Press Kit
Media Contact:
Sue Auclair, Sue Auclair Promotions
617-522-1394; sue@sueauclair.com
September 7, 2010
For Immediate Release:
Discovery Ensemble Announces 2010 - 2011 Concert Season Dates & Programs
Sunday, October 17 at 3 PM; Friday, November 12 at 8 PM
and Thursday, March 17 at 7:30 PM
at Sanders Theatre, Harvard Square, Cambridge
Cambridge, MA--Courtney Lewis, Conductor and Music Director of Discovery Ensemble has just announced Discovery Ensemble’s 2010 - 2011 Concert Season. Three stellar concerts will take place at Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street, near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The dates are Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 3:00 PM; Friday, November 12 at 8:00 PM and Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 7:30 PM.
Reserved-seat tickets for each concert priced at $35.00, $28.00 and $20.00 are on sale now on line at www.DiscoveryEnsemble.com or by calling: 617-496-2222. Tickets are also available at the Harvard Box Office Booth, located at 1350 Massachusetts Avenue in the Holyoke Center Arcade. Harvard Box Office summer hours are Wednesday through Saturday 12:00 noon to 6:00 pm. Regular box office hours [beginning September 7] are Tuesday through Sunday from 12:00 noon to 6:00 P.M. The box office is closed on Mondays and some holidays. Tickets for students and seniors with identification will be available at a discount of $10.00 in all price ranges. Season passes at $100.00, $80.00 and $60.00 for all three concerts will be available at www.DiscoveryEnsemble.com in the near future. Sanders Theatre is wheelchair accessible.
Courtney Lewis, the amazing 26-year-old conductor and founding Music Director of Discovery Ensemble, combines exacting standards with true vision and interpretative depth, as well as an infectious joy in the sheer act of making music. On more than one occasion he has been compared, by those whose musical memories go back to the early 1960s, to the young Carlos Kleiber. Lewis has molded Discovery Ensemble into a finely tuned, nuanced and virtuosic orchestra capable of switching from Bach to Beethoven to Stravinsky with complete stylistic assurance and a standard of playing that rivals the great European chamber orchestras. In May 2009, Osmo Vänskä appointed him Assistant Conductor and recently elevated him to Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, so Lewis now divides his time between Minneapolis and Boston.
About the Programs:
Sunday, October 17, 3:00 PM at Sanders Theatre: Conflict & Resolution
- Martinů Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani
- Schoenberg First Chamber Symphony
- Beethoven Symphony No. 3, “Eroica”
A revolutionary, at times mutinous streak runs through this program. Martinu’s Double Concerto is one of that under-appreciated composer’s masterpieces. It was written on the eve of the Second World War, and its atmosphere of tense apprehensiveness is a perfect, harrowing corollary to the mood of Europe in 1938. The First Chamber Symphony of Arnold Schoenberg marks the high point and end of the first period of his creativity. It’s still a tonal work – perfectly approachable, with many features that hark back to Brahms – but in other respects it hovers on the cusp of modernity, threatening to spill out of its own mold into uncharted territory at every turn. And to conclude the program Beethoven’s “Eroica,” the iconic masterpiece of revolution, in which Beethoven broke out of the Classical framework and created a new kind of symphony altogether.
Friday, November 12, 8 PM at Sanders Theatre: The Shapes of Music
- Stravinsky Concerto in E-flat, “Dumbarton Oaks”
- Adès Three Studies from Couperin
- Beethoven Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”
Music comes in a variety of shapes, some odder than others. The three pieces on this program all take familiar forms and procedures as their point of departure, but then go their own strange, path-breaking, infinitely inventive ways. To begin, Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks,” one of the most brilliant and surprising of all the composer’s neoclassical works, takes seemingly-familiar musical material to completely unexpected places, while all the time glittering like a diamond. British composer Thomas Adès has taken the classical music world by storm in the past few years. In his Three Studies from Couperin he takes harpsichord pieces by the French baroque master and refashions them in such a way that every note of the original is still there, but transformed into a piece that is completely of our time. In the “Pastorale” Symphony Beethoven, ever the iconoclast, alters the lineaments of the classical symphony to make it the vehicle for the greatest paean to nature that symphonic music had known up till then.
Thursday, March 17, 7:30 PM at Sanders Theatre: Three Faces of Romanticism
- Wagner Siegfried Idyll
- Schreker Chamber Symphony
- Schumann Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish”
The Romantic movement in music embraced almost the whole of the nineteenth century, and then, in its 20th century afterlife, gave birth to some marvelous and strange post-romantic masterpieces. The earliest work on this program, Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony, is the Romantic Symphony par excellence, deeply personal in its expression, with the dual influences of folk music and nature at every turn, and with the admixture of religious awe as well. Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, based on themes from the opera Siegfried and composed as a surprise gift for his wife, is music’s most beautiful Christmas present (and the perfect, sure-fire antidote for people who think they don’t like Wagner!). The latest work on the program, Schreker’s Chamber Symphony, is strange, intoxicating and dreamlike. A true masterpiece, even though rarely heard, its subtle, ever-shifting luminosity of instrumental color is like nothing else in music. We are thrilled to be able to bring this amazing musical experience to our audience!
About Discovery Ensemble
Discovery Ensemble is an exuberantly youthful chamber orchestra founded in 2008 and made up of 40 exceptional young professional musicians in their twenties from the greater Boston area. In its concerts, Discovery Ensemble presents an eclectic cross section of masterworks – some familiar, some unfamiliar – in performances that are impassioned, searching and at the highest level of technical accomplishment.
Unseen by the general pubic is the other side of Discovery Ensemble’s work -- an extensive program of workshops in Boston public schools and children’s concerts, all of which especially target areas that are underserved by existing musical institutions. The target area for these workshops for the past two years has been the community of Dorchester, Massachusetts where Discovery Ensemble has given interactive workshops in many area schools – bringing the music of Ligeti, Copland and Stravinsky into the children’s intimate and familiar surroundings. These programs have had an astonishing impact! In conjunction with each series of school workshops there are also concerts for children in the historic Strand Theatre in the Uphams Corner section of Dorchester. Over one thousand school children attend each of these morning concerts, where they experience great music played with great passion, and explained to them in a particularly dynamic and child-friendly manner. A six minute video about the outreach work of Discovery Ensemble can be seen on the Discovery Ensemble website: http://www.discoveryensemble.com.
