Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) explore the music of Franz Schubert and Alban Berg in a three week festival, May 27-June 13 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and the Flint Center in Cupertino. Dawn to Twilight: A Schubert / Berg Festival illustrates how Schubert‘s music heralded the beginning of a new Romantic age, and how Berg harnessed contemporary modes of composition to express his own unique voice, taking Romanticism forward into modernism. The pairing of these two Viennese masters will serve to create an illuminating view into each of their unique musical languages. Highlights of the festival include the first SFS performances of Schubert‘s Mass No. 6 featuring the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, MTT‘s performance on piano in The Shepherd on the Rock (Der Hirt aus dem Felsen) as part of his signature “Schubert/Berg Journey” concert, and in a pre-concert recital of Schubert‘s Rondos for Piano Four Hands also featuring Yefim Bronfman and Julia Fischer on piano. Other works to be performed over the course of the three week festival include Schubert‘s Rosamunde Overture; his Symphony in B minor; Unfinished, and his Symphony in C major, The Great. Works by Berg will include his Seven Early Songs (Sieben frühe Lieder), Three Pieces for Orchestra, and the SFS‘s first performances since 1980 of his Chamber Concert (Kammerkonzert) featuring Yefim Bronfman and Julia Fischer.

Michael Tilson Thomas has long been drawn to Schubert‘s music. “I find in Schubert a personally touching and amazingly sophisticated sense of direction, on almost any level of human thought you can imagine. He uses harmony to describe every possible shading of the human condition. Like the really great melody composers, he has the ability to write tunes that you think must somehow always have existed,” he said.

“It has to do, too, with how music can reflect life. So much of what Schubert does, and so much of what Berg does, concerns the exploration of musical ambiguity,” MTT explains. “You hear a particular note and you think it‘s going in a certain direction—it has a certain message and a certain meaning—and then all at once you discover that it is leading someplace entirely different. Schubert uses these methods to suggest some kind of surprise. You expected one thing, and in fact something different happens: something magnificent, or disappointing, or elating, or humbling. Berg uses exactly these methods to suggest some still deeper level of ambiguity or ambivalence.”

“…nothing theoretical was driving Berg‘s music. The most extraordinary thing about Berg is that in every piece, there is always a moment that—even on first hearing, even to the unsophisticated listener—is so radiantly beautiful, that you think, ‘I must hear that again.’ That‘s the mystery: Why would someone who could write as beautifully as this write other music that is so challenging? I think that‘s what draws you back to the music. Eventually you discover that it‘s all the same moment—that these lyrical, melting moments are just another way of looking at the basic situation that he is presenting…What drove Berg was his desire to share all of what it is to be human, to be alive.”

FESTIVAL SOLOISTS

Soloists for the festival include pianist Yefim Bronfman, violinist Julia Fischer (who will also perform on piano during the pre-concert recitals held on June 3 and 4), mezzo-sopranos Michelle DeYoung and Kelley O‘Connor, soprano Laura Aikin, tenor Bruce Sledge and bass-baritone Jeremy Galyon. Tenor Nicholas Phan makes his SFS debut as part of this festival. MTT will conduct and perform on piano when he leads his trademark ―A Schubert and Berg Journey‖ concerts which also feature SFS Principal Clarinet Carey Bell. Violinist Gil Shaham returns to the SFS as part of Dawn to Twilight to perform Berg‘s Violin Concerto, a work he played in 2004 with the Orchestra at Davies Symphony Hall and on tour. On Sunday, June 7, Bronfman and Fischer perform an evening of chamber music with members of the SFS.

FESTIVAL BENEFIT EVENT

On Monday, June 1, Tilson Thomas and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade will perform the music of Viennese master Franz Schubert in an evening at the Carolands Chateau to benefit the San Francisco Symphony and its many education and community programs. Following this salon-style performance, guests will enjoy one of several small dinner parties in the Chateau‘s signature rooms. A limited number of tickets are available from the Volunteer Council of the San Francisco Symphony by calling 415.503.5500.

TICKET INFORMATION

Tickets for all Dawn to Twilight: A Schubert / Berg Festival concerts in Davies Symphony Hall are priced from $25 to $130. Flint Center concert tickets are priced from $45 to $62. All tickets are available through SFS Ticket Services at 415.864.6000, and online through the SFS website at www.sfsymphony.org.

2 March 2009, San Bruno CA -  YouTube™ announced today the members of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the world’s first orchestra selected entirely through auditions on-line. The musicians will travel from thirty countries and territories around the world to New York City to participate in a classical music summit on April 12-15, concluding with a concert at Carnegie Hall under the direction of the San Francisco Symphony Music Director, New World Symphony Founder and Artistic Director, and London Symphony Orchestra Principal Guest Conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas.

