21C Artists to Watch news: Joshua Roman, Edwin Outwater and Dan Visconti
Cellist Joshua Roman launches the summer with programs showcasing recent commissions, at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge and Washington’s Bellingham Festival of Music, before embarking on a trio of Californian chamber festival residencies. Edwin Outwater looks forward to guest conducting engagements with the Detroit Symphony and San Francisco Symphony, where he will lead the orchestra’s Independence Day concert and more. And composer Dan Visconti – whose work continues to be championed by the inimitable Kronos Quartet – has just been awarded a life-changing 2013-14 Rome Prize.
New commissions and chamber favorites highlight Joshua Roman’s summer season
Cellist Joshua Roman – “a performer as charismatic as he is technically and musically talented” (Music-Web International) – teams up with the “mind-blowingly good” (Los Angeles Times) JACK Quartet at Le Poisson Rouge on June 23, for the New York premiere of a quintet by Grammy Award-winning composer Jefferson Friedman, a work commissioned by Roman for his TownMusic series in Seattle. Also on the program are original Gesualdo arrangements and Riding Light, Roman’s own work for solo cello, whose “pop rhythms…, interesting harmonic shades, and pleasant melodic lines” impressed San Francisco Classical Voice at its March premiere.
Roman also helps launch the 20th anniversary season of Washington’s Bellingham Festival of Music on July 5, with an account of Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo” Variations and the West Coast premiere of Dreamsongs, a cello concerto written for Roman by Pulitzer Prize-winner Aaron Jay Kernis; after the cellist’s world-premiere performance of the concerto last April, the Columbus Dispatch reported: “Roman’s singing tone rang in delicious nuances … Dazzling.”
Other summer festival engagements include returns to La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest (Aug 2–9), Napa Valley’s Music in the Vineyards (Aug 14–18), and Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West, where Roman will inaugurate a new alumni residency program, curating his own curriculum of performances, master classes and special projects (July 15–25).
For more information, visit JoshuaRoman.com
Edwin Outwater guest conducts San Francisco and Detroit Symphonies
Conductor Edwin Outwater returns to the San Francisco Symphony for five high-profile appearances this summer, leading the orchestra’s annual Independence Day concert and fireworks extravaganza (July 4); rendition of Gershwin’s An American in Paris and Ravel’s Bolero on a program featuring star soprano Measha Brueggergosman; a performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana (July 30); and two further accounts of Gershwin’s beloved tone poem (July 5 & 6). San Francisco Classical Voice considers Outwater to be “headed for a top-tier future,” and he has had a long and rich association with the San Francisco Symphony. Since serving as resident conductor of the orchestra from 2001-06 (when he worked closely with Michael Tilson Thomas, led numerous concerts, toured, and directed the orchestra on two recordings), he has regularly returned as a guest conductor.
Before returning to Canada’s Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, where he will soon launch his seventh season as music director, Outwater heads to the Detroit Symphony to relive the golden age of swing with hits by Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Gershwin (July 12), and to celebrate music inspired by Shakespeare’s plays with favorites by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev and more (July 13).
For more information, visit EdwinOutwater.com
Dan Visconti wins Rome Prize and continues Kronos Quartet collaboration
Composer Dan Visconti has just been named winner of the coveted 2013-14 Samuel Barber Rome Prize – a fellowship offering a stipend, a study or studio, and room and board for up to two years in Rome – and looks forward to starting life in the Italian capital this fall. He follows in the footsteps of previous Rome fellows, who include such titans of American composition as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and two-time winner Samuel Barber, for whom the award is now named.
On the heels of this announcement comes another rave review of Lonesome Roads, Visconti’s first full-length CD: the I Care If You Listen blog pronounces the album “a wonderful introduction to Visconti’s work,” which critic Andrew Lee describes variously as “achingly beautiful,” “unabashedly exuberant,” and “remarkably coherent.” Released last winter and including performances by the Horszowski Trio and the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, Lonesome Roads is available from Bridge Records.
The composer’s close collaboration with the Kronos Quartet continues with the Grammy Award-winning group’s digital-only release of Love Bleeds Radiant (2005), “a heartfelt tribute to the past that bumps flush, and sometimes violently, with the present” (Strings magazine). Now available from kronosquartet.org/store, Visconti’s quartet was the third commission of the Kronos Quartet’s ongoing “Under 30 Project,” launched during the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season to support the creation of new work by younger artists. Now, almost a decade on, Visconti is already at work on a new composition to honor the new-music trailblazing of the veteran quartet for its 40th anniversary next season.
For more information, visit DanVisconti.com.
Artists to Watch: summer engagements
June 23: Joshua Roman
New York, NY
Le Poisson Rouge
Gesualdo (arr. Ari Streisfeld): Candido e verde fiore
Roman: Riding Light
Gesualdo(arr. Ari Streisfeld): Ardita Zanzaretta
Gesualdo (arr. Ari Streisfeld): Ardo per te, mio bene
Friedman: Quintet
With Jack Quartet
June 29: Edwin Outwater
Round Top Music Festival
Round Top, TX
Festival Concert Hall
Verdi: Overture to La forza del destino
Poulenc: Concert Champêtre for Harpsichord and Orchestra
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 4
July 4: Edwin Outwater
San Francisco, CA
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Gould: American Salute
Bernstein: Theme from The Magnificent Seven
Copland: Old American Songs, Set 1
Copland: “Hoedown” from Rodeo
Rodgers: “Guadalcanal March” from Victory at Sea
Holst: “Mars” from The Planets
Williams: March from Superman, Theme from Jurassic Park, “Flying” from E.T.
