SEAN SHEPHERD composer, born in 1979 in Reno, Nevada
These Particular Circumstances
Sean Shepherd’s music has recently appeared on concert programs at the Aldeburgh Festival, Alice Tully and Weill Concert Halls, and at a Berlin Philharmonic Scharoun Ensemble program. This year the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center and the Cleveland Orchestra will perform his works. Sean Shepherd earned his Master’s degree at Juilliard, and also holds degrees in composition and bassoon performance from Indiana University. He is currently completing his doctorate at Cornell University, studying with Roberto Sierra and Steven Stucky. He has garnered many prizes and awards and has been commissioned to create works for ASCAP, the National Society of Arts and Letters, and the New York Youth Symphony, among others. Recent performances include those with new music ensembles at the universities of Texas and Southern California, the Syracuse Society for New Music, and the Minnesota Orchestra. About his upcoming Philharmonic collaboration he says: “I am enormously honored to be involved in these new directions that the Philharmonic is taking and to be part of the inaugural season of Maestro Gilbert—an inspired musician at the top of his game. Participating in a project ushered by a musical and personal hero of mine like Magnus Lindberg gives me unalloyed joy, and I intend to convey that in my contribution. Writing a piece for the New York Philharmonic is a complicated mix for me: on one hand, they are larger than life; on the other, I think I might know where they are coming from. It probably won’t be an easy piece to write, but knowing what a spectacular group of people is involved helps me find my way.” As for the title of the piece? None yet: “Titles always come very late to me and from some abstract place… sometimes involving music.”

NICO MUHLY
Composer, born in 1981 in Providence, Rhode Island
DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS
Nico Muhly graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a degree in English Literature. The following year he received his Master’s from the Juilliard School, where he studied composition under Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano. His orchestral works have been premiered by the American Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Chicago Symphony. New York’s St. Thomas Church commissioned and performed his Bright Mass with Canons. With designer/illustrator Maira Kalman, he created a cantata on Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style that premiered in the New York Public Library, landing him on 2005 Year’s-Best list of New York magazine. Film credits include his scores for Choking Man (2006), Joshua (2007), and The Reader (2008). He also has worked extensively with Philip Glass as editor, keyboardist, and conductor for numerous film and stage projects. Recently, he conducted excerpts from Glass’s Einstein on the Beach for a new ballet at the Opéra de Paris. The last two years saw commissions for the American Ballet Theater (From Here On Out) and the Paris Opéra ballet (Triade) . He has also lent his skills as performer, arranger, and conductor to other musicians, including Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, with whom he worked on a new Shakespeare setting for The Sonnet Project, a program curated by Gavin Bryars for Opera North and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Nico Muhly was invited to present concerts of his chamber music at both Carnegie Hall and the Whitney Museum in 2008, leading up to the American release of his first CD Speaks Volumes (seven pieces of chamber music for small ensemble with electronics). His second solo record, titled Mothertongue, was recently issued.

“The climax of the concert was a riveting performance of ‘The Only Tune,’ from Muhly’s new album, Mothertongue. Starting with a quirky little folk song called ‘The Wind and the Rain,’ Muhly built ‘Tune’ into a searing, explosive powerhouse that defies categorization: a work of brain-bending originality and power.” (The Washington Post)

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Composer, born 1971 in Marl, Germany
songs from Solomon's garden, for baritone and chamber orchestra
Matthias Pintscher studied composition with Giselher Klebe and Manfred Trojahn. Formative influences were his encounters with Hans Werner Henze, Helmut Lachenmann, Pierre Boulez, and Peter Eötvös. He conducted his first stage work, a ballet called Gesprungene Glocken, at the Berlin Staatsoper at the age of 23, and first came to international attention with the operas Thomas Chatterton at the Semper Opera, Dresden (1998) and L’espace dernier at the Opéra National de Paris (2004). Since then he has made his name with significant works for leading interpreters and orchestras throughout the world. He has been composer-in-residence with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Konzerthaus Dortmund, the Lucerne Festival, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Saarbrücken, the Philharmonie, Cologne, and, for 2008-2009, he became artist-in-residence with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart of South West German Radio. As a conductor, Matthias Pintscher works regularly with leading orchestras and ensembles in Europe and the U.S. His keenly acute ear and remarkable ability to handle complex scores make him equally at home conducting the music of composers like Berlioz, Debussy, Ravel, Berg, and Schoenberg, as well as music of our time. Among his many awards are the Rolf Liebermann Prize, the Composition Prize from the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Hindemith Prize from the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, and the Hans Werner Henze Prize. Since 2007, Matthias Pintscher has been professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich and artistic director of the Heidelberg Studio at the Heidelberg Spring Festival. He makes his home in Frankfurt and Paris.

