NANSHAN AMERICAADVANCED ALUMINUM TECHNOLOGIES, LLC.

LOEB PLAYHOUSEFEBRUARY 12, 2013

7:30 PM

The Knights Chamber Orchestra

THE KNIGHTS WITH

WU MANPipa

LEAD SUPPORT FROM: IN PARTNERSHIPWITH:

FRIENDS SUPPORT FROM:

PROGRAMConcerto in E-flat (Dumbarton Oaks) Tempo Giusto Allegretto Con moto

Concerto for Pipa and String Orchestra Allegro Bits and Pieces: Troika Bits and Pieces: Three Sharing Bits and PIeces: Wind and Plum Bits and Pieces: Neopolitan Threnody for Richard Locke Estampie

Prelude a l’après-midi d’un faune

“Vocalise,” Op. 34, No. 14*

Le boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58

Blue and Green (arranged for Pipa and Orchestra)

Intermission

With respect to the musicians and your fellow patrons, we request your participation in the tradition of withholding

applause between movements of a selection.

www.theknightsnyc.com

Exclusive Management:OPUS 3 ARTISTS

470 Park Avenue South, 9th Floor NorthNew York, NY 10016

www.opus3artists.com

Igor Stravinsky(1882 - 1971)

Lou Harrison(1917 - 2003)

Claude Debussy(1862 - 1918)

Arr. Atkinson

Darius Milhaud(1892 - 1974)

Arr. The Knights

Wu Man(b. 1963)

THE KNIGHTSEric Jacobsen and Colin Jacobsen, Co-Artistic Directors

Eric Jacobsen, Conductor

VIOLINColin Jacobsen, ConcertmasterTomoko KatsuraAriana KimYon Joo LeeYaira MatyakubovaGuillaume Pirard

VIOLAChristina CourtinMargaret DyerMiranda Sielaff

CELLOAlex GreenbaumEric JacobsenJulia MacLaine

DOUBLE BASSZach Cohen

FLUTEAlex Sopp

OBOEAdam Hollander

“Invisible, as music, But positive, as sound” –Emily Dickinson

Two themes unite tonight’s Knights program, the incredible creative energy that arises from cross-cultural musical exploration and the subtle notion of musical color.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)Concerto in E-flat “Dumbarton Oaks” (1937-1938)

Igor Stravinsky’s irresistible Concerto in E-flat “Dumbarton Oaks” decidedly straddles the old and new worlds. Commissioned in America, it was the composer’s last work entirely written in Europe.

In 1937, Mildred Barnes Bliss, a leading figure in American arts and culture, approached Stravinsky about writing a work modeled on Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The premiere would celebrate her thirtieth wedding anniversary and take place at “Dumbarton Oaks,” the magnificent Federal-style estate just outside Washington, DC that she and her husband, Robert Woods Bliss, owned.

In response, Stravinsky immersed himself in Bach’s music, regularly playing it on the piano. “Whether or not the first theme of my first movement is a conscious borrowing from the third of the Brandenburg set, I do not know,” he recalled. “What I can say is that Bach would most certainly have been delighted to loan it to me; to borrow in this way was exactly the sort of thing he liked to do.”

Lou Harrison (1917-2003)Concerto for Pipa and Strings (1997)

The pipa is a Chinese lute with a rich, 2000-year history. Its onomatopoetic name describes the instrument’s characteristic sounds.

American composer Lou Harrison was introduced to the indigenous musical instruments of Asia while a student at San Francisco State University in the 1930s. Enthralled, he spent the rest of his career integrating Asian musical colors into the European tradition.

His Concerto for Pipa and Strings from 1997 is a mature masterpiece, remarkable for the naturalness and joy with which the instruments sing together in a new musical language.

PROGRAM NOTES By James Roe

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)Prélude à l’áprès-midi d’un faune (1891-1894)Arrangement by Michael P. Atkinson

Languid, sensual, and seemingly improvisatory, Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune reveals a new world of musical color.

The piece opens with an unaccompanied flute melody. The first note is a sustained c-sharp, which is produced with all the flautist’s fingers raised, no keys depressed. Debussy exploits this note’s characteristic gauzy diffuseness to blend the beginning of the piece with the preceding silence. He described the work as “a very free rendering of Stéphane Mallarmé’s beautiful poem. It is a succession of scenes in which the desires and dreams of the faune pass through in the heat of the afternoon.”

