Riverside Symphony | |
---|---|
Orchestra | |
Founded | 1981 |
Location | New York City, US |
Concert hall | Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center |
Principal conductor | George Rothman |
Website | riversidesymphony |
Riverside Symphony is a New York-based professional orchestra founded in 1981 by conductor George Rothman and composer Anthony Korf. The orchestra performs an annual three-concert series at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center and is recognized for programs which emphasize lesser known repertoire. [1] The orchestra provides an ongoing forum for emerging soloists of exceptional promise and has showcased numerous instrumental and vocal talents over its history.
Directors George Rothman and Anthony Korf met as students at the Manhattan School of Music during the mid 1970s and formed Riverside Symphony after a 1980 concert at Riverside Church. [2] Numbering some 40 musicians in its core roster, the orchestra draws upon New York City's freelance community for its talent, at times expanding in size to meet the demands of larger works. [2] Since the Symphony's inception, directors George Rothman and Anthony Korf have served as Conductor and Composer-in-Residence respectively.
The orchestra's concerts regularly feature guest soloists from around the world. These have included early career appearances by Carter Brey, [3] Frederic Chiu, [4] Jeremy Denk, [5] Tim Fain, [6] Marc-André Hamelin, [7] Christopher O'Riley, [8] and Shai Wosner. [9] The Symphony has also collaborated with guest narrators Cynthia Nixon, [10] Sam Waterston, [11] and Irene Worth. [12]
Riverside Symphony's curatorial focus has been mainly directed to overlooked corners of the repertory, with a special emphasis on contemporary music. The orchestra has championed such American composers as Andrew Imbrie, Stephen Hartke, George Tsontakis, [13] Mario Davidovsky, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, [14] and European composers Marius Constant, Henri Dutilleux, [15] Guus Janssen, [16] and Robert Suter, [17] among others. [18]
Furthermore, Riverside Symphony's International Composer Reading Program has sought to expand the field of opportunity for living composers worldwide. [19] While several of the readings have been devoted solely to American works chosen from an open competition process, several installations of this project have also focused on works by composers from a designated country, such as France, Norway, or Switzerland.
Riverside Symphony appears on seven recordings, one of which was Grammy Award Nominee in 2000. All seven recordings consist of 20th- and 21st-century music, namely works by Mario Davidovsky, Stephen Hartke, Andrew Imbrie, Anthony Korf, Poul Ruders, and Maurice Wright. [20]
Year | Album Details | Works |
---|---|---|
2014 | Marius Constant
| Compositions by Marius Constant:
|
2009 | Anthony Korf: Presences from Aforetime
| Compositions by Anthony Korf:
|
2002 | Mario Davidovsky: Three Cycles on Biblical Texts
| Compositions by Mario Davidovsky:
|
1999 | Andrew Imbrie: Requiem; Piano Concerto No. 3
| Compositions by Andrew Imbrie:
|
1998 | Stephen Hartke: Concerto for Violin & Orchestra, “Auld Swaara”; Symphony No. 2
| Compositions by Stephen Hartke:
|
1995 | Poul Ruders: The Christmas Gospel
| Compositions by Poul Ruders:
|
1990 | Davidovsky/Korf/Wright: Orchestral Works
|
|
In 1999, Riverside Symphony launched the year-long classroom learning program Music Memory in New York City public schools, and has since grown from a handful of schools to serve thousands of school children annually in all five boroughs. [21] Based on a curriculum from Mighty Music Memory, this nationally recognized program is "designed to promote the love and knowledge of classical music through an in-depth study of sixteen great composers, their lives and their music each year." [22] The program concludes every year with the Music Memory Citywide Finals, held at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, in which students "must identify the composition and composer of a piece of classical or jazz music they studied after listening to only a short melodic fragment." [21] [23] Music Memory has been endorsed by the New York City Department of Education's Director of Music Barbara Murray. [21]
Riverside Symphony also coordinates music education programs for adults in conjunction with its concert season. The orchestra's Salon Series provides "behind-the-scenes concert previews" with commentary from Riverside Symphony's directors and musical excerpts from guest musicians and/or orchestra members. [24] Hear Hear!, on the other hand, provides a pre-concert preview performance of the evening's featured contemporary work, borne out of the conviction that "nothing beats repeated listening" when it comes to understanding new music. [25]
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted into a prize: "For a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year."
EXPO is an orchestral composition by the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. It was the first work commissioned by the New York Philharmonic under the conductor Alan Gilbert, and was Lindberg's first commission as the orchestra's composer-in-residence. The piece was first performed on September 16, 2009 at Avery Fisher Hall, New York City, during Alan Gilbert's inaugural concert with the New York Philharmonic. EXPO was the first newly commissioned work to open the New York Philharmonic's concert season since the premiere of Aaron Copland's Connotations under Leonard Bernstein on September 23, 1962.
Mario Davidovsky was an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the United States, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is best known for his series of compositions called Synchronisms, which in live performance incorporate both acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sounds played from a tape.
Steven Edward Stucky was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.
The New World Symphony is an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida. Established in 1987, the organization is a training ensemble for young musicians in preparation for professional careers in classical music. Since 2011, the New World Symphony has its headquarters in the New World Center.
Zhou Long is a Chinese American composer. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Robert Spano is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School, principal conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, and music director laureate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO).
The American Composers Orchestra (ACO) is an American orchestra administratively based in New York City, specialising in contemporary American music. The ACO gives concerts at various concert venues in New York City, including:
Harold Meltzer was an American composer. Harold was inspired by a wide variety of stimuli, from architectural spaces to postmodern fairy tales and messages inscribed in fortune cookies. In Fanfare Magazine, Robert Carl commented that he "seems to write pieces of scrupulous craft and exceptional freshness, which makes each seem like an important contribution." The first recording devoted to his music, released in 2010 by Naxos on its American Classics label, was named one of the CDs of the year in The New York Times and in Fanfare; new all-Meltzer recordings issued from Open G Records (2017), Bridge Records (2018), and BMOP/Sound (2019). A Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 2009 for his sextet Brion, Meltzer has been awarded the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize; a Guggenheim Fellowship, and both the Arts and Letters Award in Music and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The Tanglewood Music Center is an annual summer music academy in Lenox, Massachusetts, United States, in which emerging professional musicians participate in performances, master classes and workshops. The center operates as a part of the Tanglewood Music Festival, an outdoor concert series and the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO).
The Mostly Mozart Festival was an American classical music festival based in New York City.
Steven Sloane is an Israeli-American conductor.
Jennifer Koh is an American violinist, born to Korean parents in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.
Simone Andrea Dinnerstein is an American classical pianist.
Orion Weiss is an American classical pianist.
Evan Hause is an American composer, percussionist and conductor. Hause has composed over one hundred works ranging from rock music to opera.
Anthony Korf is an American composer, artistic director and conductor. While his output spans vocal and chamber music, his primary focus has been the orchestra, among which Goldkind, a work for young audiences written in collaboration with Sabina Sciubba, three symphonies, a piano concerto and a requiem, the latter commissioned and premiered by The San Francisco Symphony, figure most prominently. Other commissions include The American Composers Orchestra, The Koussevitzky Music Foundation, The Howard Hanson Fund, and The National Endowment for the Arts.
Ken Noda is an American concert pianist, accompanist, vocal coach, and composer. He began composing music and performing as a concert pianist before the age of 11. He has performed with symphony orchestras throughout the world, and has composed numerous art songs and five operas. He worked as a vocal coach at the Metropolitan Opera from 1991 until retiring from his full time position in July 2019.
Harold Rosenbaum is an American conductor and musician. He is the artistic director and conductor of the New York Virtuoso Singers and the Canticum Novum Singers. The New York Virtuoso Singers appear on 48 albums on labels including Naxos Records and Sony Classical. He has collaborated extensively with many ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Mark Morris Dance Group, Orchestra of Saint Luke's, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Riverside Symphony, and Brooklyn Philharmonic.
One Sweet Morning is a four-movement song cycle for mezzo-soprano solo and orchestra by the American composer John Corigliano. The work was jointly commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. It was given its world premiere on September 30, 2011, by the mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and the New York Philharmonic under the conductor Alan Gilbert. The piece is dedicated to the memory of Natalie and Serge Koussevitzky.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)