Washington National Opera (WNO) today announced full programming details for the fifth season of the American Opera Initiative, its comprehensive commissioning program that brings contemporary American stories to the stage while fostering the talents of rising American composers and librettists. For the first time, all of the program's world premiere operas will be presented during an American Opera Initiative Festival weekend, January 13-15, 2017 in the Kennedy Center Family Theater.
The Dallas Opera is proud to announce the names of the six distinguished professionals selected to participate in the second annual session of the Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors at The Dallas Opera taking place November 26 - December 11, 2016 in Dallas, Texas.
?At the 20th annual Pell Awards, Trinity Repertory Company will honor local artists Len Cabral and Charlene Carpenzano with Rhode Island Pell Awards for Excellence in the Arts alongside previously announced honorees The Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis, Laurie Eustis and Elizabeth Chace. The awards ceremony and celebration will be held at Ochre Court on the Salve Regina University Campus in Newport, RI on May 23, 2016. Tickets and sponsorships are now available at www.trinityrep.com.
Daniel Smith, who was one of the few bassoonists recording and performing in both Jazz and Classical music, described as the "Gerry Mulligan of The Bassoon", in the world of Jazz and the "Rampal of The Bassoon" in classical music, dies at 77 on December 19, 2015 in Brooklyn, NY.
In its first 50 years, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded more than $5 billion in grants to recipients in every state and U.S. jurisdiction, the only arts funder in the nation to do so. Today, the NEA announced awards totaling more than $27.6 million in its first funding round of fiscal year 2016, including an Art Works award of $40,000 to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to support commissions and premieres of new works including related educational activities.
At the 20th annual Pell Awards, Trinity Repertory Company will award Oskar Eustis and Laurie Eustis with the Pell Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. Oskar currently serves as the artistic director of The Public Theater. Elizabeth Z. Chace, local businesswoman and philanthropist will be honored with the Charles Sullivan Award for Distinguished Service in the Arts. Nominations are now being accepted for additional local honorees. Information is available at www.trinityrep.com. The ceremony will be held Monday, May 23, 2016.
Boston, MA — Two of Boston's leading musical ensembles—the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera—unite onstage for a special concert honoring the great Pulitzerwinning composer Gunther Schuller (1925- 2015). Between them, these two organizations have a repertoire spanning a wide array of genres, and this program will offer the distinctive sound of Schuller's fusion of jazz vernacular with the symphonic and operatic world. Gil Rose will lead BMOP in two enjoyable narratives for all ages, Schuller's Journey Into Jazz and The Fisherman and His Wife, joined by Gunther's sons Ed Schuller (bass) and George Schuller (drums) as special guest artists, and Odyssey Opera, featuring Met Opera regular, mezzo-soprano Sondra Kelly. Rounding out the program will be Schuller's sinfonietta work Games.
Boston, MA — Two of Boston's leading musical ensembles—the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera—unite onstage for a special concert honoring the great Pulitzerwinning composer Gunther Schuller (1925- 2015). Between them, these two organizations have a repertoire spanning a wide array of genres, and this program will offer the distinctive sound of Schuller's fusion of jazz vernacular with the symphonic and operatic world. Gil Rose will lead BMOP in two enjoyable narratives for all ages, Schuller's Journey Into Jazz and The Fisherman and His Wife, joined by Gunther's sons Ed Schuller (bass) and George Schuller (drums) as special guest artists, and Odyssey Opera, featuring Met Opera regular, mezzo-soprano Sondra Kelly. Rounding out the program will be Schuller's sinfonietta work Games.
Continuing its 20th anniversary season, BMOP is thrilled and humbled to be presenting works by Schuller, the orchestra's longtime collaborator and friend. “There was no more prodigious and passionate master of the musical 20th century in America than Gunther Schuller,” says Gil Rose, Artistic Director, Founder, and Conductor of BMOP and Odyssey Opera. “He was American music making at its best.”
Ranking among the most eclectic of his generation or any other, Schuller combined jazz and classical music in new ways. In the 1950s, Schuller's revolutionary, hybrid style became know as “Third Stream,” and entered the classical music mainstream. Schuller served as President of the New England Conservatory, where he established a successful degree-granting jazz program, from 1967-1977. He made his home in Newton, MA, and passed away on June 21, 2015 in Boston at the age of 89.
Opening the program is Schuller's Games (2013)—written at age 90—for wind quintet and strings, offering a lighthearted, rapid-??fire amalgam of ideas, rhythms, and tongue-in-cheek quotations that is a classic display of the composer's trademark nimbleness and wit. The organic fusion of contemporary classical music and modern jazz that characterizes the Third Stream is front and center in Journey Into Jazz (1962), a strong aesthetic statement about the porous nature of musical boundaries and the shared fundamentals of good musicianship. In the manner of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Journey Into Jazz features a narration by famed jazz critic and author Nat Hentoff that tells the story of a young classically-trained trumpeter who evolves into a jazz improviser and, ultimately, an artist with his own, individual sound. BMOP is thrilled to welcome Gunther's sons Ed Schuller (bass) and George Schuller (drums) as guest artists for this special tribute performance. Audiences can listen to BMOP perform Journey Into Jazz on BMOP/sound's eponymous recording of 2008. Of that disc, Gramophone wrote “Under Gil Rose's caring direction, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and stellar instrumental soloists give performances that are not likely to be surpassed for some time.”