Music’s invisible colors would never be seen the same way again.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)Le boeuf sur le toit, op. 58 (1919)

Unfit for military service in World War I, Darius Milhaud accepted a post as propaganda attaché in Rio de Janeiro in 1916. The music he heard there became a lifelong inspiration for the young French composer.

Upon returning to Paris in 1919, Milhaud wrote Le boeuf sur le toit, which showcased the tangos, maxixes, sambas, and Portuguese fado he learned in Brazil. Intended to accompany a Charlie Chaplin film, the piece quickly captured the imagination of the Parisian avant garde. Jean Cocteau created a pantomime-ballet for the music that premiered in February 1920. In December 1921, an iconic Paris cabaret reopened under the name, Le boeuf sur le toit. Its habitués included Cocteau, Milhaud, Pablo Picasso, Sergei Diaghilev, Maurice Chevalier and the young Igor Stravinsky. Milhaud’s score perfectly embodies the effervescent Bohemian milieu that thrived in Paris between the wars.

Wu Man (b. 1963)Blue and Green for Pipa and Orchestra

Wu Man chose her two favorite colors as the inspiration for this work.

“Blue” represents the peaceful and meditative mind, which Wu Man represents with a traditional Chinese folk tune beautifully sung by pipa and strings.

“Green” is based on a melody her son sang as a child. “When I first heard him sing it, he was four years old,” she explained, “I asked him where he heard the tune.” “I don’t know, Mommy,” he answered, “I make it up ... really.” The pipa sets up perpetual motion figurations while the orchestra imitates the vigorous sounds of Chinese wind instruments. Musical colors join hands across cultures.

Praised for their “polished performances and imaginative programming” (New York Times) The Knights are a “supremely talented” (Gramophone) orchestra of friends from a broad spectrum of the New York music world who cultivate collaborative music making and creatively engage audiences in the shared joy of musical performance. Led by an open-minded spirit of camaraderie and exploration, they expand the orchestral concert experience with programs that encompass their roots in the Classical tradition and their passion for musical discovery. For their inspired programming, innovative formats and “crusading musical mission,” The Knights have been hailed as “the future of classical music in America” (Los Angeles Times).

The Knights perform in a wide range of concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, 92nd Street Y, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Brooklyn Lyceum, Central Park, Le Poisson Rouge, The Stone, Tonic, the Whitney Museum and Mass MoCA. Also in demand on the international stage, they have appeared at the Dresden Musikfestspiele, Cologne Philharmonie, Dusseldorf Tonhalle, and the National Gallery in Dublin, and have toured Germany with cellist Jan Vogler. Their expanding presence on the music festival scene has included performances at the Ravinia Festival, the Stillwater Music Festival in Minnesota, and Caramoor’s Fall Festival.

The Knights 2012-2013 season began with a return to the Ravinia Festival, where the orchestra was joined by three classical music superstars–cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman and soprano Dawn Upshaw–in three concerts that concluded the prestigious festival. Other season highlights for The Knights include the release of an all-Beethoven disc for Sony Classical, their third project with the label and a U.S. tour with pipa virtuoso Wu Man in February, making stops in Madison, Austin, Houston, and Southern California. In May, The Knights travel to Berlin to team up again with American composer Lisa Bielawa for “Tempelhof Broadcast,” leading hundreds of musicians in a large-scale spatial/acoustic work to be performed on the tarmac of the former Tempelhof Airport (now Tempelhofer Park), site of the Berlin Airlift in 1948.

Last season’s highlights included high-profile appearances at Ravinia, Central Park and the 92nd Street Y, a tour of Germany in March, and their first U.S. tour in April 2012. Additionally, The Knights launched the Ensemble-in-Residence program at New York Public Radio’s WQXR, giving two concerts at New York’s Greene Space and producing the “Found Sound Project,” inviting listeners across the country to submit original audio samples for use in their performance of John Adams’s Christian Zeal and Activity. We Are The Knights, a documentary film produced by WNET/Thirteen, made

ABOUT THE KNIGHTS

its broadcast debut in September 2011 and was rebroadcast nationwide throughout the year. In April 2012, the ensemble released A Second in Silence on Ancalagon, a “smartly programmed” (NPR) album that joins music by Philip Glass, Erik Satie and Morton Feldman with Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony.

