medici.tv to webcast groundbreaking Philharmonic 360 July 6
On July 6, medici.tv presents a milestone – its first New York Philharmonic Webcast from the US and a blockbuster event at that: Philharmonic 360, a co-presentation of the New York Philharmonic and Park Avenue Armory, which will showcase a spectacular program of spatial music from Mozart and Ives to Boulez and Stockhausen. The concert will be available for streaming free on medici.tv for 90 days starting Friday, July 6 at 2pm EDT. The event will take place at the vast landmark of the Park Avenue Armory – a venue the Financial Times described as “the playground for artists with outsized imaginations.”
The Philharmonic 360 program begins with Pierre Boulez’s Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna, with New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert on the podium. He will also conduct a semi-staged Finale from Act I of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, designed and directed by Michael Counts. The cast features bass-baritone Ryan McKinny in the title role, along with bass-baritone Keith Miller (Leporello), soprano Julianna Di Giacomo (Donna Anna), tenor Russell Thomas (Don Ottavio), soprano Keri Alkema (Donna Elvira), mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (Zerlina), baritone Kelly Markgraf (Masetto) and dancer Brian T. Scott (Waiter). The program continues with Stockhausen’s Gruppen, one of the composer’s most iconic creations – a work for three orchestral ensembles, with Gilbert joined by two composers as additional conductors: Magnus Lindberg and Matthias Pintscher. The concert concludes with The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives. The video for the Webcast is being produced by the New York Philharmonic during concerts that will be filmed on June 29 and 30.
Reflecting on Philharmonic 360, Alan Gilbert says: “What music is and what it means to us, how we experience it and the space in which we experience it – these are all questions that have come up in my mind. So I had the idea of building a program around the idea of spatial music; that is, music that relies on physical space, or is about the physical space in which it’s performed. I would like for the audience to feel that they are following a story line from the beginning of the evening to the end.
“For the Boulez, there will be eight ensembles in balconies around this huge space playing this kind ur-music – it’s plaintive, it’s ritualistic,” Gilbert adds. “As for the Mozart, imagine a dance club with different music playing in different rooms. Mozart actually wrote three different dances that fit together at the same time. Stockhausen’s Gruppen is perhaps the most iconic piece in the area of spatial music. He was quite brilliant in the way he did this. As the piece goes on, you become more and more aware of how the three orchestras fit together. The orchestral writing is very, very complex, but what’s interesting about the piece is how the different groups interact. So what has to happen in this performance is that three conductors have to coordinate very carefully, have to be able to work together and have to be able to trust each other. Two very important composer-conductors have agreed to help me out: Magnus Lindberg, our Composer-in-Residence, and Matthias Pintscher, both profound musicians. The Unanswered Question by Ives is perhaps his greatest work and, I think, one of the most important works of the 20th century. It’s not possible to say what the question is that’s being asked, because it’s spoken in musical terms. But it does represent our place in space and the relationship of human beings to music. I hope it sends people off with the right sense of inquiry.”
