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Press Releases
University Musical Society (UMS) Announces 2018-19 Season
The University Musical Society (UMS), under the leadership of President Matthew VanBesien, has announced its 140th season in 2018-19 with an initial slate of 40 performances and events. One of the country’s most acclaimed performing arts presenters, UMS honors its past by showcasing respected ensembles and performers with whom it has enjoyed rich relationships, and fully embraces the future as initiator, incubator, and accelerator for innovative new works and projects. This potent combination infuses the anniversary season with dynamic and diverse voices and perspectives featuring artists at the top of their game — celebrating the canon, taking risks, moving genres in new directions, disrupting stereotypes, and surprising audiences.
Classical highlights include a three-day residency by superstar pianist Yuja Wang with Austrian drummer and bandleader Martin Grubinger and the Percussive Planet Ensemble, as they put the final touches on a percussion and solo piano evening that will subsequently tour to Carnegie Hall for its lauded Perspectives series. Leading up to International Contemporary Ensemble’s (ICE) In Plain Air performance, musicians will visit UMS four times during the season to collaborate with young composers through the University of Michigan’s Student Composers Forum, with the potential for some of these new compositions to be incorporated into ICE’s culminating performance in February. Stunning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato will collaborate in recital for the first time with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who serves as music director of both the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera, on piano.
Nézet-Séguin also appears in UMS’s 2018-19 season with the return of his Philadelphia Orchestra to Ann Arbor for the first time since 1994, in a program featuring violinist Lisa Batiashvili. Esa-Pekka Salonen and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra make their UMS debut as part of UMS’s five-year commitment to orchestral residencies, which has in previous seasons featured the New York Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic in multi-day performances and master classes with U-M students. Conductor Zubin Mehta bids farewell to his position with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, an institution he has guided for nearly 50 years.
UMS's complete 2018-19 season classical offerings are:
140th ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
- The Philadelphia Orchestra, led by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, makes a welcome return to Ann Arbor for the first time in 24 years, with rising star violinist Lisa Batiashvili as The concert will feature Nico Muhly’s Suite from Marnie, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 on Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 7:30 pm.
- Sir John Eliot Gardiner brings his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, the National Youth Choir of Scotland, tenor Michael Spyres, and baritone Ashley Riches for a historically informed all-Berlioz program that features Symphonie fantastique, as well as its rarely-performed companion piece, Lélio, on Friday, October 12, 2018 at 8 pm.
- Superstar pianist Yuja Wang is featured in a three-day residency at UMS with the Percussive Planet Ensemble and Martin Grubinger Jr. The residency will culminate with a performance on Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 7:30 pm, after which it will tour to New York’s Carnegie Hall as part of Wang’s five-concert Perspectives series.
- Semyon Bychkov conducts the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra with soloist Alisa Weilerstein featured in Dvorák’s Cello Concerto on Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 7:30 pm. The program also includes Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and Francesca da Rimini.
- Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato sings in recital with pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the pair’s debut recital collaboration on Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 4 pm.
- Music Director Grant Gershon and his Los Angeles Master Chorale bring their production of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro to UMS on Sunday, January 20, 2019 at 7 pm. Directed by Peter Sellars, the work is written for 21 singers who perform this 75-minute a cappella Renaissance masterpiece from memory with dramatic staging. Set to the poetry of Luigi Tansillo (1510-1568), the work depicts the seven stages of grief that St. Peter experienced after disavowing his knowledge of Jesus prior to his crucifixion.
- Principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen brings the London-based Philharmonia Orchestra to Ann Arbor for a residency that includes two Hill Auditorium concerts on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 and Wednesday, March 13, 2019 at 7:30 pm. The first performance will feature cellist Truls Mørk as soloist in Salonen’s own Cello Concerto, along with Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Sibelius’s Oceanides. The second includes Stravinsky’s complete Firebird, with additional repertoire to be announced.
- Tenor Lawrence Brownlee and bass-baritone Eric Owens partner with pianist Myra Huang for a duo recital on Saturday, March 16, 2019 at 8 pm.
- Harry Bicket, artistic director and conductor of The English Concert, leads a presentation of Handel’s Semele, with The Clarion Choir on Friday, April 12, 2019 at 8 pm. The cast includes vocalists Brenda Rae as Semele; Elizabeth DeShong as Juno/Ino; Soloman Howard as Cadmus/Somnus; Benjamin Hulett as Jupiter; Christopher Lowrey as Athamas; and Ailish Tynan as Iris.
- Pianist Murray Perahia returns in recital on Thursday, April 25, 2019 at 7:30 pm.
56th ANNUAL CHAMBER ARTS SERIES
- The Jerusalem Quartet is joined by violinist Pinchas Zukerman and cellist Amanda Forsyth for a performance of works for chamber sextet by Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, and Tchaikovsky on Saturday, October 6, 2018 at 8 pm.
- The critically acclaimed Danish String Quartet plays music by Haydn, Beethoven, and Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen on Thursday, November 15, 2018 at 7:30 pm.
- The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with violinist Daniel Hope, violist Paul Neubauer, cellist David Finckel, and pianist Wu Han, performs a program of piano quartets from Brahms, Suk, and Dvorák on Friday, January 25, 2019 at 8 pm.
- International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) performs In Plain Air, a program co-composed by Phyllis Chen and Nathan Davis on Thursday February 21, 2019 at 7:30 pm. The program consists of several new pieces that chart the introduction of various instruments — organ, harmonium, harpsichord, piano, music boxes, carillons (or percussion simulations), and electronic instruments — into music history. Throughout the season, Chen and Davis will also visit several times to collaborate with young composers through the U-M Student Composers Forum.
- New York Philharmonic principal clarinet Anthony McGill joins the renowned Takács Quartet for an evening that features Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, alongside works by Haydn and Shostakovich, on Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 4 pm.
- UMS will present the winner of chamber music’s most prestigious prize, the M-Prize, on its 2018-19 series. The artist will be identified at the M-Prize Finals Concert on Sunday, May 6, 2018, and a date for their UMS concert identified shortly thereafter.
SPECIAL EVENTS
- In their final performance together in the U.S., conductor Zubin Mehta leads the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra on Saturday, February 9, 2019 at 8 pm.
- The UMS Choral Union and the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, led by Choral Union music director Scott Hanoian, join forces to present the ultimate holiday season classic, Handel’s Messiah, on Saturday, December 1, 2018 at 8 pm and Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2 pm.
- To honor the centennial of the WWI armistice, the UMS Choral Union and the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, again led by Scott Hanoian, perform Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on Saturday, February 16, 2019 at 8 pm. Vocal soloists will be announced at a later date.
ABOUT UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
A recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Arts, UMS (also known as the University Musical Society) contributes to a vibrant cultural community by connecting audiences with performing artists from around the world in uncommon and engaging experiences. One of the oldest performing arts presenters in the country, UMS is an independent non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Michigan, presenting over 70 music, theater, and dance performances by professional touring artists each season, along with over 100 free educational activities. UMS is committed to bold artistic leadership, engaged learning through the arts, and access and inclusiveness. Since 1990, the organization has co-commissioned and supported the production of nearly 80 new or reimagined works. Matthew VanBesien became the organization’s seventh president in July 2017.
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