Previous Sony Classical albums include a live recording from New York’s cutting edge concert venue Le Poisson Rouge, which showcases cellist Jan Vogler in the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 alongside arrangements of Shostakovich waltzes and Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun;” and New Worlds, featuring works by Copland, Dvorak, Ives, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Osvaldo Golijov. In 2010, Orange Mountain Music released Lisa Bielawa’s Chance Encounter with The Knights and soprano Susan Narucki. Mozart, the ensemble’s collaboration with Lara and Scott St. John in the Sinfonia Concertante and Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 3 for Ancalagon, received a 2010 JUNO Award for Classical Album of the Year. Strings magazine proclaimed, “These gifted young players have created a flawless recording.” The Knights also can be heard on the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s film Twixt.

The orchestra’s extensive repertoire features traditional and contemporary masterworks of classical, popular, and world music in collaboration with such leading artists as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, soprano

Dawn Upshaw, violinists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham, flutist Paula Robison, singer-songwriter (and Knights violinist) Christina Courtin, Iranian ney (Persian bamboo flute) virtuoso Siamak Jahangiri, pianist Steven Beck, fiddler Mark O’Connor, and Syrian clarinetist/composer Kinan Azmeh. 

Dedicated to the music of our time, The Knights have served as the resident orchestra of the MATA Festival for young composers, premiering new works by Christopher Tignor and Prix-de-Rome winner Yotam Haber. The ensemble has worked closely with composer Osvaldo Golijov, performing his Passion According to St. Mark in the Canary Islands in May 2009 and several of his works with soprano Dawn Upshaw. 

The roster of The Knights boasts an unprecedented diversity of talents. Included are composers, arrangers, singer-songwriters and improvisers who bring a range of cultural influences to the group, from jazz and klezmer to pop and indie rock music. The musicians are graduates of Juilliard, Curtis, and other leading music schools, and members have performed as soloists with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago and San Francisco symphony orchestras, as well as the Israel Philharmonic and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart orchestra. Equally successful as chamber and orchestral musicians, they participate in the world’s most prestigious music festivals, including

Marlboro, Tanglewood, Verbier, Lucerne and Salzburg, and perform with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Toronto Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble.

The formation of The Knights evolved from late night chamber music reading parties with friends at the home of violinist Colin

Jacobsen and cellist Eric Jacobsen. The Jacobsen brothers, who are also founding members of Brooklyn Rider, serve as artistic directors of The Knights, with Eric Jacobsen as conductor. The unique camaraderie within the orchestra retains the intimacy and spontaneity of chamber music in performance.

Conductor and cellist Eric Jacobsen is dedicated to imaginative programming and projects, which invite audiences into a shared experience. As Music Director for The Knights, an orchestra formed by brothers Eric and Colin Jacobsen, Mr. Jacobsen has led the orchestra in numerous performances, tours, and recording projects. Mr. Jacobsen and the orchestra strive to foster the intimacy and camaraderie of chamber music on the orchestral stage. Mr. Jacobsen and The Knights opened the 2009 Dresden Musikfestspiele with soloist Dawn Upshaw. In September of 2010 Mr. Jacobsen conducted The Knights at The Caramoor Festival with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist. In 2010 he led The Knights in their first tour of Germany with cellist Jan Vogler, the experience begged another, so The Knights took on Germany for a second tour in 2012. Mr. Jacobsen and the orchestra’s interpretation of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony delighted and inspired the audiences of Beethoven’s homeland. After wildly successful performances in 2010 and 2011, Mr. Jacobsen and The Knights were invited again in 2012 to perform at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival. The 2012 programs feature three performances each with soloists; Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and Dawn Upshaw.

This season Mr. Jacobsen conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with soloist Wu Man in music of Beethoven, Debussy and Harrison. He will also make is debut with the

Alabama Symphony in music by Schubert, Higdon and Feldman. Mr. Jacobsen will returns to Columbus Ohio to work with Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra. In the summer of 2013 Mr. Jacobsen will conduct the Moritzburg Festival Academy in Dresden, Germany.

