! 6 Meyersville Road Chatham, New Jersey 07928 USA Ph/Fax 800.706.4182 [email protected] www.orchestranextcentury.org ! ! ! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Gary Schneider 973-457-5724 March 15, 2013 [email protected] To the Point: Orchestra for the Next Century pays tribute to Paul Sacher in concert at New York’s Merkin Concert Hall. Orchestra for the Next Century, Gary M. Schneider, Music Director, follows up its acclaimed NY debut in February at the Ecstatic Music Festival with a tribute to the great Swiss conductor and musical philanthropist Paul Sacher in a concert on April 30, 2013 at 8:00 pm at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. The concert features two works Sacher commissioned from Stravinsky and Martinů paired with recent works by distinguished American composers Margaret Brouwer and Paul Moravec. Tickets are $25 / $20 for students. For information and tickets, call 212- 501-3330 or online at www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org. Igor Stranvinsky’s Concerto in D for String Orchestra and Bohuslav Martinů’s Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani are among the many important works Sacher commissioned for his Basel Chamber Orchestra. Through his commissioning of new works from many of the most important composers of the 20th century, Sacher is responsible for the existence of an amazing number of landmark compositions, many of which entered the repertory and are performed every year in concert halls around the world. The concert will also include the New York premier of Margaret Brouwer’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, featuring the acclaimed Japanese-American violinist Michi Wiancko, for whom it was written. Ms Wiancko, a noted advocate of new music, was the 2002 Concert Artists Guild International Competition winner and a 2007 Musical America “Artist to Watch”. She has appeared as soloist with orchestras throughout the US including both the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics. Rounding out the program is Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec’s Morph, for solo string quartet and string orchestra. This promises to be an especially high-octane concert. Gary M. Schneider first gained attention as music director and conductor of The Hoboken Chamber Orchestra, an award-winning ensemble he founded in 1981 and led for ten seasons. A prize-winner in the 1987 Leopold Stokowski Competition for American Conductors, Mr. Schneider has actively guest conducted numerous orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic. Following his European debut at the International Zelt Musik Festival in Freiburg, Germany, The Badische Zeitung heralded him as an “astonishing” musician for his diverse and impressive efforts as conductor, composer, “jazzer” and pianist. Mr. Schneider promises to put his more than 30 years of experience into making Orchestra for the Next Century a major musical force to be reckoned with. # # # ! Forging a one-of-a-kind career path, violinist Michi Wiancko was recently described in Gramophone Magazine as an "alluring soloist [with] heightened expressive and violinistic gifts." She has given debut performances with orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philarmonic, and frequently presents recital and chamber performances across the nation. Michi made her New York solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall after winning the 2002 Concert Artists Guild International Competition. She was featured as an "Artist to Watch" on the cover of the January 2007 issue of SYMPHONY Magazine. Michi has toured extensively throughout the country as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician, and has appeared in venues such as the Kennedy Center, Sydney Opera House, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery, Library of Congress, New York’s Town Hall, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and countless others. Michi has also toured nationally with Musicians from Marlboro as well as the Los Angeles Piano Quartet, and internationally with the renowned modern dance troupe, Mark Morris Dance Group, with whom she appeared at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival, collaborating with Yo- Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax. A frequent performer of new music, Michi has played with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and recorded for numerous living composers, including a disc for Mario Diaz de Leon, released on John Zorn’s label, Tzadik. In March 2007 she gave the world premiere of a concerto written for her by Margaret Brouwer, which she performed with James Gaffigan and Cleveland’s CityMusic Orchestra. As singer, violinist and composer for her band KONO MICHI, she consistently pushes the boundaries of the classical repertoire and explores new genres. The Strad describes the sound as “intriguing and exquisitely beautiful…music that breaks through the pop classical barrier.” KONO MICHI appeared at Symphony Space in Spring 2009 performing Ms. Wiancko’s newest work, 9 Death Haiku, commissioned by CAG. The self-produced recording of this song cycle appears on disc on the UK label, Shark Batter Records. Kono Michi has also appeared in