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Press Releases
Anne Manson Leads the American Composers Orchestra at Zankel Hall, Jan. 29
New York, NY – On Friday, January 29 at 7:30pm in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall conductor Anne Manson will make her American Composers Orchestra concert debut when she leads the ACO in “Orchestra Underground: Conversations”, a program featuring two world premieres: Sebastian Currier’s Next Atlantis for orchestra, electronics and video and Time Lapse by ACO/Underwood Commission winner Roger Zare. The concert also includes Paquito D’Rivera’s Conversations with Cachao which was written for bassist Israel López. The program will be repeated on Saturday, January 30 at 7:30pm in Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
Each work in “Orchestra Underground: Conversations” has a distinct voice. Inspired by New Orleans, Sebastian Currier’s Next Atlantis – accompanied by a multimedia presentation by artist Pawel Wojtasik – weaves together sounds of water, elegiac strains for strings, murmurings of Dixieland, and visual depictions of an imagined future when the city is but a collective memory, having been fully submerged by the rising sea.
According to Roger Zare, Time Lapse “explores sudden and gradual changes of time and momentum, and ideas are developed temporally as often as they are developed motivically.”
Paquito D’Rivera’s Conversations with Cachao (2007) pays homage to the Cuban mambo star and bassist Israel “Cachao” López, and is built on elements of Cuban traditional music. Commissioned by the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, this work was conceived as a double concerto for contrabass, clarinet/alto sax & orchestra, it comprises three movements: Israel (Cachao’s first name), Guajira (a Cuban folk form) and The Return (a fantasy on the mind of every exiled Cuban). ACO’s performance will feature the composer on alto saxophone and clarinet, and Robert Black on double bass.
TICKET INFORMATION
Carnegie Hall: $38 - $48. For information, or to purchase tickets, call CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800. Tickets are also available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, or online at www.carnegiehall.org.
Annenberg Center: All seats for $25. For information, or to purchase tickets, call 215-898-3900. Tickets are also available at the Annenberg Center Box Office, or online at www.AnnenbergCenter.org.
About The Artists
Conductor Anne Manson recently led the Portland Opera Company in Philip Glass’ Orphee of which Opera magazine praised her “always spot on” conducting. A recording of Orphee will be released on Philip Glass’ record label, Orange Mountain Music in February 2010.
Last season’s opera engagements included Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Canadian Opera Company, for which she received Canada’s DORA Award for outstanding musical direction. She made her debut at the Minnesota Opera in the U.S. premiere of Jonathan Dove’s The Adventures of Pinocchio and was immediately invited back to conduct Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda for the 2010-2011 season. Ms. Manson recently led Samuel Barber’s Vanessa at New York City Opera, about which The New York Times said, “Ms. Manson has broken into the New York opera scene, and it’s about time.” For this production she won the Richard F. Gold Debut Award which is presented to the best debut artist of the season. She has also conducted Così fan tutte for San Francisco Opera, the world premiere of Scott Wheeler’s Democracy (commissioned by Placido Domingo) for Washington National Opera. Other major productions include Carlisle Floyd’s Susanna for the Grand Theatre de Genève, and Donizetti’s Viva la Mamma for the Stockholm Royal Opera.
Manson is Music Director of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, with whom she has led two very successful tours, one of which was with world famous soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian that traveled to San Francisco, Orange County, Vancouver, Toronto, Boston and Carnegie Hall.
Anne Manson is the third woman to have been appointed Music Director of a leading American symphony orchestra, having served as Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony from 1999 to 2003, where she was widely hailed for transforming the standard of orchestral playing. She came to prominence early in her career as Music Director of the London-based Mecklenburgh Opera (from 1988 to 1996), programming operas ranging from Mozart to 20th-century rarities, while commissioning world premieres from a host of contemporary composers. She regularly conducts the Orquesta de Extremadura in Spain.
Sebastian Currier holds a D.M.A. from the Juilliard School and taught at Columbia University from 1998 to 2007. Among his many awards are the 2007 Grawemeyer Award, the Berlin Prize, Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. Heralded as "lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition, but absolutely new" by the Washington Post, his music has been performed at major venues worldwide by acclaimed artists and orchestras. This December the Berliner Philharmoniker will perform the world premiere of Currier’s Traces with harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet.
The Cassatt Quartet recently released a CD of his works. A CD of mixed chamber music, recorded by Music from Copland House, includes Currier’s award-winning works Static, Verge, Night Time, and Variations on “Time & Time Again” was recently released on the Koch label.
Roger Zare won the ACO 2008 Underwood Emerging Composer Commission with his work Green Flash, for which he also received a BMI Young Composer Award in 2007. According to conductor Anne Manson, “Roger is an exciting and sophisticated young composer and a wonderful orchestrator.” His new work, Time Lapse, will be a fifteen-minute essay for orchestra, focusing on coloristic possibilities and dramatic gestures. Originally from Sarasota, FL, Zare started composing at age fourteen, writing a composition for string orchestra that was premiered by the Pine View School Chamber Symphony in Sarasota. He recently completed his M.M. in composition at the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Christopher Theofanidis, and will begin doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in the fall. He holds a B.M. in composition from the University of Southern California.
