Virginia Symphony Orchestra presents World Premiere
HAMPTON ROADS, VA [April 3, 2017] – Well-known to VSO audiences, composer Kenneth Fuchs brings us a world premiere.
This is a continuation of more than 30 years of collaboration between Kenneth Fuchs and Music Director JoAnn Falletta, which began in 1985 when they were students at Juilliard.
Accompanying Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, we present the world premiere entitled Poems of Life. Written for countertenor, cello and orchestra, this new work is based on the poems of Judith Wolf, a well-known artist and writer.
Due to illness, David Daniels, who was originally slated to sing the role of the countertenor, will be replaced with Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen. Cohen has quickly been identified as one of opera’s most promising rising stars. The cellist for this performance will be none other than VSO’s very own Michael Daniels.
Performances are Friday, April 7, 8 p.m., at Ferguson Center for the Arts in Newport News; Saturday, April 8, 8 p.m., at L. Douglas Wilder Performing arts Center in Norfolk; and Sunday, April 9, 2:30 p.m., at Sandler Center for the Performing Arts in Virginia Beach.
Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased by calling 757.892.6366, visiting www.virginiasymphony.org or visiting the Virginia Symphony Box Office at 150 Boush Street, Suite 201, Norfolk, VA 23510 from 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Monday – Friday. For group sales of 10 or more, call 757.213.1436.
Norfolk Classics Series Sponsor is Norfolk Southern. Partial support provided by the Business Consortium for Arts Support, Newport News Arts Commission, City of Norfolk, City of Virginia Beach and the Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities Commission, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.
Kenneth Fuchs has composed music for orchestra, band, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. With Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, Fuchs created three chamber musicals, The Great Nebula in Orion, A Betrothal, and Brontosaurus, which were originally presented by Circle Repertory Company in New York City. Fuchs’s operatic monodrama Falling Man (text by Don DeLillo, adapted by J. D. McClatchy) was presented at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in commemoration of the 15th anniversary of 9/11. His music has been performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
The London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, has recorded four discs of Fuchs’s music for Naxos American Classics. The first, released in August 2005, was nominated for two GRAMMY® Awards (“Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra” and “Producer of the Year, Classical”). The second disc, which features music for horn, was released in January 2008. Following the release of this disc, MusicWeb International stated in February 2008, “Fuchs’s distinctive voice is evident from the outset, and his flair for orchestral colours and sheer lyricism shine through.” The third disc, recorded in August 2011 at London’s historic Abbey Road Studios, was released in August 2012.
Following the release of this disc, BBC Music Magazine stated, “Kenneth Fuchs writes tonal orchestral music of great imagination. He’s a master of orchestral writing.” The disc was included in the 2012 GRAMMY® Award nominations for the category “Producer of the Year, Classical.” The fourth disc, recorded at Abbey Road Studios in August 2013, featuring baritone Roderick Williams in a program of vocal music based on texts by Don DeLillo, John Updike, and William Blake, was released in August 2014. Gramophone magazine featured the disc in its Awards Issue (October 2014), stating, “Fuchs claims his own expressive warmth and colour…. The performances are exemplary, from baritone Roderick Williams’s commanding artistry to the bold, fresh playing of the London Symphony Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta’s sensitive direction.”
Kenneth Fuchs serves as Professor of Composition at the University of Connecticut. He received his bachelor of music degree in composition from the University of Miami (cum laude) and his master of music and doctor of musical arts degrees in composition from The Juilliard School. Fuchs’s composition teachers include Milton Babbitt, David Del Tredici, David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti, and Alfred Reed. His music is published by the Hal Leonard Corporation, Edward B. Marks Music Company, Theodore Presser Company, and Yelton Rhodes Music, and it has been recorded by Albany, Cala, and Naxos Records.
Michael Daniels (Elise Nusbaum Hofheimer, Principal Cello Chair) began studying the cello at age 12 in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and continued further studies at the Brevard Music Center, in Brevard, North Carolina. He later received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
While in Cincinnati, Mr. Daniels was a member of the Dayton Philharmonic and performed with the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cincinnati Ballet Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Symphony Pops. He has been a member of the Swannanoa Chamber Music Festival, a faculty member at the Brevard Music Center, and a participant in the Grand Teton Summer Music Festival. He is also a founding member of the Adagio Trio (harp, flute, and cello), which has produced five seasonal CDs: Stillpoint, Sanctuary, Evensong, Winter Gift, and Celtic Heart.
Mr. Daniels has performed as soloist regularly with the Virginia Symphony. His solo appearances include the Saint-Saens Concerto in A minor, Haydn Cello Concerto in C, Beethoven Triple Concerto, Elgar Concerto, and duo performances with Bobby McFerrin of the Vivaldi Double Cello Concerto. He has also performed chamber music concerts with Robert McDuffie, Anthony Newman, Awadagin Pratt, and Nadja Salerno-Sonenberg, and the Miami String Quartet. Mr. Daniels is currently the principal cellist of the Virginia Symphony.
Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen has quickly been identified as one of opera’s most promising rising stars. Discussing his breakout performance in the 2017 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Grand Finals Concert, Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times hailed Aryeh as a “complete artist. At just 23, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen…already possesses a remarkable gift for intimate communication in a vast hall, combined with a voice of velvety gentleness — surprisingly penetrating given the tenderness of its texture.” Woolfe continued, “Expressive yet dignified, his phrasing confident and his ornamentation stylishly discreet, he brought tears to my eyes. Mr. Cohen was deservedly named one of the competition’s six winners, but he stood clearly apart from the pack.”
In 2017, in addition to being named a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, he won First Prize in the Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCollum Competition, and he won the Irvin Scherzer Award as a Finalist in the George London Foundation Competition.
In the 2017-18 season, he joins the Houston Grand Opera Studio, as the first countertenor in the studio’s history, for productions of Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Strauss’ Elektra. He also joins American Bach Soloists for their 20th-annual performances of Handel’s Messiah in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral.
He has been a participant in the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera and will be a Studio Artist at Wolf Trap Opera this summer. He made his European debut at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, singing the primo uomo role of Timante in Gluck’s Demofonte with baroque ensemble Il Complesso Barocco. Additional opera roles include Nerone in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Raphael (The Angel) in Jonathan Dove’s Tobias and the Angel, and Cefalo in Cavalli’s Gli Amori di Apollo e Dafne. Further, concert credits include performances with the Leipzig Barockorchester in Germany, the Venice Music Project in Italy, and the Newberry Consort in Chicago.
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Under the leadership of GRAMMY-winning music director JoAnn Falletta, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra is Virginia’s preeminent professional symphony orchestra with a mission of inspiring, educating and connecting audiences of all ages.
Founded in 1921, it is ranked in the top ten percent of professional orchestras nationwide and serves the entire Southeastern Virginia region with Classics, Pops and Family concert series in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News and Williamsburg as well as performances in outlying Virginia and North Carolina communities, reaching nearly 150,000 concert-goers every year. Additionally, the orchestra annually reaches 45,000 children, students and lifelong learners with its education and community programs. The Virginia Symphony has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center and is the cornerstone of the performing arts in Hampton Roads.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 3, 2017
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