Wynton Marsalis

Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!

CSO Co-Commission

• Born: October 18, 1961, New Orleans, Louisiana
• Work Composed: 2021
• Premiere: January 2022 by the New Jersey Symphony, which co-commissioned the work with the CSO and several other orchestras, Xian Zhang conducting.
• Instrumentation: 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drums, piccolo snare drum, snare drum, tom-toms, tambour de Basque, crash cymbals, finger cymbals, ride cymbal, sizzle cymbal, suspended cymbals, crotale, tam-tam, anvil, cowbells, wood block, glockenspiel, marimba, xylophone.
• CSO Notable Performances: This is the first CSO performance of the work.
• Duration: approx. 10 minutes

Brass heralds sing the coming and going of things.
Enshrined-in-stone
ringed ‘round houses of the holy
Adorning halls in fluorescent harmony,
these frescoed heroes from the heavens
set fields aflame with finesse and fury
to waken the angels AND,
to rattle the gates of the underworld, trumpeting the demands of unrepentant demons draped in gilded glory.

Brazen brass hollers and shouts in the harsh-tongued dialect of iron and steel,
strikes the soul with deadly silence soon become contemplative
soon come closer as softly sighing asides
sweetly strung from the bebroken hearts of survivors still scouring battles,
forever lost across time immemorial.

Bellicose brass blares and blasts with a sugarfoot swagger
blows down burnished walls
gathers the congregation with the grandiosity and gravitas of gold and silver fanfares
as processions of the elect bedecked-in-finery
sashay back and forth in shining significance to commemorate the celestial progression:
from occasional
to ceremonial
to the transcendent triumph of timeless tradition.

That’s what Brass always brings.

Even in passing,
that glory train opens up a Big Brass Whistle and everybody testify: “Here come ole Buddy
Bolden calling his children home.”
And the angels sing.
“Hallelujah.
hah-lay-loo-yah brothers and sisters!
(hallelujah)...”
—Wynton Marsalis

Herald, Holler and Hallelujah! for brass and percussion is a co-commission from the New Jersey Symphony and the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Baltimore and Milwaukee, as well as Germany’s WDR Symphonieorchester. As lead commissioner, the New Jersey Symphony gave the work’s world premiere.

Kinds of Kings

Nine Mothers

World Premiere, CSO Co-Commission

• Kinds of Kings: Kinds of Kings is a composers collective founded in 2017; members are Gemma Peacocke (New Zealand/Brooklyn, NY), Shelley Washington (United States/Brooklyn, NY), and Maria Kaoutzani (Cyprus/Chicago, IL). kindsofkings.com
• Work Composed: 2021–22 for Eighth Blackbird and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
• Premiere: These performances are the work’s world premiere.
• Instrumentation: solo chamber ensemble, 2 flutes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (incl. bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (incl. contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, trombone, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, bass drum, timbales, crotale, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, almglocken, slapstick, triangles, marimba, xylophone, harp, strings.
• Duration: approx. 24 minutes

Nine Mothers is dedicated to our mothers and grandmothers.

• Sara Jane Borst
• Mary Ruth Conroy
• Marcellee Emelda Toca
• Machi Kyprianou
• Thalia Kaoutzani
• Chloe Kyprianou
• Kathryn Margaret Kay
• Patricia Margaret Ranstead
• Christine Sheila Stewart

The “Nine Mothers” are Norse mythological god-figures who, as sisters, are collectively the mother of the Norse deity Heimdallr. They are mentioned in the 13^th-century Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, though descriptions of them are brief and cryptic.

Scholars have variously theorized that the nine mothers are analogous to the “Nine Sisters”—the daughters of the goddess Rán and the jötunn (ancient proto-deity) Ægir, who both personify the sea. The “Nine Sisters” are goddesses personifying different kinds of waves.

—Kinds of Kings

Eighth Blackbird has been moving music forward since 1996, and we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary. Technically, we’re in our 26th year and should have celebrated our 25th anniversary last year, but the pandemic made touring in 2020–21 rather challenging. We’re grateful to be performing again and celebrating our 25 (yes, okay, 26) years with you. Time isn’t the only barometer for marking progress though. There is also distance and we’ve covered a lot of ground in order to cross the quarter-century threshold. Eighth Blackbird has invented and reinvented itself over 25 years. Facilitating the creation and performance of new works is one of the ways this invention continues. The music we're playing (yes, it is play for us!) becomes a reflection of the distance covered.

Performing a composition, like acting a role in a play, is an interpretative practice. We didn’t compose the work, but we are tasked with making it authentic to us so that the experience for you is also authentic. It’s distinctive, in wonderful ways, when someone composes a work specifically for you. Every aspect is heightened. Kinds of Kings composed Nine Mothers for Eighth Blackbird and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. They know who we are and how we perform. We get to go beyond performing the concerto instrumental parts. We get to perform our parts, made for us. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra gets to perform their parts, made for them.

One indication of authenticity in the arts is personal relevance. We so often limit ourselves to asking, “What did the artist mean?” and forget to ignore all that and ask ourselves the only question that actually matters: “What does this mean to me?” In some way (and this way can have nothing to do with anyone else’s intentions), where do you find yourself in the work? That answer is yours and something over which I hope you feel empowered to assume complete ownership. In this case, the answer for us is quite literal. We, all of us, find ourselves in this work, making this performance about as personal as it can get.

And now it’s personal for you. You’re here, with us, and because Kinds of Kings created Nine Mothers, and we’re going to experience this together.

Thank you for being a part of the experience. We don't perform concerts the same way twice because the moment drives each attempt. So whatever happened during this particular performance, even if we missed a note or two, was probably a lot of fun—even more so because you were a part of it. We invent and reinvent. We embrace the unpredictable, friends.

Speaking of the unpredictable, we in the arts (that includes you) have been through a lot in recent times. We were supposed to be with you last year. It didn't work out. There have been some postponements. There has been a lot of uncertainty. But here we are, and we're deeply appreciative that the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra stuck by us through it all. We're so fortunate to have performed with this extraordinary orchestra in the past, and even more fortunate to be performing with them again.

—Matthew Duvall, Eighth Blackbird

Hector Berlioz

Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14a

• Born: December 11, 1803, La Côte-Saint-André, Isère near Grenoble, France
• Died: March 8, 1869, Rue de Calais, Paris, France
• Work Composed: 1830
• Premiere: December 5, 1830 in Paris, France, François-Antoine Habaneck conducting
• Instrumentation: 2 flutes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes (incl. English horn), 2 clarinets (incl. E-flat clarinet), 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas (ophicleide), 2 timpani, bass drums, bells, crash cymbals, snare drum, suspended cymbals, 4 harps, strings.
• CSO Notable Performances: First Performance: March 1897, Frank Van der Stucken conducting. Most Recent: September 2015, Louis Langrée conducting
• Duration: approx. 55 minutes

Three important influences entered Berlioz’s life during his 24th year. The first was Goethe’s Faust, which the composer read and reread in a translation by Gérard de Nerval. According to biographer Jacques Barzun, Faust represented for the impressionable French romantic “genius in all its greatness.” The second influence was the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, particularly the Eroica, heard for the first time in Paris in 1827. Berlioz was overwhelmed by the power and originality of the Bonn master’s orchestration. And, finally, there was Shakespeare, known in Letourneur’s translation and experienced in performances by an English troupe of actors that toured France in 1827. The young Frenchman understood Goethe, Beethoven and Shakespeare as kindred romantic spirits. No matter that these perceptions were one-sided and colored by what Berlioz was looking for—these three artists seemed to answer a great longing the composer felt for seriousness of purpose, depth of vision, bold originality and all-encompassing humanity. The inspiration he drew from their works coalesced two years later in one of the most original pieces ever composed—the Symphonie fantastique.

Actually, there was a fourth influence that turned out to be more significant for the composer than Goethe, Beethoven or Shakespeare. In the Shakespearean acting company was a young woman named Harriet Smithson who had a strikingly beautiful face, a moving voice and an enchanting stage manner. Her Ophelia held Parisian audiences spellbound. Berlioz was more than spellbound. He fell in love with Smithson immediately. “The impression made on my heart and mind by her extraordinary talent, nay her dramatic genius, was equaled only by the havoc wrought in me by the poet she so nobly interpreted.”

Berlioz was an unknown student composer and Smithson was a famous actress. Did the composer have any hopes of ever winning her love? He felt the first step was to make himself at least known to her. He began to give concerts with the main purpose of making his name better established, hoping that she might hear of him. After a few months of touring the provinces, Smithson’s company returned to Paris and Berlioz ventured backstage after a performance, but she refused to see him. He wrote her love letters, which she took as fan mail and left unanswered. She returned to England without having even acknowledged the existence of her strange suitor. She still had only a vague idea of who he was.

Somehow Berlioz convinced himself that she had been impressed with his letters and was testing his sincerity by a few months of silence. His feelings for her began to wane, but then they returned with great intensity as he decided to make his love for her the subject of his new symphony.

I have just been plunged again into all the tortures of an endless and unquenchable passion, without cause, without purpose. She is still in London, and yet I seem to feel her around me; I hear my heart pounding, and its beats set me going like the piston strokes of a steam engine. Each muscle of my body trembles with pain. Useless! Frightening! Oh, unhappy woman! If she could for one moment conceive all the poetry, all the infinity of such a love, she would fly to my arms, even if she must die from my embrace. I was on the point of beginning my grand symphony Episode from the Life of an Artist, in which the development of my infernal passion is to be depicted; I have it all in my head, but I can write nothing.

Soon after writing this letter on February 6, 1830, Berlioz heard and believed a rumor that Smithson was having an affair with her manager. The composer was disgusted, and he snapped out of his lovesick lethargy. Now he was able to compose the symphony. It was ready for its first performance the afternoon of December 5, 1830.

Smithson, in the meantime, had fallen on hard times, although the rumor of her affair had proven false and her good name had been restored. The acting company had gone bankrupt in London, and the actress was forced to accept walk-on parts at the Opéra-Comique. Since she did not have a singing voice and did not speak French, her roles were minor, and she was barely able to make a living. By coincidence, Smithson gave a benefit performance the very night of the Symphonie fantastique’s afternoon premiere. Berlioz, who was moved by her plight and still felt tenderness for her (though he had still never even met the woman), stayed away from her performance; he did not want to fuel the rumors (quite true, of course) that she was the beloved woman mentioned in the published program of the Symphonie fantastique.

A few weeks after the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz left for a year and a half in Rome. There he revised the second and third movements of the piece, and he composed a sequel called The Return to Life. He returned to Paris in November 1832 and rented an apartment across from where Smithson used to live.

I asked [the housekeeper] what had become of Miss Smithson and whether she had heard any news of her. “But sir…she’s in Paris. She was staying here only a few days ago. She left the day before yesterday and moved to the rue de Rivoli. She was in the apartment that you have now. She is director of an English company that’s opening next week.” I stood aghast at the extraordinary series of coincidences. It was fate. I saw it was no longer possible for me to struggle against it. For two years I had heard nothing of the fair Ophelia; I had had no idea where she was, whether in England, Scotland, or America; and here I was, arriving from Italy at exactly the moment when she reappeared after a tour of northern Europe. We had just missed meeting each other in the same house; I had taken the apartment that she had vacated the previous evening.

Berlioz was arranging for a concert that would include the revised Symphonie fantastique and its new sequel. He had a man named Scutter see to it that Smithson attended the concert. She was distressed at the time because Shakespeare was no longer popular in Paris and attendance at her company’s productions was scanty. She decided to spend an afternoon at a concert as a diversion from her financial troubles. By now she knew who Berlioz was, but she still had never met him and she had no idea of her intimate connection with the music she was about to hear. In the cab to the concert, she studied the concert program and she learned that Berlioz was “the originator of the proceedings.” The title of the symphony and the headings of the various movements somewhat astonished her; but it never so much as occurred to her that the heroine of this strange and doleful drama might be herself.

Every eye was on her as she arrived. Everyone in Parisian music circles knew the truth, but Harriet did not. She took the stares as directed at a famous actress. During the intermission (after the Symphonie fantastique but before The Return to Life), Scutter made “veiled allusions to the cause of this young composer’s well-known troubles of the heart. [She] began to suspect the truth.” The second half began, and the actor playing the part of Lélio (the hero who represents Berlioz in The Return to Life) delivered this line: “Oh, if I could only find her, the Juliet, the Ophelia for whom my heart cries out! If I could drink deep of the mingled joy and sadness that real love offers us, and one autumn evening on some wild heath with the north wind blowing over it, lie in her arms and sleep a last, long, sorrowful sleep!”

