The Boston Modern Orchestra Project Presents BMOP IN CONCERT: SURROUND SOUND, 10/12

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation's premier orchestra dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording new orchestral music, bridges the electro-acoustic divide in its season-opening concert. Spotlighting composers known for their virtuosic writing and electronic transformation of acoustic instruments, BMOP presents the world premiere of Anthony Paul De Ritis's Riflessioni, featuring bassoonist Patrick De Ritis, and the Boston premieres of Ronald Bruce Smith's Constellation and David Felder's Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux, featuring soprano Laura Aikin and bass Ethan Herschenfeld.

"As you can probably imagine, a carefully choreographed balance of ensemble, soloist, and electronics is rarely found in works for orchestra these days," explains Gil Rose, Artistic Director and Conductor of BMOP. "We are pleased to share new works by leaders of the electro-acoustic vanguard that we believe best exemplify this highly sophisticated colloquy. Be prepared for some subsonic clangors and supersonic electronics!"

BMOP in Concert: Surround Sound

When: Sunday, October 12 @ 3:00 p.m. (Pre-concert talk @ 2:00 p.m.)

Where: Jordan Hall (30 Gainsborough Street), Boston, T: Symphony

Tickets: General $20 - $50/Students $10. To purchase, contact BMOP at bmop.org or 781.324.0396. Also available from the Jordan Hall box office in person or online at tix.com.

Anthony Paul De Ritis (b.1968) is Chair of the Music Department and Director of Digital Media programs at Northeastern University. A leading American composer and music technologist, he is constantly at work in his acoustic-electronic laboratory exploring new ways of combining science, media, and art. According to New Music Box, he "has a flair for negotiations... between the concert hall and the dance club, or between instruments and electronics, or between the power of experience and the power of cliché."

BMOP and De Ritis are longtime collaborators: the orchestra has performed his work thrice before and recorded a highly acclaimed album of his works, Anthony Paul De Ritis: Devolution (BMOP/sound 1022, 2012). In the world premiere of Riflessioni, BMOP and special guest bassoonist Patrick De Ritis will render De Ritis's lush orchestration, engaging harmonies, and volatile textures with flair and precision.

Ronald Bruce Smith (b. 1959), currently an associate professor of music at Northeastern University, is a Canadian composer whose music has been described as "fresh and lustrous" (The New York Times), "seductive and unique" (Ottawa Citizen), and as "showing a remarkable sensitivity to tone colors" (Toronto Globe and Mail). In Constellation (2000), live electronics enhance the resonance of the ensemble's densely scored sequence of chords. The work's 2000 premiere was cited by the San Francisco Chronicle as being a "wonderfully evocative tone poem...clothed in a glossy metallic sheen forged from woodwinds, brass and some judicious electronic highlighting."

David Felder (b. 1953) serves as Birge-Cary Chair in Composition at SUNY Buffalo, as well as Director of the university's Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music. Described as "a Gustav Mahler for the 21st century," his work has been widely noted for its highly energetic profile and innate lyricism highlighted by employment of technological extensions. In his impressive song cycle Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux (2013), he uses a 35-piece orchestra, two solo voices, and 12 channels of electronics to explore the concept of time. Composed over the course of 20 months for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and singers Laura Aikin and Ethan Herschenfeld, Felder chose poetry by Pablo Neruda, Robert Creeley, Dana Gioia, and René Daumal to shape a journey through various times of the day. The cycle's title refers to a poem by French poet Daumal that runs intermittently through the whole work.

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

Photo Credit: Craig Bailey