Jeffrey Milarsky Leads the LA Phil New Music Group in Green Umbrella Concert

Conductor Jeffrey Milarsky returns to Walt Disney Concert Hall to lead the LA Phil New Music Group in a Green Umbrella concert, Tuesday, April 10, at 8 pm. The concert features the world premiere of Oscar Bettison's LA Phil-commissioned Livre des Sauvages, the U.S. premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Five Star Signs, and John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano, performed by Gloria Cheng. Milarsky replaces John Adams, who had to withdraw as conductor due to scheduling demands.

The concert opens with Five Star Signs from Stockhausen's Tierkreis, replacing the originally scheduled complete Tierkreis set. Following is Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano. The concert closes with Bettison's chamber concerto Livre des Sauvages. The title of the piece comes from a crude graphic novel of the same name about intersecting cultures with a mysterious origin, most likely written by a European reflecting on Native Americans of the late 18th or early 19th centuries. 

Jeffrey Milarsky's wide-ranging repertoire, which spans from Bach to Xenakis, has brought him to lead such groups as the San Francisco Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, MET Chamber Ensemble, Milwaukee Symphony, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New World Symphony and the New York Philharmonic chamber music series. In the United States and abroad, he has premiered and recorded works by contemporary composers, including Charles Wuorinen, Fred Lerdahl, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Gerard Grisey, Jonathan Dawe, Tristan Murail, Ralph Shapey, Luigi Nono, Mario Davidovsky, and Wolfgang Rihm. Milarsky is Senior Lecturer in Music at Columbia University, where he is the Music Director and Conductor of the Columbia University Orchestra. In addition, he is on the faculty of The Manhattan School of Music as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Percussion Ensemble as well as the Artistic Director of the Contemporary Music Performance Program. He is Music Director at AXIOM, the Juilliard School's critically acclaimed contemporary ensemble. In September of 2008, he was named to the conducting faculty of the Juilliard School. In addition, he is on the faculty of The Manhattan School of Music as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Percussion Ensemble as well as the Music Director of AXIOM, the Juilliard School's critically acclaimed contemporary music ensemble. In September of 2008, he was named to the conducting faculty of the Juilliard School. An in-demand timpanist and percussionist, Milarsky has performed and recorded with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony, among other ensembles. As an active chamber and orchestral musician, Milarsky performs and records regularly with the New York Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the American Composers Orchestra, the Stamford Symphony, and Concordia. He has recorded extensively for Angel, Bridge, Teldec, Telarc, New World, CRI, MusicMasters, EMI, Koch, and London Records.

Grammy-winning pianist Gloria Cheng is hailed as a compelling and eloquent performer of new works, press notes state. She is often cited for tapping the emotional core of contemporary music, and her recitals and recordings are noted for exploring significant interconnections between composers. Cheng appears on over 20 recordings, with solo discs that showcase the range of her taste in contemporary music: Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley, Piano Dance: A 20th-Century Portrait (both on Telarc), and her most recent Telarc recording, Piano Music of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Steven Stucky, and Witold Lutoslawski, which garnered international accolades culminating in her 2009 Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance. A forthcoming disc of solo and chamber works by Olivier Messiaen and Kaija Saariaho, in collaboration with the award-winning Calder Quartet, will appear in 2012 on the Harmonia mundi label. Cheng has appeared on countless L.A. Philharmonic Green Umbrella concerts in repertoire that ranged from Elliott Carter's Double Concerto for Piano and Harpsichord conducted by Oliver Knussen to Esa-Pekka Salonen's Dichotomie, composed for and dedicated to her, in its premiere performance. At the request of film composers who include Don Davis, James Horner, Maurice Jarre, and John Williams, Cheng has been featured in numerous movie soundtracks that range from The Matrix trilogy to The Adventures of Tin Tin. With dozens of commissions, premieres and dedications from a distinguished roster of composers who include John Adams, Mark Applebaum, Pierre Boulez, Daniel Godfrey, John Harbison, Joan Huang, James Newton, Bernard Rands, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Carl Stone, Stephen AnDrew Taylor, Andrew Waggoner, and Gernot Wolfgang, Ms. Cheng has also enjoyed close associations with many others: Thomas Adès, Henry Brant, Earle Brown, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, William Kraft, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, and Steven Stucky.

The final concert for the 2011/12 Green Umbrella series is LA Phil Music Director Gustavo Dudamel leading the New Music Group and the Foundry Steel Pan Ensemble in a program featuring the world premiere of LA Phil Principal Timpanist Joseph Pereira's LA Phil-commissioned Percussion Concerto with soloist Colin Currie (May 8, 2012).

For more information visit www.laphil.com.

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