Also on the program is another work of Schuller's that centers on narrative, the one-act opera The Fisherman and His Wife (1970), which received its first performance by the Boston Opera Company under the direction of Sarah Caldwell. With a libretto by John Updike, the work is derived from the German fairy tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm and is appealing for all ages. A simple fisherman (performed here by tenor Steven Goldstein) is convinced by his wife (performed here by mezzo-soprano Sondra Kelly) to ask for more and more favors from a great fish he has captured and thrown back into the sea. When the wife asks to play God, she and her husband are reduced to their original poor state, having learned some lessons along the way.
About BMOP
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today's musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber. Founded by Artistic Director Gil Rose in 1996, BMOP has championed composers whose careers span nine decades.
Each season, Rose brings BMOP's award-??winning orchestra, renowned soloists, and influential composers to the stage of New England Conservatory's historic Jordan Hall in a series that offers orchestral programming of unmatched diversity. The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and passion with which they infuse the music of the present era. For more information, please visit BMOP.org.
About Odyssey Opera
Founded in 2013 by Artistic Director/Conductor Gil Rose, Odyssey Opera presents adventurous and eclectic works that affirm opera as a powerful expression of the human experience. Its world-??class artists perform the operatic repertoire from its historic beginnings throughlesser-??known masterpieces to contemporary new works and commissions in a variety of formats and venues. Odyssey Opera sets standards of high musical and theatrical excellence and innovative programming to advance the operatic genre beyond the familiar and into undiscovered territory. Odyssey Opera takes its audience on a journey to places they've never been before. For more information, please visit odysseyopera.org.
Boston, MA — The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation's premier orchestra dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording new orchestral music, today announced its 20th anniversary season, opening October 18th at Jordan Hall. For the past two decades, BMOP has been one of the country's leading orchestras, with a mission of disseminating exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber.
?La Jolla Playhouse, nationally-renowned for its commitment to the development of new work and new theatrical forms, is pleased to announce the projects and collaborators for its second Without Walls (WoW) Festival taking place October 9 - 11.
This summer, On Site Opera(OSO) will present a new production that exemplifies the company's mission to stage operas in non-traditional locations ideally suited to the stories they tell. OSO will offer an immersive site-specific staging of Giovanni Paisiello's The Barber of Seville at the opulent Fabbri Mansion (House of the Redeemer) on New York City's Upper East Side. Conducted by the company's newly appointed Music Director,Geoffrey McDonald and directed by OSO's Co-Founder and Artistic Director, Eric Einhorn, the production will be updated to the early decades of the twentieth century (when the Fabbri Mansion was built) and staged in themansion's outdoor courtyard and library.
The Mimesis Ensemble presents "All Roads Do Not Lead Forward," a program featuring the NYC Premiere of Mohammed Fairouz's Sadat, a Ballet in 5 Scenes for Chamber Orchestra.
The Mimesis Ensemble presents "All Roads Do Not Lead Forward," a program featuring the NYC Premiere of Mohammed Fairouz's Sadat, a Ballet in 5 Scenes for Chamber Orchestra.
This summer, On Site Opera (OSO) will present a new production that exemplifies the company's mission to stage operas in non-traditional locations ideally suited to the stories they tell. OSO will offer an immersive site-specific staging of Giovanni Paisiello's The Barber of Seville at the opulent Fabbri Mansion (House of the Redeemer) on New York City's Upper East Side. Conducted by the company's newly appointed Music Director, Geoffrey McDonald and directed by OSO's Co-Founder and Artistic Director, Eric Einhorn, the production will be updated to the early decades of the twentieth century (when the Fabbri Mansion was built) and staged in themansion's outdoor courtyard and library.
BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons will lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in three programs at Carnegie Hall, this week, April 15-17. For his first Carnegie Hall concert as BSO Music Director today, April 15, Mr. Nelsons will open the program with the New York premiere of Gunther Schuller's Dreamscape, a BSO commission, inspired by a dream the composer had and featuring Schuller's characteristically kaleidoscopic mastery of the orchestra (Click here for the program note for Gunther Schuller's Dreamscape). The Schuller work will be followed by Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat, K. 595, with soloist Richard Goode, an acclaimed Mozart specialist, and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.
BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons will lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in three programs at Carnegie Hall, April 15-17. For his first Carnegie Hall concert as BSO Music Director on Wednesday, April 15, Mr. Nelsons will open the program with the New York premiere of Gunther Schuller's Dreamscape, a BSO commission, inspired by a dream the composer had and featuring Schuller's characteristically kaleidoscopic mastery of the orchestra (Click here for the program note for Gunther Schuller's Dreamscape). The Schuller work will be followed by Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat, K. 595, with soloist Richard Goode, an acclaimed Mozart specialist, and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.
The Miró Quartet returns to the Chamber Music Society of Detroit series Saturday, March 15, 8 PM with a program that spans four centuries of music, from 18th-century composer Josef Haydn to Ludwig van Beethoven to a work by American composer Gunther Schuller written in 2014 for the Miró Quartet.
Judi Silvano will perform a CD release show with Mike Abene for 'My Dance' tonight, February 26th at Jazz At Kitano, 66 Park Ave. at East 38th St., New York, NY 10016.
World-renowned singer and artist Frederica von Stade will take the stage on March 20 to perform with Longy's Sistema Side by Side Orchestra at the 2015 Sistema Side by Side Celebration, under the baton of the orchestra's newly appointed Music Director Jorge Soto. The program will feature orchestral masterpieces Brahms Hungarian Dance No 5 and Dvorák's Symphony No. 9 in e minor, as well as classic and playful tunes such as Rodgers and Hammerstein's Do Re Mi from The Sound of Music.
