Guest ARTISTs + Composers
LUMINA – OPENING NIGHT
John Corigliano: Phantasmagoria
Nina Shekhar: Lumina
Missy Mazzoli: Procession (Jennifer Koh, Violin) (West Coast Premiere)
John Corigliano: Three Hallucinations
The 63rd season kicks off with guest conductor Daniela Candillari leading the Festival Orchestra in works by John Corigliano, Nina Shekhar, and Missy Mazzoli.
Beginning our season, John Corigliano–a foundational Festival veteran whose work has been featured 16 times and an essential voice in our Pride celebration–returns with two mesmerizing pieces. His Phantasmagoria presents an orchestral suite from his opera, offering a kaleidoscope of shifting, vivid, colorful sequences. We’ll also feature his Three Hallucinations, a reality-bending work based on music written for Ken Russell’s film “Altered States.”
Nina Shekhar‘s Lumina explores the spectrum of light and dark and the murkiness in between. Using swift contrasts between bright, sharp timbres and cloudy textures with dense harmonies, the piece captures sudden bursts of radiance amongst the eeriness of shadows.
Missy Mazzoli‘s Violin Concerto (Procession) features soloist Jennifer Koh as a soothsayer and healer, leading the orchestra through five interconnected healing spells with bold musical courage and chromatic brilliance. From “Procession in a Spiral” referencing medieval processions to the final “Procession Ascending” where the soloist leads the orchestra skyward, this work traverses movements inspired by saints, hymns, and ancient charms for healing, illuminating the rich spectrum of human resilience.
The evening begins with an outdoor Pre-Concert Talk & Community Picnic. No ticket required for the outdoor event.
Featured Artists
Jennifer Koh, Violin
Grammy Award-winning violinist Jennifer Koh is recognized for her intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. She is a forward-thinking artist dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic repertoire while promoting equity and inclusivity in classical music. She has expanded the contemporary violin repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects and has premiered more than 100 works written especially for her. Named Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year, Koh has won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Concert Artists Guild Competition, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has a BA in English literature from Oberlin College and studied at the Curtis Institute, working with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir.
In December of 2023, Koh was appointed to the position of Artistic Director for the Kennedy Center’s Fortas Chamber Music Series, newly partnering with ARCO Collaborative, a non-profit she has upheld since 2014 dedicated to illuminating underrepresented voices in music. As a staple of this season, Koh will perform Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin at the Kennedy Center, as well as curate Sounds of US, an immersive new music festival featuring world premieres of new chamber works, and an emphasis on highlighting previously unheard artists in classical music. Additionally, Koh will perform other works from her critically acclaimed commissioning projects including Alone Together, Bach and Beyond, Bridge to Beethoven, Limitless, and Shared Madness.
Composers
John Corigliano
John Corigliano’s music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. His honors include the Pulitzer Prize for Symphony No. 2, the Grawemeyer Award for his Symphony No. 1 (given over 300 performances worldwide), the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Original Score (The Red Violin), and, of his five Grammy Awards, three for Best Contemporary Composition (Symphony No. 1, String Quartet, and Mr. Tambourine Man.)
Recent scores include a second opera, The Lord of Cries, with a libretto by Mark Adamo based on The Bacchae of Euripides and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Corigliano’s first opera since The Ghosts of Versailles for The Metropolitan Opera in 1991, The Lord of Cries was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and given its premiere in July 2021. Triathlon, for orchestra and saxophone soloist (who plays three instruments throughout the work) was introduced by Tim McAllister and the San Francisco Symphony in April 2021. It is Corigliano’s tenth piece for soloist and orchestra, after his concerti for piano, oboe, clarinet, flute (Pied Piper Fantasy), guitar (Troubadours), violin (The Red Violin), and percussion (Conjurer), as well as the orchestral song-cycles Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan for amplified soprano, and One Sweet Morning for mezzo- soprano. Other scores include Symphony No. 3: Circus Maximus for multiple wind ensembles, as well a rich folio of chamber works.
