New Music for Orchestra Dec. 11 features music by David Lang
The Yale School of Music presents a concert of new music for orchestra, performed by the Yale Philharmonia under the direction of Shinik Hahm, on Friday, December 11 at 8 pm in Woolsey Hall. The concert highlights two works by David Lang: International Business Machine and Grind to a Halt.
International Business Machine, subtitled “an overture for Tanglewood,” was written for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The Boston Globe called the piece “a brisk, elegantly-fashioned work depicting today’s post-industrial computer age.” Grind to a Halt is dedicated to the memory of Jacob Druckman, Lang’s composition teacher and a longtime member of the Yale School of Music faculty. According to Lang, “One of the things that interests me very much is how certain mechanical musical tasks force players – and listeners – into a kind of concentration that can be spellbinding. The intense concentration necessary to coordinate the ensemble in Grind to a Halt is a kind of virtuosity in itself.”
Lang, who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music, has said: “The world needs happy tunes. But for me, the interesting ideas are where those happy tunes aren’t. The interesting things are in the dark places, or in the ugliness, or in the noise or the grit.” (more…)
East Coast premiere of new Aaron Jay Kernis symphony
Yale presents the East Coast premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s major new work, the “profoundly spiritual” Symphony of Meditations
The Yale School of Music, Institute of Sacred Music, and Glee Club will present the East Coast premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s Symphony of Meditations, a major new work in the repertoire for orchestra and chorus, on Friday, November 6 at 8 pm in Woolsey Hall. Kernis himself will conduct the performance, which will feature the Yale Philharmonia (Shinik Hahm, conductor), the Yale Camerata (Marguerite L. Brooks, conductor), the Yale Schola Cantorum (Masaaki Suzuki, director), and the Yale Glee Club (Jeffrey Douma, director). The vocal soloists, all emerging artists in the Yale Opera program, are Amanda Hall, soprano, Joseph Mikolaj, tenor and David Pershall, baritone. The performance will take place during the 2009 convention of the American Collegiate Choral Organization, hosted by Yale University.
The hour-long, three-movement Symphony of Meditations was commissioned by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. After its first performance in June under the baton of Gerard Schwartz, the piece was warmly received by the audience and hailed by the press. The Examiner called it “a complex, ambitious and, overall, brilliant undertaking… there is much to praise about this multi-textured, profoundly spiritual composition.” Gathering Note said, “Kernis has constructed a major new symphony that gives notice to everyone that the form is not dead …nothing less than a serious and worthy composition.” (more…)
Yale Philharmonia to perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 4
Concert opens with Brahms, including the Variations on a Theme of Haydn
Music director Shinik Hahm will lead the Yale Philharmonia in a program of Brahms and Mahler on Friday, October 23 at 8 pm. The free concert will take place in historic Woolsey Hall, where nearly 100 years ago (in February of 1910) Mahler himself conducted the illustrious New York Philharmonic in a concert of music ranging from Bach to Berlioz. Mahler will be represented by his Symphony No. 4. The last movement of this popular work will feature the Korean soprano Jihee Kim, a young artist in the Yale Opera program. Two well-known pieces by Johannes Brahms comprise the first half of the concert: the Academic Festival Overture and Variations on a Theme of Haydn. (more…)
Season Finale: Yale Philharmonia plays Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Ravel
In its final concert of the season, the Yale Philharmonia will perform three colorful and popular works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on Friday, May 1 at 8 pm in Woolsey Hall. Conducting fellow Julian Pellicano will lead the orchestra in Richard Strauss’s rollicking Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, a tone poem from 1907. Then the orchestra’s music director, Shinik Hahm, will take the podium for the rest of the evening. Under his direction, Latvian pianist Reinis Zarins, a winner of the 2008 Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition, will perform the solo in Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. The evening culminates in Rachmaninoff’s monumental Symphony No. 2 in E minor.
Yale Philharmonia to play Mahler’s epic Fifth Symphony
The Yale School of Music presents the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale in a spectacular program of Mahler, Britten, and Saint-Saëns in Woolsey Hall at 8:00 pm on Saturday, April 4, 2009.
The great conductor Herbert von Karajan said once that when you hear Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, “you forget that time has passed. A great performance of the Fifth is a transforming experience. The fantastic finale almost forces you to hold your breath.” The Philharmonia, under the direction of Shinik Hahm, performs this riveting work in the resonant, historic space of Woolsey Hall.
