Bob Hurwitz & Peter Sellars

Bob Hurwitz & Peter Sellars: A Connected World in Music

Sun, Dec 7 ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Schoenberg Hall Two creative visionaries celebrate the ties that bind in the worlds of music recording and live 8pm performance. Famed theater director (and UCLA professor) Peter Sellars and Bob Hurwitz, longtime president of the eclectic and evolutionary label Nonesuch Records, come together to share stories of artistic intersection. RUNNING TIME: Approximately one hour; Hurwitz and Sellars have each left an indelible stamp on contemporary music and a wealth No intermission. of artists who populate it. In a freewheeling conversation they will highlight their work with myriad artists and the ways each has shaped the world of contemporary music.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Robert Hurwitz Robert Hurwitz, President of Nonesuch Records, has headed the company since September 1984. From 1975 until that time, he ran the American operations of ECM Records. He has also worked at Columbia Records. Hurwitz grew up in Los Angeles, where he was trained as a pianist, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in history at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971. He moved to New York in 1971 and has lived there since then. He is married to Carol Peterson, and has two children.

Nonesuch Records, founded in 1964, pursues a broad mission, including classical music, contemporary music, jazz, traditional American and world music, music theater and dance.

Among the artists he has signed or worked with are composers including John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Henryk Gorecki, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla, Steve Reich, Stephen Sondheim MEDIA SPONSOR: and John Zorn as well as performers and songwriters including Björk, Jeremy Denk, Bill Frisell, Richard Goode, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Kronos Quartet, Gidon Kremer, k.d. lang, Audra McDonald, Brad Mehldau, Pat Metheny, Mandy Patinkin, Punch Brothers, Randy Newman, Joshua Redman, Chris Thile, Dawn Upshaw, and Caetano Veloso. During this time, the label’s artist roster has grown to also include Laurie Anderson, The Black Keys, the Buena Vista Social Club, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, Youssou N’Dour, Rokia Traore, and Wilco, among many others. Hurwitz has produced recordings by Caetano Veloso, Stephen Sondheim, Astor Piazzolla and Teresa Stratas, and was the producer MESSAGE FROM THE CENTER: of the 1993 motion picture George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. Nonesuch releases have won 42 Grammy awards during his tenure. In a 2010 interview with The Guardian, Peter Sellars Three eminent new-music organizations in New York City, The talked about traveling to Africa to collaborate with singer- Kitchen, the American Music Center, and Bang on a Can, have all songwriter Rokia Traoré. He recalled sitting under mango honored Hurwitz’ achievements. trees working with traditional African musicians. In addition to his work at Nonesuch, Hurwitz has served on the “It couldn’t have been more African,” he said. “Except it’s boards of the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation, the New Music diffi cult to know what African, or Western, means any Distribution Service, and the Charles Ives Foundation. Hurwitz more. A few minutes after I started talking to the kora has been a speaker at symposiums for National Public Radio, the player, we realized we had both worked with the Berlin New York City Ballet, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And that was kind of perfect. The world really Philharmonic, and Chamber Music America. He also has taught a was connected.” course at The New School since 2006.

