BMOP to Present Final Concert of Season, BLIZZARD VOICES, 3/5

Boston, MA (For Release 2.9.14) --- The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation's premier orchestra dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording new orchestral music, celebrates its continuing relationship with New England Conservatory and the Boston new music community in a concert titled Blizzard Voices. As the New England Conservatory's affiliate orchestra, BMOP regularly features the talent of NEC students and alumni. The evening includes: the world premiere of Ondine by 2014-15 BMOP/NEC Composition Competition winner Stephanie Ann Boyd; John Harbison's Concerto for Bass Viol, featuring Boston Symphony Orchestra principal bassist Edwin Barker, and the Boston premiere of Paul Moravec's The Blizzard Voices with the NEC Concert Choir. Thanks to the generosity of the Gregory E. Bulger Foundation, this concerts is free to the public.

Dedicated to showcasing emerging composers, BMOP is thrilled to premiere 24-year old NEC master's student Stephanie Ann Boyd's orchestral work Ondine. Lauded by conductor Cliff Colnot as "a composer set to become one of the most distinctive and important voices of her generation," Boyd endeavors to write music that brings whimsical worlds to life. In Ondine, she takes inspiration from the Gaelic legend of a beautiful water spirit that leads men into the sea to drown. "I think that Ondine's tale is a sad one, not one of some vengeful feminine spirit," explains Boyd. "So I made friends with her, decided to interpret her story as one of solitude, despair and confusion, but ultimately self-redemption."

The program continues with music by John Harbison (b. 1938) and Paul Moravec (b. 1957). Both composers are Harvard alumni, Pulitzer Prize-winners, and have been featured on BMOP's record label, BMOP/sound. Harbison is one of America's most distinguished and well-known contemporary composers. His Concerto for Bass Viol (2005), featuring NEC alumnus Edwin Barker on bass, spotlights an instrument rarely heard as concerto soloist. "We have far fewer occasions in the concert music literature where we get to hear the bass in such a prominent position," says Harbison. "It's certainly an instrument I love hearing in the foreground and I think it's great for people in general to hear it too." Harbison's knowledge of the instrument is traceable to his experience conducting over 50 Bach cantatas and playing in many jazz groups.

Moravec has written over 100 orchestral, chamber, choral, lyric, film, and electro-acoustic compositions described as "tuneful, ebullient and wonderfully energetic" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "assured, virtuosic" (The Wall Street Journal). His oratorio The Blizzard Voices (2008) is a musical setting of essayist and Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's poetry collection of the same name. The words are adapted from testimonials of the survivors of the legendary "Schoolhouse Blizzard," a snowstorm of historic proportions that struck the Midwest prairie in 1888. Scored for six soloists, choir, and orchestra, The Blizzard Voices uses the chorus to represent the entire community, to narrate the poems, and to evoke the sounds of the blizzard. According to The New York Times, "the musical depiction of the outbreak of the storm was nothing short of terrifying."

About BMOP:

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is widely recognized as the leading orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to performing new music, and its signature record label, BMOP/sound, is the nation's foremost label launched by an orchestra and solely devoted to new music recordings.

Founded in 1996 by Artistic Director Gil Rose, BMOP affirms its mission to illuminate the connections that exist naturally between contemporary music and contemporary society by reuniting composers and audiences in a shared concert experience. In its first 18 seasons, BMOP established a track record that includes more than one hundred performances, over a hundred world premieres (including forty commissioned works), two Opera Unlimited festivals with Opera Boston, the inaugural Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music with the ICA/Boston, and 61 commercial recordings, including 40 CDs from BMOP/sound.

In March 2008, BMOP launched its signature record label, BMOP/sound, with the release of John Harbison's ballet Ulysses. Its composer-centric releases focus on orchestral works that are otherwise unavailable in recorded form. The response to the label was immediate and celebratory; its five inaugural releases appeared on the "Best of 2008" lists of the New York Times, Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Downbeat, and American Record Guide, among others.

BMOP/sound is the recipient of five Grammy Award nominations: in 2009 for Charles Fussell: Wilde (Best Classical Vocal Performance); in 2010 for Derek Bermel: Voices (Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra); and three nominations in 2011 for its recording of Steven Mackey: Dreamhouse (Best Engineered Classical Album, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance). The New York Times has proclaimed, "BMOP/sound is an example of everything done right." Additional BMOP recordings are available from Albany, Arsis, Cantaloupe, Centaur, Chandos, ECM, Innova, Naxos, New World, and Oxingale.

In Boston, BMOP performs at Boston's Jordan Hall and Symphony Hall, and the orchestra has also performed in New York at Miller Theater, the Winter Garden, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and The Lyceum in Brooklyn. A perennial winner of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Orchestral Music and 2006 winner of the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music, BMOP has appeared at the Bank of America Celebrity Series (Boston, MA), Tanglewood, the Boston Cyberarts Festival, the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento, CA), and Music on the Edge (Pittsburgh, PA). In April 2008, BMOP headlined the 10th Annual MATA Festival in New York.

BMOP's greatest strength is the artistic distinction of its musicians and performances. Each season, Gil Rose, recipient of Columbia University's prestigious Ditson Conductor's Award as well as an ASCAP Concert Music award for his extraordinary contribution to new music, gathers together an outstanding orchestra of dynamic and talented young performers, and presents some of the world's top vocal and instrumental soloists. The Boston Globe claims, "Gil Rose is some kind of genius; his concerts are wildly entertaining, intellectually rigorous, and meaningful." Of BMOP performances, The New York Times says: "Mr. Rose and his team filled the music with rich, decisive ensemble colors and magnificent solos. These musicians were rapturous-superb instrumentalists at work and play." www.bmop.org

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