Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Announce 2011/12 Season

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2011-2012 Season Celebrates Revolutionary Women

Music Director Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) announce the Orchestra’s 2011-2012 season, the fifth full season under the direction of Maestra Alsop. The upcoming season is a year-long celebration of revolutionary women, featuring works by female composers and music that honors or depicts women in various roles throughout history—from religious martyr to humanitarian activist. January 2012 marks the 600th anniversary of the birth of French heroine, legend and martyr Joan of Arc. The BSO commemorates her life with two seminal works: the 1935 masterpiece by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher, a piece that the BSO will also perform at Carnegie Hall, and Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, composed to accompany the landmark 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc.

The BSO will make its first tour under Marin Alsop and first domestic tour since 2000 (excluding previous Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center engagements) in March 2012. The Orchestra will travel to the West Coast to perform at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts (Costa Mesa, Ca.) and the Silva Concert Hall of the Hult Center for the Performing Arts (Eugene, Or.) and give a three-day education and performance residency at the Zellerbach Hall presented by CalPerformances of the University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Ca.).

“The Orchestra has a long history as a cultural ambassador for the region and I am pleased to continue and expand that commitment,” says BSO Music Director Marin Alsop. “Our performance this season at Carnegie Hall and our exciting West Coast tour plans will forge new partnerships and enhance the BSO’s reputation on a national scale. Our three-day residency at Berkeley highlights the musicians’ and my passion for youth education and reflects our recent achievements in the creation of programs for adult life-long learning.”

The BSO will present two large-scale multimedia works: Philip Glass’ LIFE: A Journey Through Time, paired with photographs by award-winning National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting, and Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light inspired by and performed with the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. The upcoming concert season also boasts a line-up of some of the world’s most in-demand artists, including Itzhak Perlman—as both conductor and soloist—pianists André Watts and Leon Fleisher and violinist Hilary Hahn.

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