The global YouTube community and Michael Tilson Thomas have selected more than ninety musicians playing 26 different instruments from a group of two hundred finalists. The musicians will travel to New York from thirty different countries and territories: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Since the launch of this initiative in December 2008, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s channel (www.YouTube.com/Symphony) has received more than 13 million views worldwide with visitors from more than two hundred countries and territories. More than three thousand videos were submitted to YouTube by musicians from Azerbaijan to Venezuela. These participants, consisting of professional and amateur musicians of all ages and on all instruments, represented more than seventy countries and territories on six continents.

After a preliminary screening by musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, among others, the videos of two hundred finalists were collected and posted on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel on February 14, 2009. These finalists ranged in age from 15 to 55. The YouTube community voted for their favorites and, as the project’s Artistic Advisor and Conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas reviewed the finalists to create the orchestra that will perform the program at Carnegie Hall on April 15, 2009.

“It has been a remarkably exciting process reviewing the many contributions from around the world.  It’s been a real window on the lives of music lovers everywhere who have auditioned in their dorms, practice rooms, on stages of neo-classical theaters, apartment house lobbies, on gorgeous Italian fiddles and old upright pianos,” said Mr. Tilson Thomas.  “All of them have played with great heart and devotion.  I want to thank the participating orchestras and the whole YouTube community for all their help selecting the finalists.  I am so looking forward to meeting everyone in person in New York in April.”

“From the undiscovered cellist to the professionally-trained bassoonist, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra is a real-life example of how people can use online video to share their talents with the world. Performers captured the attention of both renowned classical musicians and the YouTube community,” said Ed Sanders, YouTube Product Marketing Manager. “We can’t wait to see what happens when these musicians come together for the first time at Carnegie Hall.”

“It’s been a privilege to help so many talented people from such diverse backgrounds come together. The enthusiasm and commitment with which they have engaged with the project and each other is astonishing,” said Chaz Jenkins, Head of LSO Live, London Symphony Orchestra. “Performing and connecting with an audience is the ultimate goal for any musician and those who have taken part will have benefited from that experience in a way and on a scale that would have been unimaginable to musicians just a few years ago.”

Musicians such as Chinese pianist Lang Lang, the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra Global Ambassador, and founding composer Tan Dun, creator of Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica, a piece specially arranged for this occasion, have endorsed the project and encouraged participation.

The talented musicians will participate in Master Classes with world-class musicians, rehearse together, and share in each other’s diverse experiences and backgrounds.

“The strings on my violin were 15 years old when I first learned of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and that’s when I realized it was time to get my violin out of the closet,” said California surgeon Calvin Lee. “Since then I’ve been practicing, playing and thoroughly enjoying meeting other passionate musicians from across the globe through the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.”

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra marks the first program on YouTube to welcome submissions from nearly every country in the world, and the channel is available in 16 different languages. YouTube has partnered with more than forty major classical music organizations and institutions to bring this initiative to musicians around the world.

Program details and guest soloists will be announced shortly. Tickets are on-sale now through Carnegie Charge at (212) 247-7800 at www.carnegiehall.org.

View the winners’ videos at www.YouTube.com/Symphony.

United States:
California: Cupertino, Fremont, Modesto, San Francisco
Illinois: Chicago, Evanston
Indiana: Bloomington
Massachusetts: Allston, Boston, West Brookfield
Maryland: Baltimore
Michigan: Saline
Nevada: Reno
New York: Islip, New York, Niskayuna
Ohio: Cincinnati, Cleveland,
Pennsylvania: Harrisburg, Wayne
South Carolina: Clover
Texas: El Paso, Keller, Pearland, Waco
Virginia: Charlottesville
Washington: Spokane

Canada:
Kitchener, Ontario
Saguenay, Quebec
Calgary, Alberta
Toronto, Ontario
Montreal, Quebec

January, 2009

MIAMI BEACH – The New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy, will present an intensive four-day In-Context™ Festival focusing on the life and music of American composer Charles Ives, titled “Charles Ives, Pioneer Modernist,” Thursday, February 19 – Sunday, February 22, hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas at the Lincoln Theatre (541 Lincoln Road).

A unique aspect of the festival will involve a weeklong conducting symposium on the music of Ives, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas and James Sinclair, Executive Editor for the Charles Ives Society.  The symposium will focus on the unique challenges of conducting Ives’ music, due to frequent changes in meter and complex layering.  Also unique to the festival, Friday’s program will feature a different conductor leading each work, and Saturday’s program will feature a different conductor in each movement of Ives’ Holidays Symphony. Participating in the symposium will be Kazem Abdullah, Assistant and Cover Conductor for the Metropolitan Opera; Steven Jarvi, Assistant Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony and former New World Symphony Conducting Fellow; and Edward Abrams, New World Symphony Conducting Fellow.