“God!” she thought. “Juliet-Ophelia! Am I dreaming? I can no longer doubt. It is of me he speaks. He loves me still.” From that moment…she felt the room reel about her; she heard no more but sat in a dream and at the end returned home like a sleepwalker, with no clear notion of what was happening.

This was Berlioz’ account of how Smithson finally came to understand that the irrational young man who had written her love letters two years earlier had actually made a monumental musical composition based on his hopeless love for her. Finally, the day after the concert, the inevitable happened: the two met. Thus ended a fairy tale and began life’s reality. Several months later they were married, but within a few years they were miserable. They separated after a decade of marriage. Berlioz married his mistress when Harriet died in 1854.

Berlioz actually made two different versions of the program for the Symphonie fantastique. The original one is printed here; the revised version was intended for use when The Return to Life is also performed. But that strange second work is rarely heard today.

The composer’s intention has been to develop, insofar as they contain musical possibilities, various situations in the life of an artist. The outline of the instrumental drama, which lacks the help of words, needs to be explained in advance. The following program, indispensable for a complete understanding of the dramatic outline of the work, should thus be considered as the spoken text of an opera, serving to introduce the musical movements, whose character and expression it motivates:

Reveries, Passions. The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted with that moral disease that a well-known writer calls the vague des passions, sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in his dreams, and he falls desperately in love with her. Through an odd whim, whenever the beloved image appears before the mind’s eye of the artist, it is linked with a musical thought whose character, passionate but at the same time noble and shy, he finds similar to the one he attributes to his beloved.

This melodic image and the model it reflects pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe. This is the reason for the constant appearance, in every movement of the symphony, of the melody that begins the first allegro. The passage from this state of melancholic reverie, interrupted by a few fits of groundless joy, to one of frenzied passion, with its movements of fury, of jealousy, its return to tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations—this is the subject of the first movement.

A Ball. The artist finds himself in the most varied situations—in the midst of the tumult of a party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beauties of nature. But everywhere—in town, in the country—the beloved image appears before him and disturbs his peace of mind.

Scene in the Country. Finding himself one evening in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds piping a ranz des vaches [a simple melody played or sung by herdsmen as they drove their cattle to or from the pasture] in dialogue. This pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently brushed by the wind, the hopes he has recently found some reason to entertain—all concur in affording his heart an unaccustomed calm, and in giving a more cheerful color to his ideas. He reflects upon his isolation; he hopes that his loneliness will soon be over. But what if she were deceiving him! This mingling of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness disturbed by black presentiments, form the subject of the adagio. At the end one of the shepherds again takes up the ranz des vaches; the other no longer replies. Distant sounds of thunder—loneliness—silence.

March to the Scaffold. Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned and led to the scaffold and that he is witnessing his own execution. The procession moves forward to the sounds of a march that is now somber and fierce, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled noise of heavy steps gives way without transition to the noisiest clamor. At the end of the march, the first four measures of the idée fixe reappear, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath. He sees himself at the sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troop of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind, who have come together for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it is no more than a dance tune, mean, trivial and grotesque: it is she, coming to join the sabbath. A roar of joy at her arrival. She takes part in the devilish orgy. Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies irae [hymn sung in the funeral rites of the Catholic Church], sabbath round-dance. The sabbath round and the Dies irae combined.

The drug-induced fantasy world of this program is only one of many utterly original aspects of the Symphonie fantastique. The degree of detail in the program and the composer’s insistence on its importance for the listener are also unprecedented. The most original aspect of the work, however, is its orchestration. The use of four bassoons, four types of clarinets (A, B-flat, C and E-flat), large bells and cornets as well as trumpets lends this score a unique sound. But it is mainly Berlioz’ uncanny sonic imagination that gives the piece its special quality, that makes it sound as fresh today as it must have in 1830. The finale in particular abounds in incredible sonorities—from the parody of the idée fixe tune in the C and then E-flat clarinets, to the bells that announce the ancient Gregorian chant Dies irae, to the subsequent woodwind distortion of that melody, to the weird sound of the wooden parts of bows hitting the strings just before the end. The work consistently demonstrates Berlioz’s incredible originality as an orchestrator.

The Symphonie fantastique is a work like no other. Its reason for being is odd. Its sound palette is unprecedented. Its forms are fresh. Its program is grotesque. And the result is a composition that creates its own world in sound. The influence of Goethe, Beethoven and Shakespeare, plus the irrational love for Harriet Smithson, all worked on the mind of the 27-year-old composer, and what resulted was completely new, amazingly fresh, wholly personal.

—Jonathan D. Kramer

Orchestra’s ‘Berlioz Bells’ debut this weekend

In “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath,” the fifth movement of Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz calls for two off-stage giant church bells—one in C and the other in G. The tolling bells usher in the famous Dies irae motif. These giant bells are not part of the regular arsenal of percussion instruments and are usually rented or borrowed for each performance. Thanks to the generosity of donors, we were able to have Cincinnati’s own Verdin Company cast these “Berlioz Bells” in preparation for this weekend’s concerts. The bells are cast with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra name along with the famous Music Hall rose window.

Artists

Louis Langrée

Music Director, Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair

Louis Langrée has been Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since 2013, Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center since 2003 and recently appointed Director of Théâtre national de l'Opéra Comique. Known for imaginative programming, Langrée began his Cincinnati tenure with Jennifer Higdon’s On a Wire with Eighth Blackbird; Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait, narrated by Maya Angelou; and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Two of his Cincinnati recordings were Grammy-nominated for Best Orchestral Performance: Transatlantic, with works by Varèse, Gershwin, and Stravinsky; and Concertos for Orchestra, featuring world premieres by Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich, and Zhou Tian. His Pelléas et Mélisande trilogy contrasted settings by Fauré, Debussy, and Schoenberg. A multi-season Beethoven [R]evolution cycle has paired the symphonies with world premieres and 20th-century masterworks, as well as recreation of the legendary 1808 Akademie. During the COVID pandemic, Langrée was a catalyst for the Orchestra’s return to the stage in the fall of 2020 with a series of digitally streamed concerts, and then in January 2021 welcoming in-person audiences to Music Hall.

Between the start of his tenure and the conclusion of the CSO’s upcoming 2022-23 season, Langrée and the CSO will have commissioned or co-commissioned 42 new orchestral works and he will have conducted over 30 premieres from a wide range of composers, including Julia Adolphe, Daníel Bjarnason, Jennifer Higdon, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Kinds of Kings, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe., and the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, his final opus. Langrée and the Orchestra also commissioned 20 composers to write solo instrument fanfares for CSO musicians during the COVID pandemic, including Michael Abels, Marcos Balter, Peter Boyer, Courtney Bryan, Bryce Dessner, Ted Hearne, Tyshawn Sorey, Georgia Stitt and Du Yun, whose new works were premiered on the Orchestra’s website.

To date, Langrée has appointed 17 of the Orchestra’s musicians, including hiring Stefani Matsuo as the Orchestra’s first female Concertmaster. Other appointments include Associate Principal Percussion, Associate Principal Second Violin, First Assistant Concertmaster, Assistant Principal Horn, Principal Tuba, Principal Clarinet, Second/Assistant Principal Trombone, Principal Bassoon, Second Flute, Second Oboe, three section violists, two section violins, and a section cellist. In the coming season, there will be auditions for Associate Principal Timpani and section percussion, Associate Concertmaster, Associate Principal Flute, Piccolo, and Section Bass. Langrée has also worked closely with the CSO/CCM Diversity Fellows, mentoring them individually and welcoming them to perform within the Orchestra.

A regular presence at Lincoln Center since his 1998 debut, Langrée has conducted around 250 concerts and productions, including more than 50 Metropolitan Opera performances; has taught Juilliard School masterclasses; appeared with the CSO as part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series; and made his New York Philharmonic guest conducting debut in March, 2020. Langrée has raised the artistic profile and repertoire of the Festival Orchestra well beyond the classical period, from Lully to Magnus Lindberg.

An advocate for the music of our time, Langrée has conducted premieres by Julia Adolphe, Daníel Bjarnason, Anna Clyne, Jonathan Bailey Holland, David Lang, Nico Muhly, André Previn, Caroline Shaw, and Julia Wolfe among numerous others including, with the CSO, the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, the composer’s final opus. Among the many period-instrument ensembles he has worked with are the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Freiburg Baroque, Concerto Köln, and Orchestre des Champs-Elysées.

Louis Langrée has guest conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Paris, and Leipzig Gewandhaus among others. In addition to the Met, he frequently conducts at the leading opera houses including the Vienna Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Bavarian Staatsoper, and at festivals including Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, BBC Proms, Edinburgh International, and the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Langrée was previously music director of the Orchestre de Picardie, Opéra National de Lyon, Glyndebourne Touring Opera, Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, and chief conductor of the Camerata Salzburg. A native of Alsace, France, he is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.

Eighth Blackbird

Eighth Blackbird

Matthew Duvall, Artistic Director
Lisa Kaplan, Executive Director

Eighth Blackbird moves music forward through innovative performance, advocacy for music by living composers, and its legacy of guiding an emerging generation of musicians.

Eighth Blackbird, hailed as “one of the smartest, most dynamic ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune), began in 1996 as a group of six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory students and continues today under the leadership of founding members Lisa Kaplan (executive director) and Matthew Duvall (artistic director).

Eighth Blackbird has won four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance over its 23-year history and has become “a brand-name defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality” (Detroit Free Press). It has commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by established and emerging composers, including Steve Reich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet and works by Andy Akiho, Bryce Dessner, Michael Gordon, Jennifer Higdon, Amy Beth Kirsten, David Lang, David T. Little, Nico Muhly, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Julia Wolfe, and Pamela Z.

Through performances in its Chicago home base and at venues across the U.S. and around the world, Eighth Blackbird has brought innovative presentations of works by living composers to tens of thousands of music lovers.

The ensemble’s extensive recording history, primarily with Chicago’s Cedille Records, encompasses more than a dozen acclaimed albums. Its most recent release on 37d03d/Secretly Canadian, 2019’s When We Are Inhuman, is a collaboration with The National’s Bryce Dessner and Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) that features new arrangements by Lisa Kaplan, who also co-produced the album with Dessner. Singing in the Dead of Night, written for Eighth Blackbird by Michael Gordon and Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Julia Wolfe, was released on Cedille Records on June 12, 2020. Other collaborations with some of today’s most well-regarded artists include heralded performers such as Dawn Upshaw and Jeremy Denk, seminal composers such as Philip Glass and Nico Muhly, and genre-fluid composers and performers Dessner, Oldham, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, My Brightest Diamond frontwoman Shara Nova, and Iarla Ó Lionáird of The Gloaming.

In addition to its Grammy Awards, Eighth Blackbird’s many honors include winning the 1998 Concert Artists Guild Competition; pioneering a year-long residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art—Chicago in 2016, during which the ensemble served as a living installation with open rehearsals, performances, guest artists, and public talks; receiving the prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions and Chamber Music America’s inaugural Visionary Award; and being named Musical America’s 2017 Ensemble of the Year.

The members of Eighth Blackbird value their roles as curators, educators and mentors. The ensemble was named music director of the 2009 Ojai Music Festival, has held residencies at the Curtis Institute of Music and at the University of Chicago, and serves as an ongoing Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Richmond. In 2017 and 2018, Eighth Blackbird led its boldest initiative yet, the Blackbird Creative Laboratory, an inclusive, two-week summer workshop and performance festival for performers and composers in Ojai, California. During the 2018–19 season, some of the Lab’s network of 60 alumni presented regional events and side-by-side concerts across the U.S. and in Melbourne, Australia with members of Eighth Blackbird. In the 2019–2020 season, Eighth Blackbird performed works by Lab alumni Fjóla Evans, Nina Shekhar and Viet Cuong. In 2020, it gave the world premiere of a new work for sextet and the U.S. Navy Band by Cuong in conjunction with Chicago’s Year of Music.

The name “Eighth Blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, imagistic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: “I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know.”

Eighth Blackbird
Lina Andonvoska, flutes
Zachary Good, clarinets
Maiani da Silva, violin
Laura Metcalf, cello
Matthew Duvall, percussion
Lisa Kaplan, piano

eighthblackbird.org

Eighth Blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists’ Representatives.

Matthew Duvall proudly endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swamp Percussion Accessories. Lisa Kaplan is a Steinway Artist.

Kinds of Kings

Kinds of Kings

Founded in 2017, composer collective Kinds of Kings is a collective of multifaceted composers committed to building a positive and supportive community around the creation and experience of new music. The collective is focused on amplifying and advocating for the voices of historically marginalized people and expanding access for audiences and composers.

