Chicago Sinfonietta's UNDER THE NIGHT SKY to Feature World Premiere Video, 11/5 & 7

Mei-Ann Chen, new Music Director of the Chicago Sinfonietta, leads the second concert of the 2011-2012 season with Under the Night Sky, a concert that examines our place in the cosmos. The program features a World Premiere video from astronomer and visual artist José Francisco Salgado along with the Chicago Premiere of excerpts from Michael Gandolfi's The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. The Chicago Sinfonietta presents Under the Night Sky at Wentz Concert Hall of North Central College, 171 E. Chicago Avenue in Naperville, Saturday, November 5 at 8:00 pm, and at Orchestra Hall of Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, Monday, November 7 at 7:30 pm. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois is the Sinfonietta's Lead Season Sponsor and Chicago Sun-Times Media is the Lead Media Sponsor for the 2011-2012 Season. Under the Night Sky is one of two concert presentations in November, the other being a holiday celebration of Día de los Muertos on November 1 at Harris Theater for Music and Dance.

Under the Night Sky begins with the stirring fanfare of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, a piece that became a fixture of pop culture through its use in Stanley Kubrick's film masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. From there, the program will transition to excerpts from a contemporary work by the American composer Michael Gandolfi. The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is a sprawling work consisting of 15 movements, but, in the composer's words, "It is intended that any arrangement of movements, in any order, may be selected for a given performance." The orchestra will perform five movements at this concert. The composition was inspired by landscape architect and theorist Charles Jencks' project of the same name, a thirty acre installation located Scotland, described as one of the most original and important gardens of the 21st century.

Following intermission, the orchestra and a special guest vocalist will perform Antonin Dvo?ák's Rusalka: Song to the Moon, setting the stage for the main event: Suites No. 1 and 2 of Maurice Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé, but with a trademark Sinfonietta twist. Instead of dancers, José Francisco Salgado's Moonrise, a spectacular video created especially for this performance, will be projected on a giant screen suspended over the orchestra. Dr. Salgado's visuals are familiar to Chicago Sinfonietta audiences, having supplied dramatic accompaniment to performances of Holst's The Planets and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, both of which were commissioned by the orchestra. This performance of Daphnis et Chloé celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Paris premiere of the ballet. Ravel himself described it as a "symphonie choréographique" (choreographic symphony). The music, some of the composer's most passionate, is widely regarded as some of Ravel's best, with extraordinarily lush harmonies typical of the impressionist movement in music.

Single tickets range from $35-$45 for concerts at Wentz Concert Hall and $26-$96 for concerts at Symphony Center, with special $10 pricing available for students. Tickets can be purchased at www.chicagosinfonietta.org or by calling 312-236-3681 ext. 2.

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