Boston Modern Orchestra Project Releases Full Schedule for 20th Anniversary Season

Boston, MA - The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation's premier orchestra dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording new orchestral music, today announced its 20th anniversary season, opening October 18th at Jordan Hall. For the past two decades, BMOP has been one of the country's leading orchestras, with a mission of disseminating exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber.

After 150+ performances, 70+ world premieres, 50+ recordings, 14 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, and five Grammy Award nominations, BMOP is a leader in expanding the horizons of classical music.

Through intrepid programming and engaging, dynamic performances, BMOP plays an important role in keeping America's orchestras vital and fresh. "I am very pleased to announce BMOP's 20th anniversary season, the programming of which underscores the company's mission and honors its great traditions," says Gil Rose, Artistic Director and Conductor of BMOP. "What is important to us as a company is to present the broadest, selection of repertoire performed by the best established and emerging artists in the nation. This coming anniversary season explores many ways in which BMOP can broaden the scope and meaning of classical music for our audience. We believe the next 20 years will enable us to keep offering the Boston community concerts that challenge, enlighten as well as entertain.

BMOP's 2015-­16 season continues to prove the orchestra's unwavering commitment to new and previously unheard music of American composers. The anniversary season offers four performances of works by 12 unique composers, running from October 18, 2015, through March 25, 2016, and offers a selection of powerful, enriching music. BMOP's record label, BMOP/sound, will release more than 10 albums, including the label's capstone 50th recording. The ensemble also continues its ongoing commitment to nourishing the future of new music in its 16th consecutive year as the New England Conservatory's affiliate orchestra for new music. BMOP epitomizes a unique model of what a forward-­looking orchestra could be: "a major historical project of recovery and advocacy" (Fanfare).

BMOP 2015-­16 Performances

The season opens with Resilient Voices: 1915-­2015 on October 18th, a concert commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide, in collaboration with Friends of Armenian Culture Society. The program includes works by Komitas, Alan Hovhaness, and Dmitri Shostakovich, as well as the Boston premiere of Tigran Mansurian's Requiem.

On what would have been his 90th birthday, BMOP salutes the trailblazing composer Gunther Schuller (1925-­2015) on November 22nd, in a special memorial concert. The program includes Schuller's Journey Into Jazz and The Fisherman and His Wife, a one-­??act opera for which BMOP will collaborate with the dynamic forces of Odyssey Opera. A long-­time friend of Schuller's, BMOP released a BMOP/sound recording of Journey Into Jazz in 2008. "Given all of the attempts over the years to synthesize jazz and classical, it is amazing how fresh these pieces remain, how effortlessly Schuller (and BMOP) move from one style to another, and how seamlessly they blend the two." (Sequenza21)

Two invigorating programs complete the season. On January 22nd, BMOP will perform six works inspired by Bach's Bradenburg Concertos by some of today's best known composers, including Aaron Jay Kernis, Melinda Wagner, Sir Peter Maxwell Davis, Christopher Theofanidis, Stephen Hartke, and Paul Moravec. The New Brandenburg Project was a set of commissions initiated in 2006 by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to celebrate Bach's seminal set of chamber concertos, and resulted in a rich, diverse, contemporary set of interpretations of a traditional form. On March 25th, BMOP will present a rare performance David Del Tredici's complete Child Alice, based on poems prefacing Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, What Alice Found There, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Del Tredici has become an iconic figure in the American new music scene, establishing himself with his set of visionary, post-­modern reinventions of Carroll's timeless heroine.

BMOP/sound Releases 50th Recording

As one of the most important labels for American composers and contemporary orchestral music, BMOP/sound continues to release "a steady stream of impeccably produced, beautifully packaged discs with exacting and engaged performances of 20th-­ and 21st-­ century music" (Boston Globe). BMOP/sound celebrates the release of several new albums in 2015-­16, including Chinary Ung: Singing Inside Aura, Mason Bates: Mothership, David Stock: Concertos, David Rakowski: Stolen Moments, Kati Agócs: The Debrecen Passion, Virgil Thomson: Four Saints in Three Acts, and the label's capstone 50th recording, Steven Stucky: American Muse.

BMOP Continues NEC Affiliation

For the 16th consecutive year, BMOP continues its long-­standing relationship with the New England Conservatory (NEC). As the NEC's affiliate orchestra for new music since 1998, BMOP regularly features the talent of NEC students and alumni in performances and on BMOP/sound recordings, and presents its orchestral series in NEC's historic Jordan Hall. NEC students may attend BMOP concerts free of charge.

About BMOP
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today's musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber. Founded by Artistic Director Gil Rose in 1996, BMOP has championed composers whose careers span nine decades. Each season, Rose brings BMOP's award-­winning orchestra, renowned soloists, and influential composers to the stage of New England Conservatory's historic Jordan Hall in a series that offers orchestral programming of unmatched diversity. The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and passion with which they infuse the music of the present era.

BMOP/sound, BMOP's distinguished independent record label, was created in 2008 to provide a platform for BMOP's extensive archive of music, as well as to provide widespread, top-­quality, permanent access to both classics of the 20th century and the music of today's most innovative composers.

Details of the upcoming 2015-­??16 performances are provided below, and more information is available at the company's website: BMOP.org.

JORDAN HALL INFORMATION: BMOP'S 2015-­16 Season

Performance Start Times
October 18 + November 22, 3:00 PM (Pre-­concert talk 2:00 PM) January 22 + March 25, 8:00 PM (Pre-­concert talk 7:00 PM)

Performances
10.18.15 Resilient Voices: 1915-­2015
Program: Komitas, Hovhaness, Shostakovich, Mansurian
Guest artists: Nareh Arghamanyan, piano, Harvard-­Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and Boston University's Marsh Chapel Choir

11.22.15 Gunther Schuller Memorial Concert
Program: Schuller's Journey Into Jazz and The Fisherman and His Wife (one-­act opera)

1.22.16 The New Bradenburgs
Program: Inspired by J.S. Bach's six Bradenburg Concertos, the New Bradenburg Project's six commissioned works by Kernis, Wagner, Maxwell Davies, Theofanidis, Hartke, Moravec

3.25.16 Child Alice
Program: David Del Tredici's Child Alice (Complete)

Location

Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston, MA, T: Green to Symphony

Single Tickets

General $20-­$50/Students $10. Tickets to the 2015-­16 season may be purchased on-­line at BMOP.org beginning September 10, 2015, or by telephone 718.324.0396. In-­person sales at the Jordan Hall box office begin in mid-­September.