Press Kit
Media Contact:
Sue Auclair, Sue Auclair Promotions
617-522-1394; sue@sueauclair.com
Monday, November 1, 2010
For Immediate Release:
Discovery Ensemble In The Media!
Television, Radio and Print: Profiles, Performances and
Rave Reviews in Boston Musical Intelligencer & Boston Phoenix!
Next Concert is Friday, November 12 at 8:00 PM at Sanders Theatre
Boston, MA--Courtney Lewis and Discovery Ensemble will be featured on two regional television programs and a prestigious radio show in the next couple of weeks. In addition, the orchestra has just racked up two superb reviews that deserve to be read!
Television: On the weekend of November 6 - 8, the charming conductor Courtney Lewis and his orchestra will be seen on styleboston on NECN Saturday, November 6 at 8:00 PM and Sunday, November 7 at 10:30 AM and at 9:30 PM. The award-winning program also airs on Sunday November 7 and Monday, November 8 on Comcast Sportsnet. Hosted by styleboston’s Tony Corey, the segment spotlights Discovery Ensemble’s concert taping at WGBH FM’s Fraser Studio as well as their exciting kids program at the Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy, Neponset campus.
On November 11, Courtney and Discovery Ensemble will also be profiled on WGBH TV’s Greater Boston. This prestigious program, hosted by Emily Rooney and co-hosted by Jared Bowen will air at 7:00 PM and again at Midnight on WGBH TV.
Radio: All Classical 99.5 WCRB and WGBH HD will air a special taping of Discovery Ensemble on Thursday, November 4 at 7:00 P.M. on Live From Fraser including an interview with Music Director Courtney Lewis. The program will feature the Martinu Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, first and third movements.
In Print Quotes:
The Boston Phoenix, review by Lloyd Schwartz, October 28, 2010
“. . . one of the most exciting and moving performances of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony I've ever heard. Absolutely riveting from beginning to end (and it's not short), with one insight, one revelation, after another (especially in the structural highlighting of Beethoven's underlying rhythmic patterns), yet unfussy, completely honest, unmannered, forward-moving yet not mechanical — all brilliantly performed and totally engaged, both emotionally and intellectually. Without wallowing in sentiment, the funeral march was about as piercing and powerful as I've ever heard it.
Entire Review: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/music/110501-review-beethoven-with-th-discovery-ensemble-the/
The Boston Musical Intelligencer review, October 18, 2010 by Vance R. Koven:
“Lewis kept a clear beat and tossed off an impressive display of body English (Irish?), as his crack band of young performers (not a gray hair onstage) responded with immaculate articulation and dynamic precision.”
“This was clearly a young person’s Eroica: brisk tempi, dramatic dynamic shifts, theatrical body language — not your deeply reflective mitteleuropäische exegesis. Lewis is a master of dynamic control and pacing, although, especially in the first movement, his rapid beat left some phrase endings gasping for air. The funeral march left nothing to be desired to our ears, and the finale overcame the biggest issue we have always had with this symphony, which is that in the majestic restatement of the theme just before the coda, Beethoven may have exceeded the capacity of his instrumental forces to sustain a full sound when his simple melody was stretched out. We don’t know how he did it, but Lewis achieved here a glowing, rounded sonority that has eluded many of his elders. Bravo.”
See the full review here: http://classical-scene.com/2010/10/18/discover-this/
THE NEXT CONCERT:
Courtney Lewis, Conductor and Music Director of Discovery Ensemble will present The Shapes of Music, a distinctive concert featuring Stravinsky’s Concerto in E flat [Dumbarton Oaks], Thomas Adès’ Three Studies from Couperin and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 also known as the Pastoral Symphony on Friday, November 12, at 8:00 PM. at Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street, near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A pre-concert chat will precede the concert at 7:00 PM with Conductor Courtney Lewis and Artistic Director David St. George.
Tickets:
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 hours 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. Tickets will also be available at the Sanders Theatre box office beginning two hours before the concert on November 12. Sanders Theatre is wheelchair accessible.
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.
“For me, this is our most exciting concert of the season,” says Courtney. “I have loved Dumbarton Oaks’s fantastic rhythms since I was a child and Thomas Adès' Three Studies from Couperin are like listening to a magician orchestrate. Beethoven's Pastoral continues our cycle.”
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. This symphony was named for the Dumbarton Oaks estate of the early 20th century U.S. diplomat Robert Woods Bliss in Washington, D.C., who commissioned it for his thirtieth wedding anniversary. Composed in Stravinsky's neo-classical period, the piece is one of Stravinsky's two chamber concertos and is scored for a chamber orchestra of flute, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, three violins, three violas, two cellos, and two double basses. The three movements, Tempo giusto, Allegretto, and Con moto, performed without a break, total roughly twelve minutes.
British composer Thomas Adès [born in London, 1 March 1971] 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 François Couperin 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. Conductor/composer Thomas Adès has remarked, “My ideal day would be staying at home and playing the harpsichord works of Couperin – new inspiration on every page.”
In Symphony No. 6, 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. The Pastoral Symphony was composed simultaneously with Beethoven's more famous—and more fiery—Fifth Symphony. It was premiered along with the Fifth in a concert in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, on December 22, 1808. There was little critical response to the premiere performance, but eventually the work has become one of the central works of the symphonic repertoire. It is a favorite of many listeners and is frequently performed and recorded today.
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.
The last concert for the 2010 - 2011 season of Discovery Ensemble is Three Faces of Romanticism, taking place on Thursday, March 17 at 7:30 PM at Sanders Theatre. This program will feature Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, Schreker’s Chamber Symphony and Schumann Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish.”
About Discovery Ensemble
Discovery Ensemble is a chamber orchestra founded in 2008 and made up of 40 exceptional professional musicians 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.
