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CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic's New-Music Series FOR RELEASE: May 29, 2013 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected] CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic’s New-Music Series, Expands to New Venues in 2013–14 Season Partnership with 92ND STREET Y To Bring CONTACT! to New Downtown Arts Venue SUBCULTURE for Three Programs Works by ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, MARC NEIKRUG, and MARC-ANDRÉ DALBAVIE Featuring YEFIM BRONFMAN, The Mary and James G. Wallach ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE; Premieres of Solo Works by YOUNG AMERICAN COMPOSERS as Part of NY PHIL BIENNIAL MATTHIAS PINTSCHER To Conduct Beyond Recall: 11 U.S. Premieres at THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART as Part of NY PHIL BIENNIAL CHRISTOPHER ROUSE, The Marie-Josée Kravis COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE, To Advise on Series Entering its fifth season in 2013–14, CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic’s new-music series, is extending its reach by presenting more concerts in new venues including SubCulture — a new arts venue in downtown Manhattan — in partnership with 92nd Street Y, and The Museum of Modern Art. The upcoming season of CONTACT! will feature four concert programs, an expansion over previous seasons. Dedicated to the works of emerging and iconic contemporary composers, CONTACT! in the 2013–14 season will feature works for ensembles of New York Philharmonic musicians as well as programs of solo works performed by Philharmonic musicians and distinguished guests. The New York Philharmonic and 92nd Street Y will co-curate three programs at SubCulture, a new, intimate space hosting eclectic music and creative arts performances in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood. The concerts will feature a program focused on works by composer- conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen; a performance by The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in- Residence Yefim Bronfman and musicians from the Orchestra; and a concert that includes World Premiere–New York Philharmonic Commissions of solo works by young American composers. The fourth CONTACT! program, co-presented by the New York Philharmonic and The Museum of Modern Art, is titled Beyond Recall and features 11 U.S. Premieres of music inspired by art works selected for the Salzburg Art Project, conducted by Matthias Pintscher and performed by New York Philharmonic musicians. The program of solo works by young American composers and Beyond Recall are both part of the inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL (May 28–June 7, 2014), a kaleidoscopic exploration (more) 2013–14 Season of CONTACT! / 2 of today’s music by a wide range of contemporary and modern composers. [See separate press release for more information about the NY PHIL BIENNIAL.] Christopher Rouse, who in 2013–14 will be completing the second in his two-year term as The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, advises the Philharmonic on the CONTACT! series. One of America’s most prominent composers of orchestral music, Mr. Rouse won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Trombone Concerto, commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic. Alan Gilbert said: “CONTACT! is essentially about making contact with a fresh, excited, exciting audience, with new music that is absolutely important to play,” said Alan Gilbert. “We have always felt it important for the series to reach across New York City, with performances in more intimate spaces not necessarily associated with the formality of a New York Philharmonic concert. This coming season brings CONTACT! as far south as NoHo, where SubCulture offers a great energy that perfectly matches the atmosphere we want for these concerts.” Christopher Rouse said: “CONTACT! has been involved in commissioning and giving premieres of works by emerging composers, so it’s a wonderful opportunity for young composers. I think that’s an important part of the mission.” Hanna Arie-Gaifman, director of 92nd Street Y’s Tisch Center for the Arts, said: “CONTACT! is more than a symbolic title for this series. It really points to the relationship between today’s music, composers, musicians, audience, and all of us who make music happen. It also hints at the creative nature of the partnership between 92nd Street Y and the New York Philharmonic: innovative, energetic, and, like the music we jointly present, quite intimate. I am thrilled that 92nd Street Y’s participation in CONTACT! is part of the NY PHIL BIENNIAL and its celebration of the life and creation of music today, here and now.” AN EVENING WITH ESA-PEKKA SALONEN Mr. Salonen To Introduce His Works, Performed by Musicians from the Philharmonic November 4, 2013, at SUBCULTURE The 2013–14 season of CONTACT! opens with An Evening with Esa-Pekka Salonen. Esa- Pekka Salonen hosts this performance featuring musicians from the New York Philharmonic in five of his compositions: