Turnage from All Sides
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Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited June 2007 2007/2 Turnage From All Sides Rouse Included in this issue: MacMillan the ballet to Washington and Pittsburgh in Requiem Interview about his new February and showcased it during its home opera, The Sacrifice Chicago season in April. The dance critic of the Chicago Tribune in LA noted how the new dancework was “arrestingly fast and busy… As music for Christopher Rouse’s dancing, its nervous explosions of Requiem, a true obstreperous energy, its crafty fusion of jazz magnum opus and the and classical impulses, serve the manic summation of his moods of Elo’s choreographic suite just fine.” creative work across two decades, was premiered on 25 “an impressive addition March at Disney Hall in to the repertory” Chicago Tribune Los Angeles by the LA Master Chorale with The dance impulse is transmuted back into pure baritone Sanford Photo: Christian Steiner Dean rhythmic exhilaration in the large, colourful Sylvan. The work was Violin concerto toured by orchestra. Turnage’s airy, edgy rhythms move commissioned for the Berlioz bicentenary by Frank Peter Zimmermann with the crisp elegance of Stravinsky combined Solo Deo Gloria, a Chicago-based with the sassy exuberance of jazz. That sound organisation dedicated to “preserving, has become Turnage’s musical fingerprint. His promoting and enhancing the classical scoring always feels light even when it enlists a hefty complement of brass and percussion… plus sacred music repertoire”. Completed in antiphonal trumpets and trombones stationed 2002, this full-evening work had to wait five throughout the auditorium. The audience is literally years for performers with the vision and surrounded by instruments – hence the title From resources to embrace its scale and technical All Sides.” Chicago Tribune demands. Photo: Hubbard Street Dance/Todd Rosenberg Turnage has recently completed Chicago Mark-Anthony Turnage’s first dance collaboration combines Remains, a 20-minute score commissioned “Rouse’s is the first Hubbard Street Dance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation. great traditional and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Bernard Haitink will conduct its first performance on 4 October with the Chicago American Requiem” The latest premiere resulting from Mark- enjoying a rising profile in North America Symphony Orchestra. Other new works Los Angeles Times Adams Anthony Turnage’s composer residency with over recent seasons, and this dancework include About Water, to be premiered at the Doctor Atomic Symphony the Chicago Symphony Orchestra took the provided further demonstration of Turnage’s South Bank Centre in London on 15 June, “Grant Gershon, the Master Chorale’s music premiered at BBC Proms form of a pioneering cross-platform wide-ranging versatility. written for jazz singer Barb Jungr, vocal director, became the first to rise to Rouse’s collaboration between the orchestra and the quartet, double bassist John Patitucci and challenge of raising the rafters. And that he did Hubbard Street Dance company. While The opening series of performances of From the London Sinfonietta conducted by Stefan with trumpets pealing to summon the dead or, Turnage’s music has long attracted All Sides took place in Symphony Center in Asbury. Turnage is working with Patitucci on when God is described in all His majestic glory, with percussion storming the land and the chorus choreographers to set existing works, From January, with the sextet of dancers from a further collaboration, A Prayer Out of Hubbard Street Dance performing Jorma describing the indescribable… under it all is a All Sides is the first score he has created Stillness, co-commissioned by the Scottish magnificent lyricism, which is the real Berlioz specifically for dance, though its orchestral Elo’s new choreography at the front of the Chamber Orchestra, Swedish Chamber influence. Small, seemingly unimportant melodic flair promises an equally active life in the orchestra and conductor Esa-Pekka Orchestra and the NYDD Festival in Estonia or rhythmic details swell into wildly unpredictable concert hall. The composer has been Salonen. The dance company then toured and due for premiere in October. castles of glory. “The soloist is the individual. The chorus, which sings the Mass text, is the masses… In the end, Rouse’s is a Requiem of wondrous mixed emotions… The Requiem ends where it begins, Chin Andrew Hill at B&H outside emotion, without conclusion or answers. Górecki We know nothing of death except its existence.” …songs are sung with the Los Angeles Times Kronos Quartet “Rouse tips his hat toward Berlioz by setting the Alice in Latin texts precisely as did Berlioz for his Requiem... But in a bow to modernity, and to Benjamin Britten, the composer interpolates Munich poems of grief from secular sources. His choices The Bayerische are excellent – from the quiet devastation of Staatsoper in Seamus Heaney’s Mid-Term Break to the Kipling- like trenchancy of Siegfried Sassoon’s Suicide in Munich