Europe + The Blue Hour + Law of Mosaics
A wintry update (including some institutional/professional news!) before crossing the pond...
Hello again,
I’ve been distracted / fragmented / discombobulated over the last few months, hence the paucity of posts over here. But I did want to share some news, if only in the most perfunctory manner. In no particular order:
Next week I’m heading to Europe. I’ll be playing seven concerts, beginning on March 2nd in Luxembourg, and concluding on March 12th in Chateauroux. In between, I’ll make stops for solo concerts in Hamburg, Köln, Paris, and Cenon, plus a date w/ string quartet in Lyon. I’d be most grateful if you spread the word to any folks you know on the continent!
I recently renewed my contract with the Oregon Symphony to serve a second term as its Creative Chair. Among the things I’m most proud of helping to put in motion during the first three years were commissioning works by Gabriella Smith (Bioluminescence Chaconne) and Nathalie Joachim (Suite from Fanm d’Ayiti), co-commissioning Tania León’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Stride, and presenting almost twenty living composers across the first season of Open Music. Another highlight was getting to bring Sam Amidon and Timo Andres for the inaugural Oregon Symphony @ The Reser series, which featured the PDX premiere of Nico Muhly’s early masterpiece, The Only Tune. I love this orchestra with all my heart, and can’t wait to do more in the next few years. Which brings me to…
Season Two of Oregon Symphony @ The Reser, curated by me, is upon us:
First, on April 8th, we’ll present The Blue Hour, an evening-length work written collaboratively by Rachel Grimes, Angelica Negrón, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Shara Nova. The piece is built around texts by Carolyn Forché, and sung by the ever-luminous Shara Nova. (I defy you to listen to Shara sing and not fall in love with her voice.) An album documenting the work, recorded with Boston-based string orchestra, A Far Cry (which also commissioned the piece), was released by Nonesuch/New Amsterdam last year, and was named one of NPR’s 10 Best Albums of 2022. The music is richly lyrical, crystalline, effervescent, and beguiling. I will be there with bells on, and I hope you will be, too.
Then, on May 5th, we present The Law of Mosaics, which brings five centuries of music into conversation. A “classical” symphony—crowdsourced from movements by C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Louise Farrenc—provides the architectural foundation for a handful of contemporary works by Ted Hearne, Györgi Ligeti, Jessie Montgomery, and Andrew Norman, each of which is preoccupied in one way or another with fragments, collage, mash-ups, mosaics, and intertextuality. I’ll be on hand as host & m.c., and again, I would be delighted to see you there.
Last but not least, I want to give a big shoutout to the San Francisco Symphony for their incredible care in presenting emergency shelter intake form earlier this month. I could not have asked for a more generous & spirited orchestra, a more sensitive community engagement team, nor a better-suited community chorus for the final movement of the piece. In a world as broken as ours, it often feels like we’re doing little more than screaming into the wind. This was one of those weeks in which it seemed that, maybe, just maybe, our voices were being heard.
All my best,
Gabriel
P.S. emergency shelter intake form is now streaming on the behemoth services, but you’d be doing the Oregon Symphony a solid by purchasing it here.
No UK visit Gabriel?