The New Juilliard Ensemble, led by Joel Sachs, presents works by Jude Vaclavik, Snorri Sigfus Birgisson, Franco Donatoni, Ursula Mamlok, and Oliver Knussen, on Thursday, April 3 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater

On Thursday, April 3 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater, the New Juilliard Ensemble led by Joel Sachs presents the world premiere of Juilliard composer Jude Vaclavik’s Bruha (2008); the U.S. premiere of Icelandic composer Snorri Sigfus Birgisson’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (2005-06) with Juilliard pianist Vikingur Olafsson; the New York premiere of Italian composer Franco Donatoni’s Cloches (1988-89); the first public performance of German/American composer Ursula Mamlok’s Concertino (1984/89); and British composer Oliver Knussen’s Requiem – Songs for Sue (2006) with soprano Katherine Whyte.

FREE tickets are available for this concert beginning March 20 at the Juilliard Box Office, located at 60 Lincoln Center Plaza. The Box Office is open 11 AM – 6 PM, Monday through Friday. The Juilliard Box Office is accessible by elevator, escalator, or stairs located on W. 65th Street near Amsterdam Avenue. For more information, please call (212) 769-7406 or visit www.juilliard.edu.  

As a result of winning the New Juilliard Ensemble’s Composers Competition, Jude Vaclavik was commissioned to compose the chamber orchestra work, Bruha, which is being premiered at this concert. Mr. Vaclavik realized that a composition for “sinfonietta” orchestra might be a challenge, so he decided to compose a work for 17 solo performers working in tandem instead of struggling to create a homogenous ensemble work. Jude Vaclavik, a native of Houston, Texas, is a first year C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at Juilliard where he received his bachelor of music degree in 2005 and his master of music degree in 2007. His principal composition teacher has been Christopher Rouse since 2002, following a year as a student of John Corgiliano. He has been commissioned to write Caccia for two trumpets by the American Festival for the Arts in Houston; it will be choreographed and danced by the Houston Ballet/Houston Ballet Academy in the near future.  

Snorri Sigfus Birgisson’s Piano Concerto No. 2 was commissioned by the Composers’ Fund of the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service and written in 2005 for the Caput-Ensemble and Juilliard pianist Vikingur Olafsson, who will play it on this occasion. The concerto was inspired by the artistry of Mr. Olafsson and is dedicated to him. He gave the first performance with the Caput Ensemble of the work on October 13, 2006 in Reykjavik at Nordic Music Days, and later played it in Riga and Bucharest. This performance is the American premiere. In 2006, he composed The Drift of Melancholy (for soprano and chamber ensemble) especially for the New Juilliard Ensemble and Joel Sachs, who gave the first performance in April of last year with Charlotte Dobbs as soloist. Snorri Sigfus Birgisson was born in Copenhagen in 1954 and then moved to Iceland. He beganhis musical studies with Gunnar Sigurgeirsson, continuing at the Reykjavik College of Music. He came to the U.S. as a piano student of Barry Snyder at Eastman. The following year, Mr. Birgisson went to Norway, studying composition with Finn Mortensen, electronic music with Lasse Thoresen, and sinology with Thoresen and Olav Anton Thommessen. Since 1980, he has lived in Reykjavik as a busy musician and teacher. He has composed solo works, chamber works, symphonic pieces, and choir music.

Franco Donatoni’s Cloches was commissioned by the Musica 89 Festival in Strasbourg and premiered there by Ensemble Modern, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek. Mr. Donatoni, one of Italy’s senior composers, studied composition at the Verdi Conservatory in Milan and the Martini Conservatory in Bologna. He received his first degree in composition and band orchestration, his second in choral music, and his third in composition. He graduated from the Accadèmia Santa Cecilia in Rome. He also attended the Darmstadt summer seminars four times between 1954 and 1961. He was influenced by the styles there, especially the piano music of Boulez. He was a member of the Accadèmia Nazionale of Santa Cecilia and Rome’s Accadèmia Filarmonica and also was given the title “Commandeur dans ‘Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Minister of Culture. While still rarely heard in the United States, in Europe his music is widely considered to be among the most unusual and imaginative of the last decades. Franco Donatoni died in August 2000.

