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Composer Kenneth Fuchs's Piano Concerto 'Spiritualist' to Be Performed by the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra Andre Raphel Conductor Friday, May 20, 2016
DEBRA KINZLER performing arts consultant¦public relations specialist
347.574.2155¦drkinz@gmail.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE COMPOSER KENNETH FUCHS’S PIANO CONCERTO “SPIRITUALIST” TO BE PERFORMED BY THE WHEELING SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (WV) ANDRÉ RAPHEL, CONDUCTOR FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2016 JEFFREY BIEGEL, PIANIST
“Kenneth Fuchs writes tonal orchestral music of great imagination…He’s a master of orchestral writing…” –BBC Music Magazine
“The composer’s distinctive ‘voice’ is evident from the outset, and his flair for orchestral colours and sheer lyricism shine through.” – Musicweb International
New York, NY (May 6, 2016) – Composer Kenneth Fuchs’s piano concerto, “Spiritualist,” After Three Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, will receive its Wheeling Symphony Orchestra (WV) premiere under the baton of André Raphel on Friday, May 20, 2016. Pianist Jeffrey Biegel will be the soloist. The work, composed as a co-commission by the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra (WV), and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (MA), received its world premiere on March 12 conducted by Kevin Rhodes performed by Mr. Biegel.
The world premiere performance was reviewed for MassLive.com by Clifton Noble Jr. Mr. Noble stated, “The evening’s centerpiece was the eagerly anticipated world premiere performance of Kenneth Fuchs’s “Piano Concerto ‘Spiritualist’ After Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler”… The twenty minute piece was cast in three movements which took their titles from three Frankenthaler canvases, “Spiritualist,” “Silent Wish,” and “Natural Answer.” The outer movements featured vivacious, motoric underpinning to a charming, lyrical façade. The middle movement contained the most extroverted drama … Fuchs’s piano writing rang true to the canon of classic concertos, capitalizing on the virtuosity of Biegel.”
Kenneth Fuchs was first introduced to the paintings of the distinguished abstract expressionist artist, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), in the fall of 1983 through the television documentary “Helen Frankenthaler Toward a New Climate.” Fuchs wrote to Ms. Frankenthaler after seeing the documentary, and an invitation from Helen Frankenthaler to her forthcoming art show in New York City immediately followed. Fuchs says about that meeting, “I was awestruck and thrilled to meet an artist whose work I admired so deeply. The first painting I saw as I walked into the gallery was Out of the Dark. I looked at the patch of raw canvas on the upper right corner with all the paint rushing toward that spot and instantly my creative instincts harmonized with the image. It was as if my own creative aesthetic was shown to me. I will never forget that moment.” Fuchs and Frankenthaler remained friends until her death in December 2011. Her artwork adorns the covers of the composer’s five Naxos recordings.
He states, “Helen Frankenthaler’s work has made a significant impact on my creative life. I was an impressionable graduate student at Juilliard at the time and was bowled over by the beauty of Helen’s painting and her free-wheeling creative attitude. This encounter helped me eventually to find my own creative path and surmount the doctrinaire rhetoric of avant-garde musical composition that prevailed in the 1980s.”
Fuchs was captivated for some time by the idea of using three of Frankenthaler’s canvases – Spiritualist, Silent Wish and Natural Answer – as the basis for a musical journey in a three-movement piano concerto. These three paintings also serve as the titles to the work’s three movements. The canvases were painted in the 1970s during Frankenthaler’s mature style of staining and scrambling unstretched raw canvases spread on her studio floor, the elaborate washes of color soaking into the raw fibers of the untreated material. “Taken together, the paintings and their titles make a logical progression visually, emotionally, and musically,” states Fuchs. First sketches of the “Spiritualist” date back to the early 1990s. “Spiritualist” was composed from February 2015 through January 2016. The complete concerto is 21 minutes and was composed in Fuchs’s mature musical style, incorporating hallmarks of the American symphonic school, rigorous counterpoint, and aspects of minimalism.
Kenneth Fuchs and the Pianist Jeffrey Biegel studied at Juilliard together during the 1980s. Fuchs says, “I am grateful to my longtime friend and Juilliard classmate Jeffrey Biegel for encouraging me to compose the work. He (Biegel) is a champion of American composers, and he has commissioned, premiered and recorded an enormous body of concerti and chamber music especially composed for him.”
Additional support for the “Spiritualist” comes from Edward J. Coyne II, Tri-State Petroleum, Wheeling, West Virginia, Isa and Marvin Leibowitz, Dr. Robert G. Schiff, and Dr. Carlos Jimenez (specifically for the Wheeling concert).
For information about the May 20 concert go to the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra’s website at www.wheelingsymphony.com .
