Robert Paterson News

Auréole – flutist Laura Gilbert, violist Mary Hammann, and harpist Stacey Shames – is considered by many the world's pre-eminent flute, viola, and harp ensemble, having commissioned and premiered more works for their instrumentation than any other such trio in the world. Embracing the Wind, a new disc of works written between 1978 and 2000 by Israeli composers Paul Ben-Haim and Lior Navok and Americans Ian Krouse and Robert Paterson, is the group's 15th recording, and its first on the American Modern Recordings label. It is the 20th AMR release.

New Amsterdam Singers (NAS), led by Music Director Clara Longstreth, launches its 2018-19 season with a program of little-known psalm settings, most written for double chorus, by composers from different centuries. They include Bach, Schein, Schutz, Wesley, Viadana, and Vaughan Williams. The concerts will take place

This fall, contemporary opera producer AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS (AOP) will present COMPOSERS & THE VOICE: SIX SCENES 2018, a showcase concert of opera scenes from nine artists emerging in the world of contemporary opera. Audiences will get a first look at six wildly different new works invoking diverse settings such as the Arab Spring in Tunisia, a post-apocalyptic future, and a modern college campus and exploring a multitude of themes and concepts, including the emotional minefield of solar flares, the dissonance of fundamentalism in urban and regional communities, and the nature and validity of Opera itself. The composers Matt Browne, Scott Ordway, Frances Pollock, Pamela Stein Lynde, Amber Vistein and Alex Weiser, and librettists Laura Barati, Kim Davies, andSokunthary Svay, were chosen by AOP to spend a year creating new works in its bi-annual fellowship program Composers & the Voice (C&V). The evening will be hosted by C&V Artistic Director Steven Osgood.

Fort Worth Opera (FWOpera) announced today that the deadline for submissions has been extended for its seventh annual Frontiers showcase. Applications will now be accepted through midnight, August 31, 2018. The company's innovative program will be held May 6 and 7 during the 2019 Fort Worth Opera Festival (April 26 - May 12). Launched during FWOpera's 2012-2013 season, Frontiers remains one of the few programs world-wide that seeks out unproduced works by the finest up-and-coming composers and librettists from North, South, and Central America, and continues to be acclaimed for the opportunities it provides its chosen artists. Frontiers is generously underwritten by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Kent Tritle is Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the largest cathedral in the world; Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York, the acclaimed 200-voice volunteer chorus; and Music Director of Musica Sacra, New York's longest continuously performing professional chorus. The 2018-19 season of “New York's choral conducting superstar” (Time Out New York) is marked by the expansion of the Oratorio Society's Carnegie Hall season from three to four concerts, which will include Kullervo, the rarely-performed symphonic poem by Sibelius, Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, and Verdi's Requiem.

Opera Saratoga's Artistic and General Director Lawrence Edelson announced that the company's 2018 Summer Festival will feature new productions of four operas at The Spa Little Theatre in Spa State Park, along with a wide variety of free and ticketed concert events from May 26 through July 15 at venues throughout the region.

For the third and final concert of its 50th anniversary season, New Amsterdam Singers, led by Music Director Clara Longstreth, will perform the world premiere of The Wave Rises by Ben Moore, a work commissioned by the chorus as part of its 50-year celebration.

Opera Saratoga's Artistic and General Director Lawrence Edelson announced the complete casting and programming for the company's 2018 Summer Festival, which will feature new productions of four operas at The Spa Little Theater in Spa State Park, along with a wide variety of free and ticketed concert events from May 26th through July 15th at venues throughout the region. Single tickets, as well as subscription packages, are on sale now at www.operasaratoga.org.

The upcoming April 26 concert by American Modern Ensemble represents two firsts: it is the ensemble's first concert at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall (or any of the Carnegie halls) in its 13-year history, and it is the first program devoted completely to the vocal works of composer and AME founder Robert Paterson (and the second all-Paterson program). About the program, which features six works for voice and piano, including three world premieres, Paterson says, "The texts are wildly diverse, and include poems constructed from reCAPTCHA texts (those texts you type online to prove that you're human), songs about the life of baseball catcher Mike Piazza, online dating, and settings of poems by W. H. Auden, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Richard Wilbur, William Carlos Williams, Sara Teasdale, David Cote (my collaborator on the opera Three Way), and others."

For its inaugural launch in June, Mostly Modern Festival (MMF), a new summer music festival that flips the traditional programming model by devoting most of its attention to the music of our time, will present eight concerts featuring an illustrious array of guest artists and ensembles, an orchestra largely made up of Mostly Modern Festival Institute (MMFI) participants, music by esteemed resident composers … and more than 30 brand-new works in world premiere performances by 30 MMFI participating composers (see list below).