The New York Philharmonic’s historic concert from Pyongyang, North Korea, in February 2008 was webcast by medici.tv; that performance was also edited for release on a DVD from medici arts. Webcasts from America included concerts from the Aspen Festival in July 2008, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s season-opening concert in fall 2010, and concerts from Trinity Wall Street last fall commemorating the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Philharmonic 360:
Pierre Boulez (b. 1925): Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Don Giovanni – Finale of Act I
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007): Gruppen
Charles Ives (1874-1954): The Unanswered Question
Alan Gilbert, conductor
Magnus Lindberg, conductor
Matthias Pintscher*, conductor
Michael Counts*, director and designer
Fisher Dachs Associates, Theater Design
Ken Roht*, choreographer
Brian Aldous*, lighting designer
Kyle Chepulis*, lighting designer
Kaye Voyce*, costume designer
Joshua Weilerstein, assistant conductor
Don Giovanni: Ryan McKinny*, bass-baritone
Leporello: Keith Miller*, bass-baritone
Donna Anna: Julianna Di Giacomo*, soprano
Don Ottavio: Russell Thomas*, tenor
Donna Elvira: Keri Alkema*, soprano
Zerlina: Sasha Cooke*, mezzo-soprano
Masetto: Kelly Markgraf*, baritone
Waiter: Brian T. Scott*, dancer
Oratorio Society of New York
Manhattan School of Music Chamber Choir
Ken Tritle, director
Ronnie Oliver Jr., assistant director
Gareth Morell, rehearsal pianist and musical consultant
* New York Philharmonic debut
About the New York Philharmonic:
Founded in 1842, the New York Philharmonic is the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States and one of the oldest in the world; on May 5, 2010, it performed its 15,000th concert. The Orchestra has always played a leading role in American musical life, championing the music of its time, and is renowned around the globe, having appeared in 431 cities in 63 countries – including its October 2009 debut in Vietnam and its February 2008 historic visit to Pyongyang, DPRK. The Philharmonic’s concerts are broadcast on the weekly syndicated radio program, The New York Philharmonic This Week, and streamed on the Orchestra’s Website, nyphil.org, and are telecast annually on Live From Lincoln Center on U.S. public television. The Philharmonic has made nearly 2,000 recordings since 1917, with more than 500 currently available. The first major American orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live, the Philharmonic, in 2009-10, released the first-ever classical iTunes Pass. The series has continued through last season, with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic: 2011-12 Season. The Orchestra has built on the long-running Young People’s Concerts to develop a wide range of education programs, including the School Partnership Program, enriching music education in New York City, and Learning Overtures, fostering international exchange. Alan Gilbert became Music Director, The Yoko Nagae Ceschina Chair, in September 2009, succeeding Lorin Maazel in a distinguished line of musical giants. Credit Suisse is the New York Philharmonic’s exclusive Global Sponsor.
About Park Avenue Armory:
Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory fills a critical void in the cultural ecology of New York by enabling artists to create, and the public to experience, unconventional work that could not otherwise be mounted in traditional performance halls and museums. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall – reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations – and array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory invites artists to draw upon its grand scale and distinctive character to both inspire and inform their work. The Armory is currently undergoing a $200-million revitalization of its historic building, named among the “100 Most Endangered Historic Sites in the World” by the World Monuments Fund in 2000. The renovation and restoration, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, will stabilize and preserve the building and create new resources and spaces for exhibitions, installations and performances, as well as artist-in-residence studios, rehearsal rooms and back-of-house amenities – offering dynamic environments for artists and audiences alike.
Since its first production in September 2007 – Aaron Young’s Greeting Card, a 9,216-square-foot “action” painting created by the burned-out tire marks of 10 choreographed motorcycles presented with Art Production Fund – the Armory has organized a series of immersive performances, installations and works of art that have drawn critical and popular attention. The year 2011 marked the Armory’s first full season of artistic programming, which culminated in December with site-specific performances by STREB and Shen Wei Dance Arts, as well as the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Music has been an integral part of the Armory’s rebirth as a groundbreaking non-profit arts center. In July 2008, the Armory paired with Lincoln Center Festival to stage Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s opera Die Soldaten on a long runway flanked by a split orchestra and moving seating platforms; the audience literally moved through the music on railroad tracks installed on the Drill Hall’s floor. The next year brought the U.S. premiere of Heiner Goebbels’s Stifters Dinge, an extraordinary sonic and visual performance landscape presented as part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, as well as a series of free master classes with conductor Kurt Masur and the Manhattan School of Music.
In February 2011, the Armory presented its first Tune-In Music Festival. Curated by the ensemble eighth blackbird, the contemporary festival brought together a diverse array of composers and performers, and it included the world premiere of the Armory’s first-ever music commission, ARCO, as well as the New York (and indoor) premiere of John Luther Adams’s Inuksuit. The second Tune-In Music Festival, held in February 2012, celebrated iconic composer Philip Glass, and it featured appearances by Patti Smith, The Philip Glass Ensemble, Nico Muhly, Vijay Iyer and Zack Glass, as well as a world-premiere commission based on Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish by Hal Willner and Bill Frisell, with visuals by Ralph Steadman.
The Armory’s 2012 season, which began with the Tune-In Music Festival, also features Tom Sachs’s SPACE PROGRAM: MARS; Trisha Brown’s Astral Converted, with original décor by Robert Rauschenberg and sound by John Cage; Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s The Murder of Crows; a site-specific installation by Ann Hamilton; and Under Construction, a new series of intimate salon-style evenings in the Armory’s period rooms with artists presenting works in progress.
