The Chamber Orchestra Of Philadelphia Presents The Second Concert Of The 2018/2019 Migrations Season

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia (COP) explores the sound of the pipa alongside familiar European repertoire with works of Mozart and Dvo?ák. These works for strings by master composers are followed by a traditional Chinese tune arranged by COP's own Dirk Brossé. The Pipa is showcased alongside the Chamber Orchestra's sound in Lou Harrison's Concerto for Pipa with String Orchestra. Wu Man will also first introduce us to the instrument by playing a solo piece for the Pipa in the intimate setting of the Perelman Theater.

A founding resident company of The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia (COP) has devoted its 54th season to the theme of Migrations. Each concert invites a virtuosic soloist from a different region of the world to share his/her unique soundscape with Philadelphia. Pairing our guest artists with familiar masterworks allows audiences to appreciate the commonality of music across continents.

In the opening Mozart work, audiences should expect a more considerable piece than the title Divertimento in F Major would suggest. Indeed, K.138 is known as one of Mozart's "Salzburg Symphonies" for the surprising amount of depth and material that it offers in comparison to other pieces in the style. Its joyful agility is unmistakably Mozartean, and it is sure to elate lovers of the classical period. Programmed alongside the Mozart is Antonin Dvo?ák's Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op.22. Famously written in only two weeks, it is one of the composer's most beloved works. Since its premiere in Prague in December 1876, it has been delighting players and listeners alike with its variety of styles and moods through five melodic and passionate movements.

American composer Lou Harrison's Concerto for Pipa with Chamber Orchestra is an energetic, pulsing, and percussive work with Chinese influence at the forefront. Harrison was a composition student of Arnold Schoenberg as well as Henry Cowell; but rather than defining himself by serialism or the avant-garde, Harrison's work is known for the use of folk instruments from around the world. Harrison weaves the orchestra around the solo Pipa with all the phrases and flavors of traditional Chinese music, while still delivering a recognizably multi-movement classical concerto.

The "pre-eminent ambassador for traditional Chinese music" (The Wall Street Journal), Wu Man is sure to give a performance that everyone in the theater will remember for years to come. Audiences can look forward to an artist with a note-worthy career at the top of the field not only as a soloist, but also as a longtime collaborator with Yo-Yo Ma in his Silkroad Ensemble. Her "consummate musicality and brilliant technique" (The New York Times) are not to be missed in this cultural collaboration.

Mozart, Dvo?ák, and the Pipa Sunday, December 9, 2018 | 2:30PM Monday, December 10, 2018 | 7:30PM

Dirk Brossé, conducting Wu Man, Pipa

Perelman Theater Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 300 South Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19102

chamberorchestra.org / 215.545.1739 Tickets $24 - $81

PROGRAM Wolfgang A. Mozart - Divertimento in F Major, K. 138 Antonin Dvo?ák - Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op.22 Traditional, arr. Brossé - Mu yang Gu-niang Wu Man - Interlude for Pipa solo Lou Harrison - Concerto for Pipa with String Orchestra

Wu Man, Pipa

Recognized as the world's premier Pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man is a soloist, educator, and composer who gives her lute-like instrument a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. She has premiered hundreds of new works for the Pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create awareness of China's ancient musical traditions. Her projects have resulted in the Pipa finding a place in new solo and quartet works, concertos, opera, chamber, electronic, and jazz music as well as in theater productions, film, dance and collaborations with visual artists including calligraphers and painters. She has performed in recital and as soloist with major orchestras around the world, and is a frequent collaborator with the Kronos and Shanghai Quartets. A founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble (along with Yo-Yo Ma), she is featured as both performer and composer in the group's 2017 Grammy-winning recording Sing Me Home, and has appeared in over 40 recordings throughout her career. Her latest recording Fingertip Carnival with Son de San Diego, released on Wind Music, explores the connections between Chinese and Mexican folk music and each culture's use of stringed instruments. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Silkroad Ensemble, this season she performs with the group in the Australia, Asia, and in the U.S. Her 2018-19 season also includes the U.S. premiere of Chinese composer Zhao Lin's Concerto for Pipa and Cello with Yo-Yo Ma and the New York Philharmonic, and two U.S. premieres by Chinese composers with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. She performs with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Fresno Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. She tours Europe as a Master Musician in the Aga Khan Music Initiative-a group of performers, composer-arrangers, teachers, and curators who create music inspired by their cultural heritage of the Middle East, South and Central Asia, West Africa, and China; and tours China with the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, which blends traditional Chinese music and shadow puppetry. Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master's degree in Pipa. She was named

Musical America's 2013 Instrumentalist of the Year, but the best measure of her achievement is that her instrument, which dates back 2000 years, is no longer an exotic curiosity.

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia

A founding resident company of The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia is a 33-member professional ensemble led by Music Director Dirk Brossé. The Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1964 by Marc Mostovoy, has a well-established reputation for distinguished performances of repertoire from the Baroque period through the twenty-first century.

The Chamber Orchestra's development was motivated, in part, by the desire to provide performance opportunities to young professional musicians emerging from the Curtis Institute of Music and other regional training programs, but also by a desire to make a substantial contribution to the city and the region's cultural life. In addition to presenting its own productions, the Chamber Orchestra started to develop an entrepreneurial approach by seeking other performance opportunities among the region's presenter/producer community, thereby providing supplementary employment for its members. The ensemble also championed new music, focusing on local composers. In total, the organization has commissioned and premiered over seventy new works.

