SFGC在Jacobsen全球首映式中结束了本季的工作。
旧金山女子合唱团2017-2018赛季圆满结束，与科林-雅各布森合作，全球首演
莉莎-比拉瓦作为艺术总监的最后一场音乐会庆祝活动
加州旧金山 - 2018年3月21日---旧金山女子合唱团和艺术总监候任瓦莱丽-圣安特-阿加特（Valérie Sainte-Agathe）将于4月22日（周日）下午4点在耶尔巴布埃纳艺术中心的论坛上与作曲家兼小提琴家科林-雅各布森（Colin Jacobsen）合作的节目，为2017-18订阅季画上句号。节目将以Jacobsen的《Vocalissimus》的世界首演为特色，以Lisa Bielawa作为SFGC艺术总监的最后一场音乐会为主题，以她在与合唱团合作的五个赛季中所创造的项目和合作关系的音乐组合来庆祝。比拉瓦的电视歌剧《森林》中的《森林》。Theo Bleckmann的《最后的答案》、Carla Kihlstedt的《鲱鱼跑》和Aleksandra Vrebalov的《泡泡》。节目中还有菲利普-格拉斯（Philip Glass）的《坩埚》和法国作曲家安德烈-卡普雷特（André Caplet）的《Septuor》中的三首赞美诗。"我想不出更合适的方式来庆祝我在SFGC的任期，"艺术总监Lisa Bielawa说。"在过去的五个赛季中，我和Valérie在艺术上进行了愉快而富有成效的合作，共同追求我对合唱团的重要宗旨--与著名作曲家和乐团建立艺术合作关系；为合唱团创作出具有我们特色的核心曲目，展示我们的标志性声音；以及成为我们这个时代的音乐冠军。"候任艺术总监Valérie Sainte-Agathe补充道："过去五年来，Lisa的远见卓识和合作精神帮助指导这个组织取得了许多成就和历史性的里程碑。这场音乐会是对我们在这段时间里共同取得的成就表示敬意，同时也是对艺术总监的一个恰当的庆祝，因为他帮助我们建立了我们作为同类乐团中最优秀的乐团之一的传统，并在此基础上发展壮大。"经常与许多世界顶尖艺术家、乐团和组织合作的科林-雅各布森（Colin Jacobsen）将与SFGC合作，为弦乐四重奏、打击乐、长笛和高音合唱的室内乐版《Vocalissimus》进行世界首演，作曲家将以小提琴手的身份进行演奏。这部作品是以三联曲的形式创作的，将美国诗人华莱士-史蒂文斯的一首诗《Vocalissimus》与两首歌曲结合在一起，其中有作家莉迪亚-戴维斯的作品。Jacobsen作为纽约交响乐团The Knights的联合艺术总监，曾与SFGC有过多次合作，他对这部作品进行了反思，并补充道："我被幽默和悲伤的混合体所吸引，世俗和魔幻的并列，紧凑的结构，以及对周围环境和我们如何与世界互动的意识提升到更高的层次。"
Under the direction of Lisa Bielawa and Valérie Sainte-Agathe, two guiding principles of SFGC’s artistic activities have been to create a repertoire of works with an emphasis on American composers and to showcase SFGC’s “signature sound.” Featuring nine new works written over the past four years including seven commissions for or by the chorus, SFGC’s new album Final Answer perfectly encapsulates this work. The program will highlight three of these works: Bielawa’s own Opening: Forest from her TV opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser (2015 SFGC premiere at San Francisco Symphony SoundBox); Final Answer by Theo Bleckmann (2016 SFGC premiere at NY PHIL BIENNIAL); Carla Kihlstedt’s Herring Run (2016 SFGC commission and premiere), and Aleksandra Vrebalov’s Bubbles (2016 SFGC premiere with Kronos Quartet).
Also included on the program are three hymns from Arthur Miller’s Broadway musical The Crucible, written by Philip Glass, and part of SFGC’s season-long celebration of the composer. Speaking of SFGC’s season-opening performance with members of the Philip Glass Ensemble on October 26, 2017, the Bay Area Reporter praised the performance as “ambitiously planned and perfectly executed.” As part of its February 2018 New York tour, SFGC made its Carnegie Hall debut with the Philip Glass Ensemble performing the composer’s groundbreaking work Music with Changing Parts, and returned to the Bay Area to present the same program under the auspices of San Francisco Performances. The San Francisco Chronicle lauded this “robust and dramatically affecting performance” and commented specifically on the “sweet-toned contributions of the choral singers.”
