Oakland Symphony to Present NOTES FROM VIETNAM, 2/12/16

Oakland, CA, December 10, 2015-Music Director Michael Morgan and the Oakland Symphony continue their annual exploration of world orchestral music traditions this season with Notes from Vietnam, Friday, February 12, 2016, at 8 pm at the Paramount Theatre. Featured will be Emmy Award-winning composer performer Vân-Ánh Võ, who will give the world premiere of her Lullaby for a Country, performing on the ?àn tranh (Vietnamese zither), ?àn B?u (monochord), and vocals. In addition, TV and Broadway star and filmmaker Michael Urie (Ugly Betty, Modern Family) will narrate Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Completing the program will be Dvo?ák's Carnival Overture. The Symphony's Notes from . . . series has become a popular mainstay of the Bay Area music scene and annually explores symphonic music both new and traditional from cultures that may be less well known to audiences. Past Notes from . . . programs have focused on music from Mexico, Persia, the Philippines, China and the Middle East, among others. Free lobby entertainment, no-host drinks and pre-concert talk begin at 7 pm. And the concert is sponsored in part by California Waste Solutions. Tickets are priced $20-$75 and may be purchased at www.OaklandSymphony.org.

About the Artists

Vân-Ánh Võ is one of the finest performers of Vietnamese traditional instruments in the world and a rapidly emerging composer. She dedicates her life to creating music by blending the wonderfully unique sounds of Vietnamese instruments with other music genres, and fusing deeply rooted Vietnamese musical traditions with fresh new structures and compositions.
In 1995, Vân-Ánh won the championship title in the Vietnamese National ?àn Tranh (Zither) Competition. Since settling in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2001, Vân-Ánh has focused on collaborating with musicians across different music genres to create new works, bringing Vietnamese traditional music to a wider audience and preserving her cultural legacy through teaching. In 2002, Vân-Ánh released her first CD, Twelve Months, Four Seasons. In 2009, she released She's Not She with award-winning composer B?o ??. In 2013, she released her third CD, Three-Mountain Pass, with the Kronos Quartet as her guest artist.
Vân-Ánh has also been collaborator and guest soloist with the Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Southwest Chamber Music, Eastbay Oakland Symphony, Jazz artists, Rap artists, and other World Music artists. Additionally, she has been co-composer and arranger for the Oscar nominated and Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner for Best Documentary, Daughter from Danang (2002), the Emmy® Awards winning film and soundtrack for Bolinao 52(2008), and the winner of multiple "Best Documentary" and "Audience Favorite" awards, A Village Called Versailles (2009). She has presented her music at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, NPR, Houston Grand Opera, Yerba Buena Performing Arts Center, many World Music festivals throughout the U.S., and London Olympic Games 2012 Music Festival. She has been invited and participated as a screening judge in the World Music category for both the 2015 & 2016 Grammy Awards. In addition to the zither (?àn Tranh), Vân-Ánh also performs as soloist on the monochord (?àn B?u), the bamboo xylophone (?àn T'rung), traditional drums (tr?ng) and many other traditional instruments.
Recently, in collaboration with Asian American for Community Involvement, a NGO who serves refugees for 40 years in Santa Clara County, Vân-Ánh has awarded $40,000 from the Creative Work Fund to work on her next coming production which is scheduled to premier at Kennedy Center in March 2016. The Odyssey - from Vietnam to America aims to highlight the incredible power of the human spirit, the value of freedom and the will to survive of the Vietnamese Boat People. Beyond that, The Odyssey also wants to deliver the message of Forgiveness, Peace and Unity.
Michael Urie is the award-winning star of one of the most unexpected success stories in theatre this year, the brilliant and hilarious Buyer & Cellar. Playing multiple characters - including Barbra Streisand - in this one-man tour de force, Urie has won the hearts of everyone smart enough to venture down to the Village for a night of off-Broadway genius that won him the Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance and the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Male Performer.

Before Buyer & Cellar Urie was probably best known as the delicious Marc St. James on the award-winning Ugly Betty, the series that introduced him to and made him a favorite of TV audiences everywhere. Following that series, he spent most of his time in critically acclaimed stage productions. He played iconic fashion designer Rudi Gernreich in The Temperamentals, a role he originated in Los Angeles before bringing it to New York where he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor. He followed that run with appearances off-Broadway in the Classic Stage Company's production ofThe Cherry Orchard" and the revival of Angels in America.

But his lifelong dream of Broadway came early last year when he took on the role of Bud Frump in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, opposite Nick Jonas and Beau Bridges. Critics raved that not since Charles Nelson Reilly originated the role had Bud Frump delighted audiences as Urie did. The run ended in time for him to star in the short-lived but much-loved CBS series Partners.

A graduate of Juilliard, Urie won the John Houseman Prize in his graduating class, and has worked on stage in major theaters throughout the country in every genre from Restoration comedy to Shakespeare to classic drama and musicals.

Urie is also a filmmaker, with his award-winning documentary Thank You For Judging, about the mother of all high school speech and debate tournaments - in Texas, of course - the tournament that catapulted him to the national competition (which he won), soon to be released theatrically. His first feature as a director, He's Way More Famous Than You, was released in theatres earlier this year and is now available on DVD.

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