Grammy Award-Winning BMOP/sound Releases Portrait Disc of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Symphony No. 5 (#1098)

Conducted by Gil Rose with Performances by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Soloists Sarah Brady (flute) and Gabriela Diaz (violin)
                               
  PHYSICAL DIGITAL RELEASE

TBR April 9, 2024

Available at BMOP.org and BandCamp

Approaching its landmark 100th album, the Grammy Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Gil Rose present Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Symphony No. 5 on their eponymous label, BMOP/sound. In four works drawing from two decades, this new portrait disc showcases the full measure of Zwilich’s varying shades of emotionally complex music. An icon of American symphonic composition, Zwilich (who turns 85 years old on April 30, 2024) is a trailblazing American composer and pioneer. Led by conductor Gil Rose, the BMOP is joined by longtime orchestra members Sarah Brady (flute) and Gabriel Diaz (violin) who take centerstage in two concertos.

The album opens with the fitting Upbeat (1999), a work springing from the famous Partita No. 3 by J.S Bach, and the title referring also to the lively and joyous “upbeat” character of the music. Zwilich’s Concerto Elegia (2015) for flute and strings and Commedia dell’Arte (2012) for violin and string orchestra feature BMOP soloists: flutist Sarah Brady and violinist Gabriela Diaz (recently appointed member of The Kronos Quartet). The album closer Symphony No. 5 (2008) was commissioned by The Juilliard School where Zwilich not only received her doctorate, but also found her voice as a composer. Consisting of four contrasting movements, Symphony No. 5, according to the composer, "treats the ensemble like a huge chamber ensemble, in which each player or section can be a brilliant soloist one moment and a sensitive partner the next."

Zwilich is the recipient of numerous prizes and honors, and has achieved a number of firsts in her life: in 1975, the first woman to earn a doctorate in composition at Juilliard (with honorary doctorates including those from Oberlin College and Michigan State University); in 1983, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music; and in 1995, the first composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall. A prolific composer in virtually all media, Zwilich’s works have been performed by most of the leading American orchestras and by major ensembles abroad. Critics rave that hers is a “musical mind of originality, skill and versatility (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) and her music is “distinctive not only for its superb craftsmanship, but also for its wit, lyricism and sheer beauty, making it immediately appealing to listeners (Cincinnati.com).”

About BMOP

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today’s musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber. Founded by Artistic Director Gil Rose in 1996, Grammy Award-winning BMOP has championed composers whose careers span nine decades. Each season, Rose brings BMOP’s award-winning orchestra, renowned soloists, and influential composers to the stage of New England Conservatory’s historic Jordan Hall in a series that offers orchestral programming of unrivaled eclecticism. Musical America’s 2016 Ensemble of the Year, BMOP was awarded the 2021 Special Achievement Award from Gramophone Magazine as “an organization that has championed American music of the 20^th and 21^st century with passion and panache.” The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and passion with which they infuse the music of the present era. BMOP.org

About Gil Rose      
Gil Rose is one of today’s most trailblazing conductors, praised as “amazingly versatile” (The Boston Globe) with “a sense of style and sophistication” (Opera News). Equally at home performing core repertoire, new music, and lesser-known historic symphonic and operative works, “Gil Rose is not just a fine conductor, but a peerless curator, sniffing out—and commissioning—off-trend, unheralded, and otherwise underplayed repertoire, that nevertheless holds to unfailingly high standards of quality. In doing so, he’s built an indefinable, but unmistakable, personal aesthetic” (WQXR).   A global leader in American contemporary music, Grammy Award-winner Rose is the founder of the performing and recording ensemble the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), who “bring an endlessly curious and almost archaeological mind to programming…with each concert, each recording, an essential step in a better direction” (The New York Times), as well as the founder of Odyssey Opera, praised by The New York Times as “bold and intriguing.” GilRoseConductor.com 

About BMOP/sound         
BMOP/sound, BMOP’s independent record label, was created in 2008 to provide a platform for BMOP’s extensive archive of music, as well as to provide widespread, top-quality, permanent access to both classics of the 20th century and the music of today’s most innovative composers. BMOP/sound has garnered praise from the national and international press. It is the recipient of a 2020 Grammy Award for Tobias Picker: Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as eight Grammy nominations, and its releases have appeared on the year-end “Best of” lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, American Record Guide, DownBeat, WBUR, NewMusicBox, and others. Admired, praised, and sought after by artists, presenters, critics, and audiophiles, BMOP and BMOP/sound are uniquely positioned to redefine the new music concert and recording experience. Launched in 2019, BMOP's digital radio station, BMOP/radio, streams BMOP/sound's entire catalog and airs special programming. BMOP.org

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