European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

ICE Presents North American Premiere of Jonathan Harvey’s Bird Concerto with Pianosong

Jun. 28, 2012

ICE Presents North American Premiere of Jonathan Harvey’s <em>Bird Concerto with Pianosong</em>

New York City’s premiere summer music festival, Mostly Mozart, touts an avian theme this year with its “Jubilant Birdsong” series. Between August 5 and 12, the formidable International Contemporary Ensemble, or ICE, will perform several ornithologically-inspired programs featuring works by Olivier Messiaen and Jonathan Harvey in concerts at the Park Avenue Armory, Rose Theater and Alice Tully Hall’s Starr Theater. The series of program will also include a panel discussion, film screening, and sound installation.

On August 5, Susanna Mälkki conducts ICE in Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques for solo piano, winds and percussion, with Nicholas Hodges as soloist. Completed in 1956, Oiseaux Exotiques' expressive catalogue of birdsong draws vast material from Messiaen’s careful transcriptions. The program also features his late and compact Pièce for piano and string quartet.

Jonathan Harvey’s Bird Concerto with Pianosong for solo piano, orchestra and live electronics, will receive its North American premiere on August 11 with ICE led by conductor Jayce Ogren and soloist Joanna MacGregor. The piece, requiring simultaneous performance by the soloist of both piano and recorded bird samples, was written on MacGregor’s request and commissioned by Sinfonia 21, GRAME/Ensemble Orchestrale Contemporain, and the French Ministere de Culture.

Harvey describes his ambition in creating such a unique work:

Birds embody not only the joy of endless singing but also the freedom of the body's flight. The orchestra, like the birds, would have to wing its way through the bright air. Birds also use quasi-electronic frequency modulation in their cries and songs. I took their hint and copied their tricks in the electronic modulations of the orchestra. If the songs and objects of the score can bring some inkling of how it might feel to be a human in the mind of a bird, or vice-versa, then I would be happy.

ICE rounds out the series on August 12 with a performance of Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and electronics. Commissioned by Philip Mead and funded by Eastern Arts, Harvey describes the work as “a modest offering in response to the death of a great musical and spiritual presence.”

Listen to a free streaming excerpt of Bird Concerto with Pianosong on WQXR here.

Details on the life and work of Jonathan Harvey are located at www.fabermusic.com.

For more information on Olivier Messiaen, please visit www.universaledition.com

Concert information on Mostly Mozart and the Jubilant Birdsong series, can be found at www.mostlymozart.org.

Olivier Messiaen
Oiseaux Exotiques (1955-56)
for piano and small orchestra
2.1.4.1-2.1.0.0-7perc
16’

Piece (1991)
for piano and string quartet
3’

Jonathan Harvey
Bird Concerto with Pianosong (2001)
for solo piano, chamber orchestra and live electronics
pic.ob.2cl(2.cbcl).bsn-hn.tpt.tbn-2perc-hp.acc-str(1.1.1.1.1)
30’

Tombeau de Messiaen (1994)
for piano and electronics
9’

News