Classic Ross Amico

Tag: New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

Princeton’s Mega Music Events and Gemma New’s Triumph

Apologies if any of you were stuck sitting in a cubicle somewhere hoping for a few seconds of escapism courtesy of Classic Ross Amico. Unfortunately, I was up to my eyeballs trying to figure out how to synthesize all the abundant material for a newspaper article about two mega-events coming up in Princeton, beginning this weekend: the Golandsky Institute International Piano Festival, and the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute, a workshop for young composers, with JoAnn Falletta and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

The reminders from my editors that they were expecting an article from me began to arrive around 4:00, four hours past deadline. I uploaded the last of the photos around 6. All in a day’s work.

Speaking of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, belated congratulations to Gemma New, associate conductor of the NJSO, who has been named music director of Ontario’s Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. New, 28, is also founder/director of the Baltimore-based new music collective, the LUNAR ensemble.

Apparently, the announcement was made back in May, but you know how it is when you’re working. You’ll find the press release here:

http://hpo.org/gemma-new-music-director/

At least this article was published by the CBC only three days ago:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/gemma-new-of-hamilton-philharmonic-is-1-of-continent-s-few-female-conductors-1.3137925

July 6, 2015
Shakespeare Inspires Princeton’s Music Scene

After 400 years, the Bard continues to provide some great shakes. Two Shakespeare-related works will be served up in the Princeton area over the course of the next week.

Tonight at 8 p.m., the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will unveil Darryl Kubian’s “O for a Muse of Fire” (which takes its title from the Prologue to “Henry V”), as part of a concert to be held at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. Also on the program will be Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” with pianist Serhiy Savlov, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathètique.”

Though written two hundred years after Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Bellini’s opera, “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” (“The Capulets and the Monatgues”), had a kind of parallel genesis, bypassing the Bard to draw from the same Italian Renaissance sources. Westminster Opera Theatre will perform the work next Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., at the Bart Luedeke Center, Rider University, in Lawrenceville.

Find out more in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/03/classical_music_shakespeare_in.html

“Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.”

Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 1

March 20, 2015
NJ Symphony Plays Shakespeare

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra music director Jacques Lacombe promises to transform the winter of our discontent to glorious summer, with a great deal more than the lascivious pleasing of a lute. The orchestra will embark on a three-week musical exploration of Shakespeare-inspired works, January 9-25, including an appearance at Princeton’s Richardson Auditorium, on January 16, and two performances at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, on January 10 & 25.

Violinist Sarah Chang will appear in all six venues that will be hosting the series (including NJPAC in Newark, bergenPAC in Englewood, the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, and the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown), playing a suite by David Newman from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.” “West Side Story,” obviously, is a musical update of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Also on the series will be such favorites as Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture” and selections from Prokofiev’s ballet on the same subject, but also concert rarities such as Elgar’s “Falstaff,” Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s suite from “Much Ado About Nothing,” Sergei Taneyev’s completion of Tchaikovsky’s love duet from a projected opera on “Romeo and Juliet,” and selections from Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.”

For more information, check out my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/12/classical_music_nj_symphony_or_1.html

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

– “The Tempest,” Act III, Scene 2

January 2, 2015
Jacques Lacombe Leaves New Jersey Symphony

Early morning appointments today prevented me from sharing the news that Jacques Lacombe will be stepping down as music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra at the end of his current contract, in August 2016.

From my point of view, Lacombe has been great for the orchestra, overseeing the New Jersey Roots Project (which celebrates composers with a Jersey connection), presenting world premieres by prominent figures, undertaking the NJSO Edward T. Cone Institute in Princeton (as a training program for young composers), implementing thematic winter festivals, and spearheading multidisciplinary events.

In addition, he brought the orchestra to Carnegie Hall to perform the Busoni Piano Concerto with Marc-André Hamelin, on a concert which also featured works by Varèse and Weill, and set down a recording of “Carmina Burana” that had critics falling all over themselves in search of superlatives.

The NJSO’s programming under Lacombe’s tenure was recognized with an ASCAP Award from the League of American Orchestras.

Best wishes to Maestro Lacombe. The Canadian did fine work in New Jersey, but lacked the publicity machine – and perhaps the physics-defying energy – of his compatriot, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose tenure at the Philadelphia Orchestra has been trumpeted as the Second Coming. Fingers crossed that the NJSO finds as good a replacement.

PHOTO: What time is it? Time to leave the NJSO.

October 8, 2014
Mercer County Orchestral Season Highlights

So many worthwhile orchestral performances scheduled to take place in and around Mercer County this season. Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Mahler’s 7th at McCarter Theatre Center. Enrique Bátiz in a program featuring Manuel Ponce’s Piano Concerto at the State Theatre in New Brunswick. Cellist Zuill Bailey with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. Excerpts from Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra” performed by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. A Verdi Requiem with the Princeton University Glee Club and Princeton University Orchestra. Niels Wilhelm Gade’s Symphony No. 7 with Sinfonietta Nova. Also, local performances of Howard Hanson’s “Romantic” Symphony (the TCNJ Orchestra) and George Antheil’s “Capital of the World” (the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra).

Read more about it in my orchestral overview in today’s The Times of Trenton.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/08/area_orchestras_announce_conce.html

PHOTO: MTT will conduct GM in Princeton

August 29, 2014

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