After the symphony, which was written in 1901-02, the program continues into the twentieth century with Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from his opera Peter Grimes. Written during World War II, shortly after the composer’s return to his native Britain, the evocative Interludes will be conducted by Farkhad Khudiyev. The program will conclude with Saint-Saëns’ youthful, energetic Cello Concerto, a work that the Philharmonia performed with great success on its tour of Asia last July. In this performance, the soloist will be Ashley Bathgate, a winner of the 2008 Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition.
Admission to the concert is free. For more information, visit the Yale School of Music website, music.yale.edu, or call 203 432-4158.
Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition offers an exciting mix of performers
The Yale School of Music presents the annual Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition, which will take place on Saturday, March 28, 2009 from 9 am to 5 pm, in Sprague Memorial Hall (corner of College and Wall Street). The different departments of the School of Music – from piano to winds and brass, from strings to percussion – select a total of 15-20 finalists to compete for the privilege of performing as a soloist with the Yale Philharmonia in the 2009-10 season. Two to three winners will be selected by the panel of judges.
The competition, despite its name, takes place in Sprague Hall; the winners’ performances with the Philharmonia next season will take place in Woolsey Hall.
The competition is free and open to the public, and with participants from all disciplines, the competition’s program promises to be varied and interesting. For more information, visit the Yale School of Music website, music.yale.edu, or call 203 432-4158.
FOR CALENDAR EDITORS
Yale School of Music presents
Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition
Featuring selected students from the Yale School of Music
Date/time: Saturday, March 28, 2009 / 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Venue: Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
470 College Street, New Haven
Tickets: Free
Phone/web: 203 432-4158 • music.yale.edu
Yale Opera presents a new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute
Follow the sound of Tamino’s magic flute into Mozart’s bewitching fairytale opera, where good triumphs over evil, darkness gives way to light, and love conquers all.
The Yale School of Music presents Yale Opera’s new production of Mozart’s classic Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) at the Shubert Theater, 247 College Street, Friday, February 13 and Saturday, February 14 at 8:00 pm and Sunday, February 15 at 2:00 pm. The creative team that created this exciting Magic Flute includes stage director Marc Verzatt and other members of the artistic staff of Yale Opera, Italian conductor Federico Cortese, lighting designer William Warfel, costume designer Thierry Bosquet (principal and men’s chorus costumes originally created for New York City Opera), and set designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams. The original set was built by students from the Yale School of Drama. Performers include an international cast of singers from Yale Opera, a chorus drawn from the New Haven and Yale communities, and the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale. Doris Yarick Cross is the artistic director of Yale Opera.
The Magic Flute, Mozart’s last opera, is one of the most widely-performed and best-loved works in the repertory, with both comical whimsy and profound symbolism in abundance. It is actually a Singspiel, or “song-play,” with music and spoken dialogue. For this production, the spoken dialogue is in English, and director Marc Verzatt and Yale voice professor Richard Cross have collaborated on a new and often hilarious translation. The music will be sung in German with projected English translations.
The alternating casts feature the talented young singers of Yale Opera, including sopranos Mireille Asselin, Amanda Hall, Adelaide Muir, and Samantha Lane Talmadge; mezzo-sopranos Gala El Hadidi, Ana Sinicki, Emily Righter, Chrystal Williams; tenors Eric Barry, Tadeusz Szlenkier, and Michael-Paul Krubitzer; baritones David Pershall and Vince Vincent; and basses Jeremy Bowes, Damien Pass, and Tyler Simpson. Soprano Stephanie Gregory, an alumna of the Yale School of Music, will join the cast as a guest artist. The three spirits will be sung (also in alternating casts) by Yale College students Lucy Fitz Gibbon, Emily Misch, Eliza Bagg, Chloe Zale, Elizabeth Picker, and Marianne Schuck.
Tickets are $19-$41, $13 for students with ID, at the Shubert box office, 203.562.5666 or 888.736.2663, or at www.shubert.com. Senior and group discounts are available. For further information, please visit the School of Music web site at music.yale.edu, or call 203.432.4158.
