JOANA CARNEIRO AND BERKELEY SYMPHONY PRESENT A WORLD PREMIERE BY DYLAN MATTINGLY SHAI WOSNER FEATURES AS SOLOIST IN LIGETI’S PIANO CONCERTO DECEMBER 6 Berkeley, CA – November 7, 2012 – Music Director Joana Carneiro and Berkeley Symphony continue their 2012-13 Season on Thursday, December 6 at 8 PM in Zellerbach Hall with the world premiere of Invisible Skyline by Berkeley native Dylan Mattingly. Berkeley Symphony also welcomes acclaimed pianist Shai Wosner. Praised by NPR’s All Things Considered for his “keen musical mind and deep musical soul,” Wosner will perform as soloist in Ligeti’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. Robert Schumann’s Symphony No.2 in C Major, Op.61 also features on the program. Berkeley Symphony dedicates the concert to the memory of Alan Farley, who hosted the KALW broadcast of the orchestra’s Zellerbach Hall performances until his passing in October. Dylan Mattingly’s music has been performed around the world by such performers as Berkeley Symphony, the Del Sol String Quartet, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Soovin Kim, Sarah Cahill, Mary Rowell and Geoffrey Burleson. A multi-talented performer and improviser on cello, bass, piano, guitar and percussion, Mattingly is influenced by the music by Thomas Ades, John Adams, Olivier Messiaen, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and the old American blues and folk field recordings of the Lomaxes. For two years he was the co-director of Formerly Known as Classical, a Bay Area new music ensemble whose young members only play music written in their lifetimes, and is now the co-artistic director and co-founder of Contemporaneous, a New York-based ensemble of young musicians dedicated to performing the most exciting music of the present moment. Contemporaneous has just released an album on INNOVA Records entitled “Stream of Stars―Music of Dylan Mattingly.” Mattingly is a graduate of Berkeley Symphony’s Under Construction Composers Program which offers the opportunity for emerging composers to further develop their skills and gain practical experience in writing for a professional orchestra. In demand as a soloist, chamber musician and recording artist, Israeli pianist Shai Wosner has attracted international recognition for his exceptional artistry, musical integrity and creative insight. The New York Times wrote of his Onyx debut recording of works by Brahms and Schoenberg as “inventively conceived and impressive.” A versatile performer of all musical genres, Shai Wosner will demonstrate his contemporary artistry with Ligeti’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. Throughout Ligeti’s life, he continually sought out new musical styles and remained open to fresh influence. It was perhaps his endurance of two totalitarian regimes―Nazi and Stalinist―that provoked his rejection of compositional systems and sparked exploration of ideas such as African polyphony and mathematically inspired principles of fractals and chaos theory. The same influences informed his Piano Concerto. Conducted by Felix Mendelssohn in Leipzig, the premiere of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C Major in 1846 received a lukewarm reception from the audience. But after the composer made numerous edits creating a much sleeker version, it soon became the most highly esteemed of his symphonies. Despite suffering from mental illness throughout most of his adult life, Schumann overcame these afflictions through 1942 University Avenue, Suite 207, Berkeley 94704 | TEL (510) 841-2800 | FAX (510) 841-5422 | www.berkeleysymphony.org his dedication and application to music. He studied Bach counterpoint with his wife Clara, each writing a series of fugues including a set on the name B-A-C-H. The exercise was to leave its mark on the C Major Symphony. CALENDAR EDITORS, PLEASE NOTE: Zellerbach Hall Concert Series Concert II: The Rebels Thursday, December 6, 2012, 8 PM, Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley Joana Carneiro, conductor Shai Wosner, piano Dylan Mattingly: Invisible Skyline (World Premiere Commission) Ligeti: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra Schumann: Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61 Single tickets for the concert are $15-$68. For more information or to purchase tickets, call (510) 841-2800 x1 or visit www.berkeleysymphony.org MORE ABOUT DYLAN MATTINGLY Dylan Mattingly currently studies composition at the Bard College Conservatory of Music with George Tsontakis, Joan Tower, John Halle, and Kyle Gann, and is mentored by John Adams in Berkeley. Mattingly not only draws not only from his artistic surroundings but from the landscapes themselves. Deeply influenced by literature, Mattingly is also a Classics major at Bard College, and his music is informed by the poems of Homer and the complex metrical schemes of choral tragedy. Mattingly was a finalist in Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's “Project 440,” a crowdsourcing commissioning project sponsored by WQXR. Mattingly’s recent work “I Was a Stranger,” commissioned by John Adams and Deborah O’Grady for the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, received its world premiere on August 11, 2012 at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. Upcoming premieres include a new work for the Del Sol String Quartet entitled “Gone, Gone, Gone” to be premiered on December 7th, 2012, as well as a setting of the choruses of Euripides’ The Bakkhae, in which he utilizes the original Ancient Greek meter and tuning systems for a large production of the play in spring 2013. In addition to composing, Mattingly is also an avid painter, poet, and pitcher for Bard College’s first ever baseball team. MORE ABOUT SHAI WOSNER Shai Wosner recently made his highly acclaimed debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was invited to return later that year to perform with the orchestra at Ravinia. He has appeared with various renowned orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Cleveland Symphony, under conductors Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta and Leonard Slatkin. A former member of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two, Wosner has collaborated with numerous esteemed chamber artists such as Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, Ralph Kirschbaum, Christian Tetzlaff and Cho-Liang Lin. He also performs regularly at various chamber music festivals, including Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival. Wosner recently completed a residency as a BBC New Generation Artist in the U.K. during which he played frequently with the BBC orchestras, including appearances conducting Mozart concertos from the keyboard with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He also returned to the BBC Scottish Symphony in both subscription concerts and performances at the Proms with Donald Runnicles. ABOUT JOANA CARNEIRO As Music Director, Joana Carneiro has captivated the public with her commanding stage presence and adventurous programming, which has highlighted the works of several prominent contemporary composers, including John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Gabriela Lena Frank. Maestra Carneiro’s commitment to expanding the community base of Berkeley Symphony and upholding the orchestra’s artistic excellence was recognized by the League of American Orchestras, which honored her with the Helen M. Thompson Award in 2010. She was appointed Music Director of Berkeley Symphony in January 2009, succeeding Kent Nagano as only the third Music Director in the 40-year history of the orchestra. Noted for her vibrant performances in a wide diversity of musical styles, Joana Carneiro is considered one of the most exciting and outstanding young conductors today. Prior to her Berkeley Symphony appointment, she served as Assistant Conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 2005 to 2008, where she worked closely with Esa-Pekka Salonen and led performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. Together with her leadership in Berkeley, she is the official guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in her native Lisbon and an active guest conductor worldwide. Increasingly in demand as an opera conductor, Carneiro made her Cincinnati Opera debut in June 2011, conducting John Adams’s A Flowering Tree, which she also recently debuted with Chicago Opera Theater and Cité de la Musique in Paris. In January 2010, Carneiro led performances of Peter Sellars’s stagings of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms at the Sydney Festival. In 2008-2009, she worked again with Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Paris Opera’s premiere of Adriana Mater by Kaija Saariaho, where she served as Assistant Conductor, and led critically acclaimed performances of Philippe Boesmans’s Julie in Bolzano, Italy. ABOUT BERKELEY SYMPHONY Founded in 1969 as the Berkeley Promenade Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony has established a reputation for presenting major new works for orchestra alongside fresh interpretations of the classic European repertoire. Berkeley Symphony has been recognized in eight of the past ten seasons with an Award for Adventurous Programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). In addition to its subscription concerts and Under Construction New Music Series, Berkeley Symphony regularly partners with Cal Performances, the performing arts presenter and producer of the University of California, Berkeley, to provide music for visiting artists. Berkeley Symphony’s award-winning yearlong Music in the Schools program reaches every public elementary school student in Berkeley. San Francisco public radio station KALW 91.7 FM is Berkeley Symphony’s broadcast partner, airi ng all Berkeley Symphony subscription concerts. PHOTO CREDITS Dylan Mattingly / Dávid Adam Nagy Shai Wosner / Marco Borggreve PRESS CONTACT Karen Ames and Brenden Guy, Karen Ames Communications (415) 641 7474 • [email protected]; [email protected] Jenny Lee, Director of Communications, Berkeley Symphony (510) 841-2800 x304 • [email protected] .