Music Hall

Tickets:
Call (513) 381-3300 or www.cincinnatisymphony.org

Program:
R. STRAUSS: Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration”)
JOHN ADAMS: On the Transmigration of Souls
JOHN ADAMS: The Dharma at Big Sur

Sponsor: 
PNC Headliners

CINCINNATI
According to The Financial Times (London), “John Adams is not only one of America’s cleverest composers but a sharp conductor too.”  He returns to Music Hall to lead the Cincinnati Symphony on Friday, February 22 and Saturday, February 23 at 8 p.m. Joining Mr. Adams and the CSO are the world-renowned May Festival Chorus, the Cincinnati Children’s Choir, and electric violinist Leila Josefowicz.  According to The New York Times, “Ms. Josefowicz’s musicality is as dazzling as her technique.” 

The concert program opens with Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration”) by Richard Strauss, followed appropriately by the CSO premiere of Mr. Adams’ stirring On the Transmigration of Souls. This Pulitzer Prize-winning work for chorus and orchestra was written in reaction to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, specifically the attack on the World Trade Center, and has garnered praise around the world.  It also earned Mr. Adams a Grammy Award for “Best Classical Contemporary Composition.”

“John Adams is one of the composers in America who needs no introduction,” said CSO Music Director Paavo Järvi.  “Hearing On the Transmigration of Souls is a very moving experience, and I’m happy it’s coming to Cincinnati – especially with the composer conducting. There’s a great sense of authenticity.” 

For the second half of the concert, the audience is musically transported to sunny California for The Dharma at Big Sur, an Adams work originally commissioned for the opening of Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and featuring Ms. Josefowicz on the electric violin. According to The New York Times, “the rich intricacies in the orchestra, with haunting stretches of music that seem laconic in some laid-back Los Angeles way, yet tremble underneath with fidgety figures, wayward counterpoint and fractured rhythms...”

Audiences are invited to learn more about the music at Classical Conversations with guest conductor and composer John Adams and guest electric violinist Leila Josefowicz, hosted by CSO Assistant Conductor Eric Dudley, one hour before the performances.

The CSO thanks PNC for its generous sponsorship of these concerts.

John Adams, conductor/composer
John Adams is one of America’s most admired and respected composers. A musician of enormous range and technical command, he has produced works, both operatic and symphonic, that stand out among all contemporary classical music for the depth of their expression, the brilliance of their sound and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. His music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of musical aesthetics away from the theoretical principles of European modernism toward a more expansive and expressive language, so characteristic of his New World surroundings.
Born and raised in New England, Adams learned the clarinet from his father and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his formative years. He began composing at the age of ten and heard his first orchestral pieces performed while still a teenager. The intellectual and artistic traditions of New England, especially the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Harvard University, helped shape him as an artist and thinker. After earning two degrees from Harvard University, he moved to Northern California in 1971 and has ever since lived in the San Francisco Bay area.
Adams taught for ten years at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music before becoming Composer in Residence with the San Francisco Symphony (1982-85) and the creator of the orchestra's highly successful and controversial “New and Unusual Music" series.  Several of Adams’s landmark orchestral works were written for and premiered by the San Francisco Symphony, including Harmonium (1981), Grand Pianola Music (1982), Harmonielehre (1985) and El Dorado (1992).
In 1985 Adams began a collaboration with the poet Alice Goodman and stage director Peter Sellars that resulted in two operas, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, worldwide productions of which made them among the most performed operas in recent history. These operas were followed by three further stage works done with Sellars: the 1995 “songplay” I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, with libretto by June Jordan; El Niño, a multi-lingual retelling of the Nativity story composed for the celebration of the Millennium; and Doctor Atomic (2005), about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the first atomic bomb. Adams’s latest opera, A Flowering Tree, inspired by Mozart’s The Magic Flute, premiered in November of 2006 in Vienna.

In 2002 Adams composed On the Transmigration of Souls for the New York Philharmonic, a work written in commemoration of the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. This work received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and the Nonesuch recording won a rare “triple crown” at the Grammys, including “Best Classical Recording”, “Best Orchestral Performance”, and “Best Classical Contemporary Composition.”
In April and May of 2003 Lincoln Center presented a festival entitled "John Adams: An American Master", the most extensive festival ever mounted at Lincoln Center devoted to a living composer. International festivals of Adams’s music have been presented in London, Rotterdam and Stockholm. He has twice been featured guest on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross and has been the subject of a New Yorker Magazine profile.

Leila Josefowicz, violin
Violinist Leila Josefowicz has won the hearts of audiences around the world with her honest, fresh approach to the repertoire and her dynamic virtuosity.

Ms. Josefowicz came to national attention in 1994 when she made her Carnegie Hall debut with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and has since appeared with many of the world's most prestigious orchestras and eminent conductors. A regular, close collaborator with leading composers of the day such as John Adams and Oliver Knussen, she is a strong advocate of new music—a characteristic that is reflected in her diverse programs and her enthusiasm for premiering new works.

Recent appearances in North America include re-engagements with the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Toronto, St. Louis, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and Vancouver symphonies; performaces with the San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis symphonies and the Minnesota Orchestra; and recitals in San Francisco, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.

During her 2006-07 season, Ms. Josefowicz played the Adams Violin Concerto in Carnegie Hall with the American Composers Orchestra; made her debut with the New York Philharmonic in Central Park and at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival; appeared with the Toronto Symphony in Toronto and on tour in Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec; and premiered a new concerto by composer Mark Grey. Equally active in Europe, recent and upcoming engagements there include performances with the Royal Concertgebouw and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestras, the London and Munich Philharmonics, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, tours with the Bergen Philharmonic in Germany and with the London Symphony Orchestra and a third appearance at the London Proms.

No stranger to television, Leila Josefowicz has appeared on numerous national broadcasts such as “The Tonight Show,” “Evening at Pops” and PBS' “Live from Lincoln Center.” Her most recent television appearance was a profile on “CBS Sunday Morning.” In January 2002, her performance of John Adams’ Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony was televised and broadcast by the BBC throughout Europe.

Ms. Josefowicz made her recording debut with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in 1994 for Philips Classics. Subsequent releases on that label include Solo, a disc of unaccompanied violin works by Bartók, Kreisler, Ysaÿe, Ernst and Paganini; Bohemian Rhapsodies, a collection of virtuosic violin works with orchestra; For the End of Time and Americana with pianist John Novacek; and the Mendelssohn, Glazunov and Prokofiev concertos with the Montreal Symphony, Charles Dutoit conducting. Additional releases include a live recording of her performance of the Adams Violin Concerto with John Adams conducting on the BBC label and Adams' Road Movies, which received a 2004 Grammy nomination, for Nonesuch. Her most recent CD releases are a recital disc featuring the works of Messiaen, Beethoven, Salonen, Ravel and Mark Grey and the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 (with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo) and Violin Sonata for Warner Classics.

A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1994, Leila Josefowicz is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Jaime Laredo and Jascha Brodsky. In addition to her solo work, she studied chamber music at Curtis with Felix Galimir and participated for several summers at the Marlboro Music Festival. Ms. Josefowicz currently performs on a Del Gesu made in 1724.