San Francisco Symphony to Premiere Lou Harrison's CONCERTO FOR PIPA AND STRING ORCHESTRA
The concert is set to play on February 11th and 12th, starring Pipa Virtuoso Wu Man.
Wu Man, "the world's finest player of the pipa" (The New York Times), will make her San Francisco Symphony subscription series debut on Friday, February 11 and Saturday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m. PT as the soloist in Lou Harrison's Concerto for Pipa and String Orchestra. It will be the first performance of the concerto by the San Francisco Symphony, one of five SF Symphony premieres on the program that includes works by Texu Kim, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Takashi Yoshimatsu, and Zhou Long.
Mr. Harrison (1917-2003) composed the concerto for Wu Man in 1997. It was the first concerto for the pipa-a lute-like instrument with a history of more than two thousand years- by a western composer and the last large-scale work Mr. Harrison composed before his death. It has been a core part of Ms. Wu's repertoire since she premiered it with Dennis Russell Davies and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra at Lincoln Center. She most recently performed excerpts from the concerto's lively second movement with The Knights and dancer Maile Okamura for a video titled "Bits & Pieces" that was filmed at Harrison House, the late composer's desert home and artist retreat near the border of Joshua Tree National Park.
"This concerto has been such an important and cherished part of my artistic life and I am so pleased to perform it in a city that Lou loved, and where the Chinese community had such a formative influence on him," said Ms. Wu. "He spoke so fondly about visiting San Francisco's Chinatown when he was a student and going to Chinese opera performances where he heard traditional Chinese music for the first time and fell in love with it."
Mr. Harrison's music has previously been widely showcased and celebrated by the San Francisco Symphony, particularly under Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas, whose 25-year directorship opened with the world premiere of Mr. Harrison's "A Parade for M.T.T." in 1995. Mr. Harrison was a central focus of the symphony's first "American Mavericks" festival in 2000 performing, touring, and recording his Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra. The symphony and MTT also presented an expansive centennial celebration in its experimental performance venue, SoundBox, in December 2016.
Tickets for concerts at Davies Symphony can be purchased by clicking here or by calling the San Francisco Symphony Box Office at 415-864-6000. Tickets priced from $20 to $125.
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