While Strings Attached is the final program in SFGC’s 2017-18 subscription series, local audiences will have two additional opportunities in the coming months to hear the chorus in concert. SFGC will join Kronos Quartet on Saturday, April 28, for the world premiere Aleksandra Vrebalov’s Missa Supratext as part of Day 3 of the KRONOS FESTIVAL 2018 at SFJAZZ. And on Thursday, June 7, and Saturday, June 9, SFGC joins forces with Voices of Music in a presentation of Henry Purcell’s baroque operatic masterpiece, Dido and Aeneas, for the San Francisco Early Music Society’s 2018 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition.
CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:
San Francisco Girls Chorus Presents:
“Strings Attached”
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Sunday, April 22, 2018, 4:00 p.m.
Forum at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103
Colin Jacobsen: Vocalissimus (World Premiere of Chamber Version)
Theo Bleckmann: Final Answer
Carla Kihlstedt: Herring Run
Philip Glass: Hymns from The Crucible
Aleksandra Vrebalov: Bubbles
Lisa Bielawa: Opening: Forest from the TV opera Vireo
André Caplet: Septuor
Single tickets are priced at $25 for General Admission and $5 for Students, and can be purchased online through City Box Office at http://www.cityboxofice.com or by phone at (415) 392-4400.
For more information, please visit http://www.sfgirlschorus.org.
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ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO GIRLS CHORUS
Stunning vocal range, flexibility, drama, and power are among the hallmarks of the 39-year-old San Francisco Girls Chorus, recognized as one of the world’s most widely known and respected youth vocal ensembles.
Under the direction of Artistic Director Lisa Bielawa and Music Director & Principal Conductor Valérie Sainte-Agathe, SFGC has achieved an incomparable sound that underscores the unique clarity and force of impeccably trained treble voices fused with expressiveness and drama. As a result, the Chorus vibrantly performs 1,000 years of choral masterworks from plainchant to the most challenging and nuanced contemporary works created expressly for them in programs that are as intelligently designed as they are enjoyable and revelatory to experience.
This season, SFGC will present a three-concert subscription series in San Francisco at Herbst Theatre, Davies Symphony Hall, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In February, the Chorus made its Carnegie Hall debut with Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble for a remounting of the composer's seminal 1971 work, Music with Changing Parts. The Chorus will also appear on the Kronos Quartet’s KRONOS FESTIVAL 2018, present a co-production of Henry Purcell's Baroque operatic masterpiece, Dido and Aeneas, with the San Francisco Early Music Society and Voices of Music for the 2018 Berkeley Festival & Exhibition, and again collaborate with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Symphony.
Highlights from the 2016-2017 Season included SFGC's debut at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with The Knights for the acclaimed SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras and performances with the Kronos Quartet, for the ensemble's festival at SFJAZZ, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, and San Francisco Film Festival. SFGC also went back to the studio to record works by nine living composers, including Philip Glass, Alesksandra Vrebalov, Sahba Aminikia, Lisa Bielawa, John Zorn, and Gabriel Kahane, with the Kronos Quartet for its newest album, Final Answer, which was released in February 2018.
Other recent performance highlights include the inauguration of President Barack Obama; Beethoven’s monumental Ninth Symphony with Gustavo Dudamel and Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra; and the New York Philharmonic's 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL festival at Lincoln Center. Recent touring activities have taken the chorus to China, Japan, Korea, Cuba, Germany, Nordic countries, New York, Washington, D.C., and Oregon, for performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, and Britt Music Festival.
Founded in 1978, the San Francisco Girls Chorus quickly became a regional center for choral music education and performance for girls and young women ages 5-18. Hundreds of singers from 46 Bay Area cities participate in this internationally recognized program, described as “a model in the country for training girls’ voices” by the California Arts Council. The organization consists of a professional-level performance, recording, and touring ensemble; the four-level Chorus School training program; and a Preparatory Chorus for 4-7 year olds.
