FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ARTIST AND PROGRAM UPDATES December 22, 2017 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5700; [email protected] NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONCERTS Inspirations and Tributes: “An African American Lineage” Saturday, February 3, 2018 Music by STILL, ELLINGTON, and VERY YOUNG COMPOSERS of New York City Assistant Conductor Joshua Gersen To Conduct Brooklyn Youth Chorus To Perform Terrance McKnight To Narrate and Host Written and Directed by Noah Himmelstein The 95th season of the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts (YPCs) will continue on Saturday, February 3, 2018, at 2:00 p.m. with “An African American Lineage,” the third program in this season’s series, Inspirations and Tributes — each program exploring how composers influence and pay tribute to each other. Assistant Conductor Joshua Gersen will lead the program, featuring selections from Still’s Lenox Avenue and Ellington’s Harlem; “My Lord, What a Mornin’,” a spiritual arranged by Harry T. Burleigh performed a cappella by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus; and new works by Very Young Composers of New York City inspired by their neighborhoods. Terrance McKnight — host for WQXR 105.9 FM, New York’s only all-classical music station — will make his Philharmonic debut hosting the event, written and directed by Noah Himmelstein (Philharmonic debut) and featuring actor Kristen Alyson Browne (Philharmonic debut). Attendees are invited to arrive early to take part in YPC Overtures, at which children meet Philharmonic musicians and try out orchestral instruments on the Grand Promenade and upper tiers of David Geffen Hall, starting at 12:45 p.m. Pre-concert activities include live performances by ensembles of Philharmonic musicians of works by Very Young Composers inspired by the YPC’s thematic content. Artists Joshua Gersen, New York Philharmonic Assistant Conductor since September 2015, made his acclaimed Philharmonic subscription debut on hours’ notice in February 2017. Mr. Gersen has been music director of the New York Youth Symphony for the past five years, and he was previously the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Conducting Fellow of the New World Symphony, where he served as the assistant conductor to the symphony’s artistic director, Michael Tilson Thomas, leading the orchestra in various subscription, education, and family concerts including the orchestra’s PULSE concert series. He made his conducting debut with the San Francisco Symphony in the fall of 2013 and (more) Young People’s Concert / 2 has been invited back to conduct a variety of concerts, including a performance in the new SoundBox Theater and filling in for Michael Tilson Thomas on part of a subscription series. The winner of the Aspen Music Festival’s 2011 Aspen Conducting Prize and the 2010 Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize, Mr. Gersen served as the festival’s assistant conductor for the 2012 summer season under Robert Spano. He was principal conductor of the Ojai Music Festival in 2013, and has conducted the National, Toronto, New Jersey, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, and Alabama symphony orchestras and members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He was also a recipient of a 2015 and 2016 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award. Also an avid composer, his String Quartet No. 1 and Fantasy for Chamber Orchestra have been premiered in New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. He has had works performed by the New Mexico Symphony, Greater Bridgeport Symphony, and Greater Bridgeport Youth Orchestra. His work as a composer has inspired an interest in conducting contemporary music, and he has led several World Premieres by young composers with New York Youth Symphony’s First Music Program and the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program. He has also collaborated with prominent composers including John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Steven Mackey, Mason Bates, and Michael Gandolfi. Joshua Gersen made his conducting debut at age 11 with the Greater Bridgeport Youth Orchestra and his professional conducting debut five years later when he led the Greater Bridgeport Symphony in a performance of his own composition, A Symphonic Movement. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied conducting with Otto Werner Mueller, and the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied composition with Michael Gandolfi. Joshua Gersen made his New York Philharmonic debut leading a Young People’s Concert in December 2015; he most recently led the Orchestra in a Young People’s Concert in Shanghai in July 2017 as part of the Orchestra’s third annual performance residency, part of the Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership. The Grammy Award–winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus, WQXR’s 2016–17 artist-in-residence, is a collective of young singers and vocal ensembles reimagining choral music performance through artistic innovation, collaboration, and a versatile range and repertoire. The Chorus’s multilevel training program draws students from across the five boroughs and combines intensive voice and musicianship study with exceptional performance experiences. It has performed with ensembles including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras, London and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras, and Mariinsky Orchestra; conductors including Marin Alsop, Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert, James Levine, and Esa-Pekka Salonen; and major recording artists including Barbra Streisand, Arcade Fire, Elton John, Grizzly Bear, and John Legend. Featured on the New York Philharmonic’s Grammy Award–winning recording of John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, the Chorus recently released its first solo recording, Black Mountain Songs, through New Amsterdam Records. Brooklyn Youth Chorus has garnered a strong reputation as an arts producer. Current productions include Silent Voices, which premiered at the BAM Opera House in May 2017; Aging Magician, which received its Off-Broadway premiere in March 2017; and Black Mountain Songs, which toured to Asheville, North Carolina, in September 2017. Founded in 1992 by artistic director Dianne Berkun Menaker, Brooklyn Youth Chorus serves more than 600 students in its core after-school and public school outreach programs. Classes take place at its Cobble Hill headquarters and neighborhood locations in Bedford- Stuyvesant, Red Hook, and Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The Chorus made its New York Philharmonic debut in September 2002 in the World Premiere of John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, conducted by then Music Director Lorin Maazel. It most recently appeared with the Philharmonic in June 2015 in (more) Young People’s Concert / 3 Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, conducted by then Music Director Alan Gilbert, and participated in programs presented as part of the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL. Dianne Berkun Menaker is the founder and artistic director of Brooklyn Youth Chorus, which, under her leadership, has become one of the most highly regarded ensembles in the country and has stretched the artistic boundaries for the youth chorus. Ms. Berkun Menaker has prepared choruses for performances with acclaimed conductors including Marin Alsop, Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert, James Levine, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Robert Spano. She prepared the chorus for its 2002 New York Philharmonic debut in John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, the recording of which won a 2005 Grammy Award. Dianne Berkun Menaker is the creator of the chorus’s Cross-Choral Training program, a holistic and experiential approach to developing singers in a group setting encompassing both voice and musicianship pedagogy. Terrance McKnight is the weekday evening host for WQXR 105.9 FM, New York’s only all-classical music station. He is also the host, writer, and producer of the station’s audio documentaries on Langston Hughes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Hazel Scott, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and Florence Beatrice Price. In 2010 his program All Ears with Terrance McKnight, a show about musical discovery, was honored with an ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award. Mr. McKnight serves as the artistic director and host of The Dream Unfinished Orchestra, an activist orchestra that supports New York City–based civil rights and community organizations through concerts and presentations. As a writer or host, Mr. McKnight has worked with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. He has served on panels for Chamber Music America, the Mellon Foundation, American Opera Projects, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. He has also curated musical programs for the Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of Modern Art, Look and Listen Festival, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In addition, Mr. McKnight has served on the music faculty at Morehouse College, where he taught music appreciation, music theory, and applied piano for ten years. He received his bachelor of arts in music degree from Morehouse College and his master’s from Georgia State University. This performance marks his New York Philharmonic debut. Noah Himmelstein is a Manhattan-based theater and opera director. His recent directing work includes Ellen Fitzhugh and Michael John LaChiusa’s new musical Los Otros at Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre, and the premiere of Jonathan Tolins’s play The Forgotten Woman at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theatre. In 2013 he staged the premiere of Andrew Lippa’s theatrical oratorio I Am Harvey Milk at San Francisco’s Nourse Theatre, which was premiered on the same