NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press contact: John Stolen 541.310.1876 | [email protected] New York Youth Symphony’s 2020/21 Composition Program Features Guest Speakers Nico Muhly, Jessie Montgomery, John Corigliano, and more New York, NY - New York Youth Symphony (NYYS), is excited to announce the 2020/2021 season of its Composition Program. Led by director Dr. Kyle Blaha the program offers student composers the opportunity to explore the world of composition and orchestration through seminars, individual tutorials, and workshops, plus reading sessions with professional musicians, and performances. This season will feature guest composers and artists including John Corigliano, Andrea DelGiudice, Reena Esmail, Molly Joyce, harpist Bridget Kibbey, Mari Kimura, David Ludwig, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, percussionist Javier Diaz, violist and composer Jessica Meyer, violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery, Nico Muhly, cellist Philip Sheegog, Chen Yi, and the Aizuri Quartet. Students' works will be read and workshopped throughout the season, culminating in a final performance by members of the NYYS Orchestra, Chamber Music, Jazz, and Apprentice Conducting programs at the annual Composition Date 2021 concert at Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Symphony Space on Thursday, May 13, 2021. Director Dr. Kyle Blaha says, “I am thrilled to announce our 20/21 season! I look forward to our students engaging with our brilliant guest composers and artists who represent diverse styles, backgrounds, careers, and points of view.” Participating students explore the musical thought of a wide variety of composers and concepts. Examples are drawn from the vast classical repertoire and a range of musical traditions from throughout the world. The program aims to cultivate the students' own voices through class discussion, written exercises, and free composition, as well as feedback from the industry’s leading performers and thinkers. Fall and Winter sessions 1 will be held online via Zoom. Spring sessions will be held in accordance with health and safety recommendations from the CDC. Students who are accepted into the NYYS Composition program will also be eligible to apply for one of ten Vargas-Vetter/Ukena fellowships which offer financial assistance and mentors to young musicians as they prepare for college and beyond. For more information, please visit nyys.org/community. Applications for the 2020/2021 Season are now open. Composers ages 12-22 who have a sense of curiosity and a taste for musical adventure are invited to apply at nyys.org/apply. Founded in 1963, the NYYS is internationally recognized for its award-winning and innovative educational programs for talented young musicians. As the premier independent music education organization for ensemble training in the New York metropolitan area, the NYYS has provided over 7,000 music students unparalleled opportunities to perform at world-class venues including Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Joe’s Pub, and The Times Center, and to study with world-renowned artists. Beyond the instruction from accomplished musicians, students gain valuable life skills — commitment, discipline, focus, collaboration — and friendships that last a lifetime. The NYYS is committed to making its educational offerings accessible to a wider and more diverse community. Through partnerships with organizations including the Harmony Program, Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s Harlem School of the Arts, New York Film Academy, New York SongSpace, Maestra, and Orpheus, the NYYS is creating pathways for young people from all backgrounds to find their way to music. These community partnerships include peer-to-peer instruction, financial support, mentorships with professional artists, free community concerts, and more. Executive Director Shauna Quill noted, “The New York Youth Symphony is proud of its 58-year history of providing outstanding music education to students through its six outstanding programs. COVID-19 will not slow us down! Through a combination of smaller ensemble rehearsals, and online seminars and instruction, we are committed to providing outstanding education to all of our students this season. We are broadening access to the arts through our partnerships across the city as well as through fellowships which support students as they navigate the pathway towards college and beyond. We are grateful to all of our supporters as we navigate this pandemic together, including the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and more, and look forward to returning to stages around the city as soon as we are able.” ABOUT THE DIRECTORS AND ARTISTS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Dr. Kyle Blaha received his D.M.A. and M.M. from Juilliard and his B.M. from Eastman School of Music with high distinction in composition, clarinet, and German. He has studied composition with Darrell Handel, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez, Samuel Adler, Philip Lasser, and Robert Beaser, and Solfège with Mary Anthony Cox. He is faculty at the European American Musical Alliance Program in Paris, faculty at The Juilliard School where he teaches Ear Training, Music Theory, and Advanced Score Reading and Musicianship for conducting majors, and chair of Music Theory and Ear Training at Juilliard Pre-College. He has received multiple ASCAP Young Composer Awards and awards for study in German, including a Fulbright grant and a D.A.A.D. (German government) grant as well as Arabic study in Cairo, Egypt. Dr. Blaha’s work has been premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra and multiple performances by the New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute and has received commissions from the NYYS, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Donald Sinta Quartet, and the American Composers Orchestra. GUEST ARTISTS 2 The American composer John Corigliano continues to add to one of the richest, most unusual, and most widely celebrated bodies of work any composer has created over the last forty years. Mr. Corigliano's numerous scores—including three symphonies and eight concerti among over one hundred chamber, vocal, choral, and orchestral works—have been performed and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. Recent scores include Conjurer (2008), for percussion and string orchestra, commissioned for and introduced by Dame Evelyn Glennie; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra: The Red Violin (2005), developed from the themes of the score to the François Girard’s film of the same name, which won Corigliano the Oscar in 1999; Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (2000) for orchestra and amplified soprano, the recording which won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition in 2008; Symphony No. 3: Circus Maximus (2004), scored simultaneously for wind orchestra and a multitude of wind ensembles; and Symphony No. 2 (2001: Pulitzer Prize in Music.) Other important scores include String Quartet (1995: Grammy Award, Best Contemporary Composition); Symphony No. 1 (1991: Grawemeyer and Grammy Awards); the opera The Ghosts of Versailles (Metropolitan Opera commission, 1991, International Classical Music Award 1992); and the Clarinet Concerto (1977.) One of the few living composers to have a string quartet named for him, Corigliano serves on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music and holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, which has established a scholarship in his name; for the past fourteen years he and his partner, the composer-librettist Mark Adamo, have divided their time between Manhattan and Kent Cliffs, New York. Andrea DelGiudice is a soprano of “astonishing power and subtlety” (Newcastle Journal, England). Her international career as a leading soprano has taken her to the Scottish National Opera, Munich State Opera, Liege Opera, Opera Bonn, Edmonton Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, DiCapo Opera Theater, and Arizona Opera. Specializing in the verismo heroines of Puccini and Verdi, she has appeared alongside renowned artists such as Placido Domingo, Johan Botha, Sherill Milnes, Alexei Steblianko, and Nicola Martinucci. Ms. DelGiudice has been a featured concert soloist at Boston’s Jordan Hall with some of Boston’s leading soloists, and WGBH's “Morning Classics” in Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs as well as contemporary works including Simon Sargon’s Shema. Her diverse talents have led to numerous international recording contracts in over 200 major films and animated features in Rome, Italy with Walt Disney/Buena Vista, RAI television, and Sundance Films. Ms. DelGiudice currently serves as Founder and Director of New York Opera Collaborative; Director of Vocal Arts at the Narnia Festival in Narni, Italy; and Vocal Director at the Neighborhood Playhouse of the Theater in New York City. She recently made her directing debut at the Axelrod Theater in her edgy conceptual production of Verdi’s La Traviata. 2021 brings her double bill of Suor Angelica and the world premiere of Pieta, music by Jake Landau and libretto cowritten with Andrea; and her new concept production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Syracuse University. Javier Diaz is a percussionist in the New York Area. He has performed with the American Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Broadway's productions of Tarzan, Guys and Dolls, The Wiz, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Rocky, Gloria Estefan’s On Your Feet, Once on This Island,