Led by Music Director Marin Alsop, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform two works by the Pulitzer Prize‐winning American composer Aaron Jay Kernis, November 29 and 30 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and December 1 at the Music Center at Strathmore. On the program are Kernis’ Newly Drawn Sky and his Holocaust commemorative work, Lament and Prayer, featuring violinist Timothy Fain in his debut appearance with the Orchestra.
The program will also include Beethoven’s nature‐inspired Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral.” This program is part of the BSO's 2007‐2008 “Year of the Composer,” featuring works by 11 contemporary composers, paired with all nine Beethoven symphonies. Prior to these concerts, Aaron Jay Kernis will participate in Composers in Conversation, Wednesday, November 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Theatre Project.
In addition, as part of the Baltimore Symphony’s partnership with XM Satellite Radio, this program will be broadcast nationally on XM Classics 110 on Friday, January 4 at 9:00 p.m. ET. The program will be rebroadcast on Sunday, January 6 at 3:00 p.m. ET. Hosted by Martin Goldsmith, the broadcast will feature the full‐length program, along with behind‐the‐scenes interviews with Marin Alsop and Aaron Jay Kernis. See below for complete program information.
The youngest composer ever to win a Pulitzer Prize (String Quartet No. 2, 1988), Aaron Jay Kernis was also the youngest to receive the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, awarded to him in 2002 for his cello concerto, Colored Field. His work has been described as lyrical, Romantic, sometimes‐minimalist, but above all, accessible. “I want to write music that is visceral, that is moving and that is impeccably put together,” Aaron Jay Kernis has remarked. “I don’t want classical music to be a passive experience. I want it to have as much of an impact as the best rock concerts.”
Written in 1996 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust, Lament and Prayer is the conclusion to Kernis’ series of compositions dealing with his reaction to war and genocide. An elegy for violin and orchestra, Kernis imagined Lament and Prayer as a call‐and‐response interplay similar to that of a cantor and his congregation. Solo violin, in these concerts performed by Timothy Fain, plays the part of cantor, leading his orchestral congregation in mourning lives lost. The cantor’s expression of sorrow in Lament later concludes with a sense of hope in the lyrical second‐movement Prayer, as a lengthy solo cadenza for violin gives way to the principal melody from Kernis’ prizewinning Colored Field, also based on the horrors of the Holocaust.
In Kernis’ own words, his purely orchestra 2005 composition Newly Drawn Sky “was initially inspired by a first summer visit to the ocean with my then‐six‐month‐old twins. I’m always most at peace near the water, but this was a tumultuous period for me, lacking sleep and perspective at the early point of my life as a new father. Carrying my kids around on the beach, the wind picked up and we became surrounded by the changing colors of the sky at dusk—shifting from dull blue to gold hints under the clouds with clear streaks of pink and purple—suddenly brought the words ‘newly drawn sky’ to mind. The meaning that the words have for me is palpable: they suggest the fabric of my life redrawn, of the growing awareness of the shifts my life would now undergo with the presence of these angelic creatures at the center of it, of the constancy of change in life.” The rhythms and melodies of this composition mirror the changes Kernis saw in the summer sky. From intricate percussion solos to grand orchestral swells, Newly Drawn Sky explores the full range of orchestral colors.
Paired with Kernis’ compositions is Beethoven Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral,” a work similarly inspired by the natural world. This symphony is a reflection of Beethoven’s relaxing vacations in Vienna’s neighboring countryside. While many believe the melody expresses nature’s beauty, Beethoven’s intent was to convey the emotions evoked while viewing the countryside.
Marin Alsop, conductor
Hailed as one of the world’s leading conductors for her artistic vision and commitment to accessibility in classical music, Marin Alsop made history with her appointment as the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. With her inaugural concerts in September 2007, she became the first woman to head a major American orchestra, mirroring her ongoing success in the United Kingdom as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony since 2002.
In summer 2005, she was named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this most prestigious American award. The first artist to win Gramophone’s “Artist of the Year” award and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor’s Award in the same season (2003), Maestra Alsop recently won the Classical Brit Award for Best Female Artist of 2005. In July 2007, she was honored with a European Women of Achievement Award presented to individuals whose vision, courage and determination have made a major impact on increasing the influence of women in European affairs.
Ms. Alsop is a regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. She also appears frequently as a guest conductor with many distinguished orchestras worldwide. After a highly successful 12‐year tenure as music director of the Colorado Symphony, Ms. Alsop continues her association as conductor laureate; she also continues as music director of the highly acclaimed Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California.
Marin Alsop is a native of New York City; she attended Yale University and received her master’s degree from The Juilliard School. In 1989, her conducting career was launched when she became a prizewinner at the Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition in New York, and in the same year, she was awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she was a pupil of Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa and Gustav Meier.
Timothy Fain, violin
With his adventuresome spirit and vast musical gifts, violinist Timothy Fain has emerged as a mesmerizing new presence on the music scene. Selected as one of Symphony magazine’s “Up‐and‐Coming Young Musicians of 2006,” and a Strad Magazine 2007 “Pick of Up‐and‐Coming Musicians,” Fain has recently captured the Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Young Concert Artists International Award.
A sought‐after chamber musician, Timothy Fain has performed at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York’s Bargemusic, Chamber Music Northwest and the Ravinia, Spoleto (Italy), Bridgehampton, Santa Fe, Caramoor, Bard, Lucerne (Switzerland), Vail Valley, Moab and Martha’s Vineyard festivals. He has toured nationally with Musicians from Marlboro, and is first violinist of the Rossetti String Quartet.
His provocative debut CD on Image Recordings of music for solo violin reflects Fain’s inquisitive passion and intellect by combining old and new in solo works by J.S. Bach, Fritz Kreisler, Kevin Puts, Mark O’Connor, Daniel Ott and Randy Woolf.
A native of Santa Monica, California, Timothy Fain is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Victor Danchenko, and of The Juilliard School, where he worked with Robert Mann.
Aaron Jay Kernis, composer
Aaron Jay Kernis, winner of the coveted 2002 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and one of the youngest composers ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, is among the most esteemed musical figures of his generation. His music figures prominently on orchestral, chamber, and recital programs around the world and he has been commissioned by many of America‘s foremost performing artists including Renee Fleming, Joshua Bell and Nadja Salerno‐Sonnenberg, and by numerous prestigious institutions including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco and Singapore Symphonies, and the Walt Disney Company.
Recent commissions include a new work for James Conlon’s first season as the Ravinia Festival’s Music Director, a work for the BBC Proms, and a song cycle for the opening of the new San Francisco
Conservatory.
One of America's most honored composers, Mr. Kernis has also been awarded the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many others, and received Grammy Award nominations for both Air and the Second Symphony.
Since 1998, Mr. Kernis as served as New Music Advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra. He is chairman and co‐director of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, a program that gives young composers the opportunity to hear their works played by one of the world’s great orchestras. He has taught composition at the Yale School of Music since 2003. -- www.baltimoresymphony.org
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