FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE UPDATED May 28, 2015 February 17, 2015 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected] NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC TO RETURN TO BRAVO! VAIL FOR 13th-ANNUAL SUMMER RESIDENCY, JULY 24–31, 2015 Music Director Alan Gilbert To Lead Three Programs Bramwell Tovey and Joshua Weilerstein Also To Conduct Soloists To Include Violinist Midori, Cellist Alisa Weilerstein, Pianists Jon Kimura Parker and Anne-Marie McDermott, Acting Concertmaster Sheryl Staples, Principal Viola Cynthia Phelps, Soprano Julia Bullock, and Tenor Ben Bliss New York Philharmonic Musicians To Perform Chamber Concert The New York Philharmonic will return to Bravo! Vail in Colorado for the Orchestra’s 13th- annual summer residency there, featuring six concerts July 24–31, 2015, as well as a chamber music concert performed by Philharmonic musicians. Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct three programs, July 29–31, including an all-American program and works by Mendelssohn, Mahler, Mozart, and Shostakovich. The other Philharmonic concerts, conducted by Bramwell Tovey (July 24 and 26) and former New York Philharmonic Assistant Conductor Joshua Weilerstein (July 25), will feature works by Grieg, Elgar, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Richard Strauss, among others. The soloists appearing during the Orchestra’s residency are pianists Jon Kimura Parker and Anne-Marie McDermott, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, violinist Midori, soprano Julia Bullock and tenor Ben Bliss, and Acting Concertmaster Sheryl Staples and Principal Viola Cynthia Phelps. The New York Philharmonic has performed at Bravo! Vail each summer since 2003. Alan Gilbert will lead the concert on Wednesday, July 29, featuring Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, with Midori as soloist, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. On Thursday, July 30, he will lead an all-American program: Barber’s The School for Scandal Overture; Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite; Leroy Anderson’s Fiddle-Faddle; Rodgers’s The Carousel Waltz; Bernstein’s West Side Story Concert Suite No. 1, performed by soprano Julia Bullock and tenor Ben Bliss; Gershwin’s Lullaby; and Sousa’s The Washington Post. Alan Gilbert will also conduct the program on Friday, July 31, featuring Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for Violin and Viola, with Acting Concertmaster Sheryl Staples and Principal Viola Cynthia Phelps as soloists, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. (more) Bravo! Vail / 2 Bramwell Tovey will return for his 12th summer with the New York Philharmonic at Vail to conduct two programs. The first, which opens the residency on Friday, July 24, will feature Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture; Grieg’s Piano Concerto, with Jon Kimura Parker; and Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Enigma. He will also conduct the concert on Sunday, July 26, featuring Berlioz’s Le Corsaire Overture; Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with Anne-Marie McDermott as soloist; J. Strauss II’s Emperor Waltz; and R. Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite. Former Philharmonic Assistant Conductor Joshua Weilerstein returns to the Orchestra to conduct a concert featuring his sister, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, on Saturday, July 25. The program features Verdi’s La forza del destino Overture; Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra, with Ms. Weilerstein as soloist; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Pathétique. In addition, on Tuesday, July 28, Philharmonic violinist Kerry McDermott, Associate Principal Viola Rebecca Young, Associate Principal Cello Eileen Moon, Principal Clarinet Anthony McGill, and Principal Horn Philip Myers will join pianist Anne-Marie McDermott in a program comprising Beethoven’s Sonata for Horn and Piano, Op. 17; Bartók’s Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano; and, in its first Bravo! Vail performance, Dohnányi’s Sextet for Piano, Strings, and Winds, Op. 37, as part of Bravo! Vail’s chamber music series. Bravo! Vail was founded by John Giovando and violinist Ida Kavafian; pianist Anne-Marie McDermott became artistic director in 2011, and John Giovando is currently serving as interim executive director of the festival. All New York Philharmonic concerts will be performed in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater and will start at 6:00 p.m.; the chamber concert featuring Musicians from the New York Philharmonic will be held at the Donovan Pavilion and will also start at 6:00 p.m. About the Artists Music Director Alan Gilbert began his New York Philharmonic tenure in September 2009, the first native New Yorker in the post. He and the Philharmonic have introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in- Residence, and the Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; and the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today’s music by a wide range of contemporary and modern composers inaugurated in spring 2014. As New York magazine wrote, “The Philharmonic and its music director Alan Gilbert have turned themselves into a force of permanent revolution.” In the 2014–15 season Alan Gilbert conducts the U.S. Premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Clarinet Concerto, a Philharmonic co-commission, alongside Mahler’s First Symphony; La Dolce Vita: The Music of Italian Cinema; Verdi’s Requiem; a staging of Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake featuring Oscar winner Marion Cotillard; World Premieres; a CONTACT! program; and Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. He concludes The Nielsen Project — the multi-year initiative to perform and record the Danish composer’s symphonies and concertos, the first release of which was named by The New York Times as among the Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012 — and presides over the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. Last season’s highlights included the (more) Bravo! Vail / 3 inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL; Mozart’s final three symphonies; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside the film; a staging of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson; and the ASIA / WINTER 2014 tour. Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies and holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School. Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, he regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award. Renée Fleming’s recent Decca recording Poèmes, on which he conducted, received a 2013 Grammy Award. His recordings have received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. In May 2010 Mr. Gilbert received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music and in December 2011, Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for his “exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary music.” In 2014 he was elected to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Grammy and Juno award–winning conductor/composer Bramwell Tovey was appointed music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) in 2000, since conducting complete symphony cycles of Beethoven, Mahler, and Brahms; establishing an annual festival dedicated to contemporary music; and touring China, South Korea, Canada, and the United States. Mr. Tovey is also the artistic adviser of the VSO School of Music, a state-of-the-art facility and recital hall in downtown Vancouver. In 2018, the VSO’s centenary year, he will become the orchestra’s music director emeritus. In the 2014–15 season he makes guest appearances with orchestras across the globe including The Philadelphia Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and the Kansas City, Helsingborgs, Melbourne, and Sydney symphony orchestras. Bramwell Tovey won the 2003 Juno Award for Best Classical Composition for his choral and brass work Requiem for a Charred Skull. He has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic (Urban Runway, 2008), as well as the Toronto Symphony and Calgary Opera, the latter of which premiered his first full-length opera, The Inventor, in 2011 (a recording featuring the VSO, UBC Opera, and original cast will be issued by Naxos). His trumpet concerto, Songs of the Paradise Saloon, was recently performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and soloist Alison Balsom, who reprised it with The Philadelphia Orchestra in December 2014. As a pianist, Mr. Tovey has appeared with ensembles including the Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Toronto, and Royal Scottish National orchestras. In the summer of 2014 he played and conducted Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in Saratoga with The Philadelphia Orchestra. He has performed his own Pictures in the Smoke with the Melbourne and Helsingborg Symphony Orchestras and the Royal Philharmonic. Mr. Tovey was music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (1989–2001), where he founded the organization’s New Music Festival, and of Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg (2002– 06), leading tours of Europe, the U.S., China, and South Korea. A fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London and Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, he holds honorary degrees from the universities of British Columbia, Manitoba, Kwantlen, and Winnipeg. In 2013 he was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada for services to music. Bramwell Tovey (more) Bravo! Vail / 4 made his Philharmonic debut in October 2000 and his subscription debut in March 2002; his many returns has included conducting and