For the 2019–2020 season, Kinds of Kings was an Artist-in-Residence at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, New York. Described as, “distinguished young creators who work in diverse styles” (The New Yorker), the collective’s 2019-2020 concert series, Equilibrium and Disturbance, featured Rubiks Collective (Melbourne, Australia), ~Nois saxophone quartet (Chicago), Isabelle O’Connell (New York), Nouveau Classical Project (New York), and Real Loud (New York). Kinds of Kings has previously had portrait concerts with New York-based chamber groups Metropolis Ensemble and Desdemona Ensemble, the ZAFA Collective in Chicago, and the St. Louis Symphony as part of the orchestra’s Pulitzer Series. In March 2022 the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Grammy-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird will premiere a new concerto by the collective.

Kinds of Kings is Gemma Peacocke (New Zealand/Brooklyn, NY), Shelley Washington (United States/Brooklyn, NY), and Maria Kaoutzani (Cyprus/Chicago, IL).

Individual Composers:

Gemma Peacocke is a New Zealand-born, Brooklyn-based composer. She has a particular interest in cross-art form and multimedia projects. Her first album, Waves & Lines, which sets poems by Afghan women, was released on New Amsterdam in March 2019. Gemma is co-founder of the Kinds of Kings composer collective which is focused on amplifying and advocating for under-heard voices. Gemma’s music has been performed and commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic, PUBLIQuartet, Bang on a Can, cellist Nick Photinos, Third Coast Percussion, Rubiks Collective, ~Nois saxophone quartet, the Furies, and Alarm Will Sound.

Maria Kaoutzani is a composer from Limassol, Cyprus, currently based in Chicago, IL, where she is a PhD candidate and a Lindsay Graduate Fellow in Music Composition at the University of Chicago. Her works have been performed in Europe, the US, Canada and Latin America, by ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Spektral Quartet, Longleash Trio and Imani Winds, and at festivals such as New Music On The Point, Valencia International Performance Academy, International Symposium for New Music, among others.

Shelley Washington writes music to fulfil one calling: to move. With an eclectic palette, Washington tells stories focusing on exploring emotions and intentions by finding their root cause. Using driving, rhythmic riffs paired with indelible melodies, she creates a sound dialogue for the public and personal discourse. She performs regularly as a vocalist and saxophonist, primarily on baritone saxophone, and has performed and recorded throughout the Midwest and East Coast- anything from Baroque to Screamo.

kindsofkings.com

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed musician, composer and bandleader, an educator and a leading advocate of American culture. He has created and performed an expansive range of music from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras and tap dance to ballet, expanding the vocabulary for jazz and classical music with a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.

Always swinging, Marsalis blows his trumpet with a clear tone, a depth of emotion and a unique, virtuosic style derived from an encyclopedic range of trumpet techniques. When you hear Marsalis play, you’re hearing life being played out through music.

Marsalis’ core beliefs and foundation for living are based on the principals of jazz. He promotes individual creativity (improvisation), collective cooperation (swing), gratitude and good manners (sophistication), and faces adversity with persistent optimism (the blues). With his evolved humanity and through his selfless work, Marsalis has elevated the quality of human engagement for individuals, social networks and cultural institutions throughout the world.

The Early Years

Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, to Ellis and Dolores Marsalis, the second of six sons. At an early age, he exhibited a superior aptitude for music and a desire to participate in American culture. At age eight Marsalis performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by legendary banjoist Danny Barker, and at 14 he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school Marsalis performed with the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, various jazz bands and with the popular local funk band, the Creators.

At age 17 Marsalis became the youngest musician ever to be admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center. Despite his youth, he was awarded the school’s prestigious Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Marsalis moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979. When he started gigging around the City, the grapevine began to buzz. The excitement around Marsalis attracted the attention of Columbia Records executives who signed him to his first recording contract. In 1980 Marsalis seized the opportunity to join the Jazz Messengers to study under master drummer and bandleader Art Blakey. It was from Blakey that Marsalis acquired his concept for bandleading and for bringing intensity to each and every performance.

In the years to follow Marsalis performed with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, John Lewis, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and countless other jazz legends.

Marsalis assembled his own band in 1981 and hit the road, performing over 120 concerts every year for 15 consecutive years. With the power of his superior musicianship, the infectious sound of his swinging bands and a far-reaching series of performances and music workshops, Marsalis rekindled widespread interest in jazz throughout the world and inspired a renaissance that attracted a new generation of fine young talent to jazz. A look at the more distinguished jazz musicians to emerge for the decades to follow reveals the efficacy of Marsalis’ workshops and includes: James Carter, Christian McBride, Roy Hargrove, Marcus Roberts, Wycliffe Gordon, Harry Connick Jr., Nicholas Payton, Eric Reed and Eric Lewis, to name a few.

Marsalis also embraced the jazz lineage to bring recognition to the older generation of overlooked jazz musicians and prompted the re-issue of jazz catalogs by record companies worldwide.

Classical Career

Marsalis’s love of the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and others drove him to pursue a career in classical music as well. He recorded the Haydn, Hummel and Leopold Mozart Trumpet Concertos at age 20. His debut recording received glorious reviews and won the Grammy Award® for “Best Classical Soloist with an Orchestra.” Marsalis went on to record 10 additional classical records, all to critical acclaim. Marsalis performed with leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, The Cleveland Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and London’s Royal Philharmonic, working with an eminent group of conductors including: Leppard, Dutoit, Maazel, Slatkin, Salonen and Tilson-Thomas. A timeless highlight of Marsalis’s classical career is his collaboration with soprano Kathleen Battle on their recording Baroque Duet. Famed classical trumpeter Maurice André praised Marsalis as “potentially the greatest trumpeter of all time.”

Record Production

Marsalis has produced over 100 records which have sold over seven million copies worldwide including three Gold Records. His recordings consistently incorporate a heavy emphasis on the blues, an inclusive approach to all forms of jazz from New Orleans to modern jazz, persistent use of swing as the primary rhythm, an embrace of the American popular song, individual and collective improvisation, and a panoramic vision of compositional styles from dittys to dynamic call and response patterns (both within the rhythm section and between the rhythm section and horn players).

The Composer

Wynton Marsalis is a prolific and inventive composer. He is the world’s first jazz artist to perform and compose across the full jazz spectrum from its New Orleans roots to bebop to modern jazz. He has also composed a violin concerto and four symphonies to introduce new rhythms to the classical music canon.

