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Orpheus Chamber Orchestra will celebrate its 50th performance at the Williams Center for the Arts with an all-American concert featuring guest soloist Edgar Meyer, considered by some to be the world’s greatest bassist, 8 p.m. tonight..
The program will include Meyer’s Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra, with the composer as soloist, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England, and Walter Piston’s Sinfonietta.
Tickets for the event, which is the annual J. Mahlon and Grace Buck Concert, are free for students, $4 for faculty and staff and $35 for the public; they are in short supply. To inquire about availability, call the Williams Center box office at 610-330-5009.
When Orpheus first visited Nov. 12, 1987, few would have imagined the 18-year marriage that evolved, notes Ellis Finger, director of the Williams Center for the Arts.
“That memorable evening gave us Mozart, Haydn, Bizet, and new work by Irvine Fine – a spectrum of styles that has continued to mark Orpheus’s programming ideas. There would of course be more of the classics suitable to Orpheus’s instrumentation. But there would also be Shostakovich and Stravinsky, Schumann and Richard Strauss, and a wide array of American composers – the pantheon of Copland, Ives, Carter, and Piston, but also younger voices such as Susan Botti, Ellen Zwillich, and Paul Chihara (with a 20th anniversary commission by the Williams Center).”
Williams Center audiences enjoy the orchestra’s final polishing of its award-winning recording projects, major international tours, and numerous Carnegie Hall programs. The series has included many guest appearances by musicians later showcased by Orpheus at Carnegie Hall. Local audiences have been treated to musicians unlikely to be heard in other roles: pianists Jeffrey Kahane, Andre Watts, Cecile Licad, and Olli Mustonen; violinists Gil Shaham and Elmar Oliveira; vocalists Andreas Scholl, Nathalie Stutzman, Milagro Vargas, and Carmen Pelton; and bassist Meyer.
According Finger, highlights of the series include the extraordinary all-Ives concert led by Gil Kalisch in April 1993, Shaham’s first performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in December 1993, Branford Marsalis’ performance of French suites and concertos in March 2000, the collaboration between Lafayette and Easton’s State Theater that brought James Galway to the theater in November 2000, the “Wayfaring Stranger” program with Scholl in December 2001, and the Andre Watts performance of Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 in December 2003.
Meyer has performed at the Williams Center several times, first with Emerson String Quartet, once in a recital with pianist Amy Dorfman, twice with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and most recently, with banjo player Béla Fleck last September.
Recognized internationally as one of the world’s great chamber orchestras, Orpheus celebrates its 31st season with concert activity spanning three continents, including appearances in the major cities of North America, Europe, and Asia. The centerpiece of each Orpheus season is its five-concert series at Carnegie Hall.
Accompanying the critical acclaim for the orchestra’s live appearances are numerous distinctions and awards, including a 2001 Grammy Award for Shadow Dances: Stravinsky Miniatures, three 1999 Grammy Awards for its jazz-inspired Ravel and Gershwin collaboration with Herbie Hancock, a 1998 Grammy nomination for its recording of Mozart piano concertos with Richard Goode, and the 1998 “Ensemble of the Year” award by Musical America.
Orpheus was founded in 1972 by cellist Julian Fifer and a group of fellow musicians who aspired to perform chamber orchestral repertory as chamber music through their own close collaborative efforts, and without a conductor. Orpheus developed its approach to the study and performance of this repertory by bringing to the orchestral setting the chamber music principles of personal involvement and mutual respect. Orpheus is a self-governing organization, making the repertory and interpretive decisions ordinarily assumed by a conductor. Holt/NY Times Books published a book about Orpheus and its management model, Leadership Ensemble: Lessons in Collaborative Management from the World’s Only Conductorless Orchestra, written by former Orpheus executive director Harvey Seifter and business writer Peter Economy.
Members of Orpheus have received recognition for solo, chamber music, and orchestral performances. Many of the core members hold teaching positions at prominent conservatories and universities in the New York and New England areas, including Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, Mannes College of Music, Columbia University, and Yale University.
The Orpheus recording legacy consists of nearly 70 albums. Included in the catalogue of over 50 recordings for Deutsche Grammophon are Baroque masterworks of Handel, Corelli, and Vivali, Haydn symphonies, Mozart symphonies and serenades, the complete Mozart wind concerti with Orpheus members as soloists, Romantic works by Dvorák, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky, and a number of 20th-century classics by Bartók, Prokofiev, Fauré, Ravel, Schoenberg, Ives, Copland and Stravinsky. Recent collaborations include a recording of English and American folk songs with countertenor Andreas Scholl (Decca); Creation, a jazz-inspired CD of classics from 1920s Paris with saxophonist Branford Marsalis (SONY Classical); and a critically acclaimed series of recordings of Mozart piano concertos with Richard Goode (Nonesuch).
During the 2003-04 season, Orpheus is performing with some of the world’s finest soloists in concerts at Carnegie Hall and on tour in the United States and Europe: Watts, Meyer, Jennifer Larmore, Sarah Chang, and Zhang Qiang. Orpheus is presenting the New York premieres of works by Meyer and Tan Dun. It also continues its series of concerts at Trinity Church and its educational programs at Baruch College/CUNY and in New York City elementary, middle, and high schools. The 2003-04 season marks the launch of a major new multimedia outreach program, 3 Places, designed to bring composers together with diverse communities throughout New York City.
Meyer has established himself as both an innovative composer and unique and masterful instrumentalist. As a classical bassist, he released an album of Bach’s Unaccompanied Suites for Cello and recorded a concerto album with St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Fruitful collaborations are the cornerstone of his work, including a quartet comprised of violinist Joshua Bell and legendary bluegrass musicians Sam Bush and Mike Marshall. Their album, Short Trip Home, was nominated for a Grammy award as Best Classical Crossover and the group was subsequently invited to perform live at the 42nd annual Grammy Awards.
Shortly before this collaboration, Meyer was involved in Uncommon Ritual, an inventive trio project with Fleck on banjo and Marshall on mandolin, performing original compositions marrying bluegrass, classical, and other traditional styles. He has collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma on the albums Appalachia Waltz and Appalachian Journey, the latter of which earned a Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album.
Winner of numerous competitions, Meyer became the only bassist to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1994, and in 2000, he became the only bassist to win the Avery Fisher Prize. A frequent guest at music festivals, he has appeared as performer and composer at Aspen, Tanglewood, Caramoor, Chamber Music Northwest, and Marlboro. At the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, he was a regular guest from 1985-93 and composed six works for the festival. In 1994, Meyer joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and continues to perform regularly with the ensemble.
The nationally recognized Performance Series attracts more than 10,000 people each season. It has been cited for performing excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, Pennsylvania Arts and Humanities Councils, and Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
The 2003-04 Performance Series at Lafayette is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by the F.M. Kirby Foundation; by provisions of the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, and New England Foundation for the Arts.