FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 26, 2015 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected] ALAN GILBERT AND THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC CONTACT! THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC’S NEW-MUSIC SERIES “NEW MUSIC FROM NORDIC COUNTRIES” NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC To Perform Works by Kaija SAARIAHO, Per NØRGÅRD, Đuro ŽIVKOVIĆ, and Kalevi AHO Music Director ALAN GILBERT and Assistant Conductor COURTNEY LEWIS To Conduct Saturday, March 7, 2015, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art The sixth season of CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic’s new-music series, continues with “New Music from Nordic Countries,” Saturday, March 7, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with Met Museum Presents, led by Music Director Alan Gilbert and Assistant Conductor Courtney Lewis. Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Premiere of Per Nørgård’s Cello Concerto No. 2, Momentum, with Philharmonic cellist Eric Bartlett as soloist, and Kalevi Aho’s Chamber Symphony No. 2; Courtney Lewis will conduct the U.S. Premiere of the string orchestra version of Kaija Saariaho’s Terra Memoria, and the U.S. Premiere of Đuro Živković’s The White Angel. The 2014–15 season of CONTACT! features World, U.S., and New York Premieres, as well as seminal works by leading composers, in programs that explore the new-music scene from four different countries. CONTACT! will continue with “New Music from Italy” at SubCulture, a chamber concert co-presented with 92nd Street Y (May 11, 2015), followed by “New Music from Japan,” conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (June 5, 2015). Christopher Rouse, who in 2014–15 is completing his three-year term as The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, advises the Philharmonic on the CONTACT! series. Per Nørgård, whose Cello Concerto No. 2, Momentum, is featured on the program is the second recipient of The Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music at the New York Philharmonic, which recognizes a composer for extraordinary artistic endeavor in the field of new music Artists Music Director Alan Gilbert began his New York Philharmonic tenure in September 2009, the first native New Yorker in the post. He and the Philharmonic have introduced the positions of (more) CONTACT!: “New Music from Nordic Countries” / 2 The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in- Residence, and the Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; and the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today’s music by a wide range of contemporary and modern composers inaugurated in spring 2014. As New York magazine wrote, “The Philharmonic and its music director Alan Gilbert have turned themselves into a force of permanent revolution.” In the 2014–15 season Alan Gilbert conducts the U.S. Premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Clarinet Concerto, a Philharmonic co-commission, alongside Mahler’s First Symphony; La Dolce Vita: The Music of Italian Cinema; the Verdi Requiem; a staging of Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, featuring Oscar winner Marion Cotillard; World Premieres; a CONTACT! program; and Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. He concludes The Nielsen Project — the multi-year initiative to perform and record the Danish composer’s symphonies and concertos, the first release of which was named by The New York Times as among the Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012 — and presides over the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. His Philharmonic- tenure highlights include acclaimed productions of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson, and Philharmonic 360 at Park Avenue Armory; World Premieres by Magnus Lindberg, John Corigliano, Christopher Rouse, and others; Bach’s B-minor Mass and Ives’s Fourth Symphony; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside the film; Mahler’s Second Symphony, Resurrection, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; and eight international tours. Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, Alan Gilbert regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. His 2014–15 appearances include the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Opera, and The Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award. Renée Fleming’s recent Decca recording Poèmes, on which he conducted, received a 2013 Grammy Award. His recordings have received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard School, where he holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. In May 2010 Mr. Gilbert received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music and in December 2011, Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for his “exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary music.” In 2014 he was elected to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Courtney Lewis began his tenure as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic in September 2014, and made his debut with the Orchestra leading a Young People’s Concert in November 2014. He also serves as music director of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, a position he assumed in the 2014–15 season. Mr. Lewis’s previous posts include associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, where he made his subscription debut in the 2011–12 season, and Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he made his debut in the fall of 2011. From 2008 to 2014 Mr. Lewis was the music director of Boston’s Discovery Ensemble, a chamber orchestra dedicated not only to giving concerts of contemporary and established repertoire at the highest level of musical and technical excellence, but also to (more) CONTACT!: “New Music from Nordic Countries” / 3 bringing live music into the least privileged parts of Boston with workshops in local schools. He made his major American orchestral debut in November 2008 with the St. Louis Symphony, and has since appeared with the Atlanta Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, Alabama Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and Ulster Orchestra (for a series of BBC Radio 3 Invitation Concerts, as well as on subscription). Recent and upcoming engagements include debuts with the Lausanne Chamber and Vancouver, Detroit, North Carolina, and Edmonton symphony orchestras, as well as returns to the Minnesota Orchestra, Alabama Symphony, and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Courtney Lewis graduated from the University of Cambridge where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and clarinet with Dame Thea King. After completing a master’s degree with a focus on the late music of György Ligeti, he attended the Royal Northern College of Music, where his teachers included Sir Mark Elder and Clark Rundell. Cellist Eric Bartlett joined the New York Philharmonic in 1997. He has appeared frequently as a member soloist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and is featured on several of their Deutsche Grammophon recordings. In addition to Orpheus, his solo appearances include the Cabrillo Music Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Anchorage Symphony, Hartford Chamber Orchestra, Aspen and Juilliard Orchestras, Brattleboro Music Center in Vermont, and the New York Philharmonic’s “Horizons ’84” series. Mr. Bartlett has participated in more than 90 premieres with ensembles such as Speculum Musicae, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Group for Contemporary Music, and the Columbia String Quartet, and he has commissioned new works for the cello from American composers. During the summer of 2000, Mr. Bartlett was invited by Marin Alsop to be a featured soloist in the North American premiere of James MacMillan’s Triduum, the middle third of which is a cello concerto. He has served as either artist-president or vice-president of Speculum Musicae since 1990. Mr. Bartlett has performed at the Mostly Mozart, Marlboro, Aspen, Adirondack, Grand Teton, and Waterloo music festivals, and has been a regular participant at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival since 1996. He served as principal cello of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and co-principal of Orpheus from 1984 until 1997. He recorded the cello music of Larry Bell for North-South Records on a CD entitled River of Ponds (which includes a collaboration with narrator Robert J. Lurtsema) and has also recorded for CRI, Opus One, Bridge, Delos, and Deutsche Grammophon. Eric Bartlett was awarded full scholarships to both The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School and received both his bachelor’s and master’s of music degrees from Juilliard, where he was a student of Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins. He is the recipient of a Solo Recitalist’s Award from the National Endowment for the Arts and a special Performance Award as a finalist of the 1987 New England Conservatory/Piatigorsky Award. He has served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts and is currently an adjunct professor at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. Repertoire Per Nørgård (b. 1932) is considered by many to be the most prominent Danish composer after Carl Nielsen. The latest recipient of the Philharmonic’s Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music, he has composed in a variety of genres, from symphonies, operas, and chamber music to film and theater music. In the program notes to his 2009 Cello Concerto No. 2, Momentum, Mr. (more) CONTACT!: “New Music from Nordic Countries” / 4 Nørgård cited Nielsen, who believed titles could serve as musical road signs: “As such a ‘road sign’ into the purely musical world of the present cello concerto, I at last settled for the title Momentum.