Hannah Lash Eating Flowers [World Premiere | Festival Commission]
Missy Mazzoli River Rouge Transfiguration [West Coast Premiere]
Sean Shepherd Blue Blazes [West Coast Premiere]
Nico Muhly Wish You Were Here [West Coast Premiere]
Philip Glass Double Concerto for Violin and Cello (Tim Fain, violin; Matt Haimovitz, cello) [West Coast Premiere]
This Saturday night program includes works by four composers under the age of 35 and veteran composer Philip Glass, with one world premiere and four West Coast premieres.
Maestra Marin Alsop opens the concert with the world premiere of Eating Flowers by Hannah Lash, a young composer who began studying music at the age of four, certain she wanted to grow up to be a composer. Lash’s new work was commissioned by the Festival and sponsored by the Pacific Harmony Foundation, established by renowned composer John Adams and his wife, photographer Deborah O’Grady.
The West Coast premiere of River Rouge Transfiguration by Missy Mazzoli was inspired by a 1927 photograph of Ford’s River Rouge plant near Detroit. Mazzoli, the recipient of four ASCAP Young Composer Awards and a Fulbright Grant, cites her key influences as minimalism, 19th-century Romanticism, techno and indie rock. She explains of River Rouge, “This is music about the transformation of grit and noise into something massive, resonant and unexpected.”
Also receiving its West Coast premiere is Blue Blazes by Sean Shepherd, an “exciting composer of the new American generation” (New York Times). Blue Blazes is an eight-minute piece showcasing all the areas of the orchestra, allowing different sections to be featured in a sequence, ultimately weaving in a “noble fanfare” and concluding with a “wild, distracted, self-satisfied romp.”
Prolific and eclectic, Nico Muhly has written a wide range of work for soloists and ensembles. Alsop directs the Festival Orchestra in the West Coast premiere of Muhly’s atmospheric Wish You Were Here, a work that pays homage to Colin McPhee, one of the first western musicologists to study Balinese gamelan, as well as to two great illustrators: Carl Barks and Hergé.
The program culminates with the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello, featuring acclaimed soloists Tim Fain (violin) and Matt Haimovitz (cello). Originally composed for Nederlands Dance Theater, this work’s marked feature is its unusual structure–two soloists perform with the orchestra and, in a series of four duets, without.
MEETUP! The concert is followed by an outdoor dessert reception for the entire audience and orchestra!