Born in Havana, Cuba, Paquito D'Rivera performed at age ten with the National Theater Orchestra, studied at the Havana Conservatory of Music and, at seventeen, became a featured soloist with the Cuban National Symphony. As a founding member of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, he directed that group for two years, while at the same time playing the clarinet and saxophone with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra.
Additionally, he was a founding member and co-director of the innovative musical ensemble Irakere. With its explosive mixture of jazz, rock, classical, and traditional Cuban music never before heard, Irakere toured extensively throughout America and Europe.
Now in its 33rd year, American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. ACO is extending its mission, making the creation of new opportunities for American composers and new American orchestral music its central purpose. Through its concerts at Carnegie Hall and other venues, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, New Music Readings, and commissions, ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers as well as those lesser-known, and increases regional, national, and international awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting geographic, stylistic, and temporal diversity. ACO also serves as an incubator of ideas, research, and talent, as a catalyst for growth and change among orchestras, and as an advocate for American composers and their music.
To date, ACO has performed music by 600 American composers, including 200 world premieres and newly commissioned works. Among the orchestra’s innovative programs have been Sonidos de las Américas, six annual festivals devoted to Latin American composers and their music; Coming to America, a program immersing audiences in the ongoing evolution of American music through the work of immigrant composers; Orchestra Tech, a festival and long-term initiative to integrate new digital technologies in the symphony orchestra; Improvise!, a festival devoted to the exploration of improvisation and the orchestra; Playing it UNsafe, a new laboratory for the research and development of experimental new works for orchestra; and, of course, Orchestra Underground, ACO’s entrepreneurial cutting-edge orchestral ensemble that embraces new technology, eclectic instruments, influences, and spatial orientation of the orchestra, new experiments in the concert format, and multimedia and multi-disciplinary collaborations.
Among the honors ACO has received are special awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and from BMI recognizing the orchestra’s outstanding contribution to American music. ASCAP has awarded its annual prize for adventurous programming to ACO 30 times, singling out ACO as “the orchestra that has done the most for new American music in the United States,” and most recently awarding ACO the 2008 ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming. ACO received the inaugural METLife Award for Excellence in Audience Engagement, and a proclamation from the New York City Council. ACO recordings are available on ARGO, CRI, ECM, Point, Phoenix USA, MusicMasters, Nonesuch, Tzadik, New World Records, and InstantEncore.com. More information about American Composers Orchestra is available online at www.americancomposers.org.
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Each work in “Orchestra Underground: Conversations” has a distinct voice. Inspired by New Orleans, Sebastian Currier’s Next Atlantis – accompanied by a multimedia presentation by artist Pawel Wojtasik – weaves together sounds of water, elegiac strains for strings, murmurings of Dixieland, and visual depictions of an imagined future when the city is but a collective memory, having been fully submerged by the rising sea.
According to Roger Zare, Time Lapse “explores sudden and gradual changes of time and momentum, and ideas are developed temporally as often as they are developed motivically.”
Paquito D’Rivera’s Conversations with Cachao (2007) pays homage to the Cuban mambo star and bassist Israel “Cachao” López, and is built on elements of Cuban traditional music. Commissioned by the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, this work was conceived as a double concerto for contrabass, clarinet/alto sax & orchestra, it comprises three movements: Israel (Cachao’s first name), Guajira (a Cuban folk form) and The Return (a fantasy on the mind of every exiled Cuban). ACO’s performance will feature the composer on alto saxophone and clarinet, and Robert Black on double bass.
TICKET INFORMATION
Carnegie Hall: $38 - $48. For information, or to purchase tickets, call CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800. Tickets are also available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, or online at www.carnegiehall.org.
Annenberg Center: All seats for $25. For information, or to purchase tickets, call 215-898-3900. Tickets are also available at the Annenberg Center Box Office, or online at www.AnnenbergCenter.org.
About The Artists
Conductor Anne Manson recently led the Portland Opera Company in Philip Glass’ Orphee of which Opera magazine praised her “always spot on” conducting. A recording of Orphee will be released on Philip Glass’ record label, Orange Mountain Music in February 2010.
Last season’s opera engagements included Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Canadian Opera Company, for which she received Canada’s DORA Award for outstanding musical direction. She made her debut at the Minnesota Opera in the U.S. premiere of Jonathan Dove’s The Adventures of Pinocchio and was immediately invited back to conduct Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda for the 2010-2011 season. Ms. Manson recently led Samuel Barber’s Vanessa at New York City Opera, about which The New York Times said, “Ms. Manson has broken into the New York opera scene, and it’s about time.” For this production she won the Richard F. Gold Debut Award which is presented to the best debut artist of the season. She has also conducted Così fan tutte for San Francisco Opera, the world premiere of Scott Wheeler’s Democracy (commissioned by Placido Domingo) for Washington National Opera. Other major productions include Carlisle Floyd’s Susanna for the Grand Theatre de Genève, and Donizetti’s Viva la Mamma for the Stockholm Royal Opera.
