(LENOX, Mass.) – Works by American composers, especially works by former/current Tanglewood Music Center Composition Fellows and works by women composers, will be featured in this summer’s Festival of Contemporary Music, under the direction of composers John Harbison and Michael Gandolfi, at Tanglewood, running Thursday, July 17, 2014, through Monday, July 21, in accordance with Tanglewood’s season-long focus on American music.

The spotlight on women composers includes Hannah Lash, Kate Soper, and Anna Weesner, British composer Charlotte Bray, and Korean composer Seung-Ah Oh. This year’s festival will also feature very recent works or very early pieces by composers including John Adams, Martin Boykan, Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison, and Steven Mackey, as well as works by 20th century masters Jacob Druckman, George Perle, and Roger Sessions.

A highlight of this year’s Festival of Contemporary Music is the world premiere of Welsh-born American composer Bernard Rands’ “Folk Songs,” a kind of autobiography of the composer’s musical life in England and Wales, Italy, Germany, and the United States. This year’s festival also features the world premiere of “Voices” by the young German composer and 2012 TMC Fellow Benjamin Scheuer.  These new works have been commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center.

Composers featured in this year’s Festival of Contemporary Music feature include fourteen former Tanglewood Music Center Fellows: John Adams (TMC 1974), Martin Boykan (TMC 1949-50), Charlotte Bray (TMC 2008), Anthony Cheung (TMC 2005), Jacob Druckman (TMC 1949-50), Michael Gandolfi (TMC 1986), John Harbison (TMC 1959), Hannah Lash (TMC 2005), Fred Lerdahl (TMC 1964/66), Steven Mackey (TMC 1984), Eric Nathan (TMC 2010), Seung-Ah Oh (TMC 2006), Benjamin Scheuer (TMC 2012), and Kate Soper (TMC 2006).  2014 TMC Composition Fellows featured in this year’s FCM programming include Yiyiing Chen, Arne Gieshoff, David Hertzberg, Andrew Hsu, and Elizabeth Kelly.

The Festival of Contemporary Music, which began at Tanglewood in 1964, is a project of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO’s prestigious summer music academy, which celebrates its 75th anniversary season in 2015. The 2014 Festival of Contemporary Music will feature performances by TMC Fellows and guest artists, will all performances to take place in Ozawa Hall. John Harbison and Michael Gandolfi, both directors of the 2014 Festival of Contemporary Music, are composition program coordinators for the Tanglewood Music Center.

Thursday, July 17, 8 p.m., Ozawa Hall:

The Festival opens on Thursday, July 17, with chamber works by American composers James Matheson (Anatomy of Melancholy for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano), Anna Weesner (Mother Tongues for soprano, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano), Jacob Druckman (Bo for two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, harp, bass clarinet, and marimba), Fred Lerdahl (Wake for soprano, violin, viola, cello, harp, and percussion), and TMC faculty member and FCM co-director John Harbison (Parody Fantasia for solo piano), as well as Korean-born composer Seung-Ah Oh (Canonical Contours for percussion quartet).

 

Friday, July 18,  2:30 p.m., Ozawa Hall:

On Friday, July 18, TMC Fellows will perform works from the Composition Fellows’ intensive “piece-a-day” project, whereby the composers develop short works for specific small ensembles quickly and practically. This program will feature works by 2014 TMC fellows Yiyiing Chen (from Taiwan) and Arne Gieshoff (from Germany), as well as Americans David Hertzberg, Andrew Hsu, and Elizabeth Kelly.

 

Saturday, July 19, 2:30 p.m.,  Ozawa Hall:

Saturday, July 19, at 2:30 p.m., features an all-American program with works by George Perle (Etudes 1976 for solo piano), Keeril Makan (2 for violin and percussion), Hannah Lash (Friction, Pressure, Impact for cello and piano), David Dzubay (String Quartet No. 1, Astral), Eric Nathan (Toying for solo trumpet), and Anthony Cheung (Roundabout for solo piano).

