Celebrating three generations in ACO's artistic
leadership, Dennis Russell Davies returns to the podium for the first
time since 2007.
American
Composers Orchestra, the nation's most consistently adventurous
champion of new orchestral work, returns Underground for four premieres
at 7:30PM on Friday, May 1, presented by Carnegie Hall
at Zankel Hall. The concert continues ACO's cutting-edge Orchestra
Underground series that redefines orchestral music with new composers,
new influences, new multimedia collaborations, and new technologies.
This
concert program features:
Robert Beaser delivers the
New York premiere of his new Guitar Concerto written for long-time
friend and collaborator, the "monster virtuoso" Eliot Fisk. Beaser's
concerto is the first work work commissioned by his "home team"
orchesta in over a decade.
Derek Bermel'scontribution
to the program is the world premiere of A shout, a whisper, and a trace,
a piece inspired by Bartók's correspondence during his final years in
New York City. The commission also concludes the triumphant three year
Music Alive Residency Bermel has had with ACO.
Lukas Ligeti (Labyrinth of Clouds)
and
Thomas
Larcher
(Bose Zellen)
join this musical gathering of old friends with a world premiere and
U.S. premiere promising new and excting sounds. Both Ligeti'sLabyrinth
of Clouds and Larcher's Böse Zellen (Malignant
Cells) will
feature composers as soloist. Ligeti will play his Marimba Lumina and
Larcher will be spotlighted soloing on prepared piano which gradually
becomes stripped of its trappings throughout the piece.
The evening will be led by former music director Dennis
Russell Davies, returning to the orchestra for the first time
since 2007.
A
born risk taker and charismatic virtuoso, Eliot Fisk has brought an
entirely new dimension to classical guitar performance. He is known
worldwide for his imaginative and innovative approach and for expanding
the scope of the classical guitar legacy he inherited from his
legendary mentor, Andrés Segovia. Through numerous works written for
him by leading composers, Eliot Fisk has created a fresh and exciting
modern style all his own. Fisk continues to actively seek out
contemporary composers to expand the repertoire of the guitar. Among
the works dedicated to Eliot Fisk are Luciano Berio’s Sequenza
XI, for
solo guitar, premiered by Mr. Fisk in 1988, and Chemin V,
for guitar
and orchestra, premiered in Bonn, Germany, in September of 1992 with
Mr. Berio conducting the Orchester der Beethoven Halle. This
performance marks Fisk’s first appearance with ACO.
Derek
Bermel, ACO’s Music Alive Composer-in-Residence and the winner of the
2008 Alpert Award in the Arts, completes his three-year residency with
the orchestra this season. His influence in programming ACO’s Orchestra
Underground and Composers OutFront! events have extended ACO’s range
and programmatic diversity and enhanced its focus on the
composer-performer and on improvisation. Called “eclectic with wide
open ears,” by the Toronto Star, Bermel has been hailed by colleagues,
critics, and audiences across the globe for his creativity as a
composer and his virtuosity and charisma as a clarinetist. Known for
drawing freely from a rich variety of musical traditions, he filters
the sounds of the world through his own musical palette, crafting a
singular artistic vision.
A Shout, A Whisper, A Trace has been co-commissioned by
ACO, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, and The Serge Koussevitzky Music
Foundation.
Bermel’s relationship extends back before his professional career. He
first came to ACO’s attention through its annual New Music Readings for
Emerging Composers. That experience led ACO to offer Bermel his first
professional orchestra commission for Voices, which he premiered with
ACO at Carnegie Hall twelve years ago. And Bermel’s relationship with
the orchestra is likely to continue into the future. “I love ACO,” says
Bermel. “They have done so much for me and for so many young composers.
I look forward to continuing to play a role in ACO’s programming,” he
says.
Bermel holds B.A. and D.M.A. degrees from Yale University and the
University of Michigan. His main composition teachers were William
Albright, Louis Andriessen, William Bolcom, Henri Dutilleux, and
Michael Tenzer, and he studied clarinet with Ben Armato and Keith
Wilson. He also studied ethnomusicology and orchestration in Jerusalem
with André Hajdu, later traveling to Bulgaria to study Thracian folk
style with Nikola Iliev, to Brazil to learn caxixi with Julio Góes, and
to Ghana to study Lobi xylophone with Ngmen Baaru. His music is
published by Peermusic (North/South America & Asia) and Faber
Music (Europe & Australia).
Lukas
Ligeti’s Labyrinth of Clouds is “a concerto of
sorts” for electronic
percussion, live electronics, and orchestra. The composer will be the
soloist, performing on Marimba Lumina, an electronic MIDI controller
that includes a traditionally arrayed set of electronic bars and brings
an extended vocabulary and range of expression to the mallet instrument
family. Ligeti is a composer-performer comfortable in a variety of
settings. His music brings together disparate sources from
European-American modernism, jazz improvisation, and African rhythmic
influences.
The composer writes, “The Marimba Lumina is a very unusual electronic
marimba, designed by the engineer Don Buchla. This will be my first
time playing as soloist with an orchestra, which I’m very excited
about. Mixing electronics and orchestra is a great challenge, and my
piece will examine various contrasts between and juxtapositions of
these two sound worlds. My music is strongly informed both by the
Western classical canon and by the traditional and popular musics of
Africa, a continent where the marimba plays a prominent role. The piece
will contrast and juxtapose these cultural worlds in various ways.”
Ligeti calls himself, “essentially an improvising musician,” and the
solo part includes space for improvisation, showcasing some of the
unique possibilities of his hi-tech instrument. In combination with the
sonic palette of the orchestra, the result is a maze of swirling,
polymetric patterns and melodies coming in and out of phase and focus,
with changes of timbre.
Thomas Larcher is a
rising Austrian composer whose piano concerto, Böse Zellen
(Malignant
Cells), is a tour-de-force inspired by a film of the same
name by
Barbara Albert. The composer used images from the film to develop
tightly constructed motivic and structural material that is then
spun-out in aggressive and wild ways. The work was premiered in 2006 in
Essen at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, with the composer as soloist,
performing with the Münchener Kammerorchester conducted by Dennis
Russell Davies.
Larcher says, “In 2004 I was commissioned to write a concerto for the
same orchestration as Mozart’s K. 482. It should have been a piece
that—just like the Mozart—could be done without a conductor. However I
got stuck very soon. It was Dennis Russell Davies who encouraged me ‘to
write a piece first and then to think whether a conductor would be
needed.’ While composing, the film accompanied me but it did not give
my piece a programme. Perhaps there are analogies with regard to the
construction, structure, treatment of form, the openness of the
architecture, and juxtaposition of people, impressions, feelings, and
structures. The fundamental impression that remains with me is the
tracing of ‘horizontal structures’ in life, the depiction of the
impossibility of influencing the direction in which life is heading.“
Dennis Russell Davies,
conductor
Dennis
Russell Davies is a co-founder of ACO. He served for over 20 years as
the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor and Music Director, and now as
Conductor Laureate. He is a conductor who is at the forefront of both
orchestral and operatic worlds, and is also an accomplished pianist,
sought out by orchestras, composers and musicians worldwide for his
inspiring collaborations and interpretive mastery.
2009 marks Mr.
Davies’ 40th year of intrepid international music making. He is
currently Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Bruckner Orchester
Linz, and Chief Conductor of the Linz Opera. He was recently appointed
Music Director of the Basel Symphony Orchestra in Basel, Switzerland.
Mr. Davies is also Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the Salzburg
Mozarteum, and is Conductor Laureate of the Stuttgart Chamber
Orchestra. Mr. Davies has served as Chief Conductor of the Vienna Radio
Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber
Orchestra, and Beethovenhalle Orchestra, and as Music Director of the
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgart State Opera, Bonn Opera, and the
Cabrillo Music Festival (Santa Cruz, CA). He was also Principal
Conductor/Classical Music Program Director of the Philadelphia
Orchestra at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
As both conductor and pianist,
Mr. Davies has released more than
60 recordings, earning numerous awards. He was born in Toledo, Ohio,
and graduated from The Juilliard School, where he studied piano with
Lonny Epstein and Sasha Gorodnitski, and conducting with Jean Morel and
Jorge Mester.
Tickets
& Info
ACO performs at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
Friday, May 1, 2009, at 7:30pm. Tickets are $38 and $48, and may
be purchased through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, by visiting
Carnegie Hall's website at www.carnegiehall.org,
or at the Carnegie Hall box office, 57th Street at 7th Ave.