Ursula Mamlok’s Concertino (1984/89) for woodwind quintet, strings, and percussion, was commissioned by the Quintet of the Americas. Ms. Mamlok writes: “In the first movement, quickly shifting motives contrast with long lines, while the second movement displays boisterous music in the winds against a floating two-tone motif in the strings, with percussion decorating the texture. After much virtuosic music, the two-tone line appears in the coda as glittering high repeated chords in celesta, glockenspiel, and strings. The third movement, “Elegy,” evokes a cortege, especially through the use of the bass drum at the beginning and ending. Florid cadenzas are interspersed between stepwise mournful melodies. Extended cadenzas also decorate the fourth movement, the longest of the Concertino.” Ms. Mamlok was born in Berlin in 1923 and fled the Nazis in 1939, arriving in New York after living in Ecuador for two years. She studied with George Szell at Mannes College of Music and later studied with Vittorio Giannini. She sought out Stefan Wolpe and Ralph Shapey to learn about their compositional procedures. Their influence, as well as the repertory played at new-music concerts, led her away from composing tonal music. She completed her education at the Manhattan School of Music and retired recently after decades on its composition faculty. She also taught at NYU, Temple University, and the City University of New York. Her works have been performed by many of the leading contemporary music ensembles. She recently was the subject of several performances and tributes in Germany, where she returned to live. Her most recent piece is Terzanium, for flute and violin, commissioned by Juilliard graduate Miranda Cuckson and Swiss flutist Christoph Bösch. She is now writing a piece for four cellos. 
  
Oliver Knussen’s Requiem – Songs for Sue (2006) sung by soprano Katherine Whyte, was composed in memory of Mr. Knussen’s wife, who died in 2003. The work, which is set to poems by Emily Dickinson, Antonio de Machado, W.H. Auden, and Rainer Maria Rilke, was written for Claire Booth to sing and commissioned for MusicNOW, the new music chamber series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with whom Mr. Knussen conducted the first performance in April 2006. Born in Glasgow, Oliver Knussen grew up near London, where his father was principal double bass of the London Symphony Orchestra. He attended the Purcell School and studied composition with John Lambert. He made his debut with the LSO in 1968m conducting his first symphony in London and at Carnegie Hall. In 1970, Mr. Knussen was awarded the first of three fellowships to Tanglewood, where he studied with Gunther Schuller and for the next few years, divided his time between England and the U.S. In 1975, he returned permanently to the U.K. and achieved a place in the forefront of contemporary British music. He collaborated with Maurice Sendak on Where the Wild Things Are (1979-83) and Higglety Pigglety Pop! (1984-85, revised 1999), which were produced by the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. From 1983 until 1998, he was artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival and between 1986 and 1993 headed contemporary music activities at the Tanglewood Music Center. In 1990-92, he held the Elise L. Stoeger Composer’s Chair with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and in 1991, in collaboration with Colin Matthews, established the Contemporary Composition and Performance courses at the Britten-Pears School in Snape. He also established a major reputation as a conductor. Mr. Knussen became music director of the London Sinfonietta in 1998 and in 2002, was made conductor laureate. His many awards include a Commander of the British Empire in 1994 Birthday Honours. He resides in Suffolk, England.
       
The New Juilliard Ensemble is now in its 15th season. Celebrating the liveliness of today's music, and focusing primarily on repertory of the last decade, the ensemble presents music by a variety of international composers writing in the most diverse styles. The ensemble appears regularly in MoMA’s Summergarden festival and has been a featured ensemble four times at the Lincoln Center Festival, playing the music of Brian Ferneyhough, Guo Wenjing, Bright Sheng, and Salvatore Sciarrino to packed houses and rave reviews. Its members are current students at Juilliard, who are admitted to the ensemble by audition. In January 2008 at the FOCUS! Festival: All About Elliott, celebrating Elliott Carter’s 100th year, members of the New Juilliard Ensemble performed jointly with members of the Lucerne Festival Academy Ensemble, conducted by Pierre Boulez. The combined ensembles will be heard again at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland this summer.

