New Jersey Symphony to Close Season with Emanuel Ax and World Premiere
Music director Xian Zhang leads BERLIOZ'S SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE alongside Allison Loggins-Hull's DOUBLESPEAK world premiere.
New Jersey Symphony will present its Season Finale concerts with Music Director Xian Zhang conducting Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and Emanuel Ax will perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22.
The program opens with the world premiere of Doublespeak from Resident Artistic Partner Allison Loggins-Hull. From the composer: “Doublespeak is a symphonic tone poem in three continuous movements that explores the tension between truth, perception, and language in modern life. The title refers to the manipulation of meaning: language that disguises reality while appearing to state it plainly.”
In February 2025, the Symphony performed the East Coast premiere of Hull's Can You See?, originally commissioned for the New Jersey Symphony Chamber Players, and later expanded for full orchestra. Now in her second season as Resident Artistic Partner, Allison collaborates with the Symphony's artistic leadership adding her unique perspective and experiences to the artistic planning process for programming and community events.
Season finale performances take place on:
- Thursday, June 4, at 7 pm at State Theatre New Jersey in New Brunswick;
- Friday, June 5, at 7:30 pm at Richardson Auditorium in Princeton;
- Saturday, June 6, at 7:30 pm at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank;
- Sunday, June 7, at 2 pm at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.
Tickets available at njsymphony.org.
Season Finale: Symphonie fantastique
Xian Zhang conductor
Emanuel Ax piano
New Jersey Symphony
Allison Loggins-Hull Doublespeak (World Premiere, New Jersey Symphony Commission)
Gregory D. McDaniel conductor
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22
Hector Berlioz Symphonie fantastique
New Brunswick - Thursday, June 4, 7 pm
Princeton - Friday, June 5, 7:30 pm
Red Bank - Saturday, June 6, 7:30 pm
Newark - Sunday, June 7, 2 pm
Emanuel Ax
Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975, he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize. Emanuel Ax was recently named the 2026 Musical America Artist of the Year.
In recognition of the 50th anniversary of his first appearance with the orchestra, the 2025–26 season began with The Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on October 31. Fall also included an Asian tour to Tokyo, Seoul, and Hong Kong. Following its world premiere at Tanglewood in summer 2025, the concerto written for him by John Williams had its Boston Symphony subscription debut in January with the New York premiere one month later with the New York Philharmonic. As a guest artist he will return to orchestras in Dallas, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Madison, Naples, and New Jersey. In recital he can be heard in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Santa Barbara, Des Moines, Cedar Falls, Schenectady, and Princeton. An extensive European tour will include concerts in Munich, Prague, Berlin, Rome, and Torino. Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn's piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY Award-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004–05 season, Mr. Ax contributed to an International Emmy Award-winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax's recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).
Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorate of music degrees from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University.
Allison Loggins-Hull
Celebrated as a musical “powerhouse” (The Washington Post), Allison Loggins-Hull is a composer, flutist, and producer whose work defies genre, ranging from symphonic music to film scores, chamber music, and electronic music.
Her signature style of composing for orchestra is characterized by unique sonic effects that echo contemporary music production techniques. Her works are profoundly influenced by Black American music, creating a vibrant and kaleidoscopic sonic palette. Thematically, her compositions are deeply rooted in the experiences of community, culture, and life, offering a rich and evocative musical narrative. Her artistic reflections on Black stories, music, and experience have led to works aligned with Afrofuturism, a movement that imagines alternate realities and a liberated future viewed through the lens of Black cultures.
Her recent and upcoming highlights include premieres performed by the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Toronto Symphony, The Knights, Third Coast Percussion, Apollo Chamber Players, and the National Orchestral Institute.
Loggins-Hull has served as Resident Artistic Partner to New Jersey Symphony since September 2024. The 2024–25 season marked the last of her three years as the Lewis Composer Fellow with The Cleveland Orchestra, an engagement that focused on the narratives and history of Cleveland through the prism of one of the world's great orchestras, culminating in three world premieres and two portrait albums in 2026. She also received a 2025 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Loggins-Hull has performed as an accompanist to major pop acts, including Lizzo and Frank Ocean. She has performed on multiple blockbuster film scores and composed the score for Bring Them Back, an award-winning documentary executive-produced by Debbie Allen about the legendary dancer Maurice Hines. Born in Chicago, Loggins-Hull lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey.
New Jersey Symphony
New Jersey Symphony is a GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning orchestra. Under the direction of Music Director Xian Zhang, the Symphony performs more than 55 mainstage concerts across the state at venues in Newark, Princeton, New Brunswick, Red Bank, and Morristown, as well as at schools and public spaces statewide. Programming at the Symphony reflects an unwavering commitment to diverse communities throughout the state, while providing students unparalleled opportunities to achieve musical excellence through its Youth Orchestra and other education programs. In 2024, the Symphony announced it would continue to deliver its statewide activities from a new, permanent office, rehearsal, and concert space in Jersey City, set to open in 2027. For more information about New Jersey Symphony, visit our website at njsymphony.org.
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