Various (Arr. Lowden): Armed Forces Salute
Williams: Main Title from Star Wars
Ward (Arr. Dragon): America the Beautiful
Sousa: Stars and Stripes Forever
San Francisco Symphony
July 5: Joshua Roman
Bellingham Festival of Music
Bellingham, WA
Western Washington University Performing Arts Center
Beethoven: Overture to King Stephen in E-flat major, Op. 117
Kernis: Dreamsongs
Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33
Beethoven: Symphony #3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 – “Eroica”
July 5-6: Edwin Outwater
San Francisco, CA
Davies Symphony Hall
Gershwin: An American in Paris
Johnny Mathis: Greatest Hits
San Francisco Symphony
July 7: Edwin Outwater
San Francisco, CA
Sigmund Stern Grove
Chabrier: Suite pastorale
Duparc: “L’invitation au voyage”
Duparc: “Phidylé”
Duparc: “La vie antérieure”
Duparc: “Au pays où se fait la guerre”
Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1
Gershwin: Selected Songs
Gershwin: An American in Paris
San Francisco Symphony
July 11: Joshua Roman
Shippensburg, PA
H. Ric Luhrs Performing Arts Center
Dvořák: Cello Concerto
Shippensburg Festival Orchestra / Robert Trevino
July 12: Edwin Outwater
Gross Pointe Shores, MI
Edsel & Eleanor Ford House
Gershwin: Girl Crazy Overture
Herman: Woodchoppers Ball
Schertzinger: Tangerine
Gershwin: An American in Paris
Bernstein: Times Square 1944
Gershwin: I Got Rhythm
Duke: Takin’ a Chance on Love
Prima: Sing, Sing, Sing
Strauss: Radetzky March
Sousa: Stars and Stripes Forever
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
July 13: Edwin Outwater
Gross Pointe Shores, MI
Edsel & Eleanor Ford House
Beethoven: Overture to Coriolanus
Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Mendelssohn: Nocturne and Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music
Prokofiev: “Montagues and Capulets” from Romeo and Juliet
Prokofiev: “Death of Tybalt” from Romeo and Juliet
Strauss: Radetzky March
Sousa: Stars and Stripes Forever
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
July 15-25: Joshua Roman
Santa Barbara, CA
Music Academy of the West
Alumni Residency Program
July 30: Edwin Outwater
San Francisco, CA
Davies Symphony Hall
Orff: Carmina Burana
San Francisco Symphony
Aug 2: Joshua Roman
La Jolla Music Society SummerFest
La Jolla, CA
MCASD Sherwood Auditorium
Schubert: German Dances for String Quartet
Aug 3: Joshua Roman
La Jolla Music Society SummerFest
La Jolla, CA
MCASD Sherwood Auditorium
Schubert: String Trio in B-flat Major, D. 471
Aug 4: Joshua Roman
La Jolla Music Society SummerFest
La Jolla, CA
MCASD Sherwood Auditorium
Dvorak: Piano Quartet in E-flat Major
Aug 6: Joshua Roman
La Jolla Music Society SummerFest
La Jolla, CA
MCASD Sherwood Auditorium
Beethoven: Piano Trio in D Major – “Ghost”
Aug 7: Joshua Roman
La Jolla Music Society SummerFest
La Jolla, CA
MCASD Sherwood Auditorium
J.S. Bach: Suite No. 2 in B Minor for Flute and Strings
Aug 9: Joshua Roman
La Jolla Music Society SummerFest
La Jolla, CA
Ives: TSIAJ (“This Scherzo Is A Joke”) from Piano Trio
Villa-Lobos: Jet Whistle
Carter: Elegy
Wuorinen: Cello Variations II
Bartok: Contrasts
Aug 14: Joshua Roman
Music in the Vineyards
St. Helena, CA
Markham Vineyards
Beethoven: Trio in B flat major, Op. 11
Visconti: Lonesome Roads
Beethoven: Trio in B flat major, Op. 97 – “Archduke”
Aug 15-16: Joshua Roman
Music in the Vineyards
Yountville, CA
Napa Valley Museum
Stravinsky: The Soldier’s Tale for Three Actors, Dancer and Seven instruments
Aug 17: Joshua Roman
Music in the Vineyards
St. Helena, CA
Freemark Abbey Winery
Piatti: Serenade for two cellos and piano
Aug 18: Joshua Roman
Music in the Vineyards
Napa, CA
Black Stallion Winery
Beethoven: String Quintet in A major, Op. 47 (arr. “Kreutzer” Sonata)
Bach: Suite no. 3 in C major for unaccompanied cello
Golijov: Last Round for string nonet
Aug 30-31: Edwin Outwater
Bogata, Colombia
National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia
Barber: Music for a Scene from Shelley
Steve Mackey: Eating Greens
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 12
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© 21C Media Group, June 2013