In 1994, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a concert pianist and conducting graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music, joined the Chamber Orchestra as Assistant Conductor. In 1998, he was named Principal Conductor and, ultimately, Music Director in 2004. Maestro Solzhenitsyn, in assuming the position of Conductor Laureate in 2010, remains closely associated with the Orchestra. A conductor and composer of international acclaim, Maestro Dirk Brossé is the current Music Director of The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. In the 2018-2019 subscription season, the Orchestra will perform five concert programs from October through May in the Kimmel Center's intimate, 600-seat Perelman Theater.

Over the course of the ensemble's rich and diverse history, the Chamber Orchestra has performed with such internationally acclaimed guest artists as Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mstislav Rostropovich, Issac Stern, Rudolph Serkin, The Eroica Trio, Jean-Pierre Rampal, The Romeros Guitar Quartet, Julie Andrews, Bernadette Peters, Ben Folds, Branford Marsalis, Elvis Costello, Sylvia McNair, Steven Isserlis, Joseph Silverstein, Ransom Wilson, Gerard Schwarz, Jahja Ling, and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, among others. The ensemble travels regularly, having toured the United States, Europe, and Israel.

Dirk Brossé, Music Director

Sir Dirk Brossé, born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1960, is a multi-faceted composer and a respected conductor on the international music scene. He is currently Music Director of The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Music Director of the Film Festival Ghent and Music Director and principal conductor of the Star Wars: In Concert World Tour.

Brossé began his music studies at the Music Conservatories of Ghent. He subsequently specialized in conducting, which he studied in Maastricht, Vienna and Cologne. He is currently Professor of Composition and Conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Ghent. Dirk Brossé has conducted all the leading Belgian orchestras, among them, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Flemish Opera and the National Orchestra of Belgium. Outside his native Belgium, he has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, l'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Shanghai, the Vancouver Opera, the KBS Symphony Orchestra of South Korea, l' Orchestra de l'Opéra de Lyon, the World Symphony Orchestra (Japan), the Ulster Symphony Orchestra of Northern Ireland, the Camerata St. Petersburg, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Orchestras of Venezuela and Ecuador. Dirk Brossé is a versatile and prolific composer. He has written some 400 works, including concerti, oratorios, lieder, chamber music and symphonic works, that have been performed all over the world and have been recorded in more than 40 countries. His most important works are La Soledad de América Latina, written in collaboration with the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Artesia, a universal symphony for orchestra and ethnic instruments, the ethno-classical symphony The Birth of Music, the oratorio Juanelo, the lieder cycles Landuyt Cycle and La vida es un Sueño, the War Concerto for clarinet and orchestra, and the violin concertos Black, White & Between, Sophia and Echoes of Silent Voices.

He has also composed extensively for cinema, television and stage. His film soundtracks include Boerenpsalm, Daens (Academy Award Nominee, 1993), Singularity, Koko Flanel, Licht, Stijn Coninx's de Kavijaks, Marian Handwerker's Marie, Martin Koolhoven's Knetter, Jaques Feyder's 1925 silent film Visages d'Enfants, and Knielen op een bed violen (Golden Calf Nominee, 2016). In 2012, Dirk scored the music for the Emmy Award Nominated BBC/HBO series Parade's End, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. He wrote the scores for the musicals Sacco & Vanzetti, The Prince of

Africa, Tintin - The Temple of the Sun (based on Hergé's world-famous cartoon character Tintin), Rembrandt The Musical, and Musical Daens, each time in close collaboration with Frank Van Laecke.

In 2010, at the request of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, he wrote The Hallow-e'en Dances. This Halloween-inspired work is especially written for age-old, traditional Chinese instruments. He recently composed Haiku Cycle 1, written for Jessye Norman and based on Haiku by Herman Van Rompuy. In 2007, Dirk Brossé made his debut in the Royal Albert Hall, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in A Night of Music from the Movies, featuring the music of Patrick Doyle, with guest appearances by such renowned actors as Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.

Dirk Brossé has made more than 80 CD recordings and has conducted in numerous world-famous concert halls, such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Centre and the Royal Albert Hall in London, la Monnaie in Brussels, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Seoul Arts Center, the Tokyo Forum and the Concert Hall Shanghai. He has collaborated with world-class artists such as José Van Dam, Philip Webb, Barbara Hendricks, Claron McFadden, Julia Migenes, Derek Lee Ragin, Sabine Meyer, Julian Lloyd Webber, Daniel Blumenthal, Salvatore Accardo and, on a broader musical platform, with John Williams, Toots Thielemans, Hans Zimmer, Elmer Bernstein, Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh, Randy Crawford, Lisa Gerrard, Mel Brooks, Maurane, Sinead O' Connor, Viktor Lazlo, Maurice Jarre and Youssou N'Dour.

Dirk Brossé has been awarded the title Cultural Ambassador of Flanders, the Flemish Parliament's Gold Medal for Merit, the Achille Van Acker Prize, the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award and the Global Thinkers Forum Award for Excellence in Cultural Creativity. In 2010, Dirk Brossé was made an honorary citizen of Destelbergen. In 2013 he was elevated to Belgium's hereditary nobility, with the personal title of Sir. In late 2010 EMI Classics released the 6 CD Box Dirk Brossé, A Portrait in Music by Jacques Servaes to international acclaim. dirkbrosse.be

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