San Francisco Symphony Announces 2011/12 Centennial Season

By -

The San Francisco Symphony celebrates its Centennial in 2011-12, and today announced its concert programs and the full season event calendar for the Orchestra’s milestone year. Presenting an ambitious eleven-month season of concerts, programs, and events, expanded education programs, and Centennial media initiatives, the Orchestra’s 100th season celebrates the American orchestra and its vibrant role in its community as an artistic leader and civic institution.

Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) and the Orchestra will break new ground with a two-week American Mavericks Festival of music from the composers that defined 20th century American music. The Orchestra performs concerts including three world premiere commissions, from modern masters John Adams and Meredith Monk and classical/electronica composer Mason Bates, both in San Francisco and on a national tour. MTT will lead the Orchestra in works from the first year of the San Francisco Symphony’s history, including Debussy’s complete music for the mystery play Le martyre de Saint Sebastien, incorporating video and multimedia. Tilson Thomas and the Orchestra also perform a semi-staged production of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1911), Stravinsky’s Petrushka, also written in 1911, and a week of semi-staged concerts of music from early San Francisco . Other major program highlights are two Project San Francisco artist and composer residencies, with violinist Joshua Bell and composer Bates; performances of Thomas Adès and Tal Rosner’s new SF Symphony co-commission Polaris: Voyage for Orchestra, also with video; and the U.S. premiere of a new co-commissioned work from Sofia Gubaidulina. The Orchestra’s 2011-12 Centennial season will also feature an unprecedented concert series of six of the most distinguished major American orchestras: Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and The Philadelphia Orchestra, performing two concerts each.

Tilson Thomas will conduct the Orchestra in 18 weeks of concerts, including the American Mavericks tour. In addition to the American Mavericks world premieres and first SFS performances during the festival of works by Morton Feldman and John Cage, he leads the first Orchestra performances of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto, with Christian Tetzlaff. Other first San Francisco Symphony performances include works by Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Schreker, and C.P.E. Bach. Major works of the classical canon MTT conducts are Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem; Mahler’s Symphony No. 3; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, Pastoral, and Symphony No. 9; Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, and his Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, orchestrated by Schoenberg.

The Symphony plans expanded music education programs during its Centennial season and beyond, including instrument training support for San Francisco public middle and high schools and an amateur music-making program for adults, unique events celebrating the period of the Symphony’s founding, and a variety of media projects that explore the living heritage of the Orchestra, its music, and its role in the community, including a book, a documentary film, and new online experiences.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Acclaimed Fauré Quartett returns to Deutsche Grammophon with their first recording of Brahms

By -
Image
The Fauré Quartett continues to add authoritative recordings to the chamber music catalog with their new recording of two Brahms quartets, available from Deutsche Grammophon on January 12, 2010. These large, some say symphonic, works test the limits of technical and musical capabilities, and the Fauré Quartett once again proves why they are one of the most acclaimed ensembles performing today. Within a short period of time the Fauré Quartett has conquered the great concert halls of London , Paris , Berlin , Amsterdam , Brussels , Geneva , Hamburg , Frankfurt, Milan , Buenos Aires , Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere. “They attract superlatives wherever they go,” wrote The Strad following a concert at London ’s Wigmore Hall, while the Süddeutsche Zeitung praised them for a performance that “brought tremendous pleasure by highlighting interpretative details that had scarcely ever been heard before”. The Fauré Quartett strives to achieve a unique sound for Brahms (as indeed for every work)
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more