knock, breathe, shine for solo cello (2010), Memoria for wind quintet (2003), YTA III for solo cello (1986), Homunculus for string quartet (2007), and Second Meeting for oboe and piano (1992). Mr. Salonen will introduce each piece. This (more) 2013–14 Season of CONTACT! / 3 program, November 4, 2013, at SubCulture, is a co-presentation by the New York Philharmonic and 92nd Street Y. Finnish-born Esa-Pekka Salonen is an eminent composer as well as the principal conductor and artistic advisor for London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and the conductor laureate for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was music director from 1992 to 2009. His pieces Floof and LA Variations are widely regarded as modern classics. In 2007 Mr. Salonen conducted the New York Philharmonic in the World Premiere of his Piano Concerto, with Yefim Bronfman, its dedicatee, as soloist. Mr. Salonen’s recordings include a CD featuring the Piano Concerto and his pieces Helix and Dichotomie with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Mr. Bronfman; it was nominated for a Grammy Award. In 2012 Mr. Salonen released a disc containing his Grawemeyer Award–winning Violin Concerto, featuring Leila Josefowicz as soloist. Mr. Salonen, Ms. Josefowicz, and the New York Philharmonic will give the New York concert premiere of the Violin Concerto on October 30–31 and November 1–2 and 5, 2013, in the days surrounding this CONTACT! concert. The title of knock, breathe, shine comes from a sonnet by John Donne and suggests the piece’s three movements. Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen, who has performed Mr. Salonen’s work extensively, has described them thus: “knock … has a lot of pizzicatos of different kinds, which eventually get very mixed up, the bow getting more and more in their way. breathe is about breathing, about singing, about melodies.… shine shows us all the brilliance of what one could do on the cello if one were able to play it while sitting on a roller coaster.” Memoria is scored for flute (doubling alto flute), oboe (doubling English horn), clarinet, bassoon (doubling contrabassoon), and horn. Using his unfinished Mimo, from 1982, as a starting point, Mr. Salonen wrote a one-movement piece he described as “serious, sometimes even sad.” The title refers partly to the death of Luciano Berio, “the great Italian composer, whose music I greatly admire.” YTA III for solo cello is the third in a series of works for solo instruments that Mr. Salonen began in 1982, starting with a piece for solo alto flute. “The title, ‘Yta,’ is in Swedish, and means ‘surface,’” the composer wrote. “I wanted to write very demanding virtuoso music, where the surface is extremely busy, but the formal process, partly hidden behind the frenetic stream of fast gestures, is considerably slower.” YTA III is a rare example of an instrumental work by Mr. Salonen with programmatic content: “I tried to imagine what happens to the famous moth that circles around a lamp in Scriabin’s Vers a flamme after the wings have finally touched the flame. A series of gestures is introduced in the beginning. Each gesture undergoes an individual development, culminating in spasms before dying away. YTA III is a study of the death of an organism; the ugliest and most violent piece I’ve written.” Homunculus for string quartet arose out of Mr. Salonen’s wish to compose, as he put it, “a piece that would be very compact in form and duration, but still contain many different characters and textures. In other words, a little piece that behaves like a big piece.” Hence, (more) 2013–14 Season of CONTACT! / 4 the title, which in Latin means “little man.” “I have long been fascinated (and amused) by the arcane spermists’ theory,” the composer wrote, “who held the belief that the sperm was in fact a ‘little man’ (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child.… I decided to call my piece Homunculus despite the obvious weaknesses of the spermists’ thinking, as I find the idea of a perfect little man strangely moving.” Mr. Salonen composed Second Meeting for oboe and piano in January 1992, ten years after writing its prequel, Meeting, which is for clarinet and harpsichord. The piece follows a theme and variations form, albeit one in which the seven themes, or melodies, are closely related. Mr. Salonen later composed a version of the piece for oboe and small orchestra that is titled Mimo I. YEFIM BRONFMAN AND FRIENDS Pianist Yefim Bronfman, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, To Perform World Premiere of Marc Neikrug’s Passions, Reflected and Marc-André Dalbavie’s Trio No. 1 with Philharmonic Musicians Marc Neikrug To Host January 13, 2014, at SUBCULTURE In the second CONTACT! program of the season, Yefim Bronfman and Friends, the Philharmonic’s Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence for the 2013–14 season will perform a contemporary chamber work with musicians from the New York Philharmonic as well as a work for solo piano. The program includes Marc-André Dalbavie’s Trio No.
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