TAKING NEW MUSIC TO NEW PLACES
We of Philadelphia's new music ensemble Orchestra 2001 will set off on Saturday, Nov. 3, for a tour of Appalachia.That may seem a little strange unless you know that the music we'll be performing will be by George Crumb, who grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, and whose music very often echoes in various ways that experience.That is especially true of the major work we'll be performing at four different venues (Charleston, Morgantown, Parkersburg, and Morehead State College), Crumb's extraordinary "Voices from the Heartland: American Songbook VII." It is the final installment in a monumental series that has occupied Crumb for the last ten years. Orchestra 2001 has been the extremely fortunate dedicatee of all seven volumes. I am especially pleased to learn that our hotel in Charleston stands next to the Kanawha River, which provided the direct inspiration for one of the nine movements of "Voices from the Heartland."
Later in November, we will take an entirely different program to Havana, Cuba's International Festival of Contemporary Music - an entirely different program but one that the Cubans insisted be primarily music (again!) by George Crumb. For this venture, the program will consist of Crumb's "Dream Sequence" and "Night of the Four Moons," together with the premiere of a new work by one of Crumb's successors at the University of Pennsylvania, Jay Reise's "Red Sea Swallow." Many of us will spend our free time while in Appalachia poring over "Introductory Spanish."
Other than a spring time concert at the Library of Congress, again featuring "Voices from the Heartland," together with the premiere of a new work by Chaya Czernowin, the rest of our 2012-13 season will be presented as usual in Philadelphia and at Swarthmore College, where Orchestra 2001 is the ensemble in residence. I'll write more about that once we're back from Appalachia.
James Freeman
Founder and Artistic Director, Orchestra 2001
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