Yo-Yo Ma premieres cello concerto by Angel Lam ’10AD
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of music director Robert Spano, will present the New York premiere of Angel Lam’s Awakening from a Disappearing Garden on Saturday, November 7, at Carnegie Hall. The piece, a concerto for cello and orchestra, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and was first performed in Atlanta Symphony Hall on October 15 and 16, 2009. This is Lam’s third commission from Carnegie Hall, which describes her as “a young composer whose work sounds both Chinese and Western, contemporary but also timeless.” (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…)
“Senior” by Timo Andres ‘09MM premieres at Carnegie Hall
Composer Timothy (Timo) Andres enjoyed a successful premiere of his orchestral work “Senior” in Carnegie Hall on Sunday, March 22.Written for string quartet and orchestra, the piece is written to evoke the state of mind of a senior in college. The New York Youth Symphony commissioned the 12-minute work, performing it with the ACME String Quartet and conductor Ryan McAdams.
According to Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times, “This pensive and restless music does seem to touch on the conflicting emotions that Mr. Andres identifies with senior slump: expectancy and finality, bewilderment and boredom. But the piece was fascinating on musical terms alone… The acuteness of Mr. Andres’s ear lends intricacy to the layered lines and pungency to the piercing harmonies.” (more…)
