Obsidian Tear Program Background

Nov 3-12, 2017

Guest Conductor: Daniel Stewart

Finlandia Composer: Jean Sibelius Boston Ballet Orchestra

Obsidian Tear Choreography: Wayne McGregor Music: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lachen verlernt and Scenic Design: Wayne McGregor Fashion Director: Katie Shillingford Lighting Design: Lucy Carter Lighting Recreation: Mike Smith Dramaturg: Uzma Hameed Stager: Amanda Eyles, using a Benesh Movement Notation score Solo violin: Christine Vitale Fashion Designers: Assaf Reeb, Christopher Shannon, Craig Green, Gareth Pugh, Hood By Air, Julius, Vivienne Westwood

World Premiere: May 28, 2016, The Royal Ballet, London North American Premiere: Nov 3, 2017, Boston Opera House, Boston, Massachusetts

Obsidian Tear is a co-production between The Royal Ballet and Boston Ballet.

Lachen verlernt and Nyx are by arrangement with G. Schirmer, INC. publisher and copyright owner.

Fifth Symphony of Jean Sibelius Music: Jean Sibelius, Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 82 Choreography: Jorma Elo Scenic Design: Jorma Elo Costume Design: Yumiko Takeshima Lighting Design: Mark Stanley

World Premiere: Nov 3, 2017, Boston Opera House, Boston, Massachusetts

BIO: Wayne McGregor, Choreographer

Born in 1970, Wayne McGregor is a multi-award-winning British choreographer and director, internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era. Driven by an insatiable curiosity about movement and its creative potentials, his experiments have led him into collaborative dialogue with an array of artistic forms, scientific disciplines, and technological interventions. The startling and multi-dimensional works resulting from these interactions have ensured McGregor’s position at the cutting edge of contemporary arts for over two decades.

Studio Wayne McGregor is the creative engine of McGregor’s life-long choreographic enquiry into thinking through and with the body. It encompasses his own touring company of dancers, Company Wayne McGregor; creative collaborations across dance, film, music, visual art, technology and science; and highly specialized creative learning and research programmes. In March 2017 Studio Wayne McGregor moved into its own newly created studio space at Here East in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a shared space for making where the creative brains of the day can exchange knowledge and invent together.

Company Wayne McGregor is McGregor’s ensemble of highly skilled dancers. Founded in 1992, this was the original instrument through which McGregor evolved his distinctive visual style, revealing the movement possibilities of the body in ever more precise degrees of articulation. McGregor has made over thirty works for the company and today it continues to be his laboratory for ambitious and experimental new choreography, touring his work across the UK and around the world. Company Wayne McGregor is Resident Company at Sadler’s Wells, London.

McGregor is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, where his productions are acclaimed for their daring reconfiguring of classical language. He is also regularly commissioned by and has works in the repertories of the most important ballet companies in the world, including Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre, opera, film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Legend of Tarzan, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Sing), music videos (Radiohead, Thom Yorke, The Chemical Brothers), fashion shows (Gareth Pugh at London Fashion Week 2017 and New York Fashion Week 2014), campaigns (everyBODY for Selfridges) and TV (The 2016 Brit Awards Opening Sequence, Paloma Faith’s Brit Awards performance 2015). Some of the long list of artists who have partnered with McGregor through more than twenty years of collaborative multi-disciplinary work include John Tavener, Audrey Niffenegger, Jamie xx, Max Richter, Olafur Eliasson, Ben Frost, Thom Yorke, Mark Wallinger, Random International, Jon Hopkins, John Pawson and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Wayne McGregor is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, has an Honorary Doctor of Science from Plymouth University and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from University of Leeds, and is part of the Circle of Cultural Fellows at King’s College London. In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the British Science Association. McGregor's work has earned him a multitude of awards including four Critics' Circle National Dance Awards, two Time Out Awards, two South Bank Show Awards, three Olivier Awards, a prix Benois de la Danse and two Golden Mask Awards. In 2011 McGregor was awarded a CBE for Services to Dance.

