Annual Meeting Photos
On November 9, the Festival held its Annual Meeting in Libbey Bowl. Artistic Director Thomas W. Morris shared programming details for the 2014 Festival with Jeremy Denk and the organization announced the appointment of its new Executive Director, Janneke Straub.
View photos from the meeting and the surprise ETM flashmob with BRAVO! students at its conclusion below:
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Thank you to all the BRAVO! students who volunteered their time for the Annual Meeting and to all the attendees for their steadfast support of the Festival.
Ojai Music Festival Adds Two Arts Leaders to Board of Directors
Scott Reed and NancyBell Coe have been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Ojai Music Festival for three-year terms, announced Ojai’s board president Stephen (Mike) J.M. Morris at the recent Festival annual meeting held in Ojai. Both Mr. Reed and Ms. Coe are Santa Barbara residents with significant experience in the performing arts field. Mr. Reed is the president of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara and Ms. Coe retired from that same position in 2010.
At the meeting, Mr. Mike Morris also recognized outgoing board members Jet Doye, Ron Phillips, Alan Rains, Esther Wachtell, and Stuart Meiklejohn, who served as board president between 2012-2013. He also welcomed the Festival’s new executive director Janneke Straub, who will begin her tenure in January 2014. Ms. Straub is currently the executive director at the American Youth Symphony in Los Angeles.
NancyBell Coe
NancyBell Coe retired as President of Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West in August 2010. She came to the Music Academy in 2004, after several years as artistic administrator at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Her long career in the performing arts industry includes the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Spokane Symphony in Washington. She was on the Ojai Music Festival Board of Directors from 2004-2010. NancyBell is active in the Santa Barbara community, where she serves as one of three co-trustees of iCAN, the Incredible Children’s Art Network and as a board member for the Community Arts Music Association of Santa Barbara, Inc. (CAMA). Additionally, she is a member of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras and New Music USA (New York). She further serves on the Board of Overseers at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music from Wellesley College, Phi Beta Kappa.
Scott Reed
Having begun his career at the Music Academy of the West as an unpaid intern in 1997, Scott Reed became only the fourth president in the history of the renowned classical music institution in August 2010. Immediately prior to his appointment, Mr. Reed served as vice president for institutional advancement at the Music Academy for five years. He came to the latter position via the San Francisco Opera, where he worked as associate director of development for nearly two years. While in San Francisco, he also served as a consultant for the St. Luke’s Hospital Foundation.
Following his stint as a college intern, Mr. Reed worked for the Music Academy from 1997 to 2004 as coordinator of alumni and student affairs, major gifts officer, and executive manager of the long-range facility upgrade campaign and permit entitlement process. During this time he was instrumental in the development of several initiatives, including the Academy’s innovative Compeer Program, which pairs fellows with donors and other Santa Barbara community members for informal social events throughout the summer season.
Mr. Reed earned his bachelor’s degree in vocal performance at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Ojai Music Directors Awarded Accolades by ‘Musical America’
2014 Music Director Jeremy Denk (right) performs during the 63rd Ojai Music Festival
Musical America announced their 2014 award recipients today, and among them were two Ojai music directors: conductor/composer George Benjamin and pianist Jeremy Denk.
George Benjamin, music director of the 2010 Festival, was awarded Composer of the Year. Benjamin brought his opera Into the Little Hill to Ojai audiences in 2010 and Musical America highlighted his 2012 opera, Written on Skin, as “at once exquisitely wrought and devastatingly raw.” Written on Skin has received almost 40 performances internationally to date and had its US premiere in August at Tanglewood – a music stream of the performances is available from New York’s WQXR Q2.
Jeremy Denk, who will serve as music director of the 2014 Festival, received the Instrumentalist of the Year award. As Musical America wrote, “His flourishing concert schedule, the second release in his Nonesuch recording contract (Bach’s Goldberg Variations), his widely read blog called “Think Denk,” and articles for the New Yorker, which led to a Random House book commission, attest to his multi-faceted artistry.” Denk is in the process of creating an opera of his own, The Classical Style, based on Charles Rosen’s work of musical analysis, which will feature music by Steven Stucky.
The Musical America awards rank among classical music’s highest honors, and will be presented by the performing arts resource at its annual ceremony on December 17 at Lincoln Center.
