Columbus Symphony to Open 2015-16 Season with CARMINA BURANA

The CSO launches its 2015-16 Masterworks season with the beloved and electrifying Carmina Burana conducted by Music Director Rossen Milanov in his first full season at the helm of the orchestra. The evening will also feature soprano Jennifer Zetlan, tenor Christopher Pfund, baritone Hugh Russell, and the Columbus Symphony Chorus. This compelling choral spectacular has been quoted and imitated on countless movie soundtracks and television commercials galore, and celebrates the basic pleasures of life-springtime, food, wine, and love! The orchestra will also pay tribute to one of Columbus' own, composer Donald Harris, with his 2003 composition for orchestra, A Lyric Fanfare.

The Columbus Symphony presents Carmina Burana at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.) on Friday and Saturday, October 2 and 3, at 8pm. Tickets start at $10 and can be purchased at the CAPA Ticket Center (39 E. State St.), all Ticketmaster outlets, and www.ticketmaster.com. To purchase tickets by phone, please call (614) 228-8600 or (800) 745-3000. The CAPA Ticket Center will also be open two hours prior to each performance. Young people between the ages of 13-25 may purchase $5 All Access tickets while available. For more information, visit www.GoFor5.com.

Prelude - Patrons are invited to join Christopher Purdy in the theatre at 7pm for a 30-minute, pre-concert discussion about the works to be performed.

Free Simulcast - The Friday concert (only) will be simulcast on the screens flanking the Columbus Bicentennial Pavilion in the Columbus Commons. There is no admission charge.

About CSO Music Director Rossen Milanov

Respected and admired by audiences and musicians alike, Rossen Milanov is the new Music Director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and begins his tenure with transformative and creative ideas for new programming and expanding the orchestra's reach to new audiences.

Recently completing his first season with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra to enthusiastic acclaim, Milanov is also the Music Director of the Princeton Symphony and of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias (OSPA) in Spain. During the 2015-16 season, he is dedicating the Princeton concert season to the creativity of women, showcasing the compositions of some of the most respected emerging female composers, such as Anna Clyne, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snyder. With OSPA, he celebrates the orchestra's 25th anniversary with 25 new works and premiere performances in Spain. He will also be conducting a new production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" at the Zurich Opera.

In 2015, he completed a 15-year tenure as Music Director of the nationally recognized training orchestra, Symphony in C, in New Jersey.

His recent season highlights include appearances with the Colorado, Detroit, Milwaukee, Vancouver, Fort Worth, Aalborg, and Latvian National Symphony Orchestras, as well as the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Zurich Opera, Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra, and his Link Up education projects with Carnegie Hall and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. He also appeared with Opera Oviedo in Spain, Hungarian National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, New York City Ballet, Pacific Symphony, and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in Philadelphia's Verizon Hall.

Milanov has collaborated with some of the world's preeminent artists, including Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Midori, Christian Tetzlaff, and André Watts. During his 11-year tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra, he conducted more than 200 performances as Associate Conductor and as Artistic Director of the orchestra's summer home at The Mann Center for the Performing Arts. His passion for new music has resulted in numerous world premieres of works by composers such as Richard Danielpour, Nicolas Maw, and Gabriel Prokofiev.

Milanov studied conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School, where he received the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship.

About guest soprano Jennifer Zetlan

Soprano Jennifer Zetlan is swiftly garnering recognition for her artistry and captivating stage presence. She has debuted on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and Florida Grand Opera. On the concert stage, she has performed with the New York Philharmonic, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, The Juilliard Orchestra, and has been heard at Carnegie Hall in recital and with Oratorio Society of New York, Musica Sacra, and the New York Youth Symphony.

About guest tenor Christopher Pfund

American tenor Christopher Pfund has performed to critical acclaim with countless major orchestras and oratorio festivals throughout North America including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park, New York Oratorio Society, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. International engagements have included performances in the Czech Republic, Germany, Mexico, and Brazil. Critics have praised his "rounded vocal beauty" and The New York Times called his voice an "attractive tenor [that] helps define a sympathetic character." Universally recognized for his irreverent portrayals of the roasting swan in Orff's Carmina Burana, Pfund has made the role a pillar of his career with over 150 performances on three continents.

About guest baritone Hugh Russell

Canadian baritone Hugh Russell continues to receive high praise for his charisma, dramatic energy, and vocal beauty. He is widely acclaimed for his performances in the operas of Mozart and Rossini, and is regularly invited to perform with symphony orchestras throughout North America. At the center of his orchestral repertoire is Orff's popular Carmina Burana, which Russell has performed with The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Houston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Toronto Symphony, and Vancouver Symphony, among others. The New Orleans Times-Picayune said, "Baritone Hugh Russell also grasped the theatrical nature of Orff's work, nearly stealing the show with a voice that ranged from organ-deep rumbles to flutelike falsetto and an acting style that drew roars of laughter as he captured the bullishness of an intoxicated medieval abbot."

About composer Donald Harris (b. 1931)

Donald Harris served on the faculties and as an administrator at the New England Conservatory of Music (1967-77) and the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford (1977-88), before becoming dean of the College of the Arts and professor of music at Ohio State in 1988. In 1997, after a 30-year career as a senior-level administrator in higher education and the arts, he stepped down as dean and rejoined the OSU faculty in composition. In 2010, he retired from the full-time faculty and was named Professor Emeritus of Composition and Theory.

From 1954-68, Harris lived and composed in Paris, where, among other things, he was music consultant to the US Information Service and produced the city's first post-war Festival of Contemporary American Music. Harris earned bachelor's and master's degrees in composition from The University of Michigan, where he was a student of Ross Lee Finney. He also studied with Lukas Foss and Boris Blacher at the Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood), and with Nadia Boulanger, Max Deutsch, and Andre Jolivet in Paris.

About composer Carl Orff (1895(1895-07-10)-1982(1982-03-29))

Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer best known for his "scenic cantata," Carmina Burana (1937). It is the first of a trilogy called Trionfi (or Triumphs) that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. The work was based on thirteenth-century poetry found in the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern in 1803. While "modern" in some of his compositional techniques, Orff was able to capture the spirit of the medieval period in this trilogy with infectious rhythms and easy tonalities. The medieval poems, written in Latin and an early form of German, are often racy without descending into smut. "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi," commonly known as "O Fortuna," from Carmina Burana is often used to denote primal forces, for example in the Oliver Stone movie The Doors.