BIO: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Composer

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s restless innovation drives him constantly to reposition classical music in the 21st century. He is currently 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 until 2009. This is his final of three seasons as the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic and his second of five as Artist in Association at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, where he will conduct his first full Ring cycle in future seasons. Additionally, Salonen is Artistic Director and cofounder of the annual Baltic Sea Festival, now in its fifteenth year, which invites celebrated artists to promote unity and ecological awareness among the countries around the Baltic Sea. He serves as an advisor to the Sync Project, a global initiative to harness the power of music for human health.

Salonen’s works move freely between contemporary idioms, combining intricacy and technical virtuosity with playful rhythmic and melodic innovations. Of the premiere of his for Yo-Yo Ma with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in spring 2016, one critic wrote, “Language can't fully capture the glorious range and complexity of this concerto.” The New York Philharmonic went on to perform the cello concerto at home and on their European tour as part of Salonen’s Composer-in- Residency, which this year will feature the New York Premiere of his Gambit and the New York Concert Premiere of . The Los Angeles Philharmonic performs all of Salonen's concertos in February 2018, with Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Yefim Bronfman, and violinist Leila Josefowicz—the musicians for whom the works were written. The Violin Concerto won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award and was featured in a 2014 international Apple ad campaign for iPad. This season it will be choreographed by Saburo Teshigawara at the Paris Opera Ballet, with Salonen conducting some of the performances.

The Barbican Centre in London has a season-long focus on Salonen’s music, including performances of LA Variations for orchestra; for piano; Two Songs from Kalender Röd for chorus; Dona Nobis Pacem for female chorus; Iri da iri for chorus; Gambit for orchestra; , written for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's inaugural season at the Frank Gehry- designed Walt Disney Concert Hall and including recordings of Southern California’s plainfin midshipman fish and distorted samples of Mr. Gehry’s voice; Mimo II for oboe; the UK premiere of for orchestra and chorus, which he wrote as the first-ever Creative Chair at the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich; Concert etude for horn, and the European Premiere of a new work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Salonen's compositions will also be featured at the Helsinki Festival and Carnegie Hall and played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, under Salonen's baton; the Kansas City and Nashville symphonies; the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which gives the Canadian Premiere of , and by a joint orchestra of Sibelius Academy and Juilliard School students who, under Salonen's direction, perform Mania for cello and orchestra. The Tero Saarinen Dance Company and Royal and Boston ballets will perform pieces choreographed to two additional Salonen orchestral works—Foreign Bodies and Nyx, respectively.

As he enters his tenth year as Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen leads Mahler's third and ninth symphonies, a celebration of 100 years of Finnish independence, the European premiere of Unsuk Chin's Le Chant des Enfants des Etoiles, and Schoenberg's Gurrelieder. Salonen and the Philharmonia have experimented in groundbreaking ways to present music, with the first major virtual-reality production from a UK symphony orchestra; the award-winning RE-RITE and Universe of Sound installations, which have allowed people all over the world to conduct, play, and step inside the orchestra through audio and video projections, and the much-hailed app for iPad, The Orchestra, which allows the user unprecedented access to the internal workings of eight symphonic works.

As the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for seventeen years, Salonen is widely credited with revitalizing the organization. He was instrumental in helping the orchestra to open the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, presided over countless premieres of contemporary work, began the Esa-Pekka Salonen Commissions Fund, and made the orchestra one of the best attended and funded in the country.

BIO: Jorma Elo, Resident Choreographer

Finnish-born Jorma Elo was appointed Resident Choreographer of Boston Ballet in 2005. Elo has created more than 60 works for over 30 companies worldwide, including New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Vienna State Opera Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Basel Ballet, and Norwegian National Ballet.

Elo trained with the Finnish National Ballet School and the Kirov Ballet School in Leningrad. He danced professionally with Finnish National Ballet and Cullberg Ballet, and joined Netherlands Dance Theater in 1990, where he enjoyed a 15 year career.