Under Mr. Jacobsen’s baton, The Knights have released two albums on SONY Classical. The first – Jan Vogler and The Knights, Experience Live from New York – pairs Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Waltzes with the music of Jimi Hendrix. New Worlds, released in 2010, celebrates music of the Americas, including Copland’s Appalachian Spring along with works by Ives, Dvorak, Golijov and Gabriela Lena Frank. In 2012, The Knights toured the United States performing works from their New Worlds album.

Mr. Jacobsen’s most recent album is on the Ancalagon label dedicated to Schubert and Minimalism; including two Schubert symphonies paired with music by Erik Satie, Morton Feldman and Philip Glass.

Mr. Jacobsen has collaborated with Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony in the music of Pablo de Sarasate performing at Le Poisson Rouge in New York. He has also led Camerata Bern in the first European performance of Mark O’Connor’s American Seasons, with the composer as soloist.

ABOUT ERIC JACOBSEN

Mr. Jacobsen is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project. He has participated in residencies and performances in Azerbaijan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Switzerland and across the USA including The Art Institute of Chicago and The Hollywood Bowl. As a founding member of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, Mr. Jacobsen has toured extensively in North America and Europe. He can be heard on many albums recorded by both of these ensembles.

An avid educator, Mr. Jacobsen is on the New York University faculty. He conducts the NYU Orchestras and teaches chamber music and cello. He has also led collaborative concerts with students of the Children’s Orchestra Society sitting alongside musicians from The Knights.

The Knights with Mr. Jacobsen and Brooklyn Rider are both represented by Opus 3 Artists.

Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Grammy Award-nominated musician Wu Man has carved out a career as a composer, soloist, and educator giving her lute-like instrument – which has a history of over 2,000 years in China – a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Through numerous trips to her native China, Wu Man has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions. Her adventurous spirit and virtuosity have led to collaborations across artistic disciplines allowing Wu Man to reach wider audiences as she works to break through cultural and musical borders.

In May 2012 Wu Man released her album Borderlands, the final installment of her acclaimed ten-volume “Music of Central Asia” ethnographic series tracing the history of the pipa in China. With the support of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the project led her to the outskirts of the country to collaborate with musical cultures along the Silk Road including Tajikistan and China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China. The result is a DVD and sound recording of folk musicians who would not otherwise

be heard outside these regions, and who represent the very beginnings of the pipa’s musical tradition.

Wu Man traveled to Singapore in June 2012 to collaborate on a theatrical project by TheatreWorks’ artistic director Ong Keng Sen called Lear Dreaming. Based on Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” the work presented an Asian-inspired interpretation of the drama that culminated in two sold-out world premiere performances during the 2012 Singapore Arts Festival, and required Wu Man to both act and play the pipa. In August 2012 Wu Man released a documentary DVD titled Discovering a Musical Heartland: Wu Man’s Return to China as part of her ongoing Return to the East project. In the film, Wu Man travels to little-explored regions of China to uncover ancient musical traditions that have rarely been documented before.

The 2012-13 season has Wu Man touring with the Silk Road Ensemble and separately as a soloist across the United States. She will perform Tan Dun’s Pipa Concerto with the Arkansas Symphony and participate in a U.S. tour with New York City’s The Knights, with whom she will premiere her own composition Blue and Green. Wu Man tours to Hong Kong to perform a program titled “Wu Man and Aboriginal Friends from Taiwan,” another installment of her Return to the East project. Wu Man will also perform at the

ABOUT WU MAN

2013 Auckland Arts Festival in New Zealand both in a solo recital and together with the Kronos Quartet in a performance of “A Chinese Home.”

Brought up in the Pudong school of pipa playing, Wu Man became the first person to receive a master’s degree in pipa performance from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She is a frequent collaborator with the Kronos Quartet and was also the first artist from China ever

to perform at the White House. She has performed with major orchestras around the world and frequently premieres works by today’s leading composers including Tan Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, and Chen Yi. Since moving to the U.S. in 1990, Wu Man’s role as an ambassador and advocate for Chinese music was recognized when she was made a United States Artists Broad Fellow in 2008.