FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 26, 2013 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected]

ALAN GILBERT AND THE

MUSIC DIRECTOR TO CONCLUDE FOURTH SEASON OF CONTACT! THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC’S NEW-MUSIC SERIES

Program To Feature Works by Contemporary Europe-Based Composers

U.S. PREMIERES OF Unsuk CHIN’s Gougalōn Poul RUDERS’s Oboe Concerto, Featuring Principal Oboe LIANG WANG Yann ROBIN’s Backdraft, a New York Philharmonic Co-Commission NEW YORK PREMIERE of Anders HILLBORG’s Vaporized Tivoli

WNYC’s John Schaefer To Host April 5; Alan Gilbert and The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse To Co-Host April 6

Concert To Be Webcast on Q2 Music, WQXR’s Online Contemporary Music Station, April 9 at 8:00 p.m. And Available for On-Demand Listening at wqxr.org/q2music for 30 Days

Friday, April 5, 2013, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Saturday, April 6, 2013, at Peter Norton Symphony Space

The fourth season of CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic’s new-music series, concludes with a program of contemporary works by Europe-based composers, led by Alan Gilbert with Principal Oboe Liang Wang as soloist. The program will include the U.S. Premieres of Berlin- based Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s Gougalōn, Danish composer Poul Ruders’s Oboe Concerto, and French composer Yann Robin’s Backdraft (a New York Philharmonic Co- Commission with the Fundação Casa da Musica, Portugal), along with the New York Premiere of Swedish composer Anders Hillborg’s Vaporized Tivoli. The concerts will take place Friday, April 5, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Saturday, April 6 at 8:00 p.m. at Peter Norton Symphony Space.

These performances mark Alan Gilbert’s first time conducting music by Unsuk Chin, Poul Ruders, and Yann Robin. “This is going to be a fun program to conduct,” Alan Gilbert said. “I’ve been looking forward to working with these composers for a long time.” (more)

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“Vaporized Tivoli is Anders Hillborg at his wildest,” said The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in- Residence Christopher Rouse, who is advising on CONTACT! “He’s a fascinating and wonderful Swedish composer, and I think this will be a very exciting experience.” Later this season, on April 26, 2013, soprano Renée Fleming will join Alan Gilbert and the Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall to perform the World Premiere of Anders Hillborg’s song cycle The Strand Settings, a New York Philharmonic Co-Commission with Carnegie Hall.

Unsuk Chin’s Gougalōn evokes her childhood memories of street entertainment in Seoul following the Korean War, “practically the only entertainment in an everyday life marked by poverty and repressive structures,” and Anders Hillborg’s Vaporized Tivoli begins by imagining children excitedly running around a carnival. The movement titles of Poul Ruders’s Oboe Concerto are inspired by the moon’s craters, and Yann Robin says that his Backdraft “follows in the continuity of pieces making metamorphic references to fire, that element often associated with volcanoes.”

WNYC’s John Schaefer, host of Soundcheck and New Sounds, will host the concert April 5, and Alan Gilbert and Christopher Rouse will co-host the concert April 6. Ms. Chin, Mr. Ruders, Mr. Hillborg, and Mr. Robin will be interviewed from the stage preceding each work.

Q2 Music, WQXR’s online new music station, will record the April 5 concert for an exclusive webcast on Tuesday, April 9 at 8:00 p.m., and will make it available for on-demand listening for 30 days following the webcast. To hear the webcast, select the Q2 Music tab on the Player at wqxr.org and click “Play.” To listen on-demand, go to wqxr.org/q2music

A reception with complimentary beer provided by Brooklyn Brewery will follow each concert, inviting concertgoers to mix and mingle with the musicians and composers. The reception at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 5 will take place at the café downstairs from the concert hall; a ticket to the concert includes admission to the museum on the day of the performance.

CONTACT! was introduced in the 2009–10 season — Alan Gilbert’s first as the Philharmonic’s Music Director — and is a showcase for emerging and established contemporary composers.

Related Events  National and International Radio Broadcast Selections from this concert will be broadcast at a future date* on The New York Philharmonic This Week, a radio concert series syndicated weekly to more than 300 stations nationally, and to 122 outlets internationally, by the WFMT Radio Network. The 52-week series, hosted by actor Alec Baldwin, is generously underwritten by The Kaplen Foundation, the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Philharmonic’s corporate partner, MetLife Foundation. The broadcast will be available on

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the Philharmonic’s Website, nyphil.org. The program is broadcast locally in the New York metropolitan area on 105.9 FM WQXR on Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. *Check local listings for broadcast and program information.

 Q2 Music Webcast and Streaming Q2 Music, WQXR’s online new music station, will record the April 5 concert for an exclusive webcast on Tuesday, April 9 at 8:00 p.m., and will make it available for on-demand listening for 30 days following the webcast. To hear the webcast, select the Q2 Music tab on the Player at wqxr.org and click “Play.” To listen on-demand, go to wqxr.org/q2music.

Artists Music Director Alan Gilbert began his tenure at the New York Philharmonic in September 2009, launching what New York magazine called “a fresh future for the Philharmonic.” The first native New Yorker in the post, he has introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, an annual multi-week festival, and CONTACT!, the new-music series, and he has sought to make the Orchestra a point of civic pride for the city and country.

In 2012–13, Alan Gilbert conducts world premieres; presides over a cycle of Brahms’s complete symphonies and concertos; continues The Nielsen Project, the multi-year initiative to perform and record Nielsen’s symphonies and concertos; and leads the EUROPE / SPRING 2013 tour. The season concludes with June Journey: Gilbert’s Playlist, four programs showcasing themes he has introduced, including the season finale: a theatrical reimagining of Stravinsky ballets with director/designer Doug Fitch and New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Sara Mearns. Last season’s highlights included tours of Europe and California, several world premieres, Mahler symphonies, and Philharmonic 360, the Philharmonic and Park Avenue Armory’s acclaimed spatial-music program featuring Stockhausen’s , about which said: “Those who think classical music needs some shaking up routinely challenge music directors at major orchestras to think outside the box. That is precisely what Alan Gilbert did.”

Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies and holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School. Conductor Laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, he regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award. His recordings have received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. 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.” (more)

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Liang Wang joined the New York Philharmonic in September 2006 as Principal Oboe, The Alice Tully Chair. Previously, he was principal oboe of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (2005–06) and principal oboe of the Santa Fe Opera (2004–05). Born in Qing Dao, , in 1980, he comes from a musical family: his mother was an amateur singer and his uncle was a professional oboist with whom Mr. Wang began oboe studies at the age of seven. In 1993 he enrolled at the Central Conservatory, studying with Professor Zhu Dun, and two years later became a full-scholarship student at the Idyllwild Arts Academy in California. Mr. Wang completed his bachelor’s degree in 2003 at The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Philadelphia Orchestra principal oboist Richard Woodhams. While at Curtis, he was a fellowship recipient at both the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with John de Lancie, the former principal oboist of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Music Academy of the West, where he was a Career Grant recipient. Mr. Wang was a prizewinner at the 2003 Fernard Gillet International Oboe Competition and the 2002 Tilden Prize Competition

After graduating from Curtis, Liang Wang served as principal oboe with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and associate principal oboe of the San Francisco Symphony; he was also a guest principal oboist with the Chicago and San Francisco symphony orchestras. An active chamber musician, he has appeared with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Angel Fire Music Festival. He has appeared as soloist with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra in Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto, and in Santa Fe, performing oboe concertos by Marcello and Vivaldi. He has given master classes at the Cincinnati Conservatory, was on the oboe faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and New York University.

Composers Unsuk Chin was born in 1961 in Seoul, South Korea, and has lived in Berlin since 1988. Her music has been conducted by Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Kent Nagano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, Peter Eötvös, Neeme Järvi, Markus Stenz, Myung-Whun Chung, George Benjamin, Susanna Mälkki, François-Xavier Roth, Leif Segerstam, and Ilan Volkov. Ms. Chin’s honors include the 2004 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for her Violin Concerto, the 2005 Prize, the 2010 Prince Pierre Foundation Music Award, and the 2012 Ho-Am Prize. She has been commissioned by leading performing organizations and her music has been presented in major festivals and concert series by the Berlin, London, and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras; BBC, Chicago, Philharmonia, Boston, and City of Birmingham symphony orchestras; and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, Kronos Quartet, and . Active in writing electronic music, Ms. Chin has received commissions from IRCAM and other electronic music studios. In 2007 Ms. Chin’s first opera, Alice in Wonderland, was given its world premiere at the Bavarian Staatsoper to open of the Munich Opera Festival, a performance that was released on DVD by Unitel Classica. Since 2006 Unsuk Chin has overseen the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra’s contemporary-music series, which she founded. Since 2011

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CONTACT! / 5 she has served as artistic director of the Music of Today series of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. Portrait CDs of her music have appeared on the Deutsche Grammophon, Kairos, and Analekta labels, and her works are published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes. These performances mark the first time the New York Philharmonic has performed her work.

About Gougalōn Gougalōn was commissioned by Siemens Arts Program and Ensemble Modern, and premiered in Berlin in 2009. Ensemble Intercontemporain commissioned an expanded version, which was first performed in January 2012 in Paris. According to Unsuk Chin, the title is a word in Old High German that means to hoodwink, make ridiculous movements, fool someone by means of feigned magic, or practice fortune-telling. Growing up in a suburb of Seoul, South Korea, in the 1960s, the composer often saw troupes of entertainers. In a note on the piece translated by Howard Weiner, Ms. Chin writes: “These amateur musicians and actors travelled from village to village in order to foist self-made medicines — which were ineffective at best — on the people. To lure the villagers, they put on a play with singing, dancing, and various stunts. This was all extremely amateurish and kitschy, yet it aroused incredible emotions among the spectators: this is hardly surprising, considering that it was practically the only entertainment in an everyday life marked by poverty and repressive structures.” These memories provided a loose framework for the composition, which is divided into six movements with titles such as Dramatic Opening of the Curtain and The Grinning Fortune Teller with the False Teeth. “This piece is about an ‘imaginary folk music’ that is stylized, broken within itself, and only apparently primitive,” Unsuk Chin writes.

Poul Ruders was born in Ringsted, Denmark, on March 27, 1949. His early studies in piano and organ eventually led to studies in orchestration with Danish composer Karl Aage Rasmussen. Mr. Ruders’s first compositions date from the mid-1960s. About Mr. Ruders, the English critic Stephen Johnson states: “He can be gloriously, explosively extrovert one minute — withdrawn, haunted, intently inward-looking the next. Super-abundant high spirits alternate with pained, almost expressionistic lyricism; simplicity and directness with astringent irony.” Poul Ruders has created a large body of music ranging from opera and orchestral works through chamber, vocal, and solo music. Following the success of his second opera, The Handmaid’s Tale (1996–98), produced in Copenhagen (2000), he received commissions from the Berlin and New York Philharmonic orchestras, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Danish Opera. Recent performances include productions of The Handmaid’s Tale in Toronto and London, the U.S. premiere of his opera Selma Jezková at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2011, and orchestral premieres and performances in Berlin, New York, and London. Poul Ruders’s opera Kafka’s Trial (with a libretto by Paul Bentley) was premiered in March 2005; commissioned by the Royal Danish Opera for the opening of Copenhagen’s new opera house, it explores Kafka’s unfinished masterpiece and dramatizes events from the writer’s life. The Philharmonic has

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CONTACT! / 6 performed Poul Ruders’s works four times: Corpus Cum Figuris, conducted by Oliver Knussen in 1986; Concerto in Pieces, performed by pianist Louis Lortier and conducted by Andrew Davis in 1996; Listening Earth, conducted by David Robertson in 2003; and Final Nightshade, conducted by in 2004.

About the Oboe Concerto Poul Ruders composed his Oboe Concerto in 1998 for Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen and Swedish oboe virtuoso Helén Jahren, to whom it is dedicated. It was commissioned by the Royal Library in Copenhagen for the inauguration of the Queen’s Hall, a new concert hall in the “Black Diamond,” the then-recently completed library annex. It has four movements, which Mr. Ruders has called four “small tone-poems” inspired by the names of four moon craters: Lake of Dreams, Ocean of Storms, Sea of Tranquility, and Lake of Death. “Four enigmatic and deeply fascinating ancient conceptions of the landscape on this our closest, but at the same time, most legendary and myth-shrouded celestial neighbor,” the composer writes. Unlike other concertos, the work “focuses more on the contemplative and sonorously introvert, rather than mere virtuosity.”

Anders Hillborg gained his first musical experience singing in choirs and was also involved in various forms of improvised music. From 1976 to 1982 he studied counterpoint, composition, and electronic music at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where his teachers included Gunnar Bucht, Lars-Erik Rosell, Arne Mellnäs, and Pär Lindgren. , who was a guest lecturer at the College of Music on several occasions, was also an important influence. Apart from occasional teaching positions, Mr. Hillborg has been a full-time composer since 1982. He composes orchestral, choral, and chamber music, as well as music for films and pop music. Anders Hillborg’s orchestral music has been performed by major conductors, including Alan Gilbert, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, David Zinman, Andrey Boreyko, Yannick Nézet-Seguin, Michael Gielen, Leif Segerstam, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Susanna Mälkki, Hannu Lintu, and John Storgårds. His works have been performed by the Los Angeles, Berlin, Oslo, Royal Stockholm, and Helsinki philharmonic orchestras, and the Chicago, San Francisco, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Bavarian Radio, BBC, Swedish Radio, and Gothenburg symphony orchestras.

Mr. Hillborg has received commissions from the Chicago, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Gothenburg, and Swedish Radio symphony orchestras, and the Los Angeles, Berlin, and Royal Stockholm philharmonic orchestras. The New York Philharmonic joined with Carnegie Hall to co- commission The Strand Settings, a new song cycle to be premiered with soprano Renée Fleming at that historic venue on April 26, 2013. He has worked with clarinetist Martin Fröst, mezzo- soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, and choir conductor Eric Ericson. Anders Hillborg received the Christ Johnson Prize in 1991 for Celestial Mechanics and in 1997 for his Violin Concerto, the selected at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in 1995. He has served as composer-in-residence at the Aspen Music Festival, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Anders Hillborg has received the Swedish Gramophone for Composer of the Year in 1996 and for Best Classical CD of the Year in 2012 for the album Eleven Gates.

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About Vaporised Tivoli Vaporised Tivoli was written in 2010 on commission from Ensemble Modern, which premiered the work in September of that year in Krakow, Poland. The conductor was Franck Ollu, to whom the piece is dedicated. “In Europe the word tivoli is used in the same way as amusement park, funfair, or Carnival is used in America,” Mr. Hillborg writes. “A main idea for the first part is the image of kids running around in a tivoli with the (for grownups) incredible speed and energy only kids can have, trying out all the marvelous attractions that the tivoli offers. ‘Here’s a rollercoaster, let’s try that! Now for a carousel, wow, and look here, a bunch of junk that we can bang on.’ After about six minutes this ecstatically joyful character suddenly changes. It’s as if a plug is pulled, and all the speed and energy is pouring out into a lush, strangely beautiful and much more ambiguous soundscape. Here a more sinister association to tivoli was lurking in the back of my mind. In my teens I read Ray Bradbury’s novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, a story combining elements of fantasy and horror about a nightmarish traveling tivoli that comes to town and preys on the people there. Finally, the music literary vaporizes, while accompanying an eerily sentimental melody line played by the double-bass.”

Yann Robin began his musical studies in Aix-en-Provence, in his native France. He later enrolled in the jazz class at the National Regional Conservatory in Marseilles and the composition class of Georges Boeuf. He was awarded first prize from the Paris National Conservatory in the composition class of Frédéric Durieux and in the analysis class of Michaël Levinas. He received a grant from the Meyer Foundation, and was awarded a first prize from the Beaux Arts Academy and the Salabert Foundation. In 2011 Sacem (the French counterpart to ASCAP) presented him with the Grand Prix de la Musique Symphonique. In 2005 Mr. Robin co- founded the Multilateral Ensemble and later became its artistic director. From 2006 to 2008 he pursued the two-year curriculum at IRCAM. During the same period he was guest composer with the National Orchestra of Lille. In 2009 and 2010, Mr. Robin was a fellow at the French Academy in Rome, the Villa Médicis, where he launched a contemporary music festival, the Controtempo Festival, which he still programs. In 2013 he will compose a large orchestral piece for the SWR Baden-Baden and Freiburg that will be presented at the Musica Festival in Strasbourg. In 2014 he will compose a newly commissioned piece for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. Yann Robin’s music is published by Editions Jobert.