The Ojai Music Festival congratulates both George and Benjamin on their achievements – and hopes that this will be another in a line of many for both!
Read more on the Musical America website >>
Timo Andres, pianist/composer
Timo Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) is a composer and pianist who grew up in rural Connecticut and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. His début album, Shy and Mighty, which features ten interrelated pieces for two pianos performed by himself and pianist David Kaplan, was released by Nonesuch Records in May 2010 to immediate critical acclaim. Of the disc, Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Shy and Mighty “achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene… more mighty than shy, [Andres] sounds like himself.”
Uri Caine, pianist/composer
Uri Caine was born in Philadelphia and began studying piano with Bernard Peiffer. He played in bands led by Philly Joe Jones, Hank Mobley,Johnny Coles, Mickey Roker, Odean Pope, Jymmie Merritt, Bootsie Barnes and Grover Washington. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and studied music composition with George Rochberg and George Crumb. Caine has recorded 22 cds as a leader. His most recent cd is a jazz trio, Siren, (Winter and Winter 2011) with John Hebert on bass and Ben Perowsky on drums.
Andrew Norman, composer
Andrew Norman (b. 1979) is a composer of chamber and orchestral music. A native Midwesterner raised in central California, Andrew studied the piano and viola before attending the University of Southern California and Yale. His teachers and mentors include Martha Ashleigh, Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke, Stewart Gordon, Aaron Kernis, Ingram Marshall, and Martin Bresnick.A lifelong enthusiast for all things architectural, Andrew writes music that is often inspired by forms and textures he encounters in the visual world.
Mark Morris, 2013 Music Director
MARK MORRIS was born on August 29, 1956, in Seattle, Washington, where he studied with Verla Flowers and Perry Brunson. In the early years of his career, he performed with the Koleda Balkan Dance Ensemble, and later the dance companies of Lar Lubovitch, Hannah Kahn, Laura Dean, and Eliot Feld. He formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980, and has since created more than 130 works for the company.
Mark Morris Dance Group
The MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP was formed in 1980 and gave its first concert that year in New York City. The company’s touring schedule steadily expanded to include cities in the U.S. and around the world, and in 1986 it made its first national television program for the PBS series Dance in America. In 1988, MMDG was invited to become the national dance company of Belgium, and spent three years in residence at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The company returned to the United States in 1991 as one of the world’s leading dance companies, performing across the U.S. and at major international festivals.
American String Quartet
Peter Winograd, violin
Laurie Carney, violin
Daniel Avshalomov, viola
Wolfram Koessel, cello
Internationally recognized as one of the world’s foremost quartets, the American String Quartet celebrated its 36th season in 2011–2012. Critics and colleagues hold the Quartet in high esteem and many of today’s leading artists and composers seek out the Quartet for collaborations.
The Bad Plus
For the past ten years The Bad Plus Reid Anderson, Ethan Iverson and David King have broken down the walls of jazz convention and created an uncompromising body of work. Few jazz groups in recent memory have amassed such acclaim, and few have inspired such controversy.
Colin Fowler, piano/organ
Colin Fowler hails from Kansas City, Kansas and began studying piano at the age of five. After attending Interlochen Arts Academy, he received his Bachelors and Masters degrees at The Julliard School, where he studied organ with Gerre Hancock and piano with Abbey Simon. He has played and directed music across the country, at venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and The Library of Congress.
Gamelan Sari Raras
Gamelan Sari Raras, founded and co-directed by Midiyanto and Ben Brinner, is an ensemble in the Department of Music at U.C. Berkeley. Widely recognized as one of the leading Javanese music ensembles outside Indonesia, Sari Raras has performed concerts, shadow plays, and performances of Javanese dance and music throughout Northern California over the past twenty-five years.
Joshua Gersen, conductor
Joshua David (J.D.) Gersen, winner of the prestigious 2011 Aspen Conducting Prize, as well as the 2010 Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize from the Aspen Music Festival, made his conducting debut at age 11 with the Greater Bridgeport Youth Orchestra in Bridgeport, CT, and his professional conducting debut 5 years later, when he led the Greater Bridgeport Symphony in a performance of his own composition, A Symphonic Movement.