Will Mistress Salomé lose her head? What happens when upgrades go wrong? These and many other burning questions will be answered when Opera Orlando plays the Orlando Fringe for six performances, beginning on May 16 and concluding on May 27.

The Art of the Score, exploring some of the most distinctive uses of music in film, will return for its fifth season with Amadeus: Live, the New York Premiere screening of Amadeus with the Mozart-centered score performed live to the complete film. Conducted by Richard Kaufman in his Philharmonic debut and featuring Musica Sacra, directed by Kent Tritle, Amadeus: Live will take place Wednesday, April 11, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, April 12 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, April 13 at 11:00 a.m.; Saturday, April l4 at 7:30 p.m.; and Tuesday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. On April 11 actor Alec Baldwin - Philharmonic Board Member and Artistic Advisor of The Art of the Score - and special guest F. Murray Abraham - who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Salieri - will introduce the film.

In the spring of 2018, choral conducting superstar (Time Out New York) Kent Tritle leads two programs featuring world premieres of works with American themes that are resonating especially strongly today: with the Oratorio Society of New York, Sanctuary Road, an oratorio about the Underground Railroad with music by Paul Moravec and text by Mark Campbell (commissioned by the OSNY) based upon the accounts of William Still, as well as Behzad Ranjbaran's We Are One (commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra) on May 7; and a program at the Cathedral Choir of St. John the Divine celebrating the immigrant history of New York in collaboration with early/world music group Rose of the Compass that includes the world premiere of a commissioned work by Robert Sirota, text by Reverend Victoria Sirota, on April 9.

With a new production of Rossini's Cinderella at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts still acting as anchor to the Opera Orlando's winter and spring offerings, the company is announcing four additional events to the Love Lost and Found season. Individual press releases will be issued for each event.

The New Amsterdam Singers (NAS) celebrating 50 years of leadership under Music Director Clara Longstreth, launches its 2017-18 season with a program titled Sing, Sing Ye Muses, featuring a world premiere-NAS commission by Carol Barnett.

The New Amsterdam Singers will celebrate 50 years of leadership under its Music Director Clara Longstreth in the 2017 18 season, with three sets of concerts and three world-premiere commissioned works.

On Friday, January 5, 2018 at 8pm the Neave Trio (Anna Williams, violin; Mikhail Veselov, cello; Eri Nakamura, piano) will present a program entitled Three Piano Trios from America to the Moon at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music's Cary Hall

On Today, November 16, 2017 at 7:30pm, preceded by a 7:00pm Composer/Poet chat, Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) presents the Brooklyn premiere and grand finale performance of the Five Borough Songbook, Volume II with expanded casting at National Sawdust. The project, which premiered in Manhattan and Queens earlier this year in honor of 5BMF's 10th anniversary season, features 20 new commissions inspired by New York City places, people and poetry from twenty composers, and includes solo songs, duets and ensemble works scored for various combinations of voice, piano and cello. The Five Borough Songbook, Volume II received its Staten Island premiere on September 16 at Trinity Lutheran Church and its Bronx premiere on September 17 at the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture.

On November 17, 2017, American Modern Recordings will release the world premiere recording of Robert Paterson's Three Way, a 'titillating and clever' (Time Out New York) trio of one-act operas for eight singers and chamber orchestra. Exploring the possible future and the eternal questions of love, sex, and need with Robert Paterson's strikingly sonorous ensemble writing (Opera magazine) and David Cote's witty, perceptive libretto (New York Observer), Three Way is clearly the kind of three way worth having (Parterre Box). Co-produced by Nashville Opera and American Opera Projects, the work received its world premiere January 27-29, 2017, in Nashville, and its New York premiere June 15-18 at BAM.

On Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 7:30pm, preceded by a 7:00pm Composer/Poet chat, Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) presents the Brooklyn premiere and grand finale performance of the Five Borough Songbook, Volume II with expanded casting at National Sawdust. The project, which premiered in Manhattan and Queens earlier this year in honor of 5BMF's 10th anniversary season, features 20 new commissions inspired by New York City places, people and poetry from twenty composers, and includes solo songs, duets and ensemble works scored for various combinations of voice, piano and cello. The Five Borough Songbook, Volume II received its Staten Island premiere on September 16 at Trinity Lutheran Church and its Bronx premiere on September 17 at the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture.