Category: 2020 Festival Artists

Steve Reich was recently called  “our greatest living composer” (The New York Times), “America’s greatest living composer.” (The Village VOICE), “…the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker) and “…among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times).. From his early taped speech pieces It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) to his and video artist Beryl Korot’s digital video opera Three Tales (2002), Mr. Reich’s path has embraced not only aspects of Western Classical music, but the structures, harmonies, and rhythms of non-Western and American vernacular music, particularly jazz. “There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them,” states The Guardian (London).

In April 2009 Steve Reich was awarded the Pulitzer prize in Music for his composition ‘Double Sextet’.

Performing organizations around the world marked Steve Reich’s 70th- birthday year, 2006, with festivals and special concerts. In the composer’s hometown of New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center joined forces to present complementary programs of his music, and in London, the Barbican mounted a major retrospective. Concerts were also presented in Amsterdam, Athens, Brussels, Baden-Baden, Barcelona, Birmingham, Budapest, Chicago, Cologne, Copenhagen, Denver, Dublin, Freiburg, Graz, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Paris, Porto, Vancouver, Vienna and Vilnius among others. In addition, Nonesuch Records released its second box set of Steve Reich’s works, Phases: A Nonesuch Retrospective, in September 2006. The five-CD collection comprises fourteen of the composer’s best-known pieces, spanning the 20 years of his time on the label.

In October 2006 in Tokyo, Mr. Reich was awarded the Preamium Imperial award in Music. This important international award is in areas in the arts not covered by the Nobel Prize. Former winners of the prize in various fields include Pierre Boulez, Lucian Berio, Gyorgy Ligeti, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Richard Serra and Stephen Sondheim.

In May 2007 Mr. Reich was awarded The Polar Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of music. The prize was presented by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. The Swedish Academy said: “…Steve Reich has transferred questions of faith, society and philosophy into a hypnotic sounding music that has inspired musicians and composers of all genres.” Former winners of the Polar Prize have included Pierre Boulez, Bob Dylan, Gyorgi Ligeti and Sir Paul McCartney.

In December 2006 Mr. Reich was awarded membership in the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest and in April 2007 he was awarded the Chubb Fellowship at Yale University. In May 2008 he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Born in New York and raised there and in California, Mr. Reich graduated with honors in philosophy from Cornell University in 1957. For the next two years, he studied composition with Hall Overton, and from 1958 to 1961 he studied at the Juilliard School of Music with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. Mr. Reich received his M.A. in Music from Mills College in 1963, where he worked with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud.

During the summer of 1970, with the help of a grant from the Institute for International Education, Mr. Reich studied drumming at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra. In 1973 and 1974 he studied Balinese Gamelan Semar Pegulingan and Gamelan Gambang at the American Society for Eastern Arts in Seattle and Berkeley, California. From 1976 to 1977 he studied the traditional forms of cantillation (chanting) of the Hebrew scriptures in New York and Jerusalem.

In 1966 Steve Reich founded his own ensemble of three musicians, which rapidly grew to 18 members or more. Since 1971, Steve Reich and Musicians have frequently toured the world, and have the distinction of performing to sold-out houses at venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall and the Bottom Line Cabaret.

Mr. Reich’s 1988 piece, Different Trains, marked a new compositional method, rooted in It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out, in which speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments. The New York Times hailed Different Trains as “a work of such astonishing originality that breakthrough seems the only possible description….possesses an absolutely harrowing emotional impact.” In 1990, Mr. Reich received a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition for Different Trains as recorded by the Kronos Quartet on the Nonesuch label.

In June 1997, in celebration of Mr. Reich’s 60th birthday, Nonesuch released a 10-CD retrospective box set of Mr. Reich’s compositions, featuring several newly-recorded and re-mastered works. He won a second Grammy award in 1999 for his piece Music for 18 Musicians, also on the Nonesuch label. In July 1999 a major retrospective of Mr. Reich’s work was presented by the Lincoln Center Festival. Earlier, in 1988, the South Bank Centre in London, mounted a similar series of retrospective concerts.