Ethan Iverson
Ethan Iverson is best known as one-third of The Bad Plus (TBP), a game-changing collective with Reid Anderson and David King. The New York Times has said that TBP is “…Better than anyone at melding the sensibilities of post-60’s jazz and indie rock.” TBP performs in venues as diverse as the Village Vanguard, Carnegie Hall, and Bonnaroo; collaborators include Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, and the Mark Morris Dance Group. They have released ten CD’s of mostly original material.
Music Director Jeremy Denk Joins Class of 2013 MacArthur Foundation Fellows
We received news late last night that Ojai’s 2014 Music Director, Jeremy Denk, has been named one of 24 recipients of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Jeremy on this well-deserved accolade and can’t wait to see what the next five years bring!
24 Extraordinarily Creative People Who Inspire Us All: Meet the 2013 MacArthur Fellows –
“MacArthur named its 2013 class of MacArthur Fellows, recognizing 24 exceptionally creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for even more significant contributions in the future.
Fellows will each receive a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000 (increased from $500,000) paid out over five years. Without stipulations or reporting requirements, the Fellowship provides maximum freedom for recipients to follow their own creative vision.
“This year’s class of MacArthur Fellows is an extraordinary group of individuals who collectively reflect the breadth and depth of American creativity,” said Cecilia Conrad, Vice President, MacArthur Fellows Program. “They are artists, social innovators, scientists, and humanists who are working to improve the human condition and to preserve and sustain our natural and cultural heritage. Their stories should inspire each of us to consider our own potential to contribute our talents for the betterment of humankind.”
Click here for complete article >>
Click here for the complete roster of recipients including Jeremy Denk >>
“Thinking Denk” in Milwaukee
We love to hear when our patrons run into Festival artists outside of Ojai – it’s always thrilling finding out how large (and, at times, far-flung) our Festival family has grown. Rusti and Steve Moffic from Minnesota first attended the Festival in 2008 and have been returning ever since. They attended the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s opening last weekend, which featured none other than 2014 Music Director Jeremy Denk. Steve emailed the office yesterday to share his experience meeting Jeremy…and showcasing his Ojai “Think Denk” pin:
We did get to meet Jeremy and Rusti took a couple of pictures. Let us know if these work for you. You may notice in the first one, when I am talking to him, that I was wearing the”Think Denk” pin. Jeremy got a big laugh out of this, but it also became an item that others noticed, so we had a chance to inform them about Ojai!
He got rave reviews for his playing the Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, our daily paper, by a critic, Elaine Schmidt, who can be tough at times:
“Denk took the stage with Franz Liszt’s dramatic ‘Concerto No. 1’. Although Denk captured the power and drama of the piece, his performance was about far more than the piece’s biggest moments. . . Taking just a pinch of rubato at the top of a phrase or a quick, light release of the end of a passage, he drew his audience into the details of the piece. He moved from soulful, lyrical playing to a jaunty playfulness in this articulate, yet workless, explanation of the piece.”
Before the concert, I got a chance to listen to the CD you sent. I had always been struck by how the transition in Beethoven’s last piano sonata seemed to foreshadow boogie-woogie jazz 200 years later. It was therefore so gratifying that Jeremy made that same point in his liner notes.
In the post concert talk, he mentioned his love of jazz. When I told him that I had noticed that he invited the great jazz pianist Uri Caine, he remarked that “he’s a genius”. I, a lover of jazz more than classical music, couldn’t help but agree. It promises to be a great festival next summer if this is also a harbinger of things to come.
Best to you and the festival staff,
Steve
Thanks Steve, for letting us share your email – we can’t wait to see you again in June! Steve also recently wrote a blog on music and its effect on health in those who are older:
Read “Music for the Aging Mind” here >>
Festival Annual Meeting Moved to the late Fall
The Ojai Music Festival will welcome back patrons at our annual gathering, which will be scheduled later in the fall.
The plans will include a sneak peek of the upcoming 68th Festival (June 12-15, 2014) plus share updates on the BRAVO! education program.
Back To School at the Festival
The month of September means many things here at the Festival – planning for the next year is starting to get underway, staff have returned from their vacations, summer interns are back to school, and, of course, the BRAVO! music education program is beginning to get underway.