Marsalis collaborated with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in 1995 to compose the string quartet At the Octoroon Balls, and again in 1998 to create a response to Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale with his composition A Fiddler’s Tale.

Several prominent choreographers embraced Marsalis’s inventiveness with commissions to compose suites to fuel their imagination for movement. This impressive list includes Garth Fagan (Citi Movement-Griot New York & Lighthouse/Lightening Rod), Peter Martins at the New York City Ballet (Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements and Them Twos), Twyla Tharp with the American Ballet Theatre (Jump Start), Judith Jamison at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (Sweet Release and Here…Now), and Savion Glover (Petite Suite and Spaces).

Marsalis reconnected audiences with the beauty of the American popular song with his collection of standards recordings (Standard Time Volumes I-VI). He re-introduced the joy in New Orleans jazz with his recording The Majesty of The Blues. And he extended the jazz musician’s interplay with the blues in Uptown Ruler, Levee Low Moan, Thick in the South and other blues recordings.

Marsalis introduced a fresh conception for extended form compositions with Citi Movement, his sanctified In This House on This Morning and Blood on the Fields. His inventive interplay with melody, harmony and rhythm, along with his lyrical voicing and tonal coloring assert new possibilities for the jazz ensemble. In his dramatic oratorio Blood on the Fields, Marsalis draws upon the blues, work songs, chants, spirituals, New Orleans jazz, Ellingtonesque orchestral arrangements and Afro-Caribbean rhythms—using Greek chorus-style recitations with great affect to move the work along. The New York Times Magazine said Blood on the Fields “marked a symbolic moment when the full heritage of the line, Ellington through Mingus, was extended into the present.” The San Francisco Examiner stated, “Marsalis’ orchestral arrangements are magnificent. Duke Ellington’s shadings and themes come and go but Marsalis’ free use of dissonance, counter rhythms and polyphonics is way ahead of Ellington’s mid-century era.” Blood on the Fields became the first jazz composition ever to be awarded the coveted Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1997.

Marsalis extended his achievements in Blood on the Fields with All Rise, an epic composition for big band, gospel choir, and symphony orchestra—a classic work of high art—which was performed by the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Kurt Masur along with the Morgan State University Choir and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (December 1999).

Marsalis collaborated with Ghanaian master drummer Yacub Addy to create Congo Square, a groundbreaking composition combining harmonies from America’s jazz tradition with fundamental rituals in African percussion and vocals (2006).

For the anniversary of the Abyssinian Baptist Church’s 200th year of service, Marsalis blended Baptist church choir cadences with blues accents and big band swing rhythms to compose Abyssinian 200: A Celebration, which was performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Abyssinian’s 100 voice choir before packed houses in New York City (May 2008).

In the fall of 2009 the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra premiered Marsalis’ composition Blues Symphony. Marsalis infused blues and ragtime rhythms with symphonic orchestrations to create a fresh type of enjoyment of classical repertoire. Marsalis further expanded his repertoire for symphony orchestra with Swing Symphony, employing complex layers of collective improvisation. The work was premiered by the renowned Berlin Philharmonic and performed with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in June 2010, creating new possibilities for audiences to experience a symphony orchestra swing.

Marsalis made a significant addition to his oeuvre with Concerto in D, a violin concerto composed for virtuoso Nicola Benedetti. The concerto is in four movements, “Rhapsody,” “Rhondo,” “Blues,” and “Hootenanny.” With this masterful composition Marsalis celebrates the American vernacular in ultra-sophisticated ways. Its fundamental character is Americana with sweeping melodies, jazzy orchestral dissonances, blues-tinge themes, fancy fiddling and a rhythmic swagger. Concerto in D received its world premiere by the London Symphony Orchestra in November 2014 and its American premiere by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia in July 2015.

In December 2016 Marsalis again demonstrated his expansive musical imagination and dexterity for seasoning the classical music realm with jazz and blues influences with The Jungle, performed by the New York Philharmonic along with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The Jungle, according to Marsalis, “is a musical portrait of New York City, the most fluid, pressure- packed, and cosmopolitan metropolis the modern world has ever seen.” The New York

Philharmonic and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra re-united to present The Jungle in Shanghai in July 2017.

Marsalis’ rich and expansive body of music for the ages places him among the world’s most significant composers.

Television, Radio & Literary

In the fall of 1995 Wynton launched two major broadcast events. In October on PBS he premiered Marsalis On Music, an educational television series on jazz and classical music. Written and hosted by Marsalis, the series and was enjoyed by millions of parents and children. Writers distinguished Marsalis On Music with comparisons to Leonard Bernstein’s celebrated Young People’s Concerts of the 50s and 60s. That same month National Public Radio aired the first of Marsalis’ 26-week series entitled Making the Music. These entertaining and insightful radio shows were the first full exposition of jazz music in American broadcast history. Wynton’s radio and television series were awarded the most prestigious distinction in broadcast journalism, the George Foster Peabody Award. The Spirit of New Orleans, Wynton’s poetic tribute to the New Orleans Saints’ first Super Bowl victory (Super Bowl XLIV) also received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Feature (2011).

From 2012 to 2014 Wynton served as cultural correspondent for CBS News, writing and presenting features for CBS This Morning on an array topics from Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela and Louis Armstrong to Juke Joints, BBQ, the Quarterback & Conducting and Thankfulness.

Marsalis has written six books: Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, To a Young Musician: Letters from the Road, Jazz ABZ (an A to Z collection of poems celebrating jazz greats), Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life and Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! a sonic adventure for kids.

Awards and Accolades

Wynton Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards® in grand style. In 1983 he became the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards® for both jazz and classical records; and he repeated the distinction by winning jazz and classical Grammys® again in 1984. Today Wynton is the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards® in five consecutive years (1983-1987). Honorary degrees have been conferred upon Wynton by over 30 of America’s leading academic institutions including Columbia, Harvard, Howard, Princeton and Yale. Elsewhere Wynton was honored with the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the “I Have a Dream Foundation.” The New York Urban League awarded Wynton with the Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership and the American Arts Council presented him with the Arts Education Award. Time magazine selected Wynton as one of America’s most promising leaders under age 40 in 1995, and in 1996 Time celebrated Marsalis again as one of America’s 25 most influential people. In November 2005 Wynton Marsalis received The National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the United States Government. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan proclaimed Wynton Marsalis an international ambassador of goodwill for the Unites States by appointing him a UN Messenger of Peace (2001).