The French premiere of The Ghosts of Versailles, in a co-production with Glimmerglass Festival, was given by the Royal Opera of Versailles in December of 2019 and subsequently released on DVD, CD, and Blu-Ray. This followed its 2015 staging by Los Angeles Opera, which collected 2017 Grammys for Best Opera Recording and Best Engineered Classical album.
Nina Shekar
Nina Shekhar is a composer and multimedia artist who explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works.
Described as “tart and compelling” (New York Times), “vivid” (Washington Post), an “orchestral supernova” (LA Times), and a “rare composer who opens our ears a little wider each time” (Chicago Tribune), her music has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Albany Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New World Symphony, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, New York Youth Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, The Crossing, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, ETHEL, violinist Jennifer Koh, saxophonist Timothy McAllister, Ensemble Échappé, Music from Copland House, soprano Tony Arnold, Third Angle New Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Lyris Quartet, Ray-Kallay Duo, and New Music Detroit. Her work has been featured by the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Library of Congress, Walt Disney Concert Hall, National Gallery of Art, National Sawdust, I Care If You Listen, ScoreFollower, and WNYC/New Sounds (New York), WFMT (Chicago), and KUSC and KPFK (Los Angeles) radio.
Recent events include China and Germany tours with the New York Philharmonic, her Hollywood Bowl debut with the LA Philharmonic, and international performances by the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony, and Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. Current projects include a new film & orchestral work for LA Phil in collaboration with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, a commission for the New York Philharmonic, a new accordion concerto for a consortium of orchestras led by St. Louis Symphony, a concerto for MIDI keyboard and choir for The Crossing, and a children’s interactive piece co-commissioned by Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), The People’s Music School, and Play on Philly (sponsored by LA Phil and New Music USA). Shekhar is the recipient of the 2021 Rudolf Nissim Prize and the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Leonard Bernstein Award, funded by the Bernstein family.
Missy Mazzoli
Three-time GRAMMY nominee Missy Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times), “a once-in-a-generation magician of the orchestra” (The New Yorker) and “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out NY). Her music has been performed by the Kronos Quartet, LA Opera, eighth blackbird, the BBC Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, Scottish Opera and many others.
In 2023, she was nominated for two GRAMMY Awards, in the categories of “Best Classical Composition” and “Best Classical Compendium.” In 2018, she became, along with Jeanine Tesori, one of the first women to receive a main stage commission from the Metropolitan Opera, and was nominated for her first GRAMMY award in the category of “Best Classical Composition”. From 2018-2021, she was Mead Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and from 2012-2015 was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia.
Mazzoli has been praised for her many operatic compositions; her latest opera Lincoln in the Bardo, an adaptation of the novel by George Saunders, will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 2026, and her opera The Listeners will be performed at Opera Philadelphia, the Essen Opera in Germany, and Lyric Opera of Chicago in the 24/25 season. Her 2016 opera Breaking the Waves, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects, was called “one of the best 21st-century American operas yet” by Opera News. Breaking the Waves received its European premiere at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival; future performances are planned at Detroit Opera, Opera Australia, and Houston Grand Opera.
Mazzoli was named 2022 “Composer of the Year” by Musical America, and in 2024 received the prestigious Kravis Prize for Composition from the New York Philharmonic. In 2016, Missy and composer Ellen Reid founded Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program for young female, non-binary, and gender nonconforming composers. Mazzoli teaches composition at Bard College and her works are published by G. Schirmer.
Program Notes
Phantasmagoria (2000)
John Corigliano (b. 1938)
My opera The Ghosts of Versailles takes place on three different planes of reality: (1) the world of eternity, inhabited by the ghosts of Versailles, including the playwright Beaumarchais and Marie Antoinette (2) the world of the stage, inhabited by the 18th century characters of Beaumarchais (Figaro, Susanna, the Count and Countess, etc.) and (3) the world of historic reality, primarily the reality of the French Revolution itself, populated by the characters of (1) and (2). Thus, The Ghosts of Versailles represents a journey from the most fantastic to the most realistic.
