FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 29, 2014 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 2014–15 SEASON FIVE PROGRAMS FEATURING WORLD, U.S., AND NEW YORK PREMIERES Concerts Focusing on Music from ISRAEL, ITALY, NORDIC Countries, and JAPAN PROGRAM CURATED AND HOSTED BY JOHN ADAMS The Mary and James G. Wallach ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE LISA BATIASHVILI To Be Featured Three Concerts at SUBCULTURE, Co-Presented with 92nd Street Y Two Concerts at THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART CONTACT! on the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 Tour Entering its sixth season in 2014–15, CONTACT!, the Philharmonic’s new-music series, will include five programs featuring World, U.S., and New York Premieres, four of which explore the new-music scene from four different countries, and a fifth curated and hosted by composer John Adams. CONTACT! will return for three programs at SubCulture, co-presented with 92nd Street Y: a program featuring works by five composers selected by John Adams, who also hosts; a concert of works by Israeli composers, featuring The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in- Residence Lisa Batiashvili alongside Philharmonic musicians; and a performance of works by Italian composers. Two CONTACT! programs will take place at The Metropolitan Museum of Art with Met Museum Presents: a concert of works by Nordic composers conducted in part by Music Director Alan Gilbert; and a program featuring works from Japan, conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky. The Philharmonic will also perform highlights from the 2014–15 season of CONTACT! during its second International Associate Residency at London’s Barbican Centre as part of the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. Further details to be announced at a later date. CONTACT!, established by Music Director Alan Gilbert in the 2009–10 season, highlights the works of both emerging and established contemporary composers, performed by smaller ensembles of Philharmonic musicians in intimate venues outside the Lincoln Center campus. Since its inception, CONTACT! has presented 20 World Premieres (as of the end of the 2013–14 season), including Matthias Pintscher’s songs from Solomon’s garden (2010), Sean Shepherd’s These Particular Circumstances (2010), and Carter’s Three Controversies and a Conversation (2012). (more) 2014–15 Season of CONTACT! / 2 Alan Gilbert said: “The work that composers do is the most important contribution to music at any given time. I have enormous admiration for composers, and I feel incredible gratitude that they are willing to struggle through the difficult process that is musical creation. One of the ways the Philharmonic can be a resource and an important catalyst for musical composition is to continue our very active commissioning program. I think it’s one of the greatest things we can do for music.” Christopher Rouse, who in 2014–15 will be completing his three-year term as The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, advises the Philharmonic on the CONTACT! series. One of America’s most prominent composers of orchestral music, Mr. Rouse won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Trombone Concerto, commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic. Christopher Rouse said: “I’m very pleased that CONTACT! will be taking a geographical bent next season with overviews of contemporary music in Scandinavia, Italy, Japan, and Israel. There are wonderful composers at work from all of these countries, and I hope that our CONTACT! programming will prove exciting to our listeners. In addition to this, John Adams will curate a CONTACT! program of music about which he is especially enthusiastic. All in all there will be a wealth of splendid new music for our audiences to encounter and enjoy.” CONTACT! HOSTED BY JOHN ADAMS Works by Daníel BJARNASON, Ingram MARHSALL, Missy MAZZOLI, and Timo ANDRES November 17, 2014, at SUBCULTURE, Co-Presented with 92nd Street Y The 2014–15 CONTACT! season opens with CONTACT! Hosted by John Adams, featuring five chamber works he has selected: Daníel Bjarnason’s Bow to String (2009; rev. 2012) and Five Possibilities for clarinet, cello, and piano (2014); Ingram Marshall’s Muddy Waters (2004); Missy Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart (2010); and the New York Premiere of Timo Andres’s Early to Rise (2013). This program, November 17, 2014, at SubCulture, is a co-presentation by the New York Philharmonic and 92nd Street Y. The first movement of Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason’s Bow to String refers to an art installation by the Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson in which a small orchestra accompanies a performer repeatedly singing the lyrics “Sorrow conquers happiness.” Originally composed in 2009 for multi-layered cello, specifically for cellist Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, this version of Bow to String is composed for solo cello, clarinet, horn, two pianos, string quartet, and double bass. Mr. Bjarnason writes that Five Possibilities, written for and premiered