In 2000 he was awarded the Schuman Prize from Columbia University, the Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College, the Regent’s Lectureship at the University of California at Berkeley, an honorary doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts and was named Composer of the Year by Musical America magazine.

The Cave, Steve Reich and Beryl Korot’s music theater video piece exploring the Biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac, was hailed by Time Magazine as “a fascinating glimpse of what opera might be like in the 21st century.” Of the Chicago premiere, John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “The techniques embraced by this work have the potential to enrich opera as living art a thousandfold….The Cave impresses, ultimately, as a powerful and imaginative work of high-tech music theater that brings the troubled present into resonant dialogue with the ancient past, and invites all of us to consider anew our shared cultural heritage.”

Three Tales, a three-part digital documentary video opera, is a second collaborative work by Steve Reich and Beryl Korot about three well known events from the twentieth century, reflecting on the growth and implications of technology in the 20th century: Hindenburg, on the crash of the German zeppelin in New Jersey in 1937; Bikini, on the Atom bomb tests at Bikini atoll in 1946-1954; and Dolly, the sheep cloned in 1997, on the issues of genetic engineering and robotics. Three Tales is a three act music theater work in which historical film and video footage, video taped interviews, photographs, text, and specially constructed stills are recreated on computer, transferred to video tape and projected on one large screen. Musicians and singers take their places on stage along with the screen, presenting the debate about the physical, ethical and religious nature of technological development. Three Tales was premiered at the Vienna Festival in 2002 and subsequently toured all over Europe, America, Australia and Hong Kong. Nonesuch is releasing a DVD/CD of the piece in fall 2003.

Over the years, Steve Reich has received commissions from the Barbican Centre London, the Holland Festival; San Francisco Symphony; the Rothko Chapel; Vienna Festival, Hebbel Theater, Berlin, the Brooklyn Academy of Music for guitarist Pat Metheny; Spoleto Festival USA, West German Radio, Cologne; Settembre Musica, Torino, the Fromm Music Foundation for clarinetist Richard Stoltzman; the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; Betty Freeman for the Kronos Quartet; and the Festival d’Automne, Paris, for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.

Steve Reich’s music has been performed by major orchestras and ensembles around the world, including the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta; the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas; The Ensemble Modern conducted by Bradley Lubman, The Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted by David Robertson, the London Sinfonietta conducted by Markus Stenz and Martyn Brabbins, the Theater of Voices conducted by Paul Hillier, the Schoenberg Ensemble conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Robert Spano; the Saint Louis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin; the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Neal Stulberg; the BBC Symphony conducted by Peter Eötvös; and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

Several noted choreographers have created dances to Steve Reich’s music, including Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker (“Fase,” 1983, set to four early works as well as”Drumming,”1998 and “Rain” set to “Music for 18 Musicians”), Jirí Kylían (“Falling Angels,” set to “Drumming Part I”), Jerome Robbins for the New York City Ballet (“Eight Lines”) and Laura Dean, who commissioned “Sextet”. That ballet, entitled “Impact,” was premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and earned Steve Reich and Laura Dean a Bessie Award in 1986. Other major choreographers using Mr. Reich’s music include Eliot Feld, Alvin Ailey, Lar Lubovitch, Maurice Bejart, Lucinda Childs, Siobhan Davies and Richard Alston.

In 1994 Steve Reich was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1995, and, in 1999, awarded Commandeur de l’ordre des Arts et Lettres.

Olga Neuwirth was born in Graz, Austria, in 1968.

She studied at the Academy of Music in Vienna and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. During her stay in the States she also attended an art college, where she studied painting and film. Her private teachers in composition included Adriana Hölszky, Tristan Murail and Luigi Nono. She first burst onto the international scene in 1991, at the age of 22, when two of her mini-operas were performed at the Wiener Festwochen. Ever since her works have been presented worldwide.