About Kenneth Fuchs
Kenneth Fuchs has composed music for orchestra, band, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. With Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, Fuchs created three chamber musicals, The Great Nebula in Orion, A Betrothal, and Brontosaurus, which were originally presented by Circle Repertory Company in New York City. His music has been performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
The London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, has recorded four discs of Fuchs’s music for Naxos American Classics. The first, released in August 2005, was nominated for two GRAMMY Awards (“Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra” and “Producer of the Year, Classical”). The second disc, which features music for horn, was released in January 2008. The third disc, recorded in August 2011 at London’s Abbey Road Studios, was released in August 2012. The disc was included in the 2012 GRAMMY Award nominations for the category “Producer of the Year, Classical.” The fourth disc, recorded at Abbey Road Studios in August 2013, featuring baritone Roderick Williams in a program of vocal music based on texts by Don DeLillo, John Updike, and William Blake, was released in August 2014. Gramophone magazine featured the recording in its October 2014 Awards issue.
Fuchs’s most recent disc of chamber music, released by Naxos in April 2013, includes Falling Canons (Christopher O’Riley, piano), Falling Trio (Trio21), and String Quartet No. 5 “American” (Delray String Quartet). The disc has received outstanding reviews in print and at online sources, including Fanfare and Gramophone magazines, as well as MusicWeb International. His recording, Kenneth Fuchs: String Quartets 2, 3 and 4 performed by the American String Quartet, released by Albany Records, was heralded in the American Record Guide stating, “String quartet recordings don’t get much better than this.”
Fuchs has received numerous commissions to write for orchestra, band, and chamber ensembles. His music has achieved significant recognition through global media exposure. For its website, Gramophone magazine created the video blog “A session report – with photos – from Abbey Road for Kenneth Fuchs’s new Naxos album.” SiriusXM Satellite Radio has showcased Fuchs’s music on its “Symphony Hall” and “Pops” channels during “Music Discovery Week” and on the programs “Ask a Musician,” “Composers Roundtable,” and “JoAnn Falletta – Rediscovering Holst and Discovering Hailstork and Fuchs.” His monodrama for baritone, “Falling Man” based on the Don DeLillo book of the same name, recently received its New York stage premiere performed by Jarrett Ott at New York’s Symphony Space under the auspices of the Center of Contemporary Opera.
Kenneth Fuchs serves as Professor of Composition at the University of Connecticut. He received his bachelor of music degree in composition from the University of Miami (cum laude) and his master of music and doctor of musical arts degrees in composition from The Juilliard School. Fuchs’s composition teachers include Milton Babbitt, David Del Tredici, David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti, and Alfred Reed. His music is published by the Hal Leonard Corporation, Edward B. Marks Music Company, Theodore Presser Company, and Yelton Rhodes Music and has been recorded by Albany, Cala, and Naxos Records.
Kenneth Fuchs: http://kennethfuchs.com Edward B. Marks Music Company: http://www.ebmarks.com Naxos: http://www.naxos.com
# # # Contact: Debra Kinzler drkinz@gmail.com ¦347 574 2155
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE COMPOSER KENNETH FUCHS’S PIANO CONCERTO “SPIRITUALIST” TO BE PERFORMED BY THE WHEELING SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (WV) ANDRÉ RAPHEL, CONDUCTOR FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2016 JEFFREY BIEGEL, PIANIST
“Kenneth Fuchs writes tonal orchestral music of great imagination…He’s a master of orchestral writing…” –BBC Music Magazine
“The composer’s distinctive ‘voice’ is evident from the outset, and his flair for orchestral colours and sheer lyricism shine through.” – Musicweb International
New York, NY (May 6, 2016) – Composer Kenneth Fuchs’s piano concerto, “Spiritualist,” After Three Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, will receive its Wheeling Symphony Orchestra (WV) premiere under the baton of André Raphel on Friday, May 20, 2016. Pianist Jeffrey Biegel will be the soloist. The work, composed as a co-commission by the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra (WV), and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (MA), received its world premiere on March 12 conducted by Kevin Rhodes performed by Mr. Biegel.
The world premiere performance was reviewed for MassLive.com by Clifton Noble Jr. Mr. Noble stated, “The evening’s centerpiece was the eagerly anticipated world premiere performance of Kenneth Fuchs’s “Piano Concerto ‘Spiritualist’ After Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler”… The twenty minute piece was cast in three movements which took their titles from three Frankenthaler canvases, “Spiritualist,” “Silent Wish,” and “Natural Answer.” The outer movements featured vivacious, motoric underpinning to a charming, lyrical façade. The middle movement contained the most extroverted drama … Fuchs’s piano writing rang true to the canon of classic concertos, capitalizing on the virtuosity of Biegel.”
Kenneth Fuchs was first introduced to the paintings of the distinguished abstract expressionist artist, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), in the fall of 1983 through the television documentary “Helen Frankenthaler Toward a New Climate.” Fuchs wrote to Ms. Frankenthaler after seeing the documentary, and an invitation from Helen Frankenthaler to her forthcoming art show in New York City immediately followed. Fuchs says about that meeting, “I was awestruck and thrilled to meet an artist whose work I admired so deeply. The first painting I saw as I walked into the gallery was Out of the Dark. I looked at the patch of raw canvas on the upper right corner with all the paint rushing toward that spot and instantly my creative instincts harmonized with the image. It was as if my own creative aesthetic was shown to me. I will never forget that moment.” Fuchs and Frankenthaler remained friends until her death in December 2011. Her artwork adorns the covers of the composer’s five Naxos recordings.