Each year, BRAVO! provides free, integrated music instruction to Ojai’s public school students and those in two nearby Ventura County schools. Students are led in a series of workshops by BRAVO!’s artists-in-residence (local professional musicians). These range from lessons in world music, to k-1 music eduction, to opera. To see a complete list of BRAVO!’s offerings, click here. Education Through Music (ETM) workshops will start shortly in K-1 classrooms throughout the district…stay tuned for photos and updates!
We’re excited to expand BRAVO!’s community percussion workshops this year to include Ojai’s older citizens. We’re bringing percussion instruments and special group activities to Ojai’s assisted living and continuing care facilities so that Ojai residents of all ages can benefit from participating in music making. We would like to recognize the City of Ojai Arts Commission and the Ojai Rotary Club for their generous support of the community percussion workshops.
If you’re here in Ojai, you’ll know that Ojai Day is just around the corner. Come by our Instrument Petting Zoo on October 19th and try out a new instrument – or reconnect with an old one!
‘Inuksuit’ in Your Living Room? Not as Far-fetched as You Think
If you were at the 2012 Ojai Music Festival, chances are you caught the West Coast premiere of John Luther Adams‘ all-embracing piece Inuksuit. The LA Times’ Mark Swed called the Ojai performance a “ritual hour of enthralling rumble and shimmer”.
We had several patrons ask us afterwards if there was a recording of Inuksuit available. Many thought it might be impossible – how could a recording capture the sheer physical sense of the piece? But now, the wait is over. Inuksuit’s first recording, produced by percussionist/composer Doug Perkins, will be released on October 29. Recorded in the forests of Guilford Sound, Vermont, the recoding uses a surround mix to better capture the full range the piece – and it sounds pretty good. Click here to listen to a preview >>
“Doug really created an ideal set of circumstances for us to make this the ‘official’ recording of Inuksuit,” Adams says. “It’s a beautiful sounding of the strong sense of community that has grown up around the piece. That’s something I wasn’t prepared for, and I’m glad to be able to give some of that back.”
We can’t wait for the final release. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Inuksuit, it’s a different journey each time you hear it. So here’s to one more.
Click here to pre-order Inuksuit >>
Nonesuch Releases Jeremy Denk’s Recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations September 24
Nonesuch releases pianist Jeremy Denk’s recording of J.S.Bach’s Goldberg Variations on September 24, 2013, available for pre-order now in the Nonesuch Store. A companion DVD accompanies the album and contains video “liner notes,” with Denk demonstrating passages on the piano as he explains certain details of the iconic piece. (Watch an excerpt below.) The beloved Bach work has long been a staple of Denk’s repertoire and his performances have received critical praise. The New York Times has remarked on his “profound affinity with Bach,” and the Philadelphia Inquirer called Denk’s performance of this piece “mesmerizing,” noting that his “Bach is expressive, but not fussy or overthought. Technically unbothered by the work’s more explosive spots and remarkably fluid in its scurrying passage work, he was able to make connections between and among bits of material that sometimes occur many seconds apart.”
Denk plays in 15 US cities this fall, including a performance of the Goldberg Variations in Boston, Chicago, and DC and four nights in Davies Hall, one at Carnegie Hall, and one at the Krannert Center (in Champaign-Urbana) with the San Francisco Symphony playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503. See below for the currently scheduled US dates; for details and tickets, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Writing for NPR’s Deceptive Cadence blog last year, Denk said, “The best reason to hate the Goldberg Variations—aside from the obvious reason that everyone asks you all the time which of the two [Glenn Gould] recordings you prefer—is that everybody loves them.” He continued, “Yes, I’m suspicious of the Goldbergs’ popularity. Classical Music is not really supposed to be that popular. I worried for years that I would be seduced into playing them, and would become like all the others—besotted, cultish—and that is exactly what happened. I have been assimilated into the Goldberg Borg.”
Denk’s previous releases include a recording of music by Charles Ives, released on his own Think Denk Media label, and a Nonesuch album of works by Beethoven and Ligeti. He also is an avid chamber musician and a respected writer, both on his blog and in such publications asThe New Yorker. Denk is expanding a recent article in that publication into a book that will be published by Random House.