In 1998 she was featured in two portrait concerts at the Salzburg Festival within the framework of the Next Generation series. The following year, her music theatre work Bahlamms Fest, with a libretto by Elfriede Jelinek, premiered at the Wiener Festwochen and won the Ernst Krenek prize. A year later, she wrote Clinamen/Nodus for Pierre Boulez and the London Symphony Orchestra tour. In 2002 Olga was appointed composer-in–residence at the Lucerne Festival.

With Nobel Prize winning novelist Elfriede Jelinek she has created two radio plays and three operas.
Her opera Lost Highway, based on the film by David Lynch, premiered in 2003 and won a South Bank Show Award for the production presented by English National Opera at the Young Vic in 2008.

Since Olga Neuwirth was a teenager, she has also been interested in film, literature, architecture and the visual arts. Aside from composing, she also realises sound installations, art exhibitions and short films and has written several articles and a book; one of her multi-media installations was presented at the documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007.

Olga Neuwirth’s works are multi-layered and multi-sensory. Some pieces also draw on the full range of effects of both electronic and orchestral instruments as well as video, which she began integrating into some of her works in the late 1980’s. The listener is struck by the immediacy of her music, which is often dramatic and expressive as she is particularly interested in emotions and how they relate to the brain and memory.

Many recordings of her music have been released on the label Kairos.

In 2008 she was awarded the Heidelberg Artist Prize. In 2010, as the first woman ever in the category of music, she received the Grand Austrian State Prize as well as the Louis Spohr Prize of the City of Braunschweig

In 2012 Olga Neuwirth completed two new operas while living in NYC: The Outcast on Hermann Melville, and American Lulu, a version of Alban Berg’s Lulu which was premiered in Berlin and subsequently given a new production in Bregenz, Edinburgh and London in 2013 and then in Vienna in 2014. In early 2015 she completed a film score for a silent film and a feature film by Franz/Fiala, and the orchestral work Masaot/Clocks without hands for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. It was premiered in Koeln and Vienna in May and had it’s US premiere in February 2016 at Carnegie Hall under the baton of Valerij Gergjev.

At the Salzburg Festival her Eleanor Suite for Bluessinger, drum-kit-player and ensemble was premiered in August 2015. Her 80 minutes electronic/space/ensemble piece Le Encantadas based on the acoustics of a venetian church received its premiere at Donaueschingen and at the Festival d’Automne à Paris with further performances in 2016 and 2017. She received the prestigious Roche Commission for the Lucerne Festival in 2016 for her percussion concerto Trurliade–Zone Zero and was composer-in-residence at the festival for the second time.

In march 2017 her 3D sound-installation in collaboration with IRCAM was inaugurated at Centre Pompidou in Paris for it’s 40th anniversary.

In 2017 she has collaborated with architect Peter Zumthor and Asymptote Architects.

Beside several concerts for her 50th anniversary in 2018, Lost Highway and The Outcast can be seen in new productions. Lost Highway under the direction of Yuval Sharon and The Outcast under Netia Jones.

Her new opera Orlando premiered at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2019.

Born in 1968 in Cameroon, he now lives with his family in Uster near Zurich (CH). As drummer and improviser, he plays in various bands including «Steamboat Switzerland» (with Dominik Blum and Marino Pliakas), He composes and generates concepts for his own band: Lucas Niggli ZOOM and BIG ZOOM, also featuring Nils Wogram and Philipp Schaufelberger, Anne La Berge, Barry Guy), in a Duo with Xu Fengxia and the Drum Duo with Peter Conradin Zumthor or BEAT BAG BOHEMIA (Drum Quartet). He plays regularly with Barry Guy, Maya Homburger, Pierre Favre, Andreas Schaerer (Duo and Quartet A Novel Of Anomaly ), Luciano Biondini, Charlotte Hug and in a Worldmusic-Trio with the Balafon Master Aly Keïta.

He toured all over the world including Festival-performances: Vancouver, Berlin, Willisau, Moers, Saalfelden, Le Mans, Donaueschingen, Bath (UK), Capetown, Staatsoper Wien, Theater Basel, Theater Hamburg  a.m.o.