Marsalis was honored with The National Humanities Medal by President Barak Obama in 2015, in recognition of his work in deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities and broadened American citizens’ engagement with history, literature, languages and philosophy.

In 1997 Wynton Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio Blood On The Fields. During the five preceding decades the Pulitzer Prize jury refused to recognize jazz musicians and their improvisational music, reserving this distinction for classical composers. In the years following Marsalis’ award, the Pulitzer Prize for Music has been awarded posthumously to Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. In a personal note to Wynton, Zarin Mehta wrote:

“I was not surprised at your winning the Pulitzer Prize for Blood On The Fields. It is a broad, beautifully painted canvas that impresses and inspires. It speaks to us all … I’m sure that, somewhere in the firmament, Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and legions of others are smiling down on you.”

Wynton’s creativity has been celebrated throughout the world. He won the Netherlands’ Edison Award and the Grand Prix Du Disque of France. The Mayor of Vitoria, Spain, awarded Wynton with the city’s Gold Medal – its most coveted distinction. Britain’s senior conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music, granted Mr. Marsalis Honorary Membership, the Academy’s highest decoration for a non-British citizen (1996). The city of Marciac, France, erected a bronze statue in his honor. The French Ministry of Culture appointed Wynton the rank of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature and in the fall of 2009 Wynton received France’s highest distinction, the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, an honor that was first awarded by Napoleon Bonaparte. French Ambassador, His Excellency Pierre Vimont, captured the evening best with his introduction:

“We are gathered here tonight to express the French government’s recognition of one of the most influential figures in American music, an outstanding artist, in one word: a visionary…

I want to stress how important your work has been for both the American and the French. I want to put the emphasis on the main values and concerns that we all share: the importance of education and transmission of culture from one generation to the other, and a true commitment to the profoundly democratic idea that lies in jazz music.

I strongly believe that, for you, jazz is more than just a musical form. It is tradition, it is part of American history and culture and life. To you, jazz is the sound of democracy. And from this democratic nature of jazz derives openness, generosity, and universality.”

Jazz at Lincoln Center

In 1987 Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, due to its significant success, Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) was installed as a new constituent of Lincoln Center, equal in stature with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet – a historic moment for jazz as an art form and for Lincoln Center as a cultural institution. In October 2004, with the assistance of a dedicated Board and staff, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world’s first institution for jazz. The complex contains three state-of-the-art performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Jazz at Lincoln Center has become a preferred venue for New York jazz fans and a destination for travelers from throughout the world. Wynton presently serves as Managing and Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center. Under his leadership Jazz at Lincoln Center has developed an international agenda presenting rich and diverse programming that includes concerts, debates, film forums, dances, television and radio broadcasts, and educational activities. The JALC mission is to entertain, enrich and expand a global community for jazz through performance, education and advocacy, and to bolster the cultural infrastructure for jazz globally.

Jazz at Lincoln Center has become a mecca for learning as well as a hub for performance. Their comprehensive educational programming includes a Band Director’s Academy, a hugely popular concert series for kids called Jazz for Young People, Jazz in the Schools, a Middle School Jazz Academy, WeBop! (for kids ages 8 months to 5 years), an annual High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival that reaches over 2000 bands in 50 states and Canada.

In 2010 the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra established its first residency in Cuba with a rich cultural exchange of performances with Cuban musicians including Chucho Valdes and Omara Portuondo and education programs for kids.

Education

In 2009 Wynton created and presented Ballad of the American Arts before a capacity crowd at the Kennedy Center. The lecture/performance was written to elucidate the essential role the arts have played in establishing America’s cultural identity. “This is our story, this is our song,” states Marsalis, “and if well sung, it tells us who we are and where we belong.”

In 2011 Harvard University President Drew Faust invited Wynton to enrich the cultural life of the University community. Wynton responded by creating a 6 lecture series which he delivered over the ensuing 3 years entitled Hidden In Plain View: Meanings in American Music, with the goal of fostering a stronger appreciation for the arts and a higher level of cultural literacy in academia. From 2015 to 2021 Wynton will serve as an A.D. White Professor at Cornell University. A.D. White Professors are charged with the mandate to enliven the intellectual and cultural lives of university students.

Giving Back

Wynton Marsalis has devoted his life to uplifting populations worldwide with the egalitarian spirit of jazz. And while his body of work is enough to fill two lifetimes, Wynton continues to work tirelessly to contribute even more to our world’s cultural landscape. It has been said that he is an artist for whom greatness is not just possible, but inevitable. The most extraordinary dimension of Wynton Marsalis, however, is not his accomplishments but his character. It is the lesser-known part of this man who finds endless ways to give of himself. It is the person who waited in an empty parking lot for one full hour after a concert in Baltimore, waiting for a single student to return from home with his horn for a trumpet lesson. It is the citizen who personally funds scholarships for students and covers medical expenses for those in need. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, Wynton organized the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Concert and raised over $3 million for musicians and cultural organizations impacted by the hurricane. At the same time, he assumed a leadership role on the Bring Back New Orleans Cultural Commission where he was instrumental in shaping a master plan that would revitalize the city’s cultural base.

Wynton Marsalis has selflessly donated his time and talent to non-profit organizations throughout the country to raise money to meet the many needs within our society. From My Sister’s Place (a shelter for battered women) to Graham Windham (a shelter for homeless children), the Children’s Defense Fund, Amnesty International, the Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, Food For All Seasons (a food bank for the elderly and disadvantaged), Very Special Arts (an organization that provides experiences in dance, drama, literature, and music for individuals with physical and mental disabilities) to the Newark Boys Chorus School (a full-time academic music school for disadvantaged youths), the Hugs Foundation (Help Us Give Smiles – provides free life changing surgical procedures for children with microtia, cleft lip and other facial deformities) and many, many more – Wynton responded enthusiastically to the call for service. It is Wynton Marsalis’ commitment to the improvement of life for all people that portrays the best of his character and humanity.

Artistic Leadership and Orchestra Roster

View Roster

LOUIS LANGRÉE, CSO Music Director
- Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair

JOHN MORRIS RUSSELL, Pops Conductor
- Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair

Matthias Pintscher, CSO Creative Partner

Damon Gupton, Pops Principal Guest Conductor

François López-Ferrer, CSO Associate Conductor
- Ashley and Barbara Ford Chair for Associate Conductor

Wilbur Lin, Pops Assistant Conductor
- Ashley and Barbara Ford Chair for Assistant Conductor

FIRST VIOLINS

Stefani Matsuo
Concertmaster
—Anna Sinton Taft Chair

Charles Morey
Acting Associate Concertmaster
—Tom & Dee Stegman Chair

Philip Marten
First Assistant Concertmaster
—James M. Ewell Chair++

Eric Bates
Second Assistant Concertmaster
—Serge Shababian Chair

Kathryn Woolley
—Nicholas Tsimaras–Peter G. Courlas Chair++

Anna Reider
—Dianne & J. David Rosenberg Chair

Mauricio Aguiar§

Minyoung Baik

James Braid
—Marc Bohlke Chair given by Katrin & Manfred Bohlke

Michelle Edgar Dugan

Rebecca Kruger Fryxell
Clifford J. Goosmann and Andrea M. Wilson Chair

Gerald Itzkoff
—Jean Ten Have Chair

Lois Reid Johnson
—Anne G. & Robert W. Dorsey Chair++

Sylvia Mitchell
—Jo Ann & Paul Ward Chair

Luo-Jia Wu

SECOND VIOLINS

Gabriel Pegis
Principal
—Al Levinson Chair

Yang Liu*
—Harold B. & Betty Justice Chair

Scott Mozlin**
—Henry Meyer Chair

Kun Dong

Cheryl Benedict

Evin Blomberg§

Rachel Charbel
—Ida Ringling North Chair

Elizabeth Furuta†

Chika Kinderman

Hyesun Park

Paul Patterson
—Charles Gausmann Chair++

Stacey Woolley
—Brenda & Ralph Taylor Chair++

VIOLAS

Christian Colberg
Principal
—Louise D. & Louis Nippert Chair

Paul Frankenfeld*
—Grace M. Allen Chair

Julian Wilkison**

Rebecca Barnes§

Christopher Fischer

Stephen Fryxell
—Melinda & Irwin Simon Chair

Caterina Longhi

Denisse Rodriguez-Rivera

Joanne Wojtowicz

CELLOS

Ilya Finkelshteyn
Principal
—Irene & John J. Emery Chair

Daniel Culnan*
—Ona Hixson Dater Chair

Norman Johns**
—Karl & Roberta Schlachter Family Chair

Matthew Lad§
—Marvin Kolodzik Chair

Susan Marshall-Petersen
—Laura Kimble McLellan Chair++

Hiro Matsuo

Theodore Nelson
—Peter G. Courlas–Nicholas Tsimaras Chair++

Alan Rafferty
—Ruth F. Rosevear Chair

BASSES

Owen Lee
Principal
—Mary Alice Heekin Burke Chair++

James Lambert*
—Thomas Vanden Eynden Chair

Matthew Zory, Jr.**+
—Trish & Rick Bryan Chair

Boris Astafiev§

Ronald Bozicevich
—Donald & Margaret Robinson Chair

Rick Vizachero

HARP

Gillian Benet Sella
Principal
—Cynthia & Frank Stewart Chair

FLUTES

Randolph Bowman
Principal
—Charles Frederic Goss Chair

Henrik Heide*†

Haley Bangs
—Jane & David Ellis Chair

PICCOLO

[OPEN]
—Patricia Gross Linnemann Chair

OBOES

Dwight Parry
Principal
—Josephine I. & David J. Joseph, Jr. Chair

Lon Bussell*
—Stephen P. McKean Chair

Emily Beare

ENGLISH HORN

Christopher Philpotts
Principal
—Alberta & Dr. Maurice Marsh Chair+

CLARINETS

Christopher Pell
Principal
—Emma Margaret & Irving D. Goldman Chair

Joseph Morris*
Associate Principal and Eb Clarinet
—Robert E. & Fay Boeh Chair++

Ixi Chen
Vicky & Rick Reynolds Chair in Honor of William A. Friedlander

BASS CLARINET

Ronald Aufmann

BASSOONS

Christopher Sales
Principal
—Emalee Schavel Chair++

Martin Garcia*

Hugh Michie

CONTRABASSOON

Jennifer Monroe

FRENCH HORNS

Elizabeth Freimuth
Principal
—Mary M. & Charles F. Yeiser Chair

[OPEN]*
—Ellen A. & Richard C. Berghamer Chair

Molly Norcross**
Acting Associate Principal
—Sweeney Family Chair in memory of Donald C. Sweeney

Lisa Conway
—Susanne & Philip O. Geier, Jr. Chair

Duane Dugger
—Mary & Joseph S. Stern, Jr. Chair

Charles Bell

TRUMPETS

Robert Sullivan
Principal
—Rawson Chair

Douglas Lindsay*
—Jackie & Roy Sweeney Family Chair

Steven Pride
—Otto M. Budig Family Foundation Chair++

Christopher Kiradjieff

TROMBONES

Cristian Ganicenco
Principal
—Dorothy & John Hermanies Chair

Joseph Rodriguez**
Second/Assistant Principal Trombone

BASS TROMBONE

Peter Norton

TUBA

Christopher Olka
Principal
—Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair

TIMPANI

Patrick Schleker
Principal
—Matthew & Peg Woodside Chair

Michael Culligan
Acting Associate Principal

[OPEN]*
—Morleen & Jack Rouse Chair

PERCUSSION

David Fishlock
Principal
—Susan S. & William A. Friedlander Chair

Michael Culligan*

[OPEN]*
—Morleen & Jack Rouse Chair

Marc Wolfley+

KEYBOARDS

Michael Chertock
—James P. Thornton Chair

Julie Spangler+
—James P. Thornton Chair

CSO/CCM DIVERSITY FELLOWS

Maalik Glover, violin

Mwakudua waNgure, violin

Tyler McKisson, viola

Javier Otalora, viola

Max Oppeltz-Carroz, cello

Luis Parra, cello

Samantha Powell, cello

Luis Celis Avila, bass

Amy Nickler, bass

LIBRARIANS

Christina Eaton
Principal Librarian
—Lois Klein Jolson Chair

Elizabeth Dunning
Acting Associate Principal Librarian

Adam Paxson
Interim Assistant Librarian

STAGE MANAGERS

Brian P. Schott

Phillip T. Sheridan

Daniel Schultz

Andrew Sheridan

§ Begins the alphabetical listing of players who participate in a system of rotated seating within the string section.

*  Associate Principal

**  Assistant Principal

† One-year appointment

‡ Leave of absence

+ Cincinnati Pops rhythm section

++ CSO endowment only

~ Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation