This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only.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 will take the stage with British tenor Ian Bostridge for “Serenades” 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 4 in the Williams Center for the Arts.
Update: Stanford Olsen Replaces Ian Bostridge as Guest Performer for Orpheus
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.
The concert opens with Mozart’s “Posthorn” Serenade, K. 320. The performance also will include Bohuslav Martinu’s Serenade for Chamber Orchestra. Created in 1930 during the composer’s extended stay in Paris, the work is marked by jaunty elements of his native Czechoslovakia and the impressionistic palette of France.
The orchestra’s special guest, Bostridge, will be featured in Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, a beautiful work shaped around poetic gems by Jonson, Blake, Keats, Tennyson, and others. Bostridge, featured in an acclaimed Perspectives Series last spring at Carnegie Hall, has been praised by The New Yorker as “a lyric tenor of uncanny focus and intensity.”
Bostridge studied philosophy and history at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, receiving his doctorate from the latter in 1990. Having won the 1991 National Federation of Music Societies/Esso Award and gained support from the Young Concert Artists’ Trust, he embarked on a full-time career as a singer in 1995. His first solo disc was Schumann: Liederkreis/Dichterliebe, accompanied by the pianist Julius Drake as the first in a series of recitals, released in February 1998.
Bostridge’s recent seasons included recitals in Paris, London, Stockholm, Lisbon, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Vienna. In North America, he has appeared in recitals in New York at the Frick Collection, the Alice Tully Hall, and made his Carnegie Hall debut under Sir Neville Marriner. Bostridge’s most recent performances include Haydn’s Die Schöpfung under James Levine at Carnegie Hall, Britten’s War Requiem in Chicago under Mstislav Rostropovich, Mozart’s Requiem in Berlin under Daniel Barenboim, and Bach’s St. John Passion in Paris and London with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Simon Rattle. He also has appeared in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at the Munich Festival and gives recitals at the Salzburg and Edinburgh Festivals.
Among his many accolades are a 1998 Gramophone Award for best solo vocal recording for Schumann: Dichterliebe and the prestigious La Monde de la Musique – Choc de l’Annee for Britten: Our Hunting Fathers. Several of his CDs have been recognized as CD of the week by various publications. Bostridge also has been awarded the Time Out Classical Music Award, Critics’ Choice Classical Brit Award, and Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
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 with guest Emanuel Ax Oct. 10 and a performance of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos with guest pianist Jeremy Denk Nov. 29.
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, three 1999 Grammy Awards 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, 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; Creation, a jazz-inspired CD of classics from 1920s Paris with Marsalis; and a critically acclaimed series of recordings of Mozart piano concertos with Goode.
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.