NY Philharmonic Ends Seventh Season of Summertime Classics, 7/10

The New York Philharmonic will present its seventh season of Summertime Classics, with nine themed concerts, conducted and hosted by Bramwell Tovey, June 29-July 10, 2009. The first program (June 29-30), entitled "From Russia with Love," will offer music by great Russian composers such as Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and Glazunov, with the Philharmonic debut of violinist Mikhail Simonyan performing Tchiakovsky's Violin Concerto. The second program, "Strike Up the Band" (July 1-2), will feature favorites by American composers, and will include Gershwin's An American in Paris and marches by "The March King," John Philip Sousa, performed by the United States Military Academy Band, Lt. Col. Timothy J. Holtan, commander/conductor. On the third program, "La Dolce Vita" (July 6-7), soprano Nicole Cabell will make her Philharmonic debut singing arias by Mozart, Puccini, and Donizetti, while the Orchestra offers additional works by Rossini, Massenet, and Gounod. The final program, "From the Danube to the Rhine" (July 8-10), will include Brahms's Hungarian Dances Nos. 17-21 as arranged by Dvo?ák, Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Alexander Gavrylyuk in his Philharmonic debut, and works by Reznicek, Suppé, J. Strauss, II, Léhar, and Enesco.

Artists
Conductor, composer, and pianist Bramwell Tovey has been music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) since September 2000 and is also principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. He has presided as host and conductor of the New York Philharmonic's Summertime Classics series at Avery Fisher Hall since its founding in 2004. Mr. Tovey has appeared as a guest conductor with ensembles including the London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Frankfurt Radio, and Bournemouth Symphony orchestras, and, in North America, the orchestras of Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Seattle, Montreal, and Toronto, where his trumpet concerto, Songs of the Paradise Saloon, was premiered in December 2009. This season Mr. Tovey appears with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall; in January and February he led the VSO in Mahler's Symphony No. 8, featuring the Toronto Mendelssohn and Vancouver Bach Choirs and an international cast, at the Cultural Olympiad of the Winter Olympic Games. In May 2010 he will return to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra as curator, conductor, and piano soloist for the contemporary Metropolis Festival, and to the main subscription season in the fall of 2011. He will make his Sydney Symphony debut in the 2010-11 season.

Mr. Tovey's recent compositions include Urban Runway, co-commissioned by the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras, premiered in the summer of 2008, and The Inventor, a full-length opera for the Calgary Opera to be premiered in January 2011. In 2003 he was honored with a Juno Award for Best Canadian Classical Composition for his Requiem for a Charred Skull. Bramwell Tovey received a 2008 Grammy Award and a 2008 Juno Award for his recording of violin concertos by Barber, Korngold, and Walton with violinist James Ehnes and the VSO. His other numerous honors include fellowships from the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, and honorary doctorates of law from the University of Winnipeg, University of Manitoba, and Kwantlen University College. In 1999 he received the M. Joan Chalmers National Award for Artistic Direction, a Canadian prize awarded to artists for outstanding contributions to the performing arts.

In June 2005 Lt. Col. Timothy J. Holtan assumed command as the 22nd Leader of the West Point Concert Band in West Point, New York, where the Band has been in continuous residence since 1817. He is a native of Bismarck, North Dakota, and a former public school music educator in Montana. An active conductor, adjudicator, and clinician, Lt. Col. Holtan has presented concerts and clinics in 37 states; Canada, Japan, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and in Europe; and for the International Association of Jazz Educators, North American Brass Band Association, Walt Disney World, the Atlanta International Band and Orchestra Conference, and the 1988 Winter Olympics.
In 2000 Lt. Col. Holtan was selected for the Army's "Training with Industry" program. He served as the director of operations and associate conductor of the Dallas Wind Symphony, and concurrently pursued post-graduate studies at the University of North Texas. Lt. Col. Holtan holds music education degrees from Montana State University and the University of Montana, and has pursued additional conducting studies with Elizabeth Green, H. Robert Reynolds, John Paynter, Larry Rachleff, Jerry Junkin, and Eugene Corporan.

Lt. Col. Holtan's military assignments include Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army Field Band, Fort Meade, Maryland; Department of the Army Staff Bands Officer, where he had administrative purview over the 105 Army Bands; Commander of the U.S. Continental Army Band, Fort Monroe, Virginia; and Executive Officer of the U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own," Washington, D.C., where he served in overlapping capacities as Director of the Ceremonial Band, the Brass Band, the Chorale, and the Chorus. He has also served as Student Company Executive Officer at the U.S. Army School of Music in Norfolk, Virginia. Lt. Col. Holtan's ensembles have been seen on national broadcasts of
network television, A&E, TNN, and C-SPAN, and on stages such as The Kennedy Center, DAR Constitution Hall, the Mormon Tabernacle, and the Myerson Symphony Center (Dallas). In 2001 Lt. Col. Timothy J. Holtan was honored as Alumnus of the Year by Bismarck State College; in 2006 he was inducted into the Bismarck High School Hall of Fame, and named to the National Band Association Board of Directors. Lyric soprano Nicole Cabell was the 2005 winner of the BBC Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff. A Decca recording artist, her debut solo album, Soprano, was named Editor's Choice by Gramophone magazine and won an ECHO Klassik Award and the 2007 Georg Solti Orphée d'Or from the French Académie du Disque Lyrique. Her current season includes returns to The Metropolitan Opera (singing the role of Musetta in Puccini's La bohème) and Lyric Opera of Chicago (as the Countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Adina in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore). She made her debut with New Orleans Opera as Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, with Atlanta Opera as Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, and with The Cleveland Orchestra in Brahms's A German Requiem, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst; she also returned to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 with conductor
Markus Stenz. Ms. Cabell sang Mahler's Symphony No. 2 with John Nelson and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and with Antonio Pappano and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. She has given recitals in Urbana, Illinois, and Savannah, Georgia. Her future engagements include singing the roles of Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen with The Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago; Leïla in Bizet's The Pearl Fishers with Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni with Deutsche Oper Berlin and Cologne. She is also scheduled to make her debuts in Montreal and Tokyo. Last season Ms. Cabell made her debut at The Metropolitan Opera in the role of Pamina and then returned as Adina; she also sang the role of Leïla with Lyric Opera of Chicago, her home company. She performed in concert in Copenhagen, Prague, Munich, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Ottawa, and Indianapolis. This is her New York Philharmonic debut. 