 

Sunday, July 20, 10 a.m., Ozawa Hall:

One of the highlights of FCM this year is the world premiere and TMC commission of Welsh-born American composer Bernard Rands’ Folk Songs (for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, harp, and percussion), which pays musical visits to locales in Europe, the UK, and the U.S. in a kind of tour of the composer’s life. Arranged deftly and with great respect for the originals, the songs will be performed by three different TMC Vocal Fellows. The program also includes the world premiere of Voices, (for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, and two horns), a TMC commissioned work by the young German composer and 2012 TMC Fellow Benjamin Scheuer.  Also on the program will be At Once on a Deserted Street (for clarinet, horn, violin, cello, and piano) by longtime Brandeis University faculty member Martin Boykan, and As Above (for violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, percussion, piano, and video) by TMC faculty member and FCM co-director Michael Gandolfi.

 

Sunday, July 20, 8 p.m., Ozawa Hall:

Another highlight of the Festival is the Theatre evening on Sunday, July 20, at 8 p.m., featuring Andrew Waggoner’s This Powerful Rhyme (for two actors, flute, clarinet, string quartet, guitar/mandolin, percussion, and piano)—a piece written between 2003 and 2006 featuring Shakespearean sonnets and exploring aspects of intimate human relationships. This special Theatre evening will also feature a performance of Kate Soper’s Helen Enfettered (for soprano, mezzo-soprano, clarinet, trumpet, piano, percussion, violin, viola, cello, and double bass), based on text from Chapter E of Christian Bök’s Eunoia, which describes the character and ordeal of Helen of Troy.

 

Monday, July 21, 8 p.m., Ozawa Hall:

The closing concert of the Festival of Contemporary Music takes place on Monday, July 21. The Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, under the direction of Stefan Asbury, performs Roger Sessions’ Concerto for Orchestra, a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for its centennial thirty years ago. Also on the program are Steve Mackey’s Beautiful Passing, a violin concerto featuring violinist Sarah Silver, a member of the 2014 Tanglewood New Fromm Players; English composer Charlotte Bray’s At the Speed of Stillness; and John Adams’ Slonimsky’s Earbox.  TMC Conducting Fellows will share the podium with Mr. Asbury for this program.

 

TICKET INFORMATION

Tickets for Festival of Contemporary Music events, July 17-July 21, are available for purchase online at www.tanglewood.org or by calling SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200 or 617-266-1200.  A Festival of Contemporary Music pass, priced at $40, is valid for general admission to all six performances; single tickets are priced at $11.

 

BRIEF BACKGROUND ON THE FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

The Festival of Contemporary Music is a project of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO’s prestigious summer music academy, which celebrates its 75th anniversary season in 2015.  The Festival of Contemporary Music began in earnest in 1964, although the mini-festival had a precedent during the Charles Munch era with the “Seminar in Contemporary Music,” which began in 1956 with concerts, lectures, and discussions underwritten by Paul Fromm. The in-depth study of 20th and 21st century works is a major part of the TMC’s chamber and orchestral curriculum throughout the summer, but the annual Festival of Contemporary Music gives TMC fellows and the general public a chance to focus solely on contemporary music.

The 2014 Festival of Contemporary Music has been endowed in perpetuity by the generosity of Dr. Raymond H. and Mrs. Hannah H. Schneider, with additional support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Fromm Music Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund.

 