New Juilliard Ensemble founder and director Joel Sachs also is co-director of the internationally-acclaimed new music ensemble Continuum. He has conducted orchestras and ensembles in Austria, El Salvador, Germany, Iceland, Mexico, Switzerland, and Ukraine, and held new music residencies in Berlin, London, Salzburg, and Curitiba (Brazil). Recent keyboard appearances include performances of John Cage’s monumental Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, and, with Continuum, chamber music by American pioneers Cowell, Ives, and Nancarrow at the 2005 Lucerne Festival. In recent years, Dr. Sachs conducted the distinguished Icelandic contemporary music ensemble Caput in a program of music from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, the United States, and Iceland, and a concert of music by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen. He also conducted Caput for a CD of works by the Icelandic composer Askell Masson. In May 2007, he and other members of Continuum performed in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and then performed in Mongolia. Dr. Sachs’ recordings appear on the Advance, CRI, Naxos, Nonesuch, and TNC labels. A member of Juilliard’s music history faculty, Dr. Sachs currently is working on a biography of the American composer Henry Cowell, to be published by Oxford University Press. He also appears on radio as a commentator on recent music.

Born into a family of musicians, Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson received his first piano lessons at age four from his mother and quickly took to the instrument. He entered Reykjavik College of Music in his early teens and graduated with a soloist diploma in 2001. That year marked his debut with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with which he a since appeared annually. He has made solo appearances with all of the major orchestras and ensembles of his country and made his conducting debut directing Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K. 503 from the keyboard at the Reykjavik Art Festival in 2006. A dedicated performer of new music, Mr. Olafsson hopes to commission at least one major work every season. In 2007, he premiered Ólafur Axelsson’s inspired Piano Suite and for the 2008-09 season, he has commissioned two piano concertos from leading Icelandic composers Haukur Tomasson and Daniel Bjarnason. In 2006, he gave the world premiere of Snorri Birgisson’s acclaimed Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Caput Ensemble at the Nordic Music Days Festival. He is currently in his sixth and last year at Juilliard, where he earned his bachelor of music degree as a student of Jerome Lowenthal. He is currently working towards his master of music degree in the class of Robert McDonald.
      
Soprano Katherine Whyte is a recent graduate of the Juilliard Opera Center where she created the role of ‘Betty’, the protagonist’s only respite of sanity and well-being, in the world-premiere performances of Lowell Liebermann’s opera, Miss Lonelyhearts. She is the recipient of the 11th annual Alice Tully Vocal Arts Debut Recital award. Ms. Whyte received her bachelor and master of music degrees from the University of Toronto and completed additional studies at the Britten-Pears School for Advance Musical Studies and The Stean’s Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival. The recipient of several awards, including the Ben Heppner Vocal Award and Jessye Norman Award from the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Ms. Whyte has performed on opera and concert stages across her native Canada and the United States. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut during the 2006-07 season as First Elf in Richard Strauss’ Die Ägyptische Helena. Ms. Whyte returns to the Metropolitan Opera this season as the Garish Lady in Prokofiev’s The Gambler with Valery Gergiev conducting, and in productions of Le nozze di Figaro, Peter Grimes, Manon Lescaut, and War and Peace. Ms. Whyte was a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center in 2006 and returned in the summer of 2007, where she appeared as soprano soloist with the Mark Morris Dance Group in performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Seiji Ozawa Hall. She also performed in Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzer at Tanglewood, and with the Mark Morris troupe at Jacob’s Pillow. Her Tanglewood Fellowship also included chamber music recitals and master classes with James Levine.