Manson is Music Director of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, with whom she has led two very successful tours, one of which was with world famous soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian that traveled to San Francisco, Orange County, Vancouver, Toronto, Boston and Carnegie Hall.
Anne Manson is the third woman to have been appointed Music Director of a leading American symphony orchestra, having served as Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony from 1999 to 2003, where she was widely hailed for transforming the standard of orchestral playing. She came to prominence early in her career as Music Director of the London-based Mecklenburgh Opera (from 1988 to 1996), programming operas ranging from Mozart to 20th-century rarities, while commissioning world premieres from a host of contemporary composers. She regularly conducts the Orquesta de Extremadura in Spain.
Sebastian Currier holds a D.M.A. from the Juilliard School and taught at Columbia University from 1998 to 2007. Among his many awards are the 2007 Grawemeyer Award, the Berlin Prize, Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. Heralded as "lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition, but absolutely new" by the Washington Post, his music has been performed at major venues worldwide by acclaimed artists and orchestras. This December the Berliner Philharmoniker will perform the world premiere of Currier’s Traces with harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet.
The Cassatt Quartet recently released a CD of his works. A CD of mixed chamber music, recorded by Music from Copland House, includes Currier’s award-winning works Static, Verge, Night Time, and Variations on “Time & Time Again” was recently released on the Koch label.
Roger Zare won the ACO 2008 Underwood Emerging Composer Commission with his work Green Flash, for which he also received a BMI Young Composer Award in 2007. According to conductor Anne Manson, “Roger is an exciting and sophisticated young composer and a wonderful orchestrator.” His new work, Time Lapse, will be a fifteen-minute essay for orchestra, focusing on coloristic possibilities and dramatic gestures. Originally from Sarasota, FL, Zare started composing at age fourteen, writing a composition for string orchestra that was premiered by the Pine View School Chamber Symphony in Sarasota. He recently completed his M.M. in composition at the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Christopher Theofanidis, and will begin doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in the fall. He holds a B.M. in composition from the University of Southern California.
Born in Havana, Cuba, Paquito D'Rivera performed at age ten with the National Theater Orchestra, studied at the Havana Conservatory of Music and, at seventeen, became a featured soloist with the Cuban National Symphony. As a founding member of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, he directed that group for two years, while at the same time playing the clarinet and saxophone with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra.
Additionally, he was a founding member and co-director of the innovative musical ensemble Irakere. With its explosive mixture of jazz, rock, classical, and traditional Cuban music never before heard, Irakere toured extensively throughout America and Europe.
Now in its 33rd year, American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. ACO is extending its mission, making the creation of new opportunities for American composers and new American orchestral music its central purpose. Through its concerts at Carnegie Hall and other venues, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, New Music Readings, and commissions, ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers as well as those lesser-known, and increases regional, national, and international awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting geographic, stylistic, and temporal diversity. ACO also serves as an incubator of ideas, research, and talent, as a catalyst for growth and change among orchestras, and as an advocate for American composers and their music.
To date, ACO has performed music by 600 American composers, including 200 world premieres and newly commissioned works. Among the orchestra’s innovative programs have been Sonidos de las Américas, six annual festivals devoted to Latin American composers and their music; Coming to America, a program immersing audiences in the ongoing evolution of American music through the work of immigrant composers; Orchestra Tech, a festival and long-term initiative to integrate new digital technologies in the symphony orchestra; Improvise!, a festival devoted to the exploration of improvisation and the orchestra; Playing it UNsafe, a new laboratory for the research and development of experimental new works for orchestra; and, of course, Orchestra Underground, ACO’s entrepreneurial cutting-edge orchestral ensemble that embraces new technology, eclectic instruments, influences, and spatial orientation of the orchestra, new experiments in the concert format, and multimedia and multi-disciplinary collaborations.
Among the honors ACO has received are special awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and from BMI recognizing the orchestra’s outstanding contribution to American music. ASCAP has awarded its annual prize for adventurous programming to ACO 30 times, singling out ACO as “the orchestra that has done the most for new American music in the United States,” and most recently awarding ACO the 2008 ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming. ACO received the inaugural METLife Award for Excellence in Audience Engagement, and a proclamation from the New York City Council. ACO recordings are available on ARGO, CRI, ECM, Point, Phoenix USA, MusicMasters, Nonesuch, Tzadik, New World Records, and InstantEncore.com. More information about American Composers Orchestra is available online at www.americancomposers.org.
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