He has performed the works of contemporary composers (Olga Neuwirth, John Cage, Sam Hayden, D. Dramm, M. Werthmüller) and taken part in several crossover projects with such musicians as Butch Morris, Sylvie Couvoisier, Trevor Watts, Fred Frith, John Cale, Phil Minton, Samuel Nori, Ikue Mori, Xu Fengxia, Michel Portal, Flea, Erika Stucky, Susanne Abbuehl, Wu Wei, Michel Portal, Andrew Cyrille, Klangforum Wien, Lucerne Festival Academy and many others.

He teaches at the University Of Arts in Zurich, ZHdK and is promoter of a concertserie for contemporary music.

This season, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford returns to the Metropolitan Opera for Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung, and appears in concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic both in Berlin and on tour in Asia. She also makes her debut at the Santa Fe Opera in the world premiere of The Thirteenth Child.

A graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Ms. Mumford made her debut there as Laura in Luisa Miller, and has since appeared in more than 140 performances with the company, some of which include the Pilgrim in the new production of Kajia Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin, Smeaton in the new production of Anna Bolena, and in productions of Rigoletto, Ariadne auf Naxos,  Il Trittico, Parsifal, Idomeneo, Cavalleria Rusticana, Nixon in China, The Queen of Spades,  the complete Ring Cycle, The Magic Flute, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Wozzeck.  

Other recent opera engagements have included her role debut as the title role in Tancredi with Teatro Nuovo, the first ever American performances of  Rossini’s Aureliano in Palmira at the Caramoor Festival, L’Amour de loin at the Festival d’opéra de Québec, Iolante at the Dallas Opera, the title role in the American premiere of Henze’s Phaedra,  the title role in The Rape of Lucretia, and the world premiere of Daniel Schnyder’s Yardbird at Opera Philadelphia;  the title role in Dido and Aeneas at the Glimmerglass Festival,  Ottavia in L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival and the BBC Proms, Orsini in Lucrezia Borgia at the Caramoor Festival , Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri at the Palm Beach Opera, the title role in The Rape of Lucretia, conducted by Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival; the title role in Carmen at the Crested Butte Music Festival, Principessa in Suor Angelica and Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi with the Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi di Milano in Italy; and the title role in La Cenerentola at Utah Festival Opera.

Also an active concert performer and recitalist, Ms Mumford appeared with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in US and European tours of the world premiere of John Adam’s oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary and in performances of Mahler Symphony No. 3. She also appeared with the Mo. Dudamel and the LAPO in performances of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in a production by Yuval Sharon and the Chilean theater group Teatrocinema. Other concert engagements have included appearances with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Utah Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and Milwaukee Symphony orchestras;  the Berlin Philharmonic, the Netherland Radio Philharmonic, and at the Hollywood Bowl and the Ravinia, Tanglewood, Grand Teton, Vail, Tucson Desert Song, Britt and La Jolla Summer Music festivals.  She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2005 as part of the Richard Good and Friends concert series in Zankel Hall, and has since appeared there with James Levine and the Met Chamber Orchestra. She has also made multiple appearances in the Musicians from Marlboro’s summer festivals and US tours. In recital she has been presented in New York by the Marilyn Horne Foundation, the Frick Collection, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in Philadelphia by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

Ms Mumford has appeared in the Metropolitan Opera’s Met: Live in HD series broadcasts of Anna Bolena, Das Rheingold, Gotterdämmerung, The Magic Flute, Nixon in China, Manon Lescaut, and Il Trittico.  Her recordings include Handel’s Messiah with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (Momon Tabernacle Choir), Beethoven’s Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony (Avie), and John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon). She was and was one of sixteen singers invited to work with Naxos Records and Yale University in a collaborative project to record the complete songs of Charles Ives.

A native of Sandy, Utah, Ms. Mumford holds a Bachelors of Music from Utah State University and has received awards from the Opera Index Competition, Palm Beach Opera Competition, Sullivan Foundation, Connecticut Opera Guild Competition, Joyce Dutka Foundation Competition and the MacAllister Awards.

