The Hartt Wind Ensemble will be performing at Carnegie Hall's Isaac Stern Auditorium, on Sunday May 30th, 2010, at 8:00 PM. The dynamic program will feature the 54-member Hartt Wind Ensemble, conducted by Hartt's Director of Bands Glen Adsit, performing the Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare (Strauss), a brilliant new piece by Hartt graduate student composer Jess Turner called Rumpelstilzchen, and a world premiere of the internationally celebrated composer Chen YI called Dragon Rhyme. After a brief intermission, the National Collegiate Honor Band, which includes 30 Hartt students, will take the stage. Their program consists of O Magnum Mysterium (Laurdisen/Reynolds), Overture to Candide (Bernstein), J'ai ete au bal (Grantham), and the Symphony in B-Flat (Hindemith). Adsit conducts the Bernstein and internationally recognized wind ensemble conductor H. Robert Reynolds conducts the remainder of the second half of the program.
For tickets to this very special
Carnegie Hall concert, visit
www.midamerica-music.com/carnegie/carnegie_may2010.html, and scroll down to the listing for the Ensemble Spotlight Series, "Encore! Encore!"
A special
Carnegie Hall preview performance will take place on Friday, April 23, at 7:30 PM in Lincoln Theater on the University of Hartford campus. For tickets to and information about this concert, call the University Box Office at 860.768.4228 or 800.274.8587, or visit
www.hartford.edu/hartt.
Prior to the preview of Dragon Rhyme in May, Chen Yi will be at Hartt on April 27 and 28 to record this new work with the Hartt Wind Ensemble.
About Jess Turner: Jess Turner holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in trumpet performance from
Bob Jones University (SC), and a completes another Master of Music degree, this time in composition, at The Hartt School this May. Turner's composition All This Night, set to anonymous 16th century text, won 1st Prize at the 2009
Roger Wagner International Choral-Composition Contest. He also won 2nd Prize at the 2009 Emil and Ruth Beyer Composition Awards for his chamber horn quartet, "The Last Voyage of Prospero." Jess has published four compositions and earned many other accolades as a composer and performer during his young career, including being the 2005 National Winner of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Composition Contest.
About Glen Adsit: Glen Adsit is the Director of Bands and Associate Director of the Instrumental Studies Division at The Hartt School, where he conducts the Wind Ensemble and the Contemporary Players Ensemble and guides all aspects of the graduate wind conducting degrees. Professor Adsit was appointed the Director of Bands at The Hartt School in the fall of 2000, following an appointment as the Associate Director of Bands at the University of New Mexico.
Under his direction, The Hartt Wind Ensemble performed at the 2007 College Band Directors National Association Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan and twice at the Eastern Division CBDNA Conferences. Under the direction of Mr. Adsit, performances have won praise from such notable composers as Joseph Schwanter, Bright Sheng, Susan Botti, Joan Tower, Michael Colgrass, and
William Bolcom. Gramophone Magazine describes The Hartt Wind Ensemble as "stellar" in its review of the newly released CD on the Naxos label, Passaggi.
An advocate of new music, Adsit is the founder of the National Wind Ensemble Consortium Group, which has a membership of over 50 ensembles and a mission to commission the world's finest composers to write for wind ensemble. The group consists of board members
Leonard Slatkin, Phillip Smith, Fran Richards, Joseph Schwantner, H. Robert Reynolds, Jerry Junkin, Mike Haithcock, and Eric Rombach-Kendall. Commissions in the first round include works by Chen Yi, Susan Botti, and Jennifer Higdon.
His professional conducting includes 3 productions of the Nutcracker, numerous pops concerts, and many educational concerts with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He conducted a series of educational concerts with both the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in Rochester, NY, and the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in Albuquerque, NM. In addition to his professional orchestral experience, he also conducted the
University of Michigan All-State Intermediate Orchestra for 7 years at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, MI.
Professor Adsit holds a bachelor's degree in music education and trombone performance and a master's degree in wind conducting, both from the
University of Michigan, where he studied with H. Robert Reynolds.
About Chen Yi: Recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001-04), Chen Yi has served as the Lorena Searcey Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor in Music Composition at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998. Prior to her current appointment, Chen served on the composition faculty of Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (1996-98) and as Composer-in-Residence with the Women's Philharmonic, Chanticleer, and Aptos Creative Arts Center in San Francisco (1993-96), supported by Meet The Composer's New Residencies Program. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.
Born April 4, 1953, in Guangzhou, China, into a family of doctors with a strong interest in classical music, Chen Yi started studying violin and piano at age three with Zheng Rihua and Li Suxin, and music theory with Zheng Zhong. Dr. Chen has received music degrees from the Beijing Central Conservatory (BA and MA) and Columbia University (DMA). Dr. Chen's major composition teachers included Professors Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, Wu Zu-qiang and Alexander Goehr.
Chen Yi was the first woman to receive a master's degree in composition in China in June, 1986, when she presented a full evening concert of her orchestral works in Beijing. She was also the first woman to present a full evening multimedia orchestral concert in the US (for orchestra, choir, Chinese traditional instrumental soloists, dancers, and image projection - the Chinese Myths Cantata), in May, 1996, with three sold out performances in San Francisco. Chen Yi has received numerous prestigious fellowships and commissions, and has seen her work premiered around the world by notable artists.
Chen Yi is in high demand as a lecturer at composition workshops and at concerts of her music throughout the world. She was appointed by the China Ministry of Education to the prestigious three-year Changjiang Scholar Visiting Professorship at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music in 2006, and presently serves on the boards, advisory councils, or juries of Meet The Composer, Chamber Music America, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, American Composers Orchestra, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the International Alliance of Women in Music, as well as numerous other music organizations. For more information on Chen Yi, please visit www.myspace.com/composerchenyi.
The Hartt School is the comprehensive performing arts conservatory of the University of Hartford that offers innovative degree programs in music, dance, and theatre. With more than 400 concerts, recitals, plays, master classes, dance performances, and musical theatre productions a year, performance is central to Hartt's curriculum. For more information on The Hartt School, visit www.hartford.edu/hartt.
