| | |

Westchester Philharmonic- Friends and Family Concert

Share

PettingZooNYM2Dawn Upshaw Headlines 2nd Annual Friends & Family Concert

Maestro Ted Sperling Leads and Explains Mozart, Golijov and Mendelssohn

Young people 17 and under admitted free with paid adult ticket.

Press Release:

(Purchase, New York) — On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 3 pm at the Purchase College Performing Arts Center, the Philharmonic warmly invites music-lovers of all ages to hop aboard Principal Conductor Ted Sperling’s guided tour to a family-friendly program, perfect for all ages yet fully satisfying to the most sophisticated musical palates. The annual “Friends & Family” concert will feature multiple Grammy-winner, McArthur “genius” and Mount Vernon resident, opera star Dawn Upshaw, and welcomes children 17 and under free with a paying adult.

Dawn Upshaw is sought out almost exclusively by today’s composers for her consummate artistry and astonishingly beautiful renderings of their work. On February 7th, Ms. Upshaw and the Phil will perform the hauntingly lyrical “Three Songs” by composer Osvaldo Golijov, set to texts by Sally Potter, Rosalía de Castro, and Emily Dickinson, and which opens with a traditional Yiddish lullaby. Also for this “Friends & Family” concert, which had a highly successful debut last season, Principal Conductor Ted Sperling will again offer concertgoers a “guided tour” to the works being performed, which will include Mozart’s iconic Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and a full orchestra arrangement by Yoon Jae Lee of Mendelssohn’s beloved Octet.

Before the concert children are invited to get up close and personal with the instruments at a free instrument “Petting Zoo” beginning at 2 pm. Orchestra musicians from the Philharmonic will be on hand in the lobby to guide young listeners as they explore violins, cellos, drums and more. February 7 concert tickets for young people 17 and under are free with a paid adult ticket.

Full program notes for the February 7 concert are accessible on the Phil’s website.

Photos available upon request.

General Information and Tickets

The performance will take place in The Concert Hall at The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, New York.  “Petting zoo” begins at 2 pm and concert begins at 3 pm. A pre-concert discussion with Maestro Sperling and Dawn Upshaw takes place inside the concert hall simultaneously at 2 pm.

Single tickets range from $30-$97. Single tickets for ages 17 and under are free with a paid adult ticket. College student/group discounts are also available. Call the Westchester Philharmonic Box Office at (914) 682-3707 ext. 10 or visit westchesterphil.org. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover Card accepted.

About Dawn Upshaw

Joining a rare natural warmth with a fierce commitment to the transforming communicative power of music, Dawn Upshaw has achieved worldwide celebrity as a singer of opera and concert repertoire ranging from the sacred works of Bach to the freshest sounds of today. Her ability to reach to the heart of music and text has earned her the devotion of an exceptionally diverse audience, and the awards and distinctions accorded only to the most distinguished of artists. In 2007, she was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, the first vocal artist to be awarded the five-year “genius” prize, and in 2008 she was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 

Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles (Susanna, Ilia, Pamina, Despina, and Zerlina) as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen. From Salzburg, Paris and Glyndebourne to the Metropolitan Opera, where she began her career in 1984 and since then has made nearly 300 appearances, Dawn Upshaw has also championed numerous new works created for her, including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison, the Grawemeyer Award-winning opera L’Amour de Loin, oratorio La Passion de Simone by Kaija Saariaho, John Adams’s Nativity oratorio El Niño, and Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre.

 

It says a great deal about Dawn Upshaw’s sensibilities as an artist and colleague that she is a favored partner of many leading musicians, including Gilbert Kalish, the Kronos Quartet, James Levine, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. In her work as a recitalist, and particularly in her work with composers, Ms. Upshaw has become a generative force in concert music, having premiered more than 25 works in the past decade.   From Carnegie Hall to large and small venues throughout the world she regularly presents specially designed programs composed of lieder, contemporary works in many languages, and folk and popular music. She furthers this in master classes and workshops with young singers at major music festivals, conservatories, and liberal arts colleges. She is Artistic Director of the Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and the head of the Vocal Arts Program at the Tanglewood Music Center.

 

A five-time Grammy Award-winner, Ms. Upshaw most recently received the 2014 Best Classical Vocal Solo Grammy for Maria Schneider’s Winter Morning Walks on the ArtistShare Label.  She is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki for Nonesuch Records. Her discography also includes full-length opera recordings of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Messiaen’s St. Francois d’Assise, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, John Adams’s El Niño, two volumes of Canteloube’s “Songs of the Auvergne,” a dozen recital recordings, and an acclaimed three-disc series of Osvaldo Golijov’s music for Deutsche Grammophon.

 

Dawn Upshaw holds honorary doctorate degrees from Yale, the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School, Allegheny College, and Illinois Wesleyan University. She began her career as a 1984 winner of the Young Concert Artists auditions and the 1985 Walter W. Naumburg Competition, she was also a member of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program.

 

Ms. Upshaw has recorded extensively for the Nonesuch label. She may also be heard on Angel/EMI, BMG, Deutsche Grammophon, London, Sony Classical, Telarc, and on Erato and Teldec in the Warner Classics family of labels.

About the Westchester Philharmonic

Now in its 33rd season, the Westchester Philharmonic is the oldest, continuously running professional symphony orchestra and largest performing arts organization of any kind in Westchester County. The Philharmonic’s main stage concert series makes its home at the 1,300 seat Concert Hall at the Purchase Performing Arts Center, with outdoor concerts, chamber concerts, children’s programs, and special events throughout the area, attracting savvy music-lovers from Rockland, Bergen, Fairfield, and Putnam counties, New York City, and beyond.

In November 2013 the Philharmonic proudly announced the concurrent appointments of Jaime Laredo and Ted Sperling as the orchestra’s Principal Conductors, commencing with the current 2014-15 season.

Founded in 1983 as the New Orchestra of Westchester under the leadership of Music Director Paul Lustig Dunkel (who became Music Director Emeritus in 2008), the orchestra was later re-named the Westchester Philharmonic. Renowned artists who have performed with the Phil include Joshua Bell, Jeremy Denk, Branford Marsalis, Midori, Garrick Ohlsson, Itzhak Perlman, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Gil Shaham, Isaac Stern, and André Watts.

Among the many new works commissioned and premiered by the Westchester Philharmonic is Melinda Wagner’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. A new commission by Christopher Theofanidis is scheduled for debut during the 2015 – 2016 season.

The orchestra’s award-winning education program reaches thousands of elementary school students each year and culminates in a full orchestra concert. The Phil also partners with local organizations to present free and low-cost chamber concerts, as well as to provide subsidized seating at main stage concerts, welcoming hundreds of area residents each year who might not otherwise have an opportunity to attend.

The orchestra is comprised of the finest professional free-lance musicians from around the greater metropolitan area, who also perform regularly with the New York City Ballet, Orchestra St. Luke’s, Orpheus, Mostly Mozart, and for many Broadway shows. Members of the Phil hold faculty positions at Juilliard, Mannes, Manhattan School of Music, Purchase Conservatory, Vassar and Bard Colleges, and at local public schools.

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.