HISTORY OF THE TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER

Since its start as the Berkshire Music Center in 1940, the Tanglewood Music Center has been closely tied to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, its players, and its music directors. Serge Koussevitzky, who headed the BSO from 1924 to 1949, founded the school with the aim of creating a premier music academy where young instrumentalists, vocalists, conductors, and composers could sharpen their skills under the tutelage of Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians and other world-class artists, with the resources of a great symphony at their disposal. To this end, he also enlisted some of the day’s most important composer-teachers as faculty members, a tradition distinguished by the presence of such longtime TMC faculty as Aaron Copland and Paul Hindemith. Koussevitzky helped develop that dream until 1950, a year after his retirement as BSO music director. Charles Munch, his successor in that position, took over the TMC from 1951 through 1962, working with Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland to shape the school’s programs. In 1963, new BSO Music Director Erich Leinsdorf took over the school’s reins, returning to Koussevitzky’s hands-on leadership approach while restoring a renewed emphasis on contemporary music. In 1970, three years before his appointment as BSO Music Director, Seiji Ozawa became head of the BSO’s programs at Tanglewood, while Gunther Schuller was appointed to lead the TMC and Leonard Bernstein became general advisor. Leon Fleisher served as Artistic Director of the TMC from 1985 to 1997. In November 1997, Ellen Highstein became director of the TMC, a position she holds today.

In addition to Ozawa, prominent alumni of the TMC include Claudio Abbado, Luciano Berio,  Leonard Bernstein, William Bolcom, Phyllis Curtin, David Del Tredici, Christoph von Dohnányi, Jacob Druckman, Lukas Foss, Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison, Oliver Knussen, Lorin Maazel, Wynton Marsalis, Zubin Mehta, Sherrill Milnes, Osvaldo Golijov, Leontyne Price, Ned Rorem, Bright Sheng, Sanford Sylvan, Cheryl Studer, Michael Tilson Thomas, Augusta Read Thomas, Dawn Upshaw, the late Shirley Verrett, and David Zinman.

 

2014 FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, JULY 17-21

OZAWA HALL

John Harbison and Michael Gandolfi, Festival Directors

Featuring Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center

 

Thursday, July 17, 8 p.m., Ozawa Hall

MATHESON Anatomy of Melancholy for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

WEESNER Mother Tongues for soprano, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano

OH (TMC Fellow 2008) Canonical Contours for percussion quartet

DRUCKMAN (TMC Fellow 1949-50) Bo for two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, harp, bass clarinet, and marimba

LERDAHL (TMC Fellows 1964/66) Wake for soprano, violin, viola, cello, harp, and percussion

HARBISON (TMC fellow 1959) Parody Fantasia for solo piano

 

Friday, July 18, 2:30 p.m., Ozawa Hall

Chamber music by 2014 TMC Composition Fellows: Yiyiing Chen, Arne Gieshoff, David Hertzberg, Andrew Hsu, and Elizabeth Kelly.

 

Saturday, July, 19, 2:30 p.m., Ozawa Hall

MAKAN 2 for violin and percussion

LASH (TMC Fellow 2006) Friction, Pressure, Impact for cello and piano

NATHAN (TMC Fellow 2010) Toying for solo trumpet

CHEUNG (TMC Fellow 2005) Roundabout for solo piano

PERLE Etudes 1976 for solo piano

DZUBAY  String Quartet No. 1, Astral

 

Sunday, July 20, 10 a.m., Ozawa Hall

BOYKAN (TMC Fellow 1949-50) Voices for clarinet, horn, violin, cello, and piano

SCHEUER  (TMC Fellow 2012) voices, for two wind quintets (world premiere, TMC commission)

GANDOLFI (TMC Fellow 1986) As Above for violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, percussion, piano, and video

RANDS Folk Songs for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, harp, and percussion (world premiere, TMC commission)

 

Sunday, July 20, 8 p.m., Ozawa Hall

Concert performances of theatrical works

WAGGONER This Powerful Rhyme for two actors, flute, clarinet, string quartet, guitar/mandolin, percussion, and piano

SOPER (TMC Fellow 2006) Helen Enfettered for soprano, mezzo-soprano, clarinet, trumpet, piano, percussion, violin, viola, cello, and double bass

 

Monday, July 21, 8 p.m., Ozawa Hall

The Fromm Concert at Tanglewood

Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra

Stefan Asbury and TMC Conducting Fellows, conductors

SESSIONS Concerto for Orchestra

MACKEY (TMC Fellow 1984) Beautiful Passing

BRAY (TMC Fellow 2008) At the Speed of Stillness

ADAMS (TMC Fellow 1974) Slonimsky’s Earbox