ABOUT COLIN JACOBSEN
Violinist and composer Colin Jacobsen is “one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene” (Washington Post). An eclectic composer who draws on a range of influences, he was named one of the top 100 composers under 40 by NPR listeners. He is also active as an Avery Fisher Career Grant-winning soloist and a touring member of Yo-Yo Ma’s famed Silk Road Ensemble. For his work as a founding member of two game-changing, audience-expanding ensembles – the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and orchestra The Knights – Jacobsen was recently selected from among the nation’s top visual, performing, media, and literary artists to receive a prestigious and substantial United States Artists Fellowship.
Colin Jacobsen’s work as a composer developed as a natural outgrowth of his chamber and orchestral collaborations. Jointly inspired by encounters with leading exponents of non-Western traditions and by his own classical heritage, his writing reveals an eclectic personal voice with a “knack for spinning lines with an elasticity that sounds uncannily like improvisation” (The New York Times).
Among Jacobsen’s most notable compositions for Brooklyn Rider are Brooklesca, an homage to his Brooklyn home; Beloved, do not let me be discouraged..., as heard on the quartet’s acclaimed recording with Kayhan Kalhor; and Achille’s Heel, which is showcased on Dominant Curve. His most recent compositions for the group include Three Miniatures – “vivacious, deftly drawn sketches” (The New York Times), which were written for the reopening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Islamic art galleries. Jacobsen collaborated with Iran’s Siamak Aghaei to write a Persian folk-inflected composition, Ascending Bird, which he performed as soloist with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House, in a concert that was streamed live by millions of viewers worldwide. His work for dance and theater includes music for Compagnia de’ Colombari’s theatrical production of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
As a touring member of Yo-Yo Ma’s venerated Silk Road Project since its founding in 2000, Jacobsen has participated in residencies and performances at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hollywood Bowl, and across the U.S., as well as in Azerbaijan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and Switzerland. Highlights of his journeys with the ensemble include performances in front of the world’s largest wooden Buddha statue in Nara, Japan; as part of Lincoln Center’s 50th anniversary celebrations; at the opening of the Shanghai Special Olympics; and at the Red Fort in Agra, India. He appears on all six of the Silk Road Ensemble’s albums.
ABOUT LISA BIELAWA
Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. She takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. The New York Timesdescribes her music as, “ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart.” She is the recipient of the 2017 Music Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.
Bielawa began touring as the vocalist with the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1992, and in 1997 co-founded the MATA Festival, which celebrates the work of young composers. Bielawa was appointed Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus in 2013 and recently completed her residency at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California. Her discography includes albums on the Tzadik, TROY, Innova, BMOP/sound, Orange Mountain Music and Sono Luminus labels.
Bielawa’s music is frequently performed throughout the US and Europe, with recent and upcoming highlights including two world premieres at the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Drama/Self Pitypremiered by the Orlando Philharmonic, performances as both composer and soloist at The Kennedy Center’s KC Jukebox series and SHIFT Festival, and a concert of her works at National Sawdust. Bielawa’s music can be found outside the concert hall as well: Chance Encounter was premiered by soprano Susan Narucki and The Knights in Lower Manhattan's Seward Park; and Airfield Broadcasts, a 60-minute work for hundreds of musicians, was premiered on the tarmac of the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin in May 2013 and at Crissy Field in San Francisco in October 2013. Bielawa recently completed her unprecedented, made-for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser with librettist Erik Ehn and director Charles Otte. Vireo was produced as part of Bielawa’s artist residency at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California and in partnership with KCETLink and Single Cel. The opera was filmed at locations across the country, and featured over 350 musicians in support of its core cast. Vireo was broadcast online and on TV by KCET. The Los Angeles Times called it an opera, “unlike any you have seen before, in content and in form,” and San Francisco Classical Voice described it as, “poetic and fantastical, visually stunning and relentlessly abstract.”
For more information, please visit www.lisabielawa.net.
PHOTO CREDITS
Colin Jacobsen / Courtesy Colin Jacobsen
Lisa Bielawa / Carlin Ma
PRESS CONTACT
Brenden Guy, Marketing & PR Consultant
(415) 640-3165
brendenguy@gmail.com
marketing@sfgirlschorus.org