Learn more: https://www.tamaramumford.com

Hailed as “Superb” and “imaginative, skillful creators” by the New York Times, the Calder Quartet captivates audiences exploring a broad spectrum of repertoire, always striving to 

 

fulfill the composer’s vision in their performances. The group’s distinctive artistry is exemplified by a musical curiosity brought to everything they perform and has led them to be called “one of America’s most satisfying – and most enterprising – quartets”. (Los Angeles Times)

Winners of the prestigious 2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant, they are widely known for the discovery, commissioning, recording and mentoring of some of today’s best emerging composers. In addition to performances of the complete Beethoven and Bartok quartets, the Calder Quartet’s dedication to commissioning new works has given rise to premieres of dozens of string quartets by established and up-and-coming composers including Peter Eötvös, Andrew Norman, Christopher Rouse, Ted Hearne and Christopher Cerrone. Inspired by innovative American artist Alexander Calder, the Calder Quartet’s desire to bring immediacy and context to the works they perform creates an artfully crafted musical experience.

Recent highlights include Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Disney Hall, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, multiple performances at Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Salzburg Festival, Donaueschingen Festival, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Tonhalle Zurich, IRCAM Paris, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and the Sydney Opera House. They have performed as soloists with the Cleveland Orchestra and LA Philharmonic and have collaborated with musicians such as Thomas Adès, Peter

Eötvös, Anders Hillborg, Daniel Bjarnasson, Andrew Norman, Audrey Luna, Johannes Moser, Joshua Bell, Menahem Pressler, Joseph Kalechstein, Paul Neubauer, Iva Bittová and Edgar Meyer. In 2017, the Calder Quartet signed an exclusive, multi-disc record deal with Pentatone with their debut recording featuring Beethoven scheduled for release in Fall 2018.

The quartet has signed an exclusive, multi-disc record deal with Pentatone records. Their debut recording features the music of Beethoven and Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. Previously the quartet has appeared on Signum Classics, BMC records, Bridge Records and E1 recording the quartets of Peter Eötvös with Audrey Luna, Thomas Adès’ chamber music with the composer at the piano, early works of Terry Riley, the chamber music of Christopher Rouse, Mozart Piano concertos with Anne-Marie McDermott, and Ravel and Mozart quartets.

As a side project, the quartet has collaborated with acts such as Andrew WK, Lord Huron, Vampire Weekend, and The National. Television appearances include the Late Show with David Letterman, Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel, and the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson as well as radio appearances on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, Performance Today, WQXR New York, KUSC Los Angeles, Colorado Public Radio, and NPR.

In 2011 the Calder Quartet launched a non-profit dedicated to furthering its efforts in commissioning, presenting, recording, and education, collaborating with

the Getty Museum, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, and the Barbican Centre in London. The Calder Quartet formed at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and continued studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music with Ronald Leonard, and at the Juilliard School, receiving the Artist Diploma in Chamber Music Studies as the Juilliard Graduate Resident String Quartet. The quartet regularly conducts master classes and has taught at the Colburn School, the Oberlin School the Juilliard School, Cleveland Institute of Music, University of Cincinnati College Conservatory and USC Thornton School of Music.

 

A prolific concert performer, Andrew has appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Wiener Philharmoniker, the Akademisten Berlin, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with Sir Simon Rattle; the Orchestre de Paris, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra with Daniel Harding; the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Andrew Manze; the Gävle Symphony and Robin Ticciati; the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest and the Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin; and the Accademia Santa Cecilia with Semyon Bychkov.

Andrew made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Jacquino Fidelio, returning for Flamand Capriccio, Tamino Die Zauberflöte, Artabenes in Arne’s Artaxerxes and Narraboth Salome. He has also appeared at the National Theatre Prague; La Monnaie  Brussels; the Salzburger Festspiele; Hamburgische Staatsoper, Theater an der Wien, the Lucerne Festival and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Learn more: http://www.ajrstaples.com/new-page