“Pintscher is a hot musical property.” (The Guardian)

“Pintscher offers a quite new kind of voice, and we can expect to hear a lot more of it. His harmonies and his orchestral voicings are seriously original too.” (Financial Times)

“Anyone coming to Pintscher’s music for the first time, especially to his orchestral works, will be struck by the beguiling soundworld, by the microscopic detail of every texture and by the imagination with which every colour is used.” (The Guardian)

“Matthias Pintscher, a composer full of creative energy—with an unerring instinct for formal and expressive effects—with a virtuoso sense of sound—most of all, capable of surprises. One who knows, and yet wants to know.” Helmut Lachenmann (composer)

Alan Gilbert will begin his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in the 2009–10 season, the first native New Yorker to hold the post. For his inaugural season he has introduced a number of new initiatives: Composer-in-Residence Magnus Lindberg; The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence Thomas Hampson; an annual three-week festival; and CONTACT, the New York Philharmonic’s new-music series. He will also lead the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi; a European tour in January 2010; and performances of world, U.S., and New York premieres. Also in the 2009–10 season Mr. Gilbert becomes the first to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, a position that will include coaching, conducting, and performance master classes.

Highlights of Mr. Gilbert’s 2008–09 season with the New York Philharmonic included the November 14, 2008, Bernstein anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall, and a performance with the Juilliard Orchestra, presented by the Philharmonic, featuring Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, Kaddish. In May 2009 he conducted the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic Commission, and in July 2009 he led the New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, and two concerts at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado.

In June 2008 Mr. Gilbert was named conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, following his final concert as its chief conductor and artistic advisor. He has been principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra (NDRSO) since 2004. Mr. Gilbert regularly conducts other leading orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, including the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; The Cleveland Orchestra; Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw; and Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2003 he was named the first music director of Santa Fe Opera, where he served for three seasons.

Born and raised in New York City, Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School; he was a substitute violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra for two seasons, and assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1995 to 1997. In November 2008 he made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Dr. Atomic. His recording of Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance.

Learn More about Alan Gilbert

American baritone Thomas Hampson has performed in the world’s preeminent concert halls and opera houses and with many of today’s most renowned musicians and orchestras; he also maintains an active interest in teaching, music research, and technology. An important interpreter of German romantic song, he is known as a leading proponent of the study of American song through his Hampsong Foundation, which he founded in 2003 to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding. In the 2009–10 season Mr. Hampson becomes The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic as well as the Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence. In these roles he will perform three programs with the Orchestra, appear on the Orchestra’s European tour, give a recital in Alice Tully Hall, and present three lectures entitled “Listening to Thought” as part of the Orchestra’s Insights Series.

Much of Mr. Hampson’s 2009–10 season is devoted to his “Song of America” project. In collaboration with the Library of Congress, Mr. Hampson is performing recitals and presenting master classes, educational activities, exhibitions, and broadcasts across the country and through a new interactive online resource, www.songofamerica.net; as part of the project, he has just released a new album, Wondrous Free — Song of America II, on his own label, Thomas Hampson Media. Other engagements include Mendelssohn’s Elijah, led by Kurt Masur in Leipzig; Verdi’s Ernani and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with Zurich Opera; Verdi’s La traviata at The Metropolitan Opera; solo recitals throughout the United States and in many European capitals; and the galas of the Vienna Staatsoper and the new Winspear Opera House in Dallas.

Raised in Spokane, Washington, Thomas Hampson has released more than 150 albums that have received many honors, including a Grammy Award, two Edison Prizes, and the Grand Prix du Disque. He has been named Kammersänger of the Vienna Staatsoper; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France; and Special Advisor to the Study and Performance of Music in America by Dr. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress. Other accolades include the Austrian Medal of Honor in Arts and Sciences (in 2004), and the Edison Life Achievement Award (2005). Mr. Hampson last appeared with the New York Philharmonic on September 20, 2001, in Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, led by Kurt Masur in memory of 9/11.

Find additional upcoming performances with Thomas Hampson