He states, “Helen Frankenthaler’s work has made a significant impact on my creative life. I was an impressionable graduate student at Juilliard at the time and was bowled over by the beauty of Helen’s painting and her free-wheeling creative attitude. This encounter helped me eventually to find my own creative path and surmount the doctrinaire rhetoric of avant-garde musical composition that prevailed in the 1980s.”
Fuchs was captivated for some time by the idea of using three of Frankenthaler’s canvases – Spiritualist, Silent Wish and Natural Answer – as the basis for a musical journey in a three-movement piano concerto. These three paintings also serve as the titles to the work’s three movements. The canvases were painted in the 1970s during Frankenthaler’s mature style of staining and scrambling unstretched raw canvases spread on her studio floor, the elaborate washes of color soaking into the raw fibers of the untreated material. “Taken together, the paintings and their titles make a logical progression visually, emotionally, and musically,” states Fuchs. First sketches of the “Spiritualist” date back to the early 1990s. “Spiritualist” was composed from February 2015 through January 2016. The complete concerto is 21 minutes and was composed in Fuchs’s mature musical style, incorporating hallmarks of the American symphonic school, rigorous counterpoint, and aspects of minimalism.
Kenneth Fuchs and the Pianist Jeffrey Biegel studied at Juilliard together during the 1980s. Fuchs says, “I am grateful to my longtime friend and Juilliard classmate Jeffrey Biegel for encouraging me to compose the work. He (Biegel) is a champion of American composers, and he has commissioned, premiered and recorded an enormous body of concerti and chamber music especially composed for him.”
Additional support for the “Spiritualist” comes from Edward J. Coyne II, Tri-State Petroleum, Wheeling, West Virginia, Isa and Marvin Leibowitz, Dr. Robert G. Schiff, and Dr. Carlos Jimenez (specifically for the Wheeling concert).
For information about the May 20 concert go to the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra’s website at www.wheelingsymphony.com .
About Kenneth Fuchs
Kenneth Fuchs has composed music for orchestra, band, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. With Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, Fuchs created three chamber musicals, The Great Nebula in Orion, A Betrothal, and Brontosaurus, which were originally presented by Circle Repertory Company in New York City. His music has been performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
The London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, has recorded four discs of Fuchs’s music for Naxos American Classics. The first, released in August 2005, was nominated for two GRAMMY Awards (“Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra” and “Producer of the Year, Classical”). The second disc, which features music for horn, was released in January 2008. The third disc, recorded in August 2011 at London’s Abbey Road Studios, was released in August 2012. The disc was included in the 2012 GRAMMY Award nominations for the category “Producer of the Year, Classical.” The fourth disc, recorded at Abbey Road Studios in August 2013, featuring baritone Roderick Williams in a program of vocal music based on texts by Don DeLillo, John Updike, and William Blake, was released in August 2014. Gramophone magazine featured the recording in its October 2014 Awards issue.
Fuchs’s most recent disc of chamber music, released by Naxos in April 2013, includes Falling Canons (Christopher O’Riley, piano), Falling Trio (Trio21), and String Quartet No. 5 “American” (Delray String Quartet). The disc has received outstanding reviews in print and at online sources, including Fanfare and Gramophone magazines, as well as MusicWeb International. His recording, Kenneth Fuchs: String Quartets 2, 3 and 4 performed by the American String Quartet, released by Albany Records, was heralded in the American Record Guide stating, “String quartet recordings don’t get much better than this.”
Fuchs has received numerous commissions to write for orchestra, band, and chamber ensembles. His music has achieved significant recognition through global media exposure. For its website, Gramophone magazine created the video blog “A session report – with photos – from Abbey Road for Kenneth Fuchs’s new Naxos album.” SiriusXM Satellite Radio has showcased Fuchs’s music on its “Symphony Hall” and “Pops” channels during “Music Discovery Week” and on the programs “Ask a Musician,” “Composers Roundtable,” and “JoAnn Falletta – Rediscovering Holst and Discovering Hailstork and Fuchs.” His monodrama for baritone, “Falling Man” based on the Don DeLillo book of the same name, recently received its New York stage premiere performed by Jarrett Ott at New York’s Symphony Space under the auspices of the Center of Contemporary Opera.
Kenneth Fuchs serves as Professor of Composition at the University of Connecticut. He received his bachelor of music degree in composition from the University of Miami (cum laude) and his master of music and doctor of musical arts degrees in composition from The Juilliard School. Fuchs’s composition teachers include Milton Babbitt, David Del Tredici, David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti, and Alfred Reed. His music is published by the Hal Leonard Corporation, Edward B. Marks Music Company, Theodore Presser Company, and Yelton Rhodes Music and has been recorded by Albany, Cala, and Naxos Records.
Kenneth Fuchs: http://kennethfuchs.com Edward B. Marks Music Company: http://www.ebmarks.com Naxos: http://www.naxos.com
# # # Contact: Debra Kinzler drkinz@gmail.com ¦347 574 2155
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