For Immediate Release

Contact: Monica Bauchwitz

monica.bauchwitz@sonyc.org 212-543-0475

SONYC presents New York Attitudes

2004 Pulitzer Prize Winner Paul Moravec’s MORPH

Michael Gatonska’s TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMMINGBIRD

Lisa Bielawa’s THE TROJAN WOMEN

Christopher Theofanidis’ VISIONS AND MIRACLES

on

MAY 2^nd at 8pm

New York, NY – SONYC (String Orchestra of New York City) presents New York Attitudes at Merkin Hall, featuring Pulitzer Prize Winning composer Paul Morevec’s Morph, on Tuesday, May 2^nd at 8pm at Merkin Concert Hall, on West 67^th St between Broadway and Amsterdam in Manhattan. Also on the program are New York composers Lisa Bielawa’s The Trojan Women, Michael Gatonska’s Transformation of the Hummingbird, and Christopher Theofanidis’ Visions and Miracles.

SONYC gave the world premieres of the four works presented in the program during their last two seasons. Gatonska’s Transformation of the Hummingbird and Moravec’s Morph were both written for SONYC. Through the Aaron Copland Grant, Argosy Foundation, and Adelphi University, SONYC will release a recording of these works in the fall of 2006 on Albany Records.

PROGRAM

Paul Moravec’s Morph (2005) is a musical fantasy on aspects of the Apollo & Daphne myth as related in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The title also refers to the nature of the music itself as motivic, harmonic, rhythmic, and phrase units continually metamorphose in the course of the work¹s development. Finally, the title appropriately suggests the figure of Morpheus, god of dreams, in that an archetypal myth may be regarded as a civilization’s collective dream.

The music of composer Paul Moravec, recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Tempest Fantasy, has been described as “openly and ebulliently attractive, flowing with an effortless lyric pulse” (Fanfare), “assur-ed, virtuosic” (Wall Street Journal), and “resourceful butidiomatic...richly melodic” (Commentary Magazine). As the composer of orchestral, chamber, choral, and lyric compositions, as well as several film scores and electro-acoustic pieces, Moravec has been sought out by leading performing artists and ensembles. Recent world premieres include The Time Gallery with Eighth Blackbird at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Cello Concerto with the Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola (NYC); Cool Fire and Chamber Symphony for the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival; Salute for soprano Amy Burton and Steven Blier of the New York Festival of Song; Spirit, a cantata commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the flight of the Spirit of St. Louis; and No Words, commissioned by Concert Artist Guild for pianist James Lent and the Gay Gotham Chorus. Awards and fellowships include the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, an NEA Composer Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, and the Charles Ives and Goddard Lieberson. A graduate of Harvard and Columbia, Moravec is currently the Music Department Chair at Adelphi University.

Michael Gatonska’s Transformation of the Hummingbird for 18 strings, written in 2003, is built architecturally with a series of frames. Whatever their contents may be (linear, harmonic, etc.), they continually appear in multiple combinations and formations, in order to create a constant refreshment and stratification of sound from beginning to end. Through superimpositions and continually refreshed explorative sources, one frame may extend over two or three others before exhausting or transforming itself. To aid in trying to create a seamless musical web, new musical materials will appear with older fragments or frames, generating various transformations, juxtapositions, simultaneities, and orchestral colorings. The composition pushes toward diverse levels of relationships, rather than a single or fixed point of view.

Michael Gatonska, born 1968, studied composition with Krzystof Penderecki, Marek Stachowski, Zbigniew Bujarski, and Elias Tanenbaum. Awards received for his compositions have been twp ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Chicago Symphony First Hearing Award, the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and composer Institute, the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Composition Competition, and the Lake Winnepesaukee Music Festival Composition Award. Recent commissions are from the Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, the electric cellist Jeffrey Krieger and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Grants awarded include two postgraduate research grants from the Kosciuszko Foundation. Mr. Gatonska is a MacDowell Colony Fellow.

Lisa Bielawa’s The Trojan Women is a continuous score for Euripides' tragedy by the same title. It was composed in 1999 for a production directed by JoAnn Akalaitis. In 2000, a string quartet version was arranged based on some of the musical material from that score, and the string orchestra version was created for the SONYC. The special musical challenge of this project was to identify and convey, in three movements, three variegated forms of grief, each one a consequence of one woman's particular sufferings: “Hecuba,” “Cassandra” and “Andromache.” These women lost husbands and sons in the notorious brutality of the Trojan War.

Composer and vocalist Lisa Bielawa often takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. Her 2004 work Hurry, for soprano and chamber ensemble, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall as part of

Dawn Upshaw¹s Perspectives series. The inaugural season of Zankel Hall included the premiere of her work The Right Weather by the American Composers Orchestra and award-winning pianist Andrew Armstrong. Bielawa will begin a three-year residency with Boston Modern Orchestra Project in 2006 under the auspices of Music Alive, a national program jointly designed and managed by Meet The Composer and ASOL. Upcoming projects include a piano quintet for pianist Jon Nakamatsu and the Miami String Quartet, and The Lay of the Love and Death for violinist Colin Jacobsen and baritone Jesse Blumberg based on an epic poem by Rilke, which premieres at Lincoln Center in March 2006 at the Premiere Commissions Gala. Bielawa has received grants, fellowships, and awards from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, The Fund for U.S.

Artists at International Festivals, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers, the Omaha Symphony International Competition, and the Fondation

Royaumont in France.

Christopher Theofanidis’Visions and Miracles (1997) was originally commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for the Cassatt, Muir and Cuartetto Latinoamericano String Quartets. A new version for string orchestra was written for SONYC. “At the time I composed the piece,” says Theofanidis, “I was listening almost daily to a recording called ‘Visions and Miracles’ by the early music group, Ensemble Alctraz. The marvelous melodic and rhythmic character of these Spanish pieces was a tremendous inspiration to me, and they have become the referential base from which I express joy in my own music.”

Christopher Theophanidis holds degrees from Yale, the Eastman School of Music and the University of Houston, and has won several awards, including the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Charles Ives Fellowship to France, and the Barlow Prize. Among the ensembles that have performed his works are the National Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the California Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, the Cassatt Quartet, Speculum Musicae, and the Absolute Ensemble. Mr. Theofanidis is currently working on a project for the Houston Grand Opera. He has been a faculty member at The Juilliard

School, the University of Houston and the American Festival for the Arts.

SONYC

Founded in 1999, SONYC is comprised of New York's most exceptional strings players and allows each member to have an equal amount of artistic control. A winner of the Copland Grant and dedicated to the performance of new music, SONYC’s last season included the world premiere of “Morph” by Pulitzer Prize winning composer Paul Moravec, who praised SONYC as “a composer's dream come true.” The group gave its Weill Hall debut in May of 2002 and has continued to perform in venues throughout New York. Their fresh approach to music-making has won the group critical acclaim. Robert Spano, Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony proclaims, “SONYC is a rarity among instrumental ensembles of its size, it’s members possess the vision and talent to communicate with great authority, the full breadth and emotional power of the string repertoire.”

Tuesday, May 2^nd at 8pm

SONYC at MERKIN HALL

New York Attitudes

TICKET INFORMATION

This performance is being donated by SONYC. Donations are welcome. Additional information about the season is available by calling SONYC at 212-543-0475. SONYC’swebsite, www.sonyc.org provides information on the group, the musicians, recordings, performances, and current projects. The website also provides regular updates on national and international engagements, contact information and a mailing list.

For Press Tickets Contact:

Monica Bauchwitz

212-543-0475

monica.bauchwitz@sonyc.org

###