Live from Sprague Hall: Yale Percussion Group
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Yale Percussion Group
February 7, 2003
James Wood: Village Burial with Fire
The internationally-acclaimed Yale Percussion Group performs James Wood’s exhilarating Village Burial with Fire. Founded in 1997 by renowned faculty percussionist Robert van Sice, the Yale Percussion Group is an ensemble that composer Steve Reich has called “something truly extraordinary.” James Wood, one of England’s leading young composers, is also a virtuoso percussionist in his own right. Evoking a Hindu funeral ceremony, Village Burial with Fire explores the topics of death and the afterlife from an earthly perspective.
Percussionists Lawson White, Adam Sliwinski, Robert Bishop, and Javier Alonso Sota
Robert van Sice, director
Peter Oundjian, Yale professor and music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, conducts the Philharmonia
January 23 program includes Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 and Bartók’s Viola Concerto in a performance dedicated to the late violist and conductor Jesse Levine
Peter Oundjian, well-known internationally as a remarkable musician who successfully made the transition from one of the world’s leading violinists to a highly-acclaimed conductor, will guest-conduct the Yale Philharmonia on Friday, January 23 at 8:00pm in Woolsey Hall. Oundjian is music director of one of North America’s major orchestras, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. A renowned teacher, he has been on the faculty of the Yale School of Music since 1981. The program will feature Bartók’s Viola Concerto, performed by Margaret Carey, a winner of the 2008 Woolsey Hall Competition. Carey has dedicated the performance to the memory of her teacher, Jesse Levine, who died in November. The major work on the program is Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 in C minor, premiered in 1892, the last symphonic work completed by the composer. Admission to the concert is free. For more information, visit www.yale.edu/music, call 203-432-4158, or come to the Sprague Hall Box Office during business hours.
Peter Oundjian, violinist and conductor, studied at the Royal College of Music in London, England. After winning the Gold Medal there, he went on to the Juilliard School in 1975 to study with Ivan Galamian. He also worked with Itzhak Perlman, Dorothy DeLay, and members of the Juilliard String Quartet. In 1980 Mr. Oundjian won first prize in the International Violin Competition in Vina del Mar, Chile. He performed as recitalist throughout North America under the sponsorship of the Pro Musicis Foundation, making his New York recital debut in 1981. He has soloed with the Boston Pops and the Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg symphony orchestras, the National Arts Center Orchestra, and the Calgary Philharmonic. He was first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet from 1981 to 1995. His formal conducting debut was in 1995 with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Since then he has conducted the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Houston, Cincinnati, and Berlin symphony orchestras, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Zurich Tonhalle, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, to name a few. He is the music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the Caramoor Festival, and artistic director and principal guest conductor of the Detroit Symphony. Oundjian has been on the School of Music faculty since 1981.
Turangalîla Symphony
at Carnegie Hall garners rave reviews
The Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale performed Olivier Messiaen’s epic Turangalîla Symphonie at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall on Sunday, December 14, under the baton of guest conductor Reinbert de Leeuw and with Wei-Yi Yang at the piano and Geneviève Grenier at the ondes Martenot to close the Messiaen Centenary Celebration. The critical reception to the performance was overwhelmingly positive:
Allan Kozinn at the New York Times had this to say in his review “A Monumental Messiaen Speaks Many Languages“:
The performance was sensational: well prepared, solidly and precisely executed, and rippling with high-energy percussion and brass playing and a fluid interplay of polished strings as well as winds. If you were looking for a demonstration of how completely a conductor can convey an unusual work’s ideas in all their complexity and beauty, and inspire his musicians to play the piece as if it is the most vivid, original music ever written, you could hardly have done better than this.
……
But in a way the work’s inspiration, musical sources and relationship with Messiaen’s other music need not matter. Taken entirely on its own, this is a masterpiece of color, texture and peculiarly alluring turns of phrase. Mr. de Leeuw made every moment of it taut and exciting, and Wei-Yi Yang, playing the sparkling piano line, contributed significantly and virtuosically, as did Geneviève Grenier, who produced the score’s otherworldly electronic lines on the ondes martenot.
Other positive reviews include:
- Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com: “Yale Philharmonia in Messiaen’s Ecstatic Turangalîla“
- Scott Cantrell, Dallas Morning News: “Classical Music Review: Turangalîla Symphony“
- Heidi Macdonald, The Beat, Publishers Weekly: “Turanga Leela“
- James Marcus, House of Mirth: “Turangalîla or bust“
