commissions and performances by such composers as Alvin Singleton, Anthony Davis and George Lewis. The program features George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, in its seldom-heard original version, featuring virtuoso pianist Marcus Roberts. Two composers whose music and aspirations could truly be defined as "Third Stream," John Lewis and Charles Mingus, will be represented, as will the much admired composer/arranger Nelson Riddle through his catalog of orchestrations from the American songbook. ACO's Music Alive Composer in Residence, Derek Bermel, has been commissioned to write a major new work for the combined forces of ACO and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to be premiered as the occasion's centerpiece. Three performances of the program are scheduled for Thursday, November 16 through Saturday, November 18, at Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center's fabulous new home. ACO principal guest conductor Steven Sloane leads the combined ensembles.
Orchestra Underground: Composers OutFront! March 25, 2007 at Annenberg Center, Philadelphia; March 26, 2007 at Zankel Hall, NYC ACO's Orchestra Underground returns to Zankel Hall on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 7:30pm (with a preview in Philadelphia on the 25th), with a line-up of composers who bring their creative vision one step closer to the public by stepping into the role of performer. This installment of "Composers OutFront!" features world premieres by Vijay Iyer and Kurt Rohde. Steven Mackey joins ACO for the New York premiere of his Deal, and Harold Meltzer performs as soloist in his piece Virginal. Music by Tania León and a spotlight performance by guitarist-composer Andrew McKenna Lee rounds-out the program. ACO conductor laureate Dennis Russell Davies returns to the podium for his first performance with ACO in five seasons.
When asked to describe his ACO-commissioned world-premiere viola concerto for this concert, Kurt Rohde responded, "Just say it is a concerto for viola and chamber orchestra... and that the viola part is hard!" Rohde, whose music, according to the San Jose Mercury News, is "filled with exhilaration... a mirror of our times," is a graduate of the Curtis Institute and SUNY Stony Brook. He is a recipient of prestigious awards including the 2005 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Rohde is Artistic Director of San Francisco-based Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.
The New York Times called Harold Meltzer's Virginal "alluring, imaginatively scored..." with "spiraling flourishes of filigree." Meltzer's style might be described as "Stravinskian neoclassicism for the age of Bang On A Can." Meltzer, a former attorney, is the founder and artistic director of the new music ensemble Sequitur, and teaches composition at Vassar College. His works have been commissioned and performed by Music for Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic, as well as pianist Ursula Oppens and tenor Paul Sperry.
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ACO's
season-long focus on composer-performers culminates on Friday, April
27, 2007 at 8:00pm, in Stern Auditorium, as 
Leila
Josefowicz is enjoying a wide and varied career as a concert
soloist. A strong advocate for new music, she frequently collaborates
with the leading composers of the day, such as John Adams and Oliver
Knussen. She regularly performs with orchestras such as the
Pittsburgh, Detroit, San Francisco and Indianapolis Symphonies, and
in Europe with the Royal Concertgebouw and Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestras, the London and Munich Philharmonics, City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra, and at the London Proms.
Capping
off its two-year residency at the Annenberg Center for the Performing
Arts, ACO and Penn Presents provide a unique professional development
opportunity for Philadelphia-area emerging composers. The New Music
Readings & Lab, held April 13 & 14, 2007, will bring ACO's expertise
in new music and proven track-record in identifying promising composers
to Penn's Harold Prince Theater in a two-day public discovery of the
region's top emerging composers. The first day will be modeled after
ACO's annual Underwood New Music Readings. Composers, selected on the
basis of competitive review of scores, will be provided the opportunity
to hear a reading of their new work and receive critical feedback from
an esteemed panel of mentor-composers that includes Jennifer Higdon,
Gerald Levinson, Jay Reise, and Maurice Wright. The second day, ACO's
Orchestra Underground will present the new works in a Laboratory Performance
that includes discussion with the composers. Jeffrey Milarsky conducts.
With
the May 2006 premiere of his Elixir at Carnegie Hall, Derek
Bermel has joined ACO as Music Alive Composer in Residence. Bermel is
a unique figure in American music today-a masterfully eclectic
composer, clarinetist, jazz and rock musician-who boasts a
decade-long relationship with ACO, beginning with his participation
in ACO's 1994 New Music Readings and Carnegie Hall debut in 1998 in
his clarinet concerto Voices.