The world really is connected. And music is one of the A number of profi les on Nonesuch have spoken of Hurwitz’s powerful threads that keep the world, its inhabitants, achievements at the label. The Boston Globe stated, “Under Robert its potential for creativity and empathetic evolution, so Hurwitz, Nonesuch Records has been an oasis of artistic excitement. connected. When one picks up a Nonesuch CD, there is a sense of occasion, the feeling that the artists in question have been assembled not as an Connections are important. Much of what we do in the arts exercise in star power, but as an exercise in artistic exploration.” is about connections, about building bridges and opening The New York Times said, “...(Hurwitz’s) results have achieved doors that allow people and thoughts to enter and take new remarkable critical acclaim as well as commercial success. If that shapes. wide-ranging program (of Nonesuch’s) sounds like what major labels are suddenly up to, it is because those labels have set out to fi nd the With music, we often can’t individually know the full depth formula for Nonesuch’s success.” And The Independent (London), in or fl exibility of our connective tissue. That’s where people a profi le of Hurwitz, wrote, “Nonesuch is full of surprises. A record like Robert Hurwitz enter our lives, unseen, unknown, but label whose ambitions lie in creating trends…in my dictionary, the defi nitely felt. word ‘nonesuch’ is defi ned as a ‘matchless person or thing.’ It’s an old word, an archaic word. An idealistic word. And Nonesuch, the label, He is a music lover of impeccable and eclectic taste who is nothing if not idealistic.” has touched the lives of music lovers worldwide whether they recognize his name or not by applying that impeccable Peter Sellars and eclectic taste in music with incredible integrity of Opera, theater, and festival director Peter Sellars is one of the most purpose and artist-centered focus to uphold Nonseuch innovative and powerful forces in the performing arts in America Records, “a label without a label.” Nonesuch marked its and abroad. A visionary artist, Sellars is known for groundbreaking 50th Anniversary this fall with a series of concerts at BAM. interpretations of classic works. Whether it is Mozart, Handel, Hurwitz has been at the helm for 30 of those years. Shakespeare, Sophocles, or the 16th-century Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu, Peter Sellars strikes a universal chord with audiences, A lengthy list of Nonesuch artists have appeared on the engaging and illuminating contemporary social and political UCLA campus as part of this nearly 80-year tradition in issues. Sellars has staged operas at the Glyndebourne Festival, performing arts presentation from Philip Glass Kronos Lyric Opera of Chicago, Netherlands Opera, Opéra National de Quartet and Laurie Anderson to most recently the Paris, Salzburg Festival, San Francisco Opera, and Teatro Real, aforementioned Rokia Traoré. among others, establishing a reputation for bringing 20th-century and contemporary operas to the stage, including works by Olivier Peter Sellars is another impeccable artist. His connective Messiaen, Paul Hindemith, and György Ligeti. Inspired by the ties to this University run deep, having taught as a professor compositions of Kaija Saariaho, Osvaldo Golijov, and Tan Dun, in the UCLA World Arts and Cultures department for years. he has guided the creation of productions of their work that have Sellars has introduced hundreds of UCLA students to artists, expanded the repertoire of modern opera. Sellars has been a driving to music, to exciting and innovative ideas about the theater force in the creation of many new works with longtime collaborator and what it can be. composer John Adams, including Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoff er, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, and A Flowering Tree. A staging We are very proud to bring together tonight these two of their latest work, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, was thought leaders, these two thoughtful infl uencers of art and seen in the U.S. and in Europe early in 2013. culture. Recent Sellars projects have included a critically acclaimed concert We owe them much. Thank you for being here with us to staging of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion with the welcome them. Enjoy. Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performed in Salzburg and Berlin, a staging of Nixon in China for the Metropolitan Opera, and new productions of Handel’s Hercules in Chicago and Vivaldi’s Griselda in Santa Fe. Desdemona, a collaboration with the Nobel Prize- winning novelist Toni Morrison and Malian composer and singer Rokia Traore, was performed in several major cities in Europe and the U.S. and presented in London as part of the Cultural Olympiad. In 2012, Sellars staged a double bill of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Stravinsky’s Persephone for Teatro Real in Madrid. For the 2013 Manchester International Festival, he staged Michelangelo Sonnets, a program of Shostakovich and Bach. His most recent production, The Indian Queen, combining Purcell music, text, and dance, had its premiere at the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and was presented COMING UP AT CAP UCLA subsequently by Teatro Real.

Sellars has led several major arts festivals, including the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals; the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival in Australia; and the 2003 Venice Biennale International Festival of Theater in Italy. In 2006 he was Artistic Director of New Crowned Hope, a month-long festival in Vienna for which he invited international artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in the fi elds of music, theater, dance, fi lm, the visual arts, and architecture for the city’s celebration of Mozart’s 250th birth anniversary.

Sellars is a professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and Resident Curator of the Telluride Film Festival. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize, the Sundance Institute Risk-Takers Award, and the Gish Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was An evening with recently honored by the American Academy in Rome and Opera News magazine. Gregory Porter Sat, Jan 17 at 8 pm Royce Hall

The Rokia Connection By Jessica Wolf

One of the most recent examples that have connected the worlds of Nonesuch Records to the theater stage is Rokia Traoré, the luminous Frank Warren: PostSecret Live and soon-to-be-superstar singer-songwriter from Mali. Wed, Jan 28 at 8 pm Rokia rocked the Royce Hall stage September 26 with her full band, Royce Hall performing tracks from her most-recent album Beautiful Africa, released by Nonesuch in September 2013, and about which Uncut Magazine said: “Traoré’s sinuous voice sits at the centre of a hybrid maelstrom that combines the raw, earthy source of Malian rhythms with snarling rock guitars and pneumatic garage energy,” and called it “the record fans of her explosive live shows always hoped she would make and a career highpoint.”

Several years ago Peter Sellars began working with Traoré as he set to work creating Desdemona, his collaboration with Toni Morrison, which premiered in Vienna and New York 2011 and London in 2012. For this compelling reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Othello, Traoré wrote original songs and lyrics in her native Bambara language, corresponding from Mali with Morrison in New York via email and MP3 downloads to turn the legendary author’s text into music.

“I’m calmer with someone who understands me,” Traoré told the New York Times of her working relationship with Sellars. “The world in which my music moves is not easy. You have to spend time with it.” Gabriel Kahane: The Ambassador Fri-Sat, Feb 27-28 at 8 pm Between Sellars and Hurwitz there are exponentially greater opportunities for all of us to spend time with the music of this Freud Playhouse remarkable artist, who charmed Royce Hall audiences in her recent debut. We hope to see much more of her. The boards of CAP UCLA and Design for Sharing would like to thank all the members who have made a choice to join them in supporting arts education and the art of performance at UCLA.

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