FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE UPDATED March 15, 2016 February 26, 2016 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected] NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONCERTS Once Upon a Time: “Babble and Verse” Saturday, March 19, 2016 Assistant Conductor Courtney Lewis To Conduct Philharmonic Vice President, Education, Theodore Wiprud To Host The 93rd season of the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts (YPCs) will continue on Saturday, March 19, 2016, at 2:00 p.m. with “Babble and Verse,” the third program in this season’s series, Once Upon a Time, which explores music inspired by stories, poems, and legends. The concert will feature selections from The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Esa- Pekka Salonen’s Karawane, Orff’s Carmina burana, and Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, as well as Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise. Philharmonic Assistant Conductor Courtney Lewis will lead the performance; Vice President, Education, Theodore Wiprud will host the event, which will be directed and scripted by Tom Dulack and feature actor Jessica Cummings. Attendees are invited to come early to take part in YPC Overtures, at which children meet Philharmonic musicians and try out orchestral instruments on the Grand Promenade and upper tiers of David Geffen Hall, starting at 12:45 p.m. Pre-concert activities inside the hall include live performances by ensembles of Philharmonic musicians of works by Very Young Composers inspired by the YPC’s thematic content. Artists Courtney Lewis began his tenure as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic in September 2014. The 2015–16 season marks Mr. Lewis’s first as music director of the Jacksonville Symphony. His previous posts include associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, where he made his subscription debut in the 2011–12 season, and Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he made his debut in the fall of 2011. From 2008 to 2014 Mr. Lewis was the music director of Boston’s Discovery Ensemble, a chamber orchestra dedicated both to giving concerts of contemporary and established repertoire at the highest level of musical and technical excellence, and to bringing live music into the least privileged parts of Boston through workshops in local schools. He made his major American orchestral debut in November 2008 with the St. Louis Symphony, and has since appeared with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, (more) Young People’s Concerts / 2 Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, and Ulster Orchestra, among others. In the 2015–16 season he makes his subscription debuts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, and Colorado Symphony; returns to the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland; and assists Thomas Adès at the Salzburg Festival for the World Premiere of Adès’s opera The Exterminating Angel. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Courtney Lewis graduated from the University of Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and clarinet with Dame Thea King. After completing a master’s degree with a focus on the late music of Ligeti, he attended the Royal Northern College of Music, where his teachers included Mark Elder and Clark Rundell. Courtney Lewis made his New York Philharmonic debut leading a Young People’s Concert in November 2014; most recently, in December 2015, he led Oh, What Fun! A Philharmonic Holiday, featuring The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence Eric Owens and the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus. Founded in 1979 by Joseph Flummerfelt, the New York Choral Artists has been a regular part of the New York Philharmonic season. Their many collaborations have included a memorial performance of Brahms’s A German Requiem conducted by Kurt Masur immediately following 9/11 and, in more recent years, Britten’s War Requiem and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Lorin Maazel and, with Alan Gilbert, J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Ligeti’s Le Grande Macabre, and the Verdi Requiem. Noteworthy among its recordings with the Philharmonic are Mahler Symphony No. 3 conducted by Leonard Bernstein (nominated for a Grammy award), Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 with Masur, and John Adams’s Grammy-winning On the Transmigration of Souls with Maazel. In 2014 the New York Choral Artists also appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony in Carnegie Hall. Jacqueline Pierce is the group’s manager. After this season, Joseph Flummerfelt is retiring after 44 seasons of preparing choral works for the New York Philharmonic. These numerous collaborations included the Westminster Symphonic Choir, which he directed from 1971 to 2004, and the New York Choral Artists, which he founded in 1979. From 1977 to 2013 he also served as an artistic director of the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. His choirs have performed with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink, Colin Davis, Alan Gilbert, Carlo Maria Giulini, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Robert Shaw, and William Steinberg, and have been featured on 45 recordings, including Grammy Award–winning performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Bernstein, Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, and Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, for which he received a Grammy. Named Musical America’s Conductor of the Year in 2004, he has also received two Grammy nominations, and his Delos recording of Brahms’s choral works with the Westminster Choir, Singing for Pleasure, was chosen by The New York Times as a favorite among Brahms recordings. His honors include Le Prix du Président de la République from L’Académie du Disque Français and five honorary doctoral degrees. He is sought out as a guest conductor and master teacher of choral conducting in New York and throughout the United States. Theodore Wiprud — New York Philharmonic Vice President, Education, The Sue B. Mercy Chair — has directed the Orchestra’s Education Department since 2004. The Philharmonic’s (more) Young People’s Concerts / 3 education programs include the famed Young People’s Concerts (which Mr. Wiprud hosts), Philharmonic Schools (an immersive classroom program that reaches thousands of New York City students), Very Young Composers (which enables students to express themselves through original works, often performed by Philharmonic musicians), adult education programs, and many special projects. Mr. Wiprud has also created innovative programs as director of education and community engagement at the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the American Composers Orchestra; served as associate director of The Commission Project; and assisted the Orchestra of St. Luke’s on its education programs. He has worked as a teaching artist and resident composer in a number of New York City schools. From 1990 to 1997 he directed national grant-making programs at Meet the Composer. Prior to that position, he taught at and directed the music department for Walnut Hill School, a pre-professional arts boarding school near Boston. Mr. Wiprud is also an active composer, whose Violin Concerto (Katrina) was released on Champs Hill Records. His music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and voice is published by Allemar Music. Theodore Wiprud holds degrees from Harvard and Boston Universities and studied at Cambridge University as a visiting scholar. Tom Dulack is an award-winning playwright, novelist, and director whose new play, The Road to Damascus, opened Off-Broadway in January 2015. His play Incommunicado won a Kennedy Center Prize for New American Drama, and Friends Like These won the Kaufman and Hart Prize for New American Comedy. Among his other plays, which have appeared on and Off-Broadway as well as in leading regional theaters around the country, are Breaking Legs, Diminished Capacity, Francis, York Beach, Just Deserts, Solomon’s Child, 1348, Shooting Craps, The Elephant, and Mrs. Rossetti. His novels include The Stigmata of Dr. Constantine and The Misanthropes. He is also the author of the theater memoir In Love with Shakespeare. Mr. Dulack has written and directed the scripts for the YPCs since 2005. He is also professor of English Literature at the University of Connecticut. * * * Esa-Pekka Salonen is The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence. * * * Support for Young People’s Concerts is provided by The Theodore H. Barth Foundation. * * * Programs are supported, in part, by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Tickets Individual tickets for the Young People’s Concerts are $13 to $40. All tickets include admission to YPC Overtures. Tickets may be purchased online at nyphil.org 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. Saturday; and noon to 5:00 p.m. Sunday. Tickets may also be purchased at the David Geffen Hall Box Office. The Box Office opens at 10:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and at noon on Sunday. On (more) Young People’s Concerts / 4 performance evenings, the Box Office closes one-half hour after performance time; other evenings it closes at 6:00 p.m. 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 at the New York Philharmonic at (212) 875-5714, or email her at [email protected]. (more) Young People’s Concert / 5 New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts® David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center Once Upon a Time: “Babble and Verse” Saturday, March 19, 2016, 2:00 p.m.