Press Release
For Immediate Release:
April 3 , 2006
New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble Presents World Premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Splendid Wood
Higdon Piece for Marimbas the Third New Work in Endicott Commissioning Project
Program Also Includes Premieres by Augusta Read Thomas, Nomi Epstein, Andrew Beall
The New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, Frank Epstein director, will present the third new work for percussion commissioned by Bradford and Dorothea Royer Endicott ’00 M.M., Sunday April 23 at 7:30 p.m. in NEC’s Jordan Hall. Jennifer Higdon’s Splendid Wood for marimbas will have its world premiere on a program featuring new and recent music for percussion. The Higdon work follows Endicott commissions by Joan Tower (DNA) and Gunther Schuller (Grand Concerto for Keyboards and Percussion); still to come are new pieces by Robert Xavier Rodriguez and John Harbison.
The Pittsburgh Symphony’s Composer of the Year 2005-06, Jennifer Higdon is one of the busiest and most prominent composers of her generation. With more than 100 performances a year of her works, she has been commissioned by numerous ensembles including the Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, National, Minnesota, Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore symphony orchestras as well as the Tokyo and Ying Quartets, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Gilmore Piano Festival and eighth blackbird. She has a particularly close relationship with conductor Robert Spano who she has known since she was a student at Bowling Green State University and he was teaching a conducting course there. He has since championed her music, performing and recording with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra her orchestral pieces, blue cathedral, and Concerto for Orchestra and City Scape. The latter two works, paired on a TelArc CD, were nominated for four Grammy Awards. Born in Brooklyn and raised in part in Atlanta, Higdon studied at BGSU (flute performance), the University of Pennsylvania, and the Curtis Institute. Her composition teachers included David Loeb and George Crumb. She currently teaches at Curtis.
With a plan to produce six new compositions, the Endicott commissioning project is the brainchild of NEC Brass and Percussion Chair Frank Epstein, a percussionist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and founder of Boston’s Collage/New Music, and Dorothea Endicott, an NEC-trained music historian and theorist. They had the idea of inviting some of today’s most distinguished composers to write for the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, thus supplementing the existing literature of the percussion ensemble (itself a child of the 20th Century) with a wholly new, 21st century American repertoire. The next installment of the project will be a piece by Dallas-based composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez which will be debuted in fall 2006.
Besides the Higdon, other works on the April 23 concert include the Boston premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s Sun Songs (2005) with mezzo soprano Andrea Coleman ’06 M.M., and the world premiere of Nomi Epstein’s This Too Shall Pass. Andrew Beall’s arrangement of three Pat Metheny pieces, Pat Metheny Suite, will also have its world premiere. The program is rounded out with William Kraft’s Quartet for Percussion (1988) and Frederick Lesemann’s Two Pieces for Four Tombones and Percussion (1965).
For more information, visit NEC on the web at www.newenglandconservatory.edu/concerts
ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.
The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.
NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.
NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top,” a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.