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ACO Opener:
Dreams and Dances
October 26th
photo: Beowulf Sheehan
Orchestra Underground:
Dreams & Dances
Friday, October 26 at Zankel Hall, NYC
We kick off the season with the world premieres of Milica Paranosic’s multimedia The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue based on the bestselling novel by Téa Obreht along with Narong Prangcharoen’s The Migration of Lost Souls. We are also excited to bring the US premiere of José Serebrier’s
Flute Concerto with Tango featuring Sharon Bezaly
& Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3 (“Camp Meeting”). Jose Serebrier will also preside over the entire concert as our distinguished guest conductor.
American Composers Orchestra (ACO) kicks off its 2012-13 concert season with Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances on Friday, October 26, 2012 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. The concert, led by guest conductor José Serebrier, features music that draws inspiration from around the world – from the Balkans to Thailand, from South America to nostalgic New England – and includes two world premieres by up-and-coming composers Milica Paranosic (The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue) and Narong Prangcharoen (The Migration of Lost Souls). The program also includes the US premiere of Serebrier’s own Flute Concerto with Tango featuring Sharon Bezaly and Charles Ives’ iconic Symphony No. 3 (“Camp Meeting”) from 1910. (Gabriela Frank’s Manchay Tiempo, previously announced as part of this concert, has been postponed.).
This concert program features:
Milica Paranosic:
The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue
(World Premiere, ACO/LVMH Commission)
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photo: Gorazd Poposki
Milica Paranosic (b. 1968) is a New York City-based composer, sound designer, music educator, and producer. A 2002 participant in ACO’s New Music Readings, she is also a regular teaching artist in ACO’s educational outreach program in New York City public schools – Music Factory. She has received grants from Meet the Composer, American Music Center, Soros Foundation, Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg, among many others. She is the resident composer and multimedia director of VisionIntoArt, an interdisciplinary performance and production team; founder and executive director of Give to Grow, an education and cultural exchange project that brings technology to children in underdeveloped communities; and co-founder of Beyond the Machine, a festival of electronic and interactive music at Juilliard.
Paranosic’s new work, The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue for Orchestra, Voice, Electronics and Visuals, takes as its inspiration a bestselling novel of the same title by Téa Obreht, who, like Paranosic, was born in Belgrade. Paranosic says, “Apart from obvious cultural and geographical connection between Obreht and myself, there are numerous parallels in our aesthetics, including mixing real and imagined, old and new, fantasy and history, folk and pop, Serbian and English languages, and the use of symbols.” Paranosic has partnered with librettist David Chambers on the text; videographer Carmen Kordas and photographer Beowulf Sheehan contribute original projections of imagery from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia.
The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue is commissioned and premiered by ACO with the support of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc.
Milica Paranosic: Zvrk for Violin, Cello and Electronics
Zentripital Duo: Lynn Bechtold, violin; Jennifer DeVore, Cello
Lori Cotler, vocals
photo: Henrik Olund
Described by the The New Yorker as “using her voice in mystically percussive ways” and by The New York Times as “explosive…exuberant,” Lori Cotler is quickly gaining an international reputation as one of the most captivating and original vocalists of our time. Using exotic rhythms as her muse, she is able to execute with the human voice phrases that do not seem possible in their rhythmic speed and clarity. Cotler’s combination of world and jazz stylings has propelled her to performances in venues around the world. Cotler has just released the first drum language ringtone of its kind for iPhone called TAKA MOSHI available on iTunes. She is currently in the studio recording her solo album featuring repertoire from her new project RHYTHM VOICE. For more information, visit www.loricotler.com.
Carmen Kordas was born in Germany and has been based in New York since 1998. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe. Coming out of video installations, her work has now developed into a wide range of disciplines: multimedia art and video projection for theater, opera and performance. Her work has been exhibited in VideoFestival in Munich, Freiberg, Berlin, Bochum, Dresden, and Arnheim, Netherlands. Ms. Kordas holds a MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin where she studied visual communication, digital editing, and three dimensional video sculpting with Valie Export.
Beowulf Sheehan is a New York-based photographer of the arts and humanities, making commercial and conceptual images of compelling figures and their stories. His work has been published in the likes of Elle France, Esquire, L’Uomo Vogue, The New Yorker, and Spin, made for Audi, Furla, Godiva, and Random House, and exhibited at the International Center of Photography. You are welcome to view his work at www.beowulfsheehan.com. Beowulf is grateful to his artist colleagues, to American Composers Orchestra, and to Téa Obreht and her representatives for the opportunity to celebrate her brilliant work.
