Nico Muhly News

New York City Ballet's 2014 Spring Season will open on Tuesday, April 29, with a one-week Festival of 21st Century Choreographers featuring 11 ballets by 10 different choreographers - Mauro Bigonzetti, William Forsythe, Peter Martins, Benjamin Millepied, Justin Peck, Angelin Preljocaj, Alexei Ratmansky, Liam Scarlett, Richard Tanner, and Christopher Wheeldon - as well the world premiere of a piece d'occasion by the artist JR, which will debut on opening night.

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced today that American Lyric Theater (ALT) is one of 886 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. ALT is recommended for a $35,000 grant to support the Composer Librettist Development Program - the only full time professional mentorship initiative for emerging operatic writers in the country.

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents Maira Kalman: The Elements of Style from June 6–September 1, 2014, in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery. The exhibition features paintings by artist, illustrator and author Maira Kalman, which were created to illustrate a 2005 re-publication of William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White's classic composition guide The Elements of Style.

Lincoln Center Theater will present the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl's new play THE OLDEST BOY this fall. The production, to be directed by Rebecca Taichman, will begin previews Thursday, October 16 and open on Monday, November 10 in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street).

Bernard Haitink will return to the New York Philharmonic to conduct two weeks of performances highlighting works by Austrian composers - Berg, Webern, and Mahler - and Beethoven, who spent much of his career in Austria. In the first program, Mr. Haitink will conduct Webern's Im Sommerwind, Berg's Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica, on Thursday, May 8, 2014, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, May 9 at 8:00 p.m.; and Saturday, May 10 at 8:00 p.m. Bernard Haitink's appearances are part of an international, season-wide celebration of the 60th anniversary of his conducting debut with the Netherlands Radio Union Orchestra (now the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra) and his 85th birthday.

Lincoln Center has announced a great lineup of events for the month of May 2014, featuring the final Emerson String Quartet concert, Dancing in Damrosch free dance parties, and more. Check out the ful schedule of events below!

After performing nationwide in 2012-13 throughout the U.S. and Canada, LIAISONS: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano featuring internationally renowned contemporary pianist Anthony de Mare comes to the Mondavi Center for two nights only tonight, March 29 (8:00om) and tomorrow, the 30th (2:00pm).

Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in the New York Premiere of The Marie-Josee Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse's Requiem with baritone Jacques Imbrailo, the Westminster Symphonic Choir directed by Joe Miller, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus directed by Dianne Berkun-Menaker.

Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in the New York Premiere of The Marie-Josee Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse's Requiem with baritone Jacques Imbrailo, the Westminster Symphonic Choir directed by Joe Miller, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus directed by Dianne Berkun-Menaker. The concert, Monday, May 5, 2014, at 7:30 p.m., will open the Spring For Music festival at Carnegie Hall, for which North American orchestras are invited to present one-night-only performances of unusual programming.

Warner Classics has signed the UK-based Aurora Orchestra for a three-album recording contract. The first album, due out in Autumn 2014, will be the American-themed Road Trip and will feature the music of John Adams, Charles Ives and Aaron Copland, as well as three newly-commissioned song arrangements by composer Nico Muhly – two traditional songs along with Paul Simon's Hearts and Bones.

The Kitchen has announce programming for its Spring 2014 season, which begins April 4-5 with the latest edition of Synth Nights, The Kitchen's series of live electronic music. This installment, curated by composer Nico Muhly, features a trio of musicians-Joe Snape, Jethro Cooke, and Jordan Munson-who all bring acoustic textures and an emotional core to their electronic compositions.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra announces the subject matter of the upcoming works to receive their world premieres by the Orchestra as part of the groundbreaking artistic collaboration with the MusicNOW Festival and Artistic Director Bryce Dessner. On Today, March 21, the Orchestra, under the direction of Music Director Louis Langrée, will premiere Nico Muhly's Pleasure Ground, a portrait work depicting the life of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead. On Saturday, March 22, Mr. Langrée and the CSO will premiere mountain, a new work by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang depicting the life of American composer Aaron Copland.

'I'm not a warhorse kind of singer,' mezzo Susan Graham states matter-of-factly. 'A. I'm a mezzo. B. I'm not a character mezzo. C. I'm not a contralto. The iconic opera repertoire for mezzos, Amneris (AIDA), Azucena (IL TROVATORE), even Eboli (DON CARLO)--those kinds of roles aren't my stock and trade because my voice sits high and has a different timbre.' Well, what then is her milieu? It's the likes of Handel, who composed several of the arias she has been singing this winter at the Met, as one of the stars of THE ENCHANTED ISLAND, a kind of Baroque 'jukebox opera.' But it's also Rodgers & Hammerstein's THE KING & I, which she is doing this June at the Chatelet in Paris.

The Manhattan Choral Ensemble (MCE) will present an imaginative program titled Requiem in Stone under the baton of guest conductor Andrew Megill. The concert will include early Baroque masterworks by Heinrich Sch'tz and Johann Hermann Schein and a new piece commissioned by the MCE from Caleb Burhans'works that render the subjects of spirituality, grief and death in exquisite detail.

Ron De Jesus Dance presents its first full evening of dance in Chicago on April 25 and 26 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts (1016 North Dearborn Street, Chicago). "Hyper Human" is a mixed repertory program of six works, by notable guest choreographers Arte Phillips and Benjamin Millepied, in addition to RDJD artistic director and Chicago native Ron De Jesus. Acclaimed Chicago jazz vocalist Paul Marinaro performs live the score for a world premiere suite of dances by De Jesus, Without a Song… Mic Check 1, 2.

From April 22 to April 29, David Lang, holder of Carnegie Hall's 2013-2014 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair, guides concertgoers through collected stories, a series in which six distinct themes are explored over six Zankel Hall performances, all at 6:00 p.m. and all curated by Mr. Lang. These multi-genre concerts-entitled hero, spirit, love/loss, travel, (post)folk, and memoir-showcase different modes of storytelling across a wide variety of music, from medieval Beowulf to conceptual John Cage, and include world premieres of new music by Lang, Kate Moore, and Kaki King, all commissioned by Carnegie Hall.

ETHEL performs “Grace” feat. works by Ennio Morricone, Jeff Buckley, Vijay Iyer, Son Lux, Marcelo Zarvos, Nico Muhly and more today, March 13th at 1:00pm at Trinity Wall Street, 74 Trinity Place, New York City, Train 2/3/4/5 Wall St, R/1 Rector St, J/Z Broad St for FREE. First come, first serve. For more info, call Trinity at 212.602.0800 or visit trinitywallstreet.org.

Gotham Chamber Opera, in collaboration with the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, presents the U.S. Premiere of The Raven as part of the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, on May 28, 2014 at 7:30pm and May 30 and 31, 2014 at 8pm, at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, 524 West 59th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), New York City. Tickets are $30-$175 and will be available at www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200. For more information visit www.gothamchamberopera.org.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's Artistic Director David Van Asselt and Managing Director Brian Long have announced that following strong reviews, the world premiere of Ode to Joy, written and directed by Craig Lucas, will extend three weeks through Saturday, April 19 at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street.