by Trio Ariadne in April 2014, is “in five short movements that each follows its own logic, creating fleeting images or glimpses of larger worlds.” He has composed works commissioned, premiered, or performed by ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Ulster Orchestra, and So Percussion, and they have been conducted (more) 2014–15 Season of CONTACT! / 3 by Gustavo Dudamel, James Conlon, and John Adams, among others. Daníel Bjarnason’s string arrangements can be heard on the 2013 Sigur Rós album Kveikur, and he contributed the score to the 2012 feature film The Deep. American composer Ingram Marshall based Muddy Waters (for an amplified chamber ensemble comprising marimba, piano, electric guitar, bass clarinet, cello, and contrabass), commissioned by Bang on a Can All-Stars, on a tune from the Bay Psalmbook of 1692, the first printed music in North America, titled Lichfield, itself based on Psalm 69: “The waters in unto my soul are come, oh God me save, I am in muddy deep sunk down where I no standing have.” Mr. Marshall writes: “In the course of the piece the psalm tune goes through various transformations.… The affect shifts, chiaroscuro like, from darkness and gloom to exuberance and sanguinity.” He notes that the conclusion shifts “away from the psalm tune to a reference to Muddy Waters (the blues singer), who has the last word.” Ingram Marshall’s influences have included Indonesian and electronic music. Since 1985 his primary focus has been on works for ensembles, both with and without electronics. He has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Magnum Opus, and Orpheus. American composer Missy Mazzoli composed Dissolve, O My Heart, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, for violinist Jennifer Koh’s Bach & Beyond project, which combines Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas with newly commissioned works. Ms. Koh requested a piece based on Bach’s Partita in D minor. Ms. Mazzoli explains: “Dissolve, O My Heart begins with the first chord of Bach’s Chaconne, a now-iconic D minor chord, and spins out from there into an off- kilter series of chords that doubles back on itself, collapses, and ultimately dissolves in a torrent of fast passages.” Melding indie-rock sensibilities with formal training from Louis Andriessen, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayers, and others, Missy Mazzoli’s music has been performed by, among others, the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, American Composers Orchestra, New York City Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, NOW Ensemble, and cellist Maya Beiser. American composer Timo Andres writes that the ten-minute, four-movement string quartet Early to Rise is “the most recent in a series of Schumann-inspired pieces I’ve written; this time, the seed is a five-note accompanimental figure from his late piano cycle Gesänge der Frühe (Morning Songs). At first, Early to Rise uses this figure in a canon, gently cycling through harmonies while its rhythms rub against each other in expanding and contracting patterns.… In the final section, momentum builds in the opposite direction with a simple downward-drifting chorale, picking up speed until it reaches a frenetic conclusion.” Timo Andres’s recent commissions have come from the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; a consortium including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, and San Francisco Performances; and the Library of Congress, among others. Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Mr. Andres’s 2010 album Shy and Mighty “achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene.” The Philharmonic has enjoyed an ongoing relationship with John Adams since 1983, when it performed the New York Premiere of his Grand Pianola Music. The Orchestra has since given the World Premieres of Easter Eve 1945 (2004, conducted by Mr. Adams) and On the (more) 2014–15 Season of CONTACT! / 4 Transmigration of Souls (2002), co-commissioned by the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series in memory of the victims of 9/11. The latter won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and its recording on Nonesuch — featuring the Philharmonic led by Lorin Maazel with the New York Choral Artists and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus — received the 2005 Grammy Awards for Best Classical Album, Best Orchestral Performance, and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Mr. Adams’s China Gates will be performed by pianist Marino Formenti, June 4, 2014, during the Philharmonic’s inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL. During the 2014–15 season (March 26–28, 2015), Alan Gilbert will conduct the Philharmonic and violinist Leila Josefowicz in the World Premiere of John Adams’s Scheherazade.2 — Symphony for violin and orchestra, a New York Philharmonic Co-Commission with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam; the Royal Concertgebouw; and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, David Robertson, chief conductor and artistic director. NEW MUSIC FROM ISRAEL Featuring Violinist LISA BATIASHVILI, The Mary and James G.