David Chambers is a producer, director, and writer of theatre and opera. His productions have been seen in theaters in Europe, throughout the US, and in New York on and off Broadway, in the BAM Next Wave Festival, at Bard Summerscape and PS 122. He is Professor of Directing at The Yale School of Drama, has taught extensively in Russia and eastern Europe and holds an honorary degree from The University of the Lower Danube in Romania.
Narong Prangcharoen:
The Migration of Lost Souls
(World Premiere, ACO/Underwood Commission)
Narong Prangcharoen (b. 1973) studied with Chen Yi and received his doctoral degree from University of Missouri-Kansas City. His music has been called “absolutely captivating” by the Chicago Sun Times and has been performed in Asia, Australia, Europe and the US. Prangcharoen is the 2011 winner of ACO’s Underwood Emerging Composer Commission. Of Prangcharoen’s winning piece Pubbanimitta (“Foreboding”), Underwood mentor composer Paul Chihara said, “Mr. Prangcharoen writes music that reaches and moves his listeners with soaring melodies and intense rhythmic dance patterns.” His works have been heard at the Beijing Modern Music, MoMA Music and Grant Park Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and at the Library of Congress. In 2007, the Thai government named Prangcharoen a Contemporary National Artist and awarded him the Silapathorn Award.
The Migration of Lost Souls is commissioned by ACO with the support of Paul Underwood.
Narong Prangcharoen: Pubbanimitta (excerpt)
American Composers Orchestra
Charles Ives: Symphony No. 3
(Camp Meeting)
Charles Ives (1874-1954) is one of the most remarkable composers America has produced. Ives studied the organ and was a composition pupil of Horatio Parker at Yale University, from which he graduated in 1898. At an early age, he decided that he would not make music the means of earning his livelihood; he realized that it might be too difficult not to compromise his artistic ideals if his livelihood depended on his music. Accordingly, he entered the insurance business and made a fortune. His Yankee refusal to accept the usual way of combining sounds left him to explore many novel and often descriptive ways of putting sounds together, placing him far ahead of his time. Many of Ives’ explorations into new harmonic and contrapuntal possibilities antedated the work of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. A long list of compositions, most written before 1920, includes four symphonies, chamber music, two piano sonatas, five violin and piano sonatas, and many songs and choral pieces, as well as a number of other orchestral works. Ives described his Symphony No. 3 in his autobiographical notes: “The themes are mostly basedaround hymnsand from organ pieces played in Central Presbyterian Church around 1901.”
Jose Serebrier:
Flute Concerto with Tango
(US Premiere)
Conductor and composer José Serebrier (b. 1938) is one of the most recorded classical artists. He has received 37 Grammy nominations in recent years. Serebrier has composed more than 100 works, and has won numerous awards including two Guggenheims, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Flute Concerto with Tango was commissioned for flutist Sharon Bezaly, who performed and recorded it with the Australian Chamber Orchestra for the BIS label. Serebrier explains the title, saying, “The fourth movement justifies the title of the work. Traditionally, tangos end with a strong dominant chord followed by a brief, barely audible tonic chord. I take this idea further, leaving my tango up in the air in the middle of a phrase, so that the listener can make his own conclusion.”
Jose Serebrier: Flute Concerto with Tango (excerpt)
Sharon Bezaly with The Australian Chamber Orchestra (courtesy of BIS Records)
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Sharon Bezaly gave her début concert as a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta when she was 14. Sharon went on to study at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris under Alain Marion, Raymond Guiot and Maurice Bourge, winning the Academy’s first prizes for flute and chamber music.
To date Sharon Bezaly has seven dedicated concertos which she performs around the world. Sharon has commented: ’In recent years my sights have been turning towards a wider horizon and I hope that, by inspiring challenging composers to create new works, it could propel the flute further into the spotlight as well as provide standard repertoire for generations to come“.
Tickets & Info
ACO performs at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Friday, October 26, 2012, at 7:30pm. Tickets are $40 and $50, and may be purchased through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, by visiting Carnegie Hall’s website at www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall box office, 57th Street at 7th Ave.