Brooklyn Phil Opens Season with Two Preview Concerts Featuring Mos Def

BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC opens 2011-12 season with two free preview concerts:

BROOKLYN PHIL & Mos Def AT RESTORATION ROCKS MUSIC FESTIVAL
Thursday, October 8 at 8:00PM
Featuring performances by the Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players and Mos Def
Music by Mos Def (arr. David Bermel) and Frederic Rzewski

WNYC NEW SOUNDS LIVE PRESENTS THE BROOKLYN PHIL
Monday, October 12 at 7:00PM
The Winter Garden at World Financial Center, NYC
Featuring performances by Mos Def, Mellissa Hughes, Corey Dargel,
Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players
Music by David T. Little, Lev Zhurbin, Mos Def (arr. David Bermel),
Frederic Rzewski, Shape Note Singing

Overview:
Hip hop legend and critically-acclaimed actor Mos Def, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, songstress Mellissa Hughes and other special guests join members of the Brooklyn Philharmonic in two lively samplings of things to come in 2011-12. The programs will feature small ensemble versions of music the full orchestra will play later in the season, including Derek Bermel's arrangements of Mos Def's original songs, 19th century Shape Note singing, and works by contemporary composers David T. Little and Lev Zhurbin.

Details:
Brooklyn Phil & Mos Def at Restoration Rocks Music Festival
Thursday, October 8, 2011, 8:00 pm (30-minute set)
Bed-Stuy Restoration, 1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
Tickets: Free

Featuring:
Mos Def, hip hop artist
Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players; Alan Pierson, conductor
Program:
Bed-Stuy Forever: The Sounds of Mos Def, arr. Derek Bermel (2011)
Frederic Rzewski, Coming Together (1972)

This preview concert is hosted by the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and will feature the first glimpses of collaborations between chamber players from the Brooklyn Philharmonic and rapper and actor Mos Def. Grammy-nominated composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel has arranged the hip hop artist's original songs, including his 2008 single "Life In Marvelous Times."

"Mos Def has always had a unique and powerful voice in hip-hop," explains Bermel. "We've talked about ways that partnering with the Brooklyn Philharmonic can unlock new and creative approaches to timbre and texture." The full collaborations will be presented alongside Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 and Beethoven remixes with the full orchestra on June 9, 2012 as part of the Brooklyn Phil's "Bed-Stuy Series."

The concert will also include American-born composer Frederic Rzewski's Coming Together (1972). One of Rzewski's better-known works, the piece is a musical and spoken text setting of the letters by Sam Melville, an inmate who was killed during the Attica State Prison riots in 1971.

WNYC New Sounds Live presents the Brooklyn Phil
Monday, October 12, 2011, 7:00 pm
The Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, NYC
Between 225 Liberty Street and 200 Vesey Street
Tickets: Free

Featuring:
Mos Def, hip hop artist
Mellissa Hughes, voice
Corey Dargel, voice
Brooklyn Youth Chorus; Dianne Berkun, director
Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players; Alan Pierson, conductor
Program:
Shape Note Singing
David T. Little, excerpt from Am I Born (2011)
Lev Zhurbin, excerpt from Only Love (2008)
Corey Dargel: What Might Have Been (2011)
Frederic Rzewski, Coming Together (1972)
Bed-Stuy Forever: The Sounds of Mos Def, arr. Derek Bermel (2011)

Mos Def and the Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players will be joined for the second free preview concert by a collection of artists also set to appear throughout the 2011-12 season. Vocalist Mellissa Hughes and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, under the direction of Dianne Berkun, will showcase in partnership with the Brooklyn Phil, an excerpt from their newly co-commissioned work, Am I Born, by composer David T. Little. Little's work has led critic Alex Ross of The New Yorker to declare: "every bad-ass new music ensemble in the city will want to play him." The piece is based on Francis Guy's evocative 1820 painting "Winter Scene in Brooklyn," currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum. The world premiere performance of Am I Born will take place March 24 and 25, 2012, as part of the Brooklyn Phil's "Downtown Brooklyn Series." Also being previewed from this March 2012 performance will be songs in the great 19th century American tradition of shape note singing.

The Brooklyn Phil will also offer a taste of its opening orchestra concert, Russian Cartoon Music (on the "Brighton Beach Series"), by performing an excerpt from composer Lev Zhurbin's score for the award-winning 2008 Russian cartoon Only Love. The film, directed by Lev Polyakov, takes a tongue-in-cheek look back at the Soviet era. The full performance takes place on November 3, 2011.

In addition, this preview concert will feature a special reprise of What Might Have Been, a piece composed by the Philharmonic's 2010-11 Composer Fellow Corey Dargel, who will perform his own work on the concert.

BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC
When the first conductor stepped to the podium in Brooklyn in 1857 to launch the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Bizet, Wagner and Berlioz were the strident young voices of new music. De Tocqueville had just departed Brooklyn to warn our European cousins about the mad democratic experiment he'd witnessed in America. Abraham Lincoln's wife hurried to attend the Philharmonic's first concert in Brooklyn's newest music hall. And the people of Brooklyn were, as always, defining what it means to really live in our country.

Now 154 years later, the Brooklyn Phil is not only one of the oldest living orchestras in the New World, but with 166 wornld premiers under its belt, 65 works commissioned from living composers, and the accolades of 22 ASCAP awards, it's also one of the most adventurous and widely acclaimed musical forces in America as well. The New York Times calls it "feisty and provocative. Rolling Stone raves the Brooklyn Phil is "vital" and "inspired."

In 2011 newly appointed Artistic Director Alan Pierson rebooted the Philharmonic, taking it on the road deep into Brooklyn's famed neighborhoods to connect with the deep and vibrant musical traditions of the people who love it most.

ALAN PIERSON
"We will become ‘Brooklyn's orchestra' like never before."
- Alan Pierson

Artistic Director Brooklyn Philharmonic
Alan Pierson has been praised as "a young conductor of monstrous skill" by Newsday, "commanding" by The New York Times, and "gifted and electrifying" by The Boston Globe. He is the artistic director and conductor of the acclaimed ensemble Alarm Will Sound which has been called "the future of classical music" by The New York Times and "a sensational force" with "powerful ideas about how to renovate the concert experience" by The New Yorker. Alan Pierson has appeared as a guest conductor with the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Steve Reich Ensemble, Carnegie Hall's Ensemble ACJW, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the New World Symphony, and The Silk Road Project, among other ensembles. He is also Principal Conductor of the Dublin-based Crash Ensemble, and was a visiting faculty conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has collaborated with major composers and performers, including Yo Yo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Michael Gordon, La Monte Young, and choreographers Christopher Wheeldon, Akram Khan and Elliot Feld. He has recorded for Nonesuch Records, Cantaloupe Music, Sony Classical, and Sweetspot DVD.

Alan Pierson grew up in Chicago. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in Physics and Music, and from the Eastman School of Music with a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Conducting.