NOVUS NY, orchestra; Julian Wachner, conductor; Jessica Muirhead, soprano. Program Wachner (b.1969) Gaudé: an LB Anniversary for Large Orchestra Copland (1900-1990) Connotations (1962) Mahler (1860-1911) Symphony No. 4 (1900) About the Performers NOVUS NY is Trinity Church Wall Street’s contemporary music orchestra, under the leadership of Trinity’s Director of Music, Julian Wachner. Hailed by the New Yorker as “expert and versatile musicians,” its members perform new music from all corners of the repertoire, meeting “every challenge with an impressive combination of discipline and imagination” (New York Classical Review). Music director Julian Wachner has been variously described as “jazzy, energetic, and ingenious,” (Boston Globe), having “splendor, dignity, outstanding tone combinations, sophisticated chromatic exploration…a rich backdrop, wavering between a glimmer and a tingle...,” (La Scena Musicale) being “a compendium of surprises,” (Washington Post) and as “bold and atmospheric,” while having “an imaginative flair for allusive text setting,” and noted for “the silken complexities of his harmonies” (New York Times). He has made guest appearances with such major organizations as the San Francisco, New York City, and Glimmerglass Opera, the New York and Hong Kong Philharmonic and many more. Soprano Jessica Muirhead, described by the New York Times as a “multihued soprano with floating top notes”, has appeared with the Hamburger Symphoniker, the Washington Chorus at the Kennedy Center, the Bayerischer Rundfunkorchester, the OFUNAM Symphonic Orchestra in Mexico City, the Flanders Symphony and l’Orchestre Chambre de Genève, among others. About the Program Aaron Copland's Connotations commissioned by Leonard Bernstein in 1962 to commemorate the opening of Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts) marks a departure from Copland's populist period, which began with El Salón México in 1936 and includes the works he is most famous for such as Appalachian Spring, Lincoln Portrait and Rodeo. Symphony No. 4 in G major by Gustav Mahler was written in 1899 and 1900, though it incorporates a song originally written in 1892. The song, "Das himmlische Leben", presents a child's vision of Heaven.
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