About medici.tv:
In addition to this month’s new live offerings, the extensive library of on-demand programs on medici.tv includes performances, documentaries and archival features, available via subscription. These programs spotlight leading musical institutions and world-class artists – from golden-age legends to today’s top stars. New to the medici.tv video-on-demand library are Verdi’s Don Carlo from Covent Garden, starring Rolando Villazón and conducted by Antonio Pappano; Purcell’s The Fairy Queen as staged by Jonathan Kent and conducted by William Christie at Glyndebourne; and the Netherlands Opera production of the John Adams/Peter Sellars Doctor Atomic, starring Gerald Finley. See http://www.medici.tv/#/new for details on these and many more. Along with such must-see opera productions, medici.tv offers the 30-plus films by documentarian Christopher Nupen; they include not only priceless documents of cellist Jacqueline du Pré (such as Elgar’s Cello Concerto and a number of all-star chamber performances) but also films of Evgeny Kissin, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Nathan Milstein. Now complete on medici.tv are all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas performed by Daniel Barenboim in 1983-84.
Critical praise accrues to medici.tv with each passing month. The Toronto Star called medici.tv “a seismic shift in the world of classical music,” New Yorker writer Alex Ross said on his blog, The Rest Is Noise, that “the hits keep coming at medici.tv.” Offering “treasures aplenty” was how Gramophone editor-in-chief James Jolly put it, naming medici.tv as one of the Web’s best classical experiences. The medici.tv app for iPads, iPhones and other digital devices – available for free at the Apple app store – was named one of the top five apps for classical music by WQXR, the classical music station of New York City.
Since its official launch in May 2008, medici.tv has gained international recognition, bringing together a community of music and arts lovers from 182 countries – online viewers who have watched over twelve million videos to date. The site currently averages more than 80,000 individual visitors each month. In addition to offering live concert hall events that music lovers can experience on their computers and entertainment systems, medici.tv now offers a free application (available at the Apple App Store) that makes it possible to experience world-class artistry on iPads and iPhones.
One of the biggest successes to date at medici.tv has been the webcast of a Lucerne Festival concert featuring Gustavo Dudamel and the Vienna Philharmonic. This has been watched more than 347,500 times (live and as video-on-demand) by visitors from 182 countries. Other recent popular offerings from medici.tv include an evening of chamber music at the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Paris; Georges Pretre conducting La Scala Orchestra in a program of Franck and Respighi; Daniel Harding conducting the same orchestra in Strauss’s Alpine Symphony; and an all-Brahms evening featuring Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestre National de Lyon.
Building on the success of webcasts from the Verbier Festival in 2007, medici.tv has offered high-definition webcasts from many other leading festivals, including Aix-en-Provence, Saint-Denis, Aspen, Glyndebourne, Salzburg, and Lucerne; from such Parisian venues as the Opéra National de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Cité de la Musique, and Salle Pleyel; and from Milan’s famed La Scala. Many operas and concerts performed by the world’s top artists and orchestras have been webcast as live events and later as video-on-demand (VOD) – all available for free. The list of artists presented at medici.tv is a “who’s who” of today’s stars, including Claudio Abbado, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Plácido Domingo, John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Anna Netrebko, Maurizio Pollini, Thomas Quasthoff, and Simon Rattle. Among the featured orchestras are such renowned ensembles as the Berlin Philharmonic, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Paris, Filarmonica della Scala, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
In addition to webcasts of more than 80 live concerts each year, medici.tv has partnered with the world’s top artists and music institutions to offer subscriptions giving music-lovers the opportunity to watch more than 1,000 VOD programs, growing to up to 1,200 programs over the next year. They include concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, master classes, artist portraits and archival material. Featured artists include such legendary musicians as Leonard Bernstein, Maria Callas, Glenn Gould, Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Georg Solti, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, as well as such leading film directors as Bruno Monsaingeon, Paul Smaczny, and Frank Scheffer. In November, medici.tv added to its library with the invaluable film record of Daniel Barenboim performing all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in the 1980s in Vienna.
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