From the Vault: Jeremy Denk’s Notes from the 2009 Festival on Bach’s Goldberg Variations
Jeremy Denk made his first appearance in Ojai at the 2009 Festival with Music Director eighth blackbird. The pianist was very thoughtful and helpful in sending over notes for his Saturday Morning Concert, which included Bach’s iconic work, Goldberg Variations (about to be released on Nonesuch Records). As we move forward Jeremy’s return to Ojai – this time as the 2014 Music Director – read about how he first explained this piece, which has become an significant part of his repertoire.
“I think the connection between the Goldbergs and the Ives First Sonata is … opposites attract? Beauty and the Beast? This program is a bit like a couple that you would never imagine would get together but, when you hook them up, they suddenly have a lot to say to each other. I love the idea–a kind of painterly contrast–of the luminous, serene Goldbergs against the dark, raucous Ives Sonata. An 18th-century German Lutheran and a 19th-century Connecticut farming family may not be all that far apart, in some sense: they’re both spartan and spiritual. One of my favorite parts of the Goldberg Variations is the concluding Quodlibet, where Bach takes two common tunes and superimposes them over the Goldberg harmonic ground: a masterstroke of composition, but also a wonderful joke combining high and low, the profound and profane. And what could be more Ivesian than that?
For me, the Goldberg Variations is a tripartite cosmos: a third of the variations are full of humorous keyboard virtuosity, another third are extraordinary canonic demonstrations, and another third are “character pieces,” which draw on the musical world around Bach, almost reproducing that world, like a mural. The Ives Sonata has interesting parallels to this: it has a big arching structure of three serious movements, flanking two down-and-dirty scherzos. The effect is that Ives journeys back and forth from the dark, wintry, severe character of his rural Connecticut family–with their plaintive hymns and ballads–to the totally different, citified world of ragtime, painting in wild contrasts a picture of Ives’s sprawling, uniquely American musical world.” – Jeremy Denk
Continue Your Festival Experience With OjaiU During the Summer
This past May, over 240 Festival enthusiasts participated in our first OjaiU Online University. Through videos from guests instructors (including Mark Morris, Jeremy Denk, John Rockwell, and John Luther Adams) and “listen and do” activities, OjaiU students got a deeper understanding of Festival programming and the thinking that lies behind it.
If you missed the classes in May – it’s not too late! OjaiU classes are still available so that you can extend Festival experience through the summer.
Composer Andrew Norman to join USC faculty
We are so excited that Andrew Norman will be returning to the west coast as a member of USC’s Thornton School of Music faculty and as Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s Composer in Residence.
The 2014 Festival (June 12-15) led by Music Director Jeremy Denk will include works by Norman.
Read the full LA Times article by Mark Swed here >>
“In recent years, Norman has worked with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra as its composer in residence. He studied at USC and Yale University before embarking on his professional composing career.
Norman was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in music for his piece ‘The Companion Guide to Rome.'”
Timo Andres’ “Home Stretch” out on Nonesuch July 30th
Timo Andres’s Home Stretch out on Nonesuch July 30
Timo Andres, piano
Metropolis Ensemble
Andrew Cyr, conductor
ANDRES: Home Stretch
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, “Coronation” (Completed by Andres)
ANDRES: Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno
NPR Music: “First Listen” streams Home Stretch in its entirety this week.
Click here for the stream.
On Timo Andres’s upcoming Nonesuch album, Home Stretch (July 30, 2013), he performs with Andrew Cyr and the Metropolis Ensemble, pairing the title work with two reinventions of works by musical heroes Mozart and Brian Eno: Mozart’s “Coronation” concerto andParaphrase on Themes of Brian Eno. Album pre-orders are available now at nonesuch.com and include an exclusive print of the first page of the Home Stretchscore, autographed by the composer. To celebrate the release, Andres, artist and book designer Peter Mendelsund and the New Yorker’s Leo Carey will host a conversation about artistic influence. The event will be held at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe on July 30 at 7:00 PM, and is free. Andres will perform music from the record, including his own work and pieces by Brian Eno and Mozart.
