Trinity Wall Street to Open 2013-14 Season with CELEBRATING BRITTEN Festival, Begin. 9/5

Trinity Wall Street will launch its 2013-14 season with "Celebrating Britten" - a September to January festival devoted to the music of Benjamin Brittenin honor of this year's centenary of the composer's birth. Much of the festival will be part of Concerts at One, Trinity Wall Street's long-running series of free concerts on Thursday afternoons. "Celebrating Britten" will explore the great British composer's orchestral, vocal and chamber works in performances by the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Trinity Youth Chorus and NOVUS NY led by Grammy Award-nominated music director Julian Wachner, with guest artists including tenor Nicholas Phan, chamber ensemble Decoda and the piano duo of Grace Cho & Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, among others. Many of the concerts will present Britten's music alongside that of contemporaries such as Berg, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff and Poulenc. Star cellist Matt Haimovitz will perform two recitals as part of the festival, on October 17 and November 21, contextualizing two of Britten's suites for solo cello with solo works by later composers including Ligeti, John Tavener and Jennifer Higdon. In addition to "Celebrating Britten" events as part of Concerts at One, there will be special Britten festival concerts on November 18 (the Choir of Trinity Wall Street in Britten's Sacred and Profane and other choral works) and December 9 (cellistElinor Frey playing Bach and Britten, on both Baroque and modern cello). And holiday-themed works by Britten will be performed as part of Trinity's Twelfth Night Festival, including the ever-popular Ceremony of Carols (Dec 26) and St. Nicolas (Jan 5). See below for a complete list of "Celebrating Britten" concert dates and programs.

Benjamin Britten (1913-76) is not just the key British composer of the 20th century; he is perhaps England's most renowned composer since Henry Purcell, with his vocal, instrumental and stage works performed the world over. The September 5 concert that opens both the Trinity Wall Street season and the "Celebrating Britten" festival will span the length of the composer's career, beginning with the NOVUS NY ensemble under Wachner performing theSinfonietta, Britten's early orchestral piece. The program will also include two of the composer's most iconic vocal works, with tenor Nicholas Phan in the orchestral song cycle Nocturne (premiered by Britten's muse and life partner, Peter Pears) and mezzo-soprano Virginia Warnken in the cantata Phaedra, Britten's final composition (made famous by Janet Baker). Phan then returns to St. Paul's Chapel on September 21 for a special solo recital, where the tenor performs repertoire from his acclaimed album Still Falls the Rain, about which the New York Times proclaimed "Phan again proves himself an affecting interpreter of Britten's music."

Reflecting on his connection to Britten's music and the span of the upcoming festival, Trinity music director Julian Wachner says: "I've been involved with Britten's works my whole life. I've conducted several of the operas and the big symphonic works, and I've played piano in the chamber pieces and with the song literature. I sang so much of his music as a child chorister, too. We can cover a huge swath of that repertoire here, given our various ensembles and multiple concert series. With the composer's Anglican ethos, the breadth of his work and the resources we have, Britten and Trinity in his centenary year seemed like an ideal pairing."

Wachner admits that when the names of many 20th-century composers are proposed for expansive projects, some people recoil a bit. "But when you mention Benjamin Britten - at least here at Trinity - people go, 'Oooh, Britten, fantastic.' Some people know his big operas, and thanks to the Wes Anderson film Moonrise Kingdom, more people know his music for children, such as Noye's Fludde. But it's great that we can cover so much of his repertoire because there are still so many wonderful pieces of his that people don't know. Trinity is going to do something that a single symphonic organization or opera company couldn't do - which is throw light across a full spectrum of Britten's music. We're also going to juxtapose his works with those of his contemporaries and inspirations, something that he did at his Aldeburgh Festival with Shostakovich, Schubert and so on. We aimed to make each concert program something that Britten and Pears might have put together themselves."

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