New York Philharmonic Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875 -5718; [email protected] League of Composers Contact: Friedrich Kern (347) 559-5376; [email protected] May 23–June 11, 2016 JUNE 1, 2016, AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’S MILLER THEATRE: ORCHESTRA OF THE LEAGUE OF COMPOSERS To Perform New York Premiere by Huck HODGE, U.S. Premiere by Felipe LARA, and Works by Charles WUORINEN and Paul MORAVEC The League of Composers/ISCM — the nation’s oldest organization devoted to contemporary music — joins the NY PHIL BIENNIAL to present the Orchestra of the League of Composers performing a New York Premiere by Huck Hodge (United States, b. 1977), a U.S. Premiere by Felipe Lara (Brazil, b. 1979), and works by Pulitzer Prize– winning composers Charles Wuorinen (United States, b. 1938) and Paul Moravec (United States, b. 1957). The program, taking place at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, will be conducted by Orchestra of the League of Composers music director Louis Karchin and composer Charles Wuorinen, who is leading his own work, and will feature pianist Anne-Marie McDermott as soloist. Rome Prize–winning composer Huck Hodge’s Alêtheia (2011), for large chamber ensemble, won the League of Composers/ISCM’s 2014 Composers’ Competition. The score is inscribed with the following quote from science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s 1978 speech How To Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later: “Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change. ... Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.” The title of Sempre Diritto! (1992) by Paul Moravec — who received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music — translates as “straight ahead!” which visitors to Italy often hear when asking for directions. In Sempre Diritto! Moravec offers a sort of musical itinerary through Venice, where destinations are rarely “straight ahead.” The composer notes: “The spiral winding themes suggest to me the natural contours of the streets, which contribute so much to the city’s incomparably enchanting effect.” Flying to Kahani (2005) for piano and chamber orchestra by Charles Wuorinen — who received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Music and a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” — refers to the undiscovered “second moon of Earth” in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which is also the basis of an opera by Wuorinen. Flying to Kahani, which the composer calls a “small piano concerto,” is partly derived from vocal elements in that opera. Because the work was premiered alongside a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, Wuorinen uses C natural as the central pitch of Flying to Kahani; the work’s last five pitches reverse the first five notes of the Mozart concerto. Wuorinen will conduct this performance of his work. Felipe Lara’s Fringes (2015) explores how large waves of sound travel through a performance space. Several performers from each of the orchestra’s units are placed on the “fringes” of the concert hall, and the composer controls the flow of timbres as they are passed throughout the venue and around the audience. This concert is presented by the League of Composers/ISCM. Related Events #biennialist The New York Philharmonic invites audience members to be a #biennialist. The five attendees who attend the most NY PHIL BIENNIAL events and post about it on social media will win a free pair of tickets to the final concert, featuring the New York Philharmonic conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, June 11 at 7:00 p.m at David Geffen Hall. Additional prizes and offerings for #biennialists will be offered; follow the New York Philharmonic on its social media channels (instagram.com/nyphilharmonic and twitter.com/nyphil) for more information. About the NY PHIL BIENNIAL A flagship project of the New York Philharmonic, the NY PHIL BIENNIAL is a wide- ranging exploration of today’s music that brings together an international roster of composers, performers, and curatorial voices for concerts presented both on the Lincoln Center campus and with partners in venues throughout the city. The second NY PHIL BIENNIAL, taking place May 23–June 11, 2016, will feature diverse programs — ranging from solo works to a chamber opera to large scale symphonies — by more than 100 composers, more than half of whom are American; present some of the country’s top music schools and youth choruses; and expand to more New York City neighborhoods. A range of events and activities will engender an ongoing dialogue among artists, composers, and audience members. Partners in the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL include National Sawdust; 92nd Street Y; Aspen Music Festival and School; Interlochen Center for the Arts; League of Composers/ISCM; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; LUCERNE FESTIVAL; MetLiveArts; New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival; Whitney Museum of American Art; WQXR’s Q2 Music; and Yale School of Music. For complete information about the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL, see press release. Artists Composer and conductor Louis Karchin, music director of the Orchestra of the League of Composers, has worked for more than three decades at the nexus of music composition and new-music performance. He has founded or co-founded major performing ensembles, including the Harvard Group for New Music (while a graduate student at Harvard), the Chamber Players of the League-ISCM, the Washington Square Ensemble, and in 2009, the Orchestra of the League of Composers. He has collaborated in performance with such artists as sopranos Lucy Shelton and Kate Lindsey, cellist Fred Sherry, violist Paul Neubauer, clarinetist Virgil Blackwell, and baritones Evan Hughes and Thomas Meglioranza. As a composer, Mr. Karchin has amassed a portfolio of more than 75 works, including orchestral, solo, and chamber works and two operas. Recent commissions have come from the Daedalus String Quartet and the Network for New Music of Philadelphia, and his latest works have been championed by Fort Worth Opera, Plurimo Ensemble of Venice, Italy, and soloists such as Steven Beck and Miranda Cuckson. In the fall of 2016, the Center for Contemporary Opera will present his full- length opera, Jane Eyre, in a staged production. Mr. Karchin is the recipient of three awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three National Endowment for the Arts awards, and Fromm, Koussevitzky, and Barlow commissions. Six CDs of his music are available on Naxos, Bridge, New World, and Albany labels, and his music is published by C.F. Peters and the American Composers Alliance. Louis Karchin is professor of music at New York University. Charles Wuorinen’s many honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Wuorinen has written more than 260 compositions to date, encompassing every form and medium, including works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloists, ballet, and stage. His most recent works include an opera on Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, premiered at the Teatro Real in Madrid in January 2014, with subsequent new productions in Aachen and Salzburg. Other recent works include Time Regained, for Peter Serkin, James Levine, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; Eighth Symphony for the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Fourth Piano Sonata for Anne- Marie McDermott; and Metagong for two pianos and two percussionists for the New York New Music Ensemble. Both as composer and performer (conductor and pianist), Mr. Wuorinen has worked with some of the finest performers of the time and his works reflect the virtuosity of his collaborators. His works have been recorded on almost a dozen labels, including several releases on Naxos and Albany Records (Charles Wuorinen Series), and two releases on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Charles Wuorinen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For more than 25 years Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She also serves as artistic director of the Bravo! Vail and Ocean Reef music festivals, as well as curator for chamber music for the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego. In the 2015–16 season she premiered a concerto written for her by Poul Ruders. Charles Wuorinen’s most recent solo piano sonata, which she has recorded, was written for her and premiered at New York’s Town Hall. In 2013 she released a disc of Mozart concertos with the Calder Quartet. Most recently she recorded five Haydn piano sonatas and two Haydn concertos with the Odense Philharmonic in Denmark, including two cadenzas written by Wuorinen. In the summer of 2014, Ms. McDermott performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 with The Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Donald Runnicles, J.S. Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D minor with members of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the New York City–based Le Train Bleu. In the 2014– 15 season she returned to the Vancouver and Dallas Symphony Orchestras, and in 2012 she performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Bramwell Tovey. Ms. McDermott has also performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Australian Chamber Orchestra, among others. She is a longtime member of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with which she performs and tours extensively each season. Anne-Marie McDermott also enjoys touring as a member of OPUS ONE. Since 2009, the Orchestra of the League of Composers has presented concerts of the newest music of our time under the auspices of its parent organization, the League-ISCM. Founded in 2009 by then-ISCM president David Gordon, flutist Sue Ann Kahn, and composer and conductor Louis Karchin, the orchestra made its debut at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre performing works by Elliott Carter, Christopher Dietz, Julia Wolfe, Charles Wuorinen, and Alvin Singleton.