Tuesday, July 30
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10012
Free
Home Stretch was written for pianist David Kaplan and was conceived as a companion piece to Mozart’s Piano Concerto, No. 12, K. 414. Andres wanted the piece to reflect his friend Kaplan’s personality. Andres notes, “I knew I wanted Home Stretch to have something to do with fast cars, which David is obsessively interested in. The piece is in three large sections that gradually accelerate: beginning in almost total stasis, working up to an off-kilter dance with stabbing accents and ushering in a sturm-und-drang cadenza that riles itself up into a perpetual-motion race to the finish. However, there are always little ‘smudges’ of music from each section in the others, sometimes fitting into their new context, sometimes balefully interrupting.”
Also on the album is Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, “Coronation,” completed by Andres. A virtuosic improviser, Mozart left much of the solo part unwritten as he expected to play the piece himself. In particular, the left hand is mostly absent from the original manuscript. Pianists generally play from a completed score that adds simple accompaniment patterns and harmonies for the left hand, but Andres’s treatment of the concerto takes a wholly different approach. He inserts his own voice into the left hand and ends the work with newly written cadenzas. He explains, “I approached the piece not from a scholarly or editorial perspective, but more as a sprawling playground for pianistic invention and virtuosity, taking cues from the composer-pianist tradition Mozart helped to crystallize.” The New Yorker’s Alex Ross wrote on his blog that the result is “mesmerizing.”
The recording ends with Andres’s Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno. Already an influential force in popular music history, Brian Eno is increasingly gaining recognition from classical composers. As Andres writes, Eno is a composer with “two quite distinct sides: as an innovator who works in ambient and collage music, and as a quirky and crafty pop songwriter. It’s all interesting, but the really amazing things happen when these musical personalities overlap and wear away each other’s surfaces.” In Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno, Andres focuses on Eno’s albums Before and After Science and Another Green World. He builds what he terms, “a nineteenth century style ‘orchestral paraphrase’ on the subject of Eno’s music.”
Home Stretch was recorded at Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood and was produced by David Frost. It is Andres’s second album with the Nonesuch label; his first, Shy and Mighty, was praised by the New York Times for its “inventiveness and originality,” and by the Guardian for the way it “glides across stylistic boundaries in a totally unselfconscious way.”
Timo Andres is a composer and pianist who grew up in rural Connecticut and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. His debut album, Shy and Mighty, which features 10 interrelated pieces for two pianos, performed by Andres and pianist David Kaplan, was released by Nonesuch Records in May 2010 to critical acclaim. Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker that Shy and Mighty “achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene… more mighty than shy, [Andres] sounds like himself.” In the current season, Andres plays a solo recital of his own works alongside those by Chopin, Thomas Adès and Schumann for Lincoln Center’s Great Performers; a solo recital for San Francisco Performances, and a duo program with Gabriel Kahane for the Library of Congress. Commissions include a new piano quintet written for Jonathan Biss and the Elias String Quartet, presented by Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and San Francisco Performances; a solo piano work for Kirill Gerstein commissioned by the Gilmore Foundation, and a new string quartet for the Library of Congress, to be premiered by The Attacca Quartet.
Leo Carey is a Senior Editor at the New Yorker magazine, where he has worked for 15 years. He was born in Oxford, England and studied English Literature at Oxford University. As an editor at the New Yorker, he has worked on a wide range of non-fiction. His own writings have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Times Literary Supplement. In his spare time he plays the piano and cello.
Peter Mendelsund is the Associate Art Director of Alfred A. Knopf Books, the Art Director of Pantheon Books and Art Director of Vertical Press (and a recovering classical pianist). His designs have been described by the Wall Street Journal as being “the most instantly recognizable and iconic book covers in contemporary fiction.” His writing on literature, design and other matters can be found on his blog: jacketmechanical.
New York-based Metropolis Ensemble is a Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra dedicated to classical music in its most contemporary forms.
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe is one of downtown New York’s most vital cultural institutions, presenting an eclectic mix of events — from readings and concerts to comedy nights and storytelling competitions -– featuring many of today’s most exciting artists. The bookstore is staffed almost entirely by volunteers and 100 percent of its profits go to Housing Works, Inc., which provides housing, healthcare, job training, and advocacy for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. As an independent cultural center, it offers patrons a unique opportunity to join the fight against AIDS and homelessness simply by buying or donating books; eating at the cafe; coming to concerts, readings, and special events; or volunteering on their staff.