unveils the Trenches to the straightforward emotion in Unsuk Chin’s new Ben Jonson’s On My First Sonne.” Musical America opera, Alice in Wonderland, on 30 “One of the major events of the season, the world June as the opening premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Requiem drew event of the Munich not only a full house, but a curious and warmly Opera Festival. The appreciative one… Emotionally, it comes off as a cry – a full-throated scream – of protest against premiere production death rather than a comfort… This is a Requiem by Achim Freyer is of crisis. Its shattering dissonances, pounding Photo: © Eric Richmond/Arena PAL conducted by Kent drums and pealing, wailing choirs shake the Nagano, with a cast including Sally Richter scale. Its calmer moments of molten Matthews in the title role, Piia Komsi, counterpoint, rhythmic whispering and death- Dietrich Henschel, Andrew Watts, and a rattle percussion add to the awe but offer little cameo appearance by Dame Gwyneth solace… Its trajectory is headlong, the energy of Jones as the Queen. Following three its invention unabated throughout.” OC Register performances in June and July, the opera Photo: © Jimmy Katz returns in the main Munich season in November. These Munich performances The April announcement that jazz master Blue Note sessions (1963-69), describing Hill received many honours from the jazz take place by permission of Los Angeles Andrew Hill had signed with Boosey & how he expanded the jazz genre through and wider arts community. In 2003 he was Opera, who commissioned the work during Hawkes was widely celebrated by jazz “enigmatic harmony, elasticised rhythm, and selected by an international committee to Kent Nagano’s time as its Music Director. commentators, who welcomed this further a multilayered arrangement of texture and receive the JAZZPAR Award, the largest validation of a long-revered pianist and pulse”. annual jazz award given to an active The libretto is by David Henry Hwang and composer. Hill’s death on 20 April turned performer. He was named Jazz Composer the composer after Lewis Carroll, and the thoughts from celebration to remembrance. Hill’s music defies easy categorisation. It is of the Year four times by the Jazz surreal dreamlike world, full of curious Berklee College of Music posthumously immediately tuneful yet strikingly complex: Journalists Association. His recent happenings and black humour, promises to granted Andrew Hill an honorary doctorate, angular melodies sprawl out over colourful recording Time Lines (Blue Note 2006) was finds a perfect partner in Chin’s music. A whose past recipients included Duke chord clusters while the rhythm section voted Best Jazz Album by Down Beat 15-minute suite from the opera for soprano Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Aretha Franklin. eludes time with impeccable nuance and magazine in 2006. and orchestra, entitled snagS & Snarls, has sophistication. He has shown particular Andrew Hill joins Chick Corea and David been performed in the USA, UK, Germany, Andrew Hill was born in Chicago in 1931 mastery of instrumentation, as heard in Benoit in the growing Boosey & Hawkes Sweden, Denmark and Spain to date. and moved to New York in 1961, since works such as the nonet Passing Ships jazz catalogue. Chin’s next project is a new work to be when his legendary music and recordings (1969) through to Sketches for string quartet premiered by the Orchestre symphonique have spanned over 40 years. The New York (1991), American Nikkei Symphony (1992) For further information visit de Montréal under Kent Nagano in Times hailed him as “one of the 1960s jazz and Obunto for solo piano and string quartet www.andrewhilljazz.com and March 2008. heroes” for his internationally renowned (1995). www.boosey.com/hill MacMillan Dean conce The Sacrifice (2005-06) MacMillan The Sacrifice Brett Dean’s virtuosic new violin concerto, The Lost Art of Opera in three acts Letter Writing, has already received performances from three orchestras, all featuring the work’s dedicatee, Frank Peter Zimmermann, as soloist. Co-commissioned by the Photo: © Eric Richmond/Arena PAL Cologne Philharmonie and the Royal Stockholm James MacMillan discusses Philharmonic, the concerto was premiered in March by the Libretto by Michael Symmons Roberts Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by the the genesis of his new opera Katie Mitchell Director composer, first as guests in Cologne and then in premiered by Welsh National James MacMillan Conductor Amsterdam. Over the following month the concerto was heard in Munich and Berlin, with the Munich Welsh National Opera Opera on 22 September. Philharmonic conducted by Jonathan Nott and 22/26 September / 6 October the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester under Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Manfred Honeck. How did you and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts The opera’s setting in a semi-derelict hotel reflects the 16 October This autumn brings the Swedish and US first discover the story for the opera? contrast between public and private events.