Alexander Gavrylyuk began his piano studies at the age of seven and gave his first concerto performance at age nine. He won first prize at the third Horowitz International Piano Competition (in 1999), Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan (2000), and Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition (2005), which also awarded him honors for Best Performance of a Classical Concerto. In 2005 VAI International recorded his live performance at the Miami Piano Discoveries Festival, U.S.A., for an international DVD release; two years later he recorded another DVD with VAI. Mr. Gavrylyuk performs regularly at Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Tchaikovsky Hall, and the Sydney Opera House, and has given a solo recital at the Kremlin. In 2009 he recorded all of Prokofiev's
concertos with the Sydney Symphony. His first two CDs were recorded in Japan and he performs in that country often, including at Suntory Hall and Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall. Mr. Gavrylyuk has performed with the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM; Russian National Orchestra; Moscow, Israel, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Netherlands, Seoul, and National Philharmonic of Russia orchestras; Tokyo and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras; Israeli Chamber Orchestra; and other ensembles. He has worked with conductors including Ashkenazy, Blomstedt, Lazarev, Pletnev, Sanderling, Segerstam,
Simonov, Spivakov, Talmi, and Tovey. Upcoming engagements include the Moscow Virtuosi; Orchestre de Paris; Royal Concertgebouw, Quebec Symphony, and Hague Philharmonic orchestras; Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl; Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana at the Lugano Festival; and returns to the National Philharmonic of Russia, Russian National Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and the Moscow, Rotterdam, and Netherlands philharmonic orchestras.
Violinist Mikhail Simonyan, who hails from Novosibirsk, began to study the violin at the age of five.

In 1999, at the age of 13, he made his New York debut performing Szymanowski's Violin Concerto No. 1 with the American Russian Young Artists Orchestra at Lincoln Center. In October 2009 Mr. Simonyan opened the New World Symphony's concert season, performing Glazunov's Violin Concerto conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. Other recent and upcoming highlights include his debuts at the Vienna Musikverein and with the NHK Symphony Orchestra with Sir Neville Marriner, and Dresden Philharmonic with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Vancouver, Aarhus (Denmark), Iceland, and West Australian symphony orchestras. In 2009 Mikhail Simonyan released his debut recording, of the Prokofiev Sonatas for Violin and Piano. He made his Lincoln Center recital debut in December 2009; in March 2010 he made his Paris recital debut at the Musée du Louvre. Also this spring, he was the featured soloist with the Philharmonia Orchestra in a
private concert at Windsor Castle, with HRH The Prince of Wales Prince Charles in attendance. Highlights of his upcoming summer appearances the Verbier Festival and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. Mikhail Simonyan has earned first prizes at the All- Russia Competition in St. Petersburg, Siberian Violin Competition, National Prize Prizvanie in Moscow, and Salon de Virtuosi in New York. A winner of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation Award, he also received the 2000 Virtuoso of the Year award in St. Petersburg. In 2003 the National Academy of Achievement selected him for an award in the Performing Arts; in 2008 he won the Young Artist Award from the Classical
Recording Foundation. The United States Military Academy Band, the U.S. Army's oldest active band and the oldest unit at the United States Military Academy, traces its roots to the Revolutionary War. At that time fifers and drummers were stationed with companies of minutemen on Constitution Island, across the river from West Point. In 1778, General Samuel Holden Parsons's 1st Connecticut Brigade crossed the Hudson River and established West Point as a permanent military post. After the American Revolution, Congress disbanded most of the Continental Army, but "the 55 men at West Point," members of the 2nd Continental Artillery, remained. Among their ranks stood at least one drummer and one fifer, who alone maintained the tradition of military music at West Point. With the establishment of the United States Military Academy in 1802 came an increased demand for military music. As the academy grew, it needed fifers, drummers and buglers to drill the new cadets and provide an audible order to their duty day. In 1817 the ensemble was
named the "West Point Band," and by this time was performing on a full range of instruments.

Today's band consists of four components: the Concert Band, the Jazz Knights, the Hellcats, and Support Staff. They combine to form the Marching Band. The organization fulfills all of the official musical requirements of the Academy, including military and patriotic ceremonies, public concerts, sporting events and radio and television broadcasts, as well as social activities for the Corps of Cadets and the West Point community. The band has appeared at many historical events, including the dedication of the Erie Canal; at the Chicago and New York World's Fairs; and for the funerals of Ulysses S. Grant and Franklin D. Roosevelt as well as the inaugurations of numerous presidents. The West Point Band appeared with the New York Philharmonic in July 2009 during Summertime Classics and as part of the Holiday Brass concert in December 2009.

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