Merkin Hall, Brooklyn’s BAM Café, Barbes, Pianos, and the World Café Live in Philadelphia. Her songs have been broadcast on WNYC, KCRW, and BBC Radio 1, 3 and 6 Music shows. A native of Southern California, Michi began her violin studies at the age of 3. She holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Donald Weilerstein, and from The Juilliard School, where she was a student of Robert Mann. Ms. Wiancko’s debut solo CD, Platinum Spirals, features works by Ravel, Beethoven, Kreisler, Debussy, Prokofiev and Joan Tower. Michi recently recorded works by French composer Emile Sauret in the legendary Glenn Gould studios at the CBC in Toronto. This album will be released on the Naxos label in 2011. ! Margaret Brouwer Composer Margaret Brouwer’s music has earned singular praise for its lyricism, musical imagery, and emotional power. Her Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, commissioned by the Dallas Symphony, was premiered by them with Ellen Rose, solo violist in January 2010. In the Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell wrote, "She has written skillfully and imaginatively for both viola and orchestra, and the music engages from start to finish." The feature article in the February 2010 edition of the on-line publication, NewMusicBox.com (found at http://newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=6252) is about Brouwer. She received a Meet The Composer Commissioning/USA award to compose Path at Sunrise, Masses of Flowers which was premiered by the Cleveland Women’s Symphony in April 2010. Reviewing the concert in clevelandclassical.com, Mike Telin said "The title describes exactly what one sees when listening to this stunning piece. The colors that Ms. Brouwer draws from the orchestra throughout this gorgeous six-minute work made this listener wish it had lasted six minutes longer." A 2010 Voices of Change concert (Dallas) featured several of Brouwer’s works. Her first children’s symphonic drama, Daniel and Snakeman, was premiered by CityMusic Cleveland in May 2011. Summer 2011 marked the inaugural season of “Music by the Lake” chamber music series, featuring music of Margaret Brouwer performed by her ensemble, Blue Streak. They performed in Cleveland, Sandusky, Vermilion, Huron, and Medina. In August, Brouwer will be the composer-in-residence at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Her piece Pulse will be performed on the opening night concert, conducted by Marin Alsop. Premieres in 2009 included Brouwer’s Rhapsody for Orchestra commissioned and premiered by the Detroit Symphony, Leonard Slatkin, conducting, and BREAKDOWN, a collaborative work by Brouwer and video/sound artist Kasumi, commissioned and premiered by the American Composers Orchestra, George Manahan conducting, at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Mark Stryker of the Detroit Free Press wrote, "Rhapsody proved to be a compact, cleverly scored concerto for orchestra…latent with romanticism but rippled." In 2007, violinist Michi Wiancko and conductor James Gaffigan premiered Brouwer’s Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orchestra with CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra. In reviewing this work, Donald Rosenberg wrote “…what makes her concerto so alluring is its surprising tension between skittish and poetic material. The three-movement commissioned work abounds in extroverted passages that call upon the soloist to negotiate acrobatic flights and suddenly switch gears. In the opening “Narrative,” the violinist has long, bravura statements that melt seamlessly into tender utterances and back again.” Wiancko played the work again in 2010 with the South Carolina Symphony and the Columbus GA Symphony. Light was performed at the Tanglewood Music Center’s 2005 Festival of Contemporary Music. Reviewing this concert Allan Kozinn wrote in the New York Times, “Margaret Brouwer’s fantastically eclectic “Light” filtered fragments of medieval and Renaissance pieces through a prism of free-ranging melody.” Ms. Brouwer received an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and letters in 2006, was named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2004, and was awarded an Ohio Council for the Arts Individual Fellowship for 2005. In January 2006, Naxos released a CD of her orchestral music called Aurolucent Circles (CD # 8.559250) featuring Evelyn Glennie, solo percussionist and The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Gerard Schwarz conducting. In review of the title work on the CD, Lawson Taitte of The Dallas Morning News praised Brouwer saying, “Ms. Brouwer has one of the most delicate ears and inventive imaginations among contemporary American composers… Ms. Brouwer not only gets seductive sounds out of the instruments, she also creates a dramatic through line that keeps the attention riveted for 27 minutes.” Many of the country’s most distinguished ensembles in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Cleveland regularly program her works. In New York Ms. Brouwer’s music has been programmed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, American Composers’ Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, the Cutting Room, and Symphony Space; by the Orchestra of St.