This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
World-renowned orchestra Orpheus with pianist Jeremy Denk will take the stage for “Brandenburg Redux” 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 29 in the Williams Center for the Arts.
Tickets are free for students, $4 for faculty and staff, and $27 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009.
Remaining performers in the Chamber Music Series include Orpheus with Ian Bostridge: Serenades Sunday, Feb. 4, $27; Ying Quartet Tuesday, March 6, $18; and Christopher Taylor Tuesday, April 3, $18.
For their upcoming performance, Orpheus will focus on Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, which will enable the group to display orchestral teamwork while shifting the solo spotlight from one cluster of instruments to another. Denk will join Orpheus for Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor, and will play harpsichord for the world premiere of a new commissioned work by Stephen Hartke modeled on Brandenburg No. 1.
Recognized internationally as one of the world’s great chamber orchestras, Orpheus is celebrating its 34th season. Williams Center audiences have already enjoyed Orpheus’ celebration of Mozart’s birth in an earlier Chamber Music Series performance.
Along with Denk, Orpheus’ Lafayette series has included many guest appearances by musicians later showcased at Carnegie Hall, from countertenor Andreas Scholl and bassist Edgar Meyer to saxophonist Branford Marsalis and violinist Gil Shaham. 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 Shaham and Elmar Oliveira; vocalists Scholl, Nathalie Stutzman, Milagro Vargas, and Carmen Pelton; and bassist Meyer.
Orpheus also has received numerous distinctions and awards, including a 2001 Grammy Award for Shadow Dances: Stravinsky Miniatures, a 1999 Grammy Award for its jazz-inspired Ravel and Gershwin collaboration with Herbie Hancock, and a Grammy nomination in 1998 for its recording of Mozart piano concertos with Richard Goode. It also won the Ensemble of the Year award from Musical America in 1998.
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 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 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 works, chamber music, and orchestral performances. Of the 18 string and 10 wind players who comprise the basic membership of Orpheus, many also 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, Montclair State University, 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 Vivaldi; 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 Scholl (Decca); Creation, a jazz-inspired CD of classics from 1920s Paris with Marsalis (SONY Classical); and a critically acclaimed series of recordings of Mozart piano concertos with Goode (Nonesuch).
Denkwas a 1998 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, and in 1997 won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, both of which helped launch his national career as a recitalist and concerto soloist. He has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, and London Philharmonia, among others, and makes his debuts with the St. Louis, Houston, and San Francisco Symphonies next season. He will make his Carnegie Hall debut while touring as a soloist with Orpheus. He made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in April 1997 as the recipient of the Juilliard School’s Piano Debut Award, and since then has appeared regularly in recital in Boston, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
Denk is a member of the faculty of Bard College Conservatory of Music. He received both a bachelor’s in chemistry from Oberlin College and a bachelor of music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied with Joseph Schwartz. He earned a master’s degree in music from Indiana University as a pupil of György Sebök, and a doctorate in piano performance from the Juilliard School, where he worked with Herbert Stessin.
The 2006-2007 Performance Series at Lafayette is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, James Bradley Fund, and Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts.