BMOP/sound Releases Label’s Landmark 100th Album - the Debut Recording of John Alden Carpenter: Complete Ballets

Performances by the GRAMMY Award-Winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) led by Conductor by Gil Rose                            

DIGITAL RELEASE

TBR July 12, 2024

Available at BMOP.org and BandCamp

PHYSICAL RELEASE

TBR July 30, 2024

Celebrating its milestone 100th album, the Grammy Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) led by conductor Gil Rose releases John Alden Carpenter: Complete Ballets (#1100). For the first time, all three of Carpenter’s seminal ballet scores—Krazy Kat, The Birthday of The Infanta, andSkyscrapers—are presented in their complete and original form. As one of the first American composers to see the importance of ragtime and, later, jazz, and to use their rhythms in his compositions, Carpenter wrote music that reflected the culture of American milieu of his times, and the sounds of modern American life, as displayed on this “tour de Force” disc.

Quote from Gil Rose, BMOP Artistic Director Conductor:

“When considering the 100th album, I wanted something that showed off the orchestra’s ‘chops’ and sense of style. I also wanted the title to show BMOP’s commitment to rediscovering lost repertoire, especially repertoire from the early 20th century.”

John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951) was a Chicago-based composer who studied at Harvard University then made his living as a businessman while writing music on the side. He was prominent in the 1920s and was one of the earliest to use jazz rhythms in orchestral music. His ground-breaking use of Black performers and his use of jazz were influential on following composers. In an interview at the time, Carpenter said that to represent current American life without incorporating jazz would be, for an American musician, “a difficult, if not a painful task. Jazz is the American folklore. It’s full of character, of pep, of life.”

The album opener Krazy Kat: A Jazz Pantomime (1921, rev. 1940) is Carpenter’s musical depiction of the popular 1913 comic strip Krazy Kat by George Herriman. This work is significant for a few reasons: 1) Carpenter’s use of the comic strip for this ballet was innovative at the time, as comic strips were not part of the cultured society of dance.; 2) The primary character of Krazy Kat self-identified as what we would now call non-binary. This comic seems more relevant today than ever in light of our culture’s recent grappling with non-dualistic gender identities.; and 3) The use of the word “jazz” in the subtitle was the first time it was used in reference to concert music.

Serving as a stepping stone for Carpenter’s more experimental ballets, The Birthday of The Infanta: A Ballet Pantomime (1917, rev. 1940) was created at the turn of the century by Carpenter, choreographer/dancer Adolph Bolm, and scenic/costume designer Robert Edmond Jones. Based on a children’s short story by Oscar Wilde, The Birthday of The Infanta recounts the birthday party of the Spanish Infanta. Initial reviews hailed the ballet score as “not only the best thing Carpenter has done, but probably the best ballet score anyone has done since Petrushka (Vanity Fair).” The New York Times called the score fascinating and Carpenter “a master.”

Completing the album is Carpenter’s Skyscrapers: A Ballet of Modern American Life (1926) written during the Harlem Renaissance. At the height of his fame in the early 1920s, Carpenter became the only American composer commissioned by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Ultimately, the ballet score was premiered by the Metropolitan Opera in 1926. Extraordinary for the time was Carpenter’s use of an all-Black choir led by Frank H. Wilson (who would go on to become the first Porgy in the play Porgy and Bess in 1927) to define the sound of the city. Skyscrapers seeks to capture the dynamics of Americans at WORK and PLAY, and the brash, often tongue and cheek, quasi-jazz sounds of the day.

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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

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 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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