FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 3, 2017 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +1 (212) 875-5700 SHANGHAI ORCHESTRA ACADEMY AND RESIDENCY PARTNERSHIP THIRD ANNUAL PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY in SHANGHAI Music Director ALAN GILBERT and Assistant Conductor JOSHUA GERSEN To Conduct Four Concerts, Including YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONCERT Hosted by Dashan YEFIM BRONFMAN To Perform Brahms Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in Asian Premiere of The Jungle VERY YOUNG COMPOSERS Workshop and Performance Philharmonic Musicians To Lead MASTER CLASSES, LESSONS, and COACHINGS as Part of Shanghai Orchestra Academy July 2–8, 2017 The New York Philharmonic travels to Shanghai for its third annual performance residency as part of the Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership, July 2–8, 2017. The residency will feature four performances at Shanghai Symphony Hall, including a Young People’s Concert in which select students from the Shanghai Orchestra Academy (SOA) will perform Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World, alongside the Orchestra; master classes, lessons, coachings, and a side-by-side Philharmonic rehearsal with SOA students of Dvořák’s New World Symphony and Brahms’s Symphony No. 3; and a Very Young Composers workshop and performance. The performances are presented as part of Shanghai’s Music in the Summer Air (MISA) festival. The Philharmonic’s Shanghai partnership is a cornerstone and founding component of the New York Philharmonic Global Academy. Starr International Foundation is the Presenting Sponsor of the Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership. Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World, and Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with Yefim Bronfman as soloist, on July 2, 2017, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 on July 3, 2017. He will also lead the Philharmonic and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in the Asian Premiere of Marsalis’s The Jungle (Symphony No. 4), commissioned and premiered by the Philharmonic in December 2016 as the first of The New York Commissions, part of the Philharmonic’s 175th anniversary season, July 7, 2017. The concert will also include Copland’s Quiet City, featuring Principal Trumpet Christopher Martin and English horn player Grace Shryock. (more) Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership / 2 Assistant Conductor Joshua Gersen will conduct a Young People’s Concert on July 4, 2017, at Shanghai Symphony Hall, hosted in Mandarin by media personality Dashan, featuring selections from Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World, as well as works by Very Young Composers of New York City and Shanghai inspired by Dvořák’s New World Symphony and its theme of home: Aye Ni Ilu (Life Is a Rhythm) by 12-year-old Isai Rabiu of New York — a second-generation immigrant of Nigerian, African American, and Native American descent — and Memories of Marnyi Stone by 14-year-old Feng Shuya of Shanghai. The New York Philharmonic will also present a Very Young Composers workshop led by Artistic Director, Very Young Composers, Jon Deak and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Teaching Artists, as well as musicians from the New York Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The workshop will culminate in a performance of the Very Young Composers’ works on July 8, 2017, at the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Hall. The Shanghai performances of Dvořák’s New World Symphony and the Very Young Composers works inspired by it are part of The New World Initiative, the Philharmonic’s season-long, citywide project revolving around Dvořák’s New World Symphony and its theme of home on the occasion of the Philharmonic’s 175th anniversary season. Through performances, community outreach, and education projects, The New World Initiative honors the Orchestra’s hometown and its role as an adopted home to many. Dvořák wrote the New World Symphony while he was living here in New York City, and the Philharmonic gave the World Premiere of the work in December 1893, marking the Orchestra’s first World Premiere of a work written in New York City that would become part of the standard repertoire. Before the Orchestra’s residency begins, New York Philharmonic Concertmaster Frank Huang, in conjunction with the concertmasters of Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, will lead the Shanghai Orchestra Academy String Festival. The festival will include a performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, led by Mr. Huang, and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, featuring Mr. Huang, members of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Orchestra Academy students, and other students from around China on June 28, 2017, at the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Hall. Also during the String Festival, Mr. Huang will lead master classes and co- present a lecture on the role of the concertmaster alongside Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Concertmasters Pei Li and Guillaume Molko. A joint endeavor of the New York Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra launched in September 2014, the Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership includes the establishment of the Shanghai Orchestra Academy (SOA) — a two-year program designed to address the need for advanced, post-graduate orchestral training in China — in partnership with the Shanghai Conservatory and under the leadership of founding president Long Yu, as well as annual performance residencies by the New York Philharmonic in Shanghai. The 2017 residency marks Alan Gilbert’s final appearances as Philharmonic Music Director in Shanghai. The Shanghai Orchestra Academy will hold its second-ever graduation ceremony this summer. (more) Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership / 3 Artists As Music Director of the New York Philharmonic since 2009, Alan Gilbert has introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, and Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today’s music; and the New York Philharmonic Global Academy, partnerships with cultural institutions to offer training of pre-professional musicians, often alongside performance residencies. The Financial Times called him “the imaginative maestro- impresario in residence.” Alan Gilbert concludes his final season as Music Director with four programs that reflect themes, works, and musicians that hold particular meaning for him, including Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony alongside Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Wagner’s complete Das Rheingold in concert, and an exploration of how music can effect positive change in the world. Other highlights include four World Premieres, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, and Manhattan, performed live to film. He also leads the Orchestra on the EUROPE / SPRING 2017 tour and in performance residencies in Shanghai and Santa Barbara. Past highlights include acclaimed stagings of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson (2015 Emmy nomination), and Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake starring Marion Cotillard; 28 World Premieres; a tribute to Boulez and Stucky during the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL; The Nielsen Project; the Verdi Requiem and Bach’s B-minor Mass; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey, performed live to film; Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; performing violin in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time; and ten tours around the world. Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and former principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, Alan Gilbert regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. This season he returns to the foremost European orchestras, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He will record Beethoven’s complete piano concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Inon Barnatan, and conduct Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, his first time leading a staged opera there. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award, and he conducted Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles on a recent album recorded live at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard School, where he holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. His honors include Honorary Doctor of Music degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music (2010) and Westminster Choir College (2016), Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award (2011), election to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2014), a Foreign Policy Association Medal for his commitment to cultural diplomacy (2015), Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2015), and New York University’s Lewis Rudin Award for Exemplary Service to New York City (2016). (more) Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership / 4 Joshua Gersen, music director of the New York Youth Symphony since September 2012, began his tenure as New York Philharmonic Assistant Conductor in September 2015. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, he studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller and was the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Conducting Fellow of the New World Symphony, where he served as assistant conductor to artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas and led subscription, education, and family concerts. Mr. Gersen made his conducting debut with the San Francisco Symphony in the fall of 2013; he has since led that orchestra numerous times, including filling in for Michael Tilson Thomas on part of a subscription series. Joshua Gersen was the principal conductor of the Ojai Music Festival in 2013; has conducted the Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Jacksonville symphony orchestras; and has served as a cover conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and many other orchestras throughout the United States. Winner of a Solti Foundation U.S.