About Backdraft “Sometimes gestures arise in one piece, only really develop and proliferate in a second, and end up fading away and disappearing in a final piece as the material wears itself out, becomes extinguished,” Yann Robin writes of his Backdraft, a New York Philharmonic Co-Commission with the Fundação Casa da Música, Portugal, “at least, when in the course of their progression, these gestures have not been metamorphosed and opened new paths for the imagination, leading to sound. Back (‘returning’ in English) – draft (‘rough sketch’), a piece calling for an ensemble of 17 instrumentalists, is based on this idea of returning, of a gesture that has already been sketched coming (back) to life through a new project, in a new context. Beyond this re- (more)

CONTACT! / 8 contextualisation of gesture and material, Backdraft follows in the continuity of pieces making metamorphic references to fire, that element often associated with volcanoes (Vulcan’s forge, in ancient mythology), to divine power, or even to hell, frequently represented as the kingdom of eternal flames. Backdraft is also the scientific translation of the ‘explosion of smoke’ that, in volcanology, designates a phenomenon of ignition that can occur due to an injection of external oxygen in a confined atmosphere saturated with unburned gases and graphite particles.”

* * * Credit Suisse is the Global Sponsor of the New York Philharmonic.

* * * CONTACT! is made possible with major support from The Francis Goelet Fund and The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. Unsuk Chin’s appearance with the New York Philharmonic is made possible through the Claudette Sorel Performance Endowment Fund. Additional support is provided by The Amphion Foundation, Inc. and The French American Fund for Contemporary Music. * * * Christopher Rouse is The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence.

* * * Programs of the New York Philharmonic are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. * * *

Tickets All tickets for CONTACT! are $20.

Student tickets for The Metropolitan Museum of Art performance are $10, with I.D. $1 tickets are available for children (ages 7–16) when accompanied by an adult with a full-price ticket. Call (212) 570-3949 or visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets. Tickets are also available at the Great Hall Box Office, which is open Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 4:30 p.m. Tickets include admission to the Museum on day of performance. For press tickets, contact Jennifer Wada (718) 855-7101 or e-mail her at [email protected].

Student tickets for the Peter Norton Symphony Space performance are available online for $10, not including fees, at nyphil.org/contact. Single tickets may be purchased online at nyphil.org/contact or symphonyspace.org/events or by calling (212) 875-5656, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday; 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday; and noon to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets may also be purchased at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office or at Peter Norton Symphony Space. To determine ticket availability, call the Philharmonic’s Customer Relations Department at (212) 875-5656. [Ticket prices subject to change.]

For press tickets, call Lanore Carr in the New York Philharmonic Marketing and Communications Department at (212) 875-5714, or e-mail her at [email protected]. (more)

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CONTACT!, THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC NEW-MUSIC SERIES

Friday, April 5, 2013, 7:00 p.m. Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 Fifth Avenue

Saturday, April 6, 2013, 8:00 p.m. Peter Jay Sharpe Theater Peter Norton Symphony Space 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street

Alan Gilbert, conductor Liang Wang, oboe

Unsuk CHIN Gougalōn (U.S. Premiere) Poul RUDERS Oboe Concerto (U.S. Premiere) Anders HILLBORG Vaporized Tivoli (New York Premiere) Yann ROBIN Backdraft (U.S. Premiere–New York Philharmonic Co- Commission with the Fundação Casa da Musica, Portugal)

Reception to follow both performances

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Tumblr — Your Backstage Pass

Photography is available in the New York Philharmonic’s online newsroom, nyphil.org/newsroom, or by contacting the Communications Department at (212) 875-5700; [email protected].