The architecture of the three-hour opera is mirrored in microcosm in Phantasmagoria, which begins with spectral ghost music and a melodic fragment from Marie Antoinette’s first aria that reappears throughout the work. Sliding harmonics and cluster-chords create a liquid tableau behind this melody.
The world of the stage is highly stylized; as the characters would suggest, it is set in the world of 18th-century opera buffa. This section of Phantasmagoria comprises parts of Figaro’s Act I aria and the many chase scenes that occur throughout the opera. Subliminal quotes from Mozart and Rossini (and even one from Wagner) are interspersed with rhythmically eccentric passages of great virtuosity for the orchestral players.
Throughout the work, the ghost music floats in and out, binding the other sections together. After the buffa reaches a climax (with of all things, the Tristan chord), we arrive at a setting of the septet (Quintet and Miserere) from Act II. This highly lyrical ensemble is set in the Conciergerie prison, and unites the Almaviva family (2) with Marie Antoinette (1) in the very real French Revolution (3).
The end of the septet flows into the ghost music, and Marie Antoinette’s melodic motto leads to a conclusion of liquid repose.
– John Corigliano
Lumina (2020)
Nina Shekar (b. 1995)
Lumina explores the spectrum of light and dark and the murkiness in between. Using swift contrasts between bright, sharp timbres and cloudy textures and dense harmonies, the piece captures sudden bursts of radiance amongst the eeriness of shadows.
– Nina Shekar
Violin Concerto (Procession) (2022)
Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980)
[West Coast Premiere]
Violin Concerto (Procession) casts the soloist as a soothsayer, sorcerer, healer, and pied piper-type character, leading the orchestra through five interconnected healing spells. Part one, “Procession in a Spiral”, references medieval penitential processions; part two, “St. Vitus,” is an homage to the patron saint of dancing, who could reportedly cast out eveil spirits; part three, “O My Soul,” is a twisted reworking of the hymn of the same name; and part four, “Bone to Bone, Blood to Blood,” derives its name from the 9th-century Merseburg Charm, a spell meant to cure broken limbs. In the final movement, “Procession Ascending,” the soloist straightens out the spiral of the first section and leads the orchestra straight into the sky. Violin Concerto (Procession) was commissioned by the National Symphony and the Cincinnati Symphony for soloist Jennifer Koh.
– Missy Mazzoli
Three Hallucinations (1981)
John Corigliano (b. 1938)
Three Hallucinations for Orchestra is based upon music written for Ken Russell’s film “Altered States.” The three pieces—Sacrifice, Hymn, Ritual—are interconnected in this score, as well as interrelated motivically and melodically. In the film, Mr. Russell devised several extended religious hallucinations, and the outer two movements of this work (Sacrifice and Ritual) are taken directly from the original film score.
Sacrifice depicts the pagan slaying of a seven-eyed goat, superimposed against other images of death (primarily the death of the hero’s father) and sensuality. The movement begins, however, with a slow introduction, setting up a trance-like state. This is interrupted by the bleating sound of oboes playing in a highly primitive manner. The motto thus introduced—an ornamented and repeated single note C—figures not only in the development of this movement, but as the motivic “theme” of the final movement’s dance.
Other ingredients combine with the oboe motive—specifically, an interval relationship (the tritone or flatted-fifth)—and a melodic fragment (of the hymn Rock of Ages). A final superimposition of all these ingredients culminates in a gigantic orchestral glissando which ends the movement.
The second movement, “Hymn,” develops and extends the previously heard fragment of “Rock of Ages,” fading in and out of a realistic version of the music into more hallucinatory visions. Blurred visions of choral “Amens” (plagal cadences) float like clouds around this music.
The last movement, “Ritual,” interrupts a series of these cadences with frenzied energy, and the momentum leads to a savage ritual dance (in the film, the Hinchi Indians’ mushroom rite). The full-orchestral forces are augmented here by two sets of four timpani each and also by an expanded percussion section, and the work ends in a burst of cumulative energy.
– John Corigliano