Houston Symphony Presents OHLSSON PLAYS CHOPIN Concert This Weekend

HOUSTON (April 13, 2015) - The Houston Symphony presents Ohlsson Plays Chopin at Jones Hall featuring works by contemporary American living composer Jennifer Higdon and Romantic-era composer and virtuoso pianist Frédéric Chopin.

This weekend, April 17-19, conductor, pianist and composer Robert Spano leads the Houston Symphony in a varied performance of celebrated compositions that helped launch Jennifer Higdon's career, such as the eloquent blue cathedral and her Concerto for Orchestra.

Spano's connection and relationship with Higdon dates back to the early 2000's when they collaborated in the premiere of blue cathedral and the recording of the Concerto for Orchestra. "Robert understands that living composers have something important to say and is great about helping foster the communications between the audience and the composer," said Higdon.

Higdon is one of the most performed composers in the contemporary repertoire. In fact, blue cathedral - inspired by her younger brother Andrew Blue's death at age 33 - is one of the most widely programmed of today's American composers, which has now received more than 500 performances worldwide since its premiere in 2000.

The program will also feature Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, a concerto full of the brilliant piano writing and poetic lyricism for which Chopin is known. That piece will be performed by world-class pianist Garrick Ohlsson, an established musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess and one of the world's leading exponents of music of Frédéric Chopin.

Although especially known for his knowledge of Chopin, Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire ranging over the entire piano literature. First prize winner of the 1970 International Fryderik Chopin Piano competition in Warsaw - one of the oldest and most prestigious music competitions in the world - Ohlsson has since recorded the complete works of Chopin and continues to perform with top orchestras internationally.

A free Prelude pre-concert discussion led by Robert Spano and Jennifer Higdon will be held 45-minutes prior to the start of the concerts at Jones Hall on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. This pre-concert discussion offers the rare opportunity to hear the composer's views and insights into the music audiences are about to hear.

Unless otherwise noted, all concerts take place at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, 615 Louisiana Street, in Houston's Theater District. For tickets and information, please call (713) 224-7575 or visit www.houstonsymphony.org unless otherwise noted. Tickets may also be purchased at the Houston Symphony Patron Services Center in Jones Hall (Monday - Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.). All programs and artists are subject to change.

OHLSSON PLAYS CHOPIN

Thursday, April 17, 2015, 8:00pm

Saturday, April 18, 2015, 8:00pm

Sunday, April 19, 2015, 2:30pm
Robert Spano, conductor

Garrick Ohlsson, piano

Jennifer Higdon: blue cathedral

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1

Jennifer Higdon: Concerto for Orchestra

Jones Hall

615 Louisiana St.

Houston, TX 77002

Tickets from $25

A free Prelude pre-concert discussion led by Robert Spano and Jennifer Higdon will be held 45-minutes prior to the start of the concerts at Jones Hall on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

About Robert Spano

Conductor, pianist, composer and pedagogue Robert Spano has served as Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra since 2001. As Music Director of the Aspen Music Festival and School, he oversees the programming of more than 300 events and educational programs for 630 students, including Aspen's American Academy of Conducting.

Maestro Spano has led ASO performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and at the Ravinia, Ojai and Savannah Music Festivals. Guest engagements have included the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, San Francisco, Boston, Cleveland and Chicago symphony orchestras, as well as Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, BBC Symphony and Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Following Britten's War Requiem in Carnegie Hall and Verdi's Aida in Atlanta, Spano conducted the world premiere performances of Steven Stucky's The Classical Style at the Ojai Festival last summer, with a libretto by pianist and writer Jeremy Denk. The Classical Style was presented in Carnegie Hall in December 2014, followed by a production of The Magic Flute with the Houston Grand Opera. Guest conducting in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Copenhagen, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore is woven among a tour with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra.

Spano has won seven Grammy™ Awards with the Atlanta Symphony and is on the faculty of Oberlin Conservatory. He has honorary doctorates from Bowling Green State University, the Curtis Institute of Music, Emory University and Oberlin. Robert Spano was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2012 and is proud to live in Atlanta.

About Garrick Ohlsson

Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. He commands an enormous repertoire ranging over the entire piano literature, noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and the Romantic repertoire. His concerto repertoire alone is unusually wide and eclectic - ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century - and to date he has over 80 concertos at his command.

Mr. Ohlsson will bring Busoni's rarely programmed piano concerto to the National Symphony (Washington) and London's Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Fall 2014. 2015 marks the centenary of the death of Alexander Scriabin, whose piano music Mr. Ohlsson will present in a series of recitals in London, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. He will also return to the orchestras of San Francisco, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, Minnesota, BBC Scotland and Prague.

Mr. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Virgin Classics labels. His ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven sonatas ( Bridge Records) has garnered critical acclaim, including a GRAMMY® for Vol. 3. In recognition of the Chopin bicentenary in 2010, Mr. Ohlsson was featured in a documentary "The Art of Chopin" co- produced by Polish, French, British and Chinese television stations. Most recently, both Brahms concerti and Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto were released on "live" performance recordings with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphonies on their own recording labels.

About Jennifer Higdon

Pulitzer-prize winner Jennifer Higdon started late in music, teaching herself to play flute at the age of 15 and then beginning formal musical studies at 18, with an even later start in composition at the age of 21. Despite this late start, Higdon has become a major figure in contemporary classical music and makes her living from commissions, representing a range of genres from orchestral to chamber and from opera to choral to wind ensemble. Hailed by the Washington Post as "a savvy, sensitive composer with a keen ear, an innate sense of form and a generous dash of pure esprit," the League of American Orchestras reports that she is one of America's most frequently performed composers.

Higdon's list of commissioners and performing organizations is extensive and includes The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony, The Atlanta Symphony, The Baltimore Symphony, The Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, The London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Luzern Sinfonieorchester, The Hague Philharmonic, The Melbourne Symphony, The New Zealand Symphony, The Pittsburgh Symphony, The Indianapolis Symphony, The Dallas Symphony, as well as such groups as the Tokyo String Quartet and the President's Own Marine Band.

Higdon received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, with the committee citing Higdon's work as a "deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity." She has also received awards from the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts & Letters (two awards), the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Meet-the-Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, and ASCAP.

Higdon enjoys several hundred performances a year of her works. Her orchestral work blue cathedral is one of the most performed contemporary orchestral works and has received more than 500 performances worldwide since its premiere in 2000. Her works have been recorded on over four dozen CDs. Her Percussion Concerto won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in January, 2010. Other CDs including her music that have won Grammys: Higdon: Concerto for Orchestra/City Scape, Strange Imaginary Animals, and Transmigration.

She is currently writing an opera, based on Charles Frazier's book Cold Mountain, which is scheduled to be premiered in August, 2015, by Santa Fe Opera. It has been co-commissioned by Opera Philadelphia which will present the opera in February, 2016, and by the Minnesota Opera (dates to be announced). Dr. Higdon currently holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Composition Studies at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press.

About the Houston Symphony

During the 2014-15 season, the Houston Symphony enters its second century as one of America's leading orchestras with a full complement of concert, community, education, touring and recording activities. This season also marks the inaugural year for new Music Director Andrés Orozco- Estrada. The Houston Symphony is one of the oldest performing arts organizations in Texas whose inaugural performance was held at The Majestic Theater in downtown Houston on June 21, 1913. Today, with an annual operating budget of $29 million, the full-time ensemble of 87 professional musicians is the largest performing arts organization in Houston, presenting more than 286 performances for 300,000 people, including 82,000 children, annually. For tickets and more information, please visit www.houstonsymphony.org or call 713-224-7575.