As Resident Choreographer of Boston Ballet, Elo has created many world premieres, including Carmen, Le Sacre du Printemps, Plan to B, Brake the Eyes, Bach Cello Suites, and the full length Elo Experience. Elo’s From All Sides debuted in 2007 for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago to a commissioned score from Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in- Residence, Mark Anthony Turnage, conducted by Maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen. Vienna State Opera Ballet premiered his full length A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2010. Finnish National Ballet premiered Elo’s full length Alice in Wonderland in 2016.

Elo was awarded the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland, one of Finland’s highest honors, in 2015. He was awarded Moscow’s prestigious Benois de la Danse prize for best choreography in 2011 for his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, commissioned by Vienna State Opera Ballet, and Slice to Sharp, a new version of the ballet created for the Stanislavsky Music Theatre. The Finnish Government awarded Elo with the 2012 Dance Artist Prize. The 2005 Helsinki International Ballet Competition awarded Elo their Choreographic Prize and he is the recipient of the Prince Charitable Trust Prize and the Choo-San Goh Choreographic Award in 2006.

BIO: Daniel Stewart, Guest Conductor, Obsidian Tear

Daniel Stewart, conductor, composer, and violist, is the Music Director of the Santa Cruz Symphony, and former Assistant Conductor with the Metropolitan Opera. Stewart's first three seasons in Santa Cruz have led to great critical acclaim, including the Peninsula Reviews’ assertion that “the Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Stewart has now developed into the finest musical ensemble South of San Francisco and North of Los Angeles.”

Since 2012, when Stewart was invited by James Levine to become the first conductor of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, he has conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and soloists in a comprehensive range of repertoire. In 2013, he made his acclaimed Lincoln Center debut in a Metropolitan Opera produced concert of comic operas by Stravinsky, Mozart, Donizetti, and Berlioz.

The recipient of the 2010 Aspen Music Festival’s James Conlon Conducting Prize, Stewart has conducted orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Hessischer Rundfunk Orchester, the Frankfurt Opern Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New World Symphony, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He has previously served as Cover Conductor with the Atlanta Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, assisting conductors including Thomas Adès, Charles Dutoit, James Levine, Kurt Masur, David Robertson, Esa- Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Stewart has worked closely with contemporary composers such as the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Adams, and particularly Thomas Adès, whom he assisted in preparing the Los Angeles Philharmonic's “Aspects of Adès” festival in 2011. An avid composer himself, Stewart's compositions have been performed at venues including the Aspen Music Festival, Tribeca New Music Festival, and Verbier Festival.

Stewart is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller, with additional studies with Sir Simon Rattle, Christoph Eschenbach, and Alan Gilbert. As a violist, Stewart has concertized frequently as soloist, and served as principal violist of numerous ensembles, including the New World Symphony, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, and for six years with the Verbier Festival and Chamber Orchestras. He has also performed with the San Francisco Symphony, recorded for EMI with Maxim Vengerov, and toured extensively in more than 40 countries.

Obsidian Tear Press Quotes

Wayne McGregor’s Obsidian Tear

“A choreographic breakthrough…McGregor introduces a physical language that is pared down and clear yet permeated by a fullness and grace.” (Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times)

“With its emotive subtext and restrained but telling choreography, this is a breakthrough work for McGregor.” (Luke Jennings, The Guardian)

“Though Salonen has referred to his 2011 “Nyx” as a return to pure orchestral music, the title references the shadowy goddess of Greek mythology, and the music features a chiaroscuro effect of flickering, shifting tones and textures. The ballet also features the composer-conductor’s haunting “Lachen verlernt” for solo violin.” (Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe)

Jorma Elo

“The award-winning choreographer, who has created dances for ballet companies around the globe, is known for a swift, contemporary movement style…Elo combines mathematical precision and creative flow.” (Kathleen Burge, The Boston Globe)

“The viewer can only watch the dancers closely as they combine surreal contortions, ethereal grace, and speed, speed, speed. A dance of his may last only ten minutes, but the viewer is bedazzled and breathless, eager to see it again.” (Matthew Reed Baker, Boston Magazine)

“What was a two hour production felt more like a fleeting abstract dream - a hypnotic display of dance, so technically rebellious that dancers often took the form of something unrecognizable and inhuman.” (Mich Cardin, South End Patch)