WYNTON MARSALIS, (b. 1961)
Symphony No. 3, Swing Symphony (2010)
The most acclaimed jazz musician and composer of his generation and a distinguished classical performer, who by force of personality, intelligence, and achievement, has brought jazz back to center stage in American culture. Wynton Marsalis is returning to the New York Philharmonic as performer with his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and as creator of his new work in its US premiere, a Philharmonic co-commission with the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His music—whether as composer or arranger—has been heard on many occasions at Avery Fisher Hall, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio Blood on the Fields, an epic oratorio on slavery. Marsalis is the first jazz composer ever to earn a Pulitzer, a distinction that for five decades had been the exclusive domain of classical composers. Juilliard-educated, Wynton Marsalis serves as Artistic Director for the internationally recognized Jazz at Lincoln Center program, which he co-founded in 1987. Under his leadership, the Jazz Department earned the distinction of being named Lincoln Center’s first new constituent since 1969. Honors, awards, and honorary degrees by the dozen have come to Wynton Marsalis, and he has been the subject of countless magazine and TV stories and in 1996, Time magazine named him among America’s 25 Most Influential People. He was also the distinguished and delightful host for Ken Burns’s acclaimed 10-part documentary, Jazz, on public television in 2001. The new large scale work that Wynton Marsalis has created for this special occasion, like his earlier All Rise, is for full symphony and jazz orchestras and exploits the full total and rhythmic potentialities of these two most powerful ensembles in a galvanizing fusion of traditions.

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864 -1949)
Don Juan (1888)
The legend of the notorious lover, Don Juan, has been grist for literary and musical mills for centuries. But the brilliant score by the then-just-24-year-old Richard Strauss, already at the top of his game, shows us a Don who is different from other literary or musical versions of him. Unlike Mozart’s more traditional image of the libertine in Don Giovanni, Strauss based his depiction on an unfinished verse-play by Nikolaus von Lenau, in which the world-weary hero tires of his search for the ideal of womanhood. In the brief span of around 16 or 17 minutes of intense music, Strauss depicts Don Juan’s character in a flurry of upward-rushing notes—as if he were setting out on yet another quest. Exquisitely beautiful music shows him in two sensuous love scenes. And in eerily scored, shuddering gestures he allows himself to be killed in a duel—an unceremonious demise for the iconic lover. Strauss always demands extraordinary virtuosity from orchestras, and players love to perform his works. The composer wrote to his father (himself a horn player) about the challenges of this tone poem for the Weimar orchestra, which “huffed and puffed…One of the horn players sat there, out of breath, sweat pouring from his brow, asking ‘Good God, in what have we sinned that you should send us this scourge!’ …I was really sorry for the wretched brass. They were quite blue in the face; the whole affair was so strenuous.” Think of that, as you listen to the Don’s brilliant signature horn calls.

PAUL HINDEMITH (1895-1963)
Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943)
Symphonic Metamorphoses is likely Hindemith’s best-known score—and certainly the one that audiences respond to with greatest delight. It began in 1940 as a commission for a ballet whose music was to be based on that of the German Romantic composer, Carl Maria von Weber. Hindemith abandoned the project because of mutual artistic differences with the choreographer, Leonid Massine. But the sketches didn’t go to waste: through a commission from Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic, he picked them up three years later and recycled them into the vibrant, energetic score you’ll hear tonight. Hindemith was renowned not only as a composer (his works number in the hundreds, including genres as diverse as a song cycle to opera, chamber music, symphonies, and sonatas and concertos for nearly every instrument), but also as a great teacher, violinist, a viola virtuoso, conductor, and music scholar. His life was not without its conflicts. While still in Germany he fell afoul of the Nazi regime resulting in his opera Mathis der Maler being banned, and in 1938 all of his music being denounced as “degenerate art.” He fled Germany and wound up as a music professor at Yale and Tanglewood (where Leonard Bernstein was one of his students). He returned to Switzerland in 1953 to live out his life. Of Metamorphoses’ suite of four movements, three are based upon Weber’s piano pieces for four hands, while the second movement is drawn from Weber’s incidental music to Schiller’s adaptation of Gozzi’s play, Turandot. A simple flute theme (using the Asian pentatonic scale) is transformed with layer upon layer of brass, winds, and a battery of percussion instruments to create a thrilling, ever more complex metamorphosis. The finale, Marsch, starts out like a funeral march that has been speeded up to double its tempo, but soon enough, Minor changes into Major, bringing the piece to an exciting climax and then slowly receding into the distance. Symphonic Metamorphoses was premiered by the New York Philharmonic and Artur Rodzinski in 1944.

In September 2009 Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, the first native New Yorker to hold the post.

For his inaugural season he introduced a number of new initiatives: the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, held by Magnus Lindberg, and Artist-in-Residence, first held by Thomas Hampson; an annual three-week festival; and CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic's new-music series. In the 2009–10 season he led the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi. He also took the Philharmonic to nine cities on the EUROPE / WINTER 2010 tour in January–February 2010, and is conducting world, U.S., and New York premieres. Also in the 2009–10 season, Mr. Gilbert became the first person to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, a position that includes coaching, conducting, and hosting performance master classes.

Highlights of Mr. Gilbert's 2008–09 season with the New York Philharmonic included the Bernstein anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall and a performance with the Juilliard Orchestra, presented by the Philharmonic. 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 Philharmonic's Concerts in the Parks and Free Indoor Concerts, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, and performances 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 since 2004, and he has conducted other leading orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, including the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2003 he was named the first music director of the Santa Fe Opera.

Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School. From 1995 to 1997 he was the assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. In November 2008 he made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams's Doctor Atomic. His recording of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award, and his recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 9 received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. On May 15, 2010, The Curtis Institute of Music awarded Mr. Gilbert an Honorary Doctor of Music degree.

Learn More about Alan Gilbert

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA, jazz ensemble, Wynton Marsalis, artistic director, established 1988
The 15-member Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) has been in residence at Lincoln Center since 1988. Under its music director Wynton Marsalis, this versatile orchestra performs and leads educational events not only in New York, but across the US and around the world, touring more than four months annually. The JLCO appears with symphony orchestras, ballet companies, local students, and guest artists and brings its artistry to a wide variety of settings…from concert halls and jazz clubs to dance venues and parks. The repertoire of this big band spans the spectrum from rare historic compositions to Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works, and pieces written for the ensemble—such as the work by Wynton Marsalis being premiered at these concerts. The composers whose music they perform reads like a Who’s Who of jazz greats: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Billy Strayhorn, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, Benny Carter, Wayne Shorter, Chico O’Farrill, Freddie Hubbard, Marcus Roberts—side by side with current and former JLCO members. The ensemble has collaborated with symphony orchestras other than the Philharmonic, such as the Russian National Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston, Chicago and London symphony orchestras, the Orchestra Esperimentale in São Paolo, Brazil, among others. The JLCO has also been showcased in international education and performance residencies, including in Vienne, France; Perugia, Italy; Prague, Czech Republic; London, England; Lucerne, Switzerland; Berlin, Germany; São Paulo, Brazil; and Yokohama, Japan.

“One rarely hears this music played with such technical brilliance, stylistic authenticity and tonal sheen...Here were the throaty reeds, percussive trumpet blasts and visceral sense of swing that have made the JLCO the greatest large jazz ensemble working today.” Chicago Tribune

“[The JLCO] is not just a band on tour, but a religious congregation, spreading the word of jazz.” Down Beat

“The audience was exceedingly young, proving that... [the JLCO is] bringing ‘America’s classical music’...to a whole new generation of listeners.” Boston Globe

Find additional upcoming performances with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra