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BMOP Performs the New York Premieres of Lei Liang's A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams and Andrew Norman's Play

Apr. 18, 2023

On April 15 at Carnegie Hall, The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, led by Gil Rose, performed the New York premieres of two Grawemeyer Award winning works that were commissioned by the orchestra: Andrew Norman's Play (2013/2016) and Lei Liang's A Thousand Mountains, a Million Streams (2017). The performance celebrated BMOP's 25th Anniversary and their groundbreaking work in commissioning and performing new music. Writing for The New York Times, Seth Colter Walls noted:

"The title of [the] concert, ‘Play It Again,’ was … a reminder that, unlike traditional orchestras—which often commission a new piece, play it once and then stuff the score in an archive—BMOP actually revisits the work it solicits and champions…. The artistic fruits of that approach were gratifyingly confirmed … sparkling contemporary music from artists who really know how to play it.”

   

Of A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, Lei Liang notes:

"A landscape emerges out of darkness, illuminated by an artist’s inner vision; distant contours, shapes, hints of color, and emptiness. As the viewer draws closer and closer to the landscape, lines and human presence begin to emerge, sounds to resonate, until we become one with each of its brush-strokes and ink splashes, with its every breath. The mountains are breathing, singing and roaring. The landscape vibrates, pulsates and dances; it takes flight; it stirs, swells, rises, grinds, surges, stretches and blooms; trembling, jolting, and collapsing, it breaks into fragments. ... Rain – drops and drops of rain – returns, to heal the landscape in ruin. A prayer, a resurrection, the rain brings life back to the landscapes, and it regains its gentle heartbeat.

A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams is a musical landscape that I painted with a sonic brush."


(A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, I. Mountain in Darkness and the Piercing Light/
Lei Liang/Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose, conductor)

Andrew Norman says of Play:

"I am fascinated by how instruments are played, and how the physical act of playing an instrument becomes potent theatrical material when we foreground it on stage at an orchestra concert. I'm also fascinated by how the orchestra, as a meta-instrument, is played, how its many moving parts and people can play with or against or apart from one another.While the world "play" certainly connotes fun and whimsy and a child-like exuberance, it can also hint at a darker side of interpersonal relationships, at manipulation, control, deceit, and the many forms of master-to-puppet dynamics one could possibly extrapolate from the composer-conductor-orchestra-audience chain of communication.Much of this piece is concerned with who is playing whom. The percussionists, for instance, spend a lot of their time and energy "playing" the rest of the orchestra (just as they themselves are "played" by the conductor, who in turn is "played" by the score). Specific percussion instruments act as triggers, turning on and off various players, making them (sometimes in a spirit of jest, sometimes not) play louder or softer, forwards or backwards, faster or slower. They cause the music to rewind and retry things, to jump back and forth in its own narrative structure, and to change channels entirely, all with an eye and ear toward finding a way out of the labyrinth and on to some higher level."


BMOP, led by Gil Rose, performs Andrew Norman's Play: Level 1 (2013)

To learn more about Lei Liang and Andrew Norman, visit schott-music.com.

Lei Liang
A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams (2017)
for orchestra
2(1.pic, 2.afl).2.2(2.bcl).2-2.2.1.btbn.1-3perc-hp.pno-10.str(10.10.8.6.6)
35'

Andrew Norman
Play (2013, rev. 2016)
for orchestra
3(2.,3.pic).2.ca.3(3.ebcl).3(3.cbsn)-4.3.2.tbtn.1-4perc-pno-str(16.14.12.10.8)
47' 

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