The festival will launch Thursday, February 19 with a panel discussion featuring James Sinclair; J. Peter Burkholder, Distinguished Professor of Musicology at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and author of numerous books on Ives; Wayne D. Shirley, former Senior Music Specialist at the Library of Congress; Jan Swafford, composer, author and professor at the Boston Conservatory; and Michael Tilson Thomas.  Burkholder and Swafford will serve as panelists from Indiana and Massachusetts via Internet2, a high-speed, high-bandwidth internet reserved for educational research and collaboration, employed by NWS for interactive musical collaborations, coaching and teaching.  Following the panel discussion will be a screening of the Ives documentary film “A Good Dissonance Like a Man,” by T.W. Timreck. This event is free and open to the public.

On Friday, February 20, NWS will perform a variety of Ives’ music, putting on display his experiments and masterpieces alike: The Unanswered Question; Central Park in the Dark; Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano; From the Steeples and the Mountains; Scherzo: Over the Pavements; and Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1, Version 2).  The program will feature Michael Tilson Thomas and James Sinclair as conductors and hosts, pianist Jeremy Denk, and conductors Abdullah, Jarvi and Abrams.  James Sinclair will host a pre-concert Curtain Talk at 6:30 P.M.

The first half of the performance on Saturday, February 21 will highlight a number of the more than 100 hymns, popular songs, college songs and war songs quoted in Ives’ Holidays Symphony, featuring the University of Miami Frost Chorale, directed by Joshua Habermann.  The second half will feature the performance of Ives’ Holidays Symphony, the first movement led by Michael Tilson Thomas with each of the three consecutive movements to be conducted by Abdullah, Jarvi and Abrams, respectively.  The performance will be preceded by a Curtain Talk with Wayne D. Shirley.

The festival finale on Sunday, February 22 will include Sonata No. 2 for Piano, “Concord, Mass., 1840-60;” featuring Jeremy Denk, and Henry Brant’s own transcription, A Concord Symphony, will be performed on the second half.  A Curtain Talk by Jan Swafford, via Internet2, will precede the performance.

NWS’ annual In-Context™ Festivals take various musical, historical and social themes as their focus.  Designed as multi-disciplinary experiences, these events incorporate art exhibits, films, lectures, commissioned essays, folk music and theatrical elements to explore the broader meaning of the orchestral and chamber repertoire being performed.  Past In-Context™ Festivals have been dedicated to subjects as diverse as the Gypsy tradition of Central Europe, composers oppressed by the Third Reich, Viennese and French musical traditions, the history of film music, and the influences of jazz, tango and flamenco on classical music.

Tickets for the Friday performance ($20), Saturday performance ($35 - $59) and Sunday performance ($15) may be obtained by calling the New World Symphony box office at 305-673-3331 or online at www.nws.edu.  Additional information about the New World Symphony may be obtained at www.nws.edu.
Festival Schedule:

Thursday, February 19, 7:30 P.M.
Panel Discussion and Film Screening
Michael Tilson Thomas
James Sinclair
Peter Burkholder (via Internet2)
Wayne Shirley
Jan Swafford (via Internet2)
Tickets: Free

Friday, February 20, 7:30 P.M. (Curtain Talk by James Sinclair at 6:30 P.M.)
Michael Tilson Thomas and James Sinclair, conductors and hosts
Jeremy Denk, piano
Kazem Abdullah, Edward Abrams, Steven Jarvi, conductors
The Unanswered Question
Central Park in the Dark
Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano
Moderato
TSIAJ
Moderato con moto
From the Steeples and the Mountains
Scherzo: Over the Pavements
Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1, Version 2)
“The ‘St. Gaudens’ in Boston Common”
Putnam’s Comp, Redding, Connecticut
“The Housatonic at Stockbridge”
All Tickets: $20

Saturday, February 21, 7:30 P.M. (Curtain Talk by Wayne D. Shirley via Internet2 at
6:30 P.M.)
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor and host
James Sinclair, co-host
Kazem Abullah, conductor
Steven Jarvi, conductor
Edward Abrams, conductor
University of Miami Frost Chorale
Joshua Habermann, director
Unversity of Miami Collegium Musicum
Hymns, popular songs, college songs and war songs quoted in Ives’ Holidays Symphony
Holidays Symphony
Washington’s Birthday
Decoration Day
The Fourth of July
Thanksgiving and Forefather’s Day
Tickets: $35, $48, $59

Sunday, February 22, 7:30 P.M. (Curtain Talk by Jan Swafford via Internet2 at 6:30)
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor and host
Jeremy Denk, piano
Sonata No. 2 for Piano, “Concord, Mass., 1840-60”
Emerson
Hawthorne
The Alcotts
Thoreau
A Concord Symphony
Emerson
Hawthorne
The Alcotts
Thoreau
All Tickets: $15