Alan Gilbert To Conduct NY Philharmonic Concerts In the Parks And At Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival

New York Philharmonic Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in five free concerts this summer throughout the City of New York, from July 14 to 20. He will conduct all of the 2009 New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, sponsored by Target, which will take place July 14–17, 2009 in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, as well as two free indoor concerts, in Staten Island and Queens, on July 18 and July 20 respectively.

Alan Gilbert, who becomes the 25th Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2009 and is the first native New Yorker to hold the post, will open the Concerts in the Parks on Tuesday, July 14 on Central Park’s Great Lawn with a program that will include Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, Jupiter, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. This program will be repeated on Wednesday, July 15 in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. On Thursday, July 16 in Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx, Mr. Gilbert will conduct Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, Jupiter. He will conclude the Concerts in the Parks with a performance on Central Park’s Great Lawn on Friday, July 17, featuring baritone Nathan Gunn singing selections from Copland’s Old American Songs and selected Mozart arias, followed by Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. All concerts begin at 8:00 p.m. and will be followed by a fireworks display.

Alan Gilbert will also lead the New York Philharmonic in two free indoor concerts at the Center for the Arts, College of Staten Island/CUNY on Saturday, July 18, and at the Colden Auditorium at the Kupferberg Center for the Arts in Queens on Monday, July 20, bringing the Orchestra to all five boroughs of New York City this summer. The concerts in Staten Island and Queens will include Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, Jupiter; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7; and Mendelssohn’s own orchestral arrangement of the Scherzo from Octet for Strings.

“As a New Yorker, I have always had a special place in my heart for the New York Philharmonic’s free summer concerts, which have been a highlight of summer in the city for forty-five years,” said Alan Gilbert, Music Director Designate of the New York Philharmonic. “I’ll never forget the concerts I heard as an audience member or my first experience conducting in the Parks last summer, and the happiness I felt at seeing the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who had come together to hear great music in some of the most spectacular settings in New York. It makes me look forward even more to taking the helm of the New York Philharmonic in the fall, when we will bring the excitement of these city-wide concerts into Avery Fisher Hall for the 2009–10 season.”

“This summer’s free concerts give New Yorkers a unique opportunity to get to know the next Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert,” said Philharmonic President and Executive Director Zarin Mehta. “A native New Yorker, he will bring his keen intellect and a true hometown spirit to these concerts, just as he will fuel the musical life of New York when he begins his tenure in the fall.”

The Philharmonic’s annual free parks concerts have become an integral part of summer in New York, drawing loyal Philharmonic fans from all walks of life. Each year these concerts transform parks throughout the New York area into a patchwork of picnickers, and provide music lovers with an opportunity to hear the best classical music under the stars. Since their inception in 1965, the performances have delighted more than 14 million listeners, including 214,000 last summer alone.

On May 1, 2009, the Philharmonic will launch a dedicated summer area of its Website, nyphil.org/summer, detailing the Orchestra’s Summer 2009 activities. It will be updated over the course of the summer and will include online photo albums, as well as information about the music, performers, and venues.

Alan Gilbert will become Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in the 2009–10 season, the only native New Yorker to hold the post. In the same season he will become the first to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, a position that will include coaching, conducting, and performance master classes. Mr. Gilbert was chief conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra from 2000 to 2008, and was subsequently named its conductor laureate. He has been principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra (NDRSO) since 2004. Mr. Gilbert made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 2001 as the Diamond American Conductor, and has returned to conduct the Orchestra numerous
times, including during the acclaimed Philharmonic Festival: Charles Ives — An American Original in Context in 2004, and in March 2008, when he led the World Premiere of Marc Neikrug’s Quintessence: Symphony No. 2, a New York Philharmonic Commission. In May he will lead the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic Commission. Other 2008–09 highlights have included his Metropolitan Opera conducting debut with John Adams’s Dr. Atomic, and returns to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic.

Mr. Gilbert’s 2007–08 season included his Vienna Staatsoper debut; concerts with Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music — his alma mater — at the Kimmel Center and Carnegie Hall; and return engagements with The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris. In June 2008 he completed his tenure with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra with a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. Mr. Gilbert’s parents, Yoko Takebe and Michael Gilbert, both violinists in the New York Philharmonic (Mr. Gilbert is now retired), were his first teachers. Born and raised in New York City, the younger Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School; while at Curtis he was a substitute violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra. He also led Juilliard’s Pre-College Symphony.

Baritone Nathan Gunn has appeared in internationally renowned opera houses such as The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Paris Opéra, Bavarian Staatsoper, and at the Aix-en-Provence and Glyndebourne Festivals. His many appearances include the title roles in Britten’s Billy Budd and Thomas’s Hamlet; Papageno in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Guglielmo in Cosí fan tutte, and the Count in The Marriage of Figaro; and Figaro in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. He created the roles of Clyde Griffiths in Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy at The Metropolitan Opera, Father Delura in Peter Eötvös’s Love and Other Demons at the Glyndebourne Festival, and Alec Harvey in André Previn’s Brief Encounter at the Houston Grand
Opera.

Also a distinguished concert performer, Mr. Gunn has appeared with the New York and Rotterdam Philharmonic orchestras; the Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, London, Munich Radio, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; and The Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, . In recital, he has been presented at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, Alice Tully Hall (by both Lincoln Center’s Art of the Song Series and the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society), Cal Performances, Schubert Club, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, University of Chicago, Krannert Center, Wigmore Hall in London, and Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels.

Mr. Gunn’s first solo album, Just Before Sunrise, was released in August 2007 on the Sony/BMG Masterworks label. Other recordings include Billy Budd (Virgin Classics), Allegro (Sony Masterworks Broadway), Peter Grimes (LSO Live!), Il barbiere di Siviglia (SONY Classics), and Kullervo (Telarc). Mr. Gunn’s last appearance with the New York Philharmonic was in May 2008, when he portrayed Sir Lancelot in the semistaged production of Camelot.

Credit Suisse is the Global Sponsor of the New York Philharmonic.

The New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks are presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer and sponsored by Target; major support comes from The City of New York, through the Department of Cultural Affairs, Kate D. Levin, Commissioner; additional support provided by the Herman Goldman Foundation.

The Concerts in the Parks are presented in cooperation with the City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation, Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor; Adrian Benepe, Commissioner; the Borough Presidents; and the City Council of New York. Fireworks by Grucci for all outdoor concerts.