NEC Philharmonia + Carlos Miguel Prieto: Debussy, Ortiz, Copland

NEC: Jordan Hall | Directions

290 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA
United States

NEC Philharmonia, led by guest conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto,  performs two movements of Debussy's Nocturnes, Gabriela Ortiz' Téenek - Invenciones de Territorio (2017), and Aaron Copland's Third Symphony.
 

Carlos Miguel Prieto

Carlos Miguel Prieto was born into a musical family of Spanish and French descent in Mexico City. His charismatic conducting is characterised by its dynamism and the expressivity of his interpretations. Prieto is recognised as a highly influential cultural leader and is the foremost Mexican conductor of his generation. He has been the Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, the country’s most important orchestra, since 2007. Prieto has also been Music Director of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra since 2006, where he has led the cultural renewal of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In 2008 he was appointed Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, a hand-picked orchestra which performs a two-month long series of summer programmes in Mexico City. In 2022, Prieto was announced as Music Director Designate from 2022/23, and will begin his tenure in 2023/24. Recent highlights include engagements with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Hallé, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Spanish National Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Strasbourg Philharmonic and Auckland Philharmonia. Prieto is in great demand as a guest conductor with many of the top North American orchestras including Cleveland, Dallas, Toronto, Minnesota, Washington, New World and Houston Symphony, and has enjoyed a particularly close and successful relationship with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra. Since 2002, alongside Gustavo Dudamel, Prieto has conducted the Youth Orchestra of the Americas (YOA), which draws young musicians from the entire American continent. A staunch proponent of music education, Prieto served as Principal Conductor of the YOA from its inception until 2011 when he was appointed Music Director. In early 2010 he conducted the YOA alongside Valery Gergiev on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the World Economic Forum at Carnegie Hall. In 2018 he conducted the orchestra on a tour of European summer festivals, which included performances at the Rheingau and Edinburgh festivals as well as Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. He has also worked regularly with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the NYO2 in New York. Prieto is renowned for championing Latin American music, as well as his dedication to new music. He has conducted over 100 world premieres of works by Mexican and American composers, many of which were commissioned by him. Prieto places equal importance on championing works by Black and African American composers such as Florence Price, Margaret Bonds and Courtney Bryan, amongst others. Prieto has an extensive discography that covers labels including Naxos and Sony. Recent Naxos recordings include Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2 & Études tableaux Op.33, with Boris Giltburg and the RSNO, which won a 2018 Opus Klassik award and was listed as a Gramophone’s Critics’ Choice, 2017, and a recording of Korngold’s Violin Concerto with violinist Philippe Quint and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, which received two Grammy nominations. His recording of the Elgar and Finzi Violin Concertos with Ning Feng was released on Channel Classics in November 2018. Carlos Miguel Prieto was recognized by Musical America as the 2019 Conductor of the Year. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard universities, Prieto studied conducting with Jorge Mester, Enrique Diemecke, Charles Bruck and Michael Jinbo.

 

This is an in-person event with a private stream available to the NEC community here: https://necmusic.edu/live

  1. Claude Debussy | from Nocturnes, L. 98

    I. Nuages (Clouds)
    II. Fêtes (Festivals)

  2. Gabriela Ortiz | Téenek - Invenciones de Territorio (2017)

    Program note

    Téenek is the language spoken in the Huasteca region, which encompasses the states of Veracruz, Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Puebla, and Querétaro in Mexico. Its name means "local man," in reference to all the men and women who belong to a place whose mere existence determines their destinations in time and space: their territories. Indeed, in any region of the world, human beings from any given era determine a way of BEING that transcends through time and defines their relationship with their surroundings, no matter what their race, skin color, political borders, or socio-economic condition may be. We are all mortals, just as our domains, differences, borders, and possessions will eventually disappear if not in decades, over the course of centuries. In the end, human beings transcend such conditions and circumstances by simply BEING, by culturally existing, by everything that remains.
            Téenek is a sonorous metaphor of our transcendence, a strength that alludes to a future where there are no borders, but rather, a recognition of the actual particularities and differences between us that propitiate our development while at the same time, enriching and uplifting us. Music thus bears witness to a gradual history of matches and mismatches, of ancient cultures and new symbols, of ways to resist and comprehend the world by imagining sounds and senses, of that vital rhythm that lends meaning to the sense of belonging and roots that identify us culturally. Through the plain and simple idea of fitting in, of not dividing but rather, recognizing otherness, Téenek reflects on the importance of reaffirming identities through fragmentation.
            It is precisely because of this that Téenek is composed of a series of apparently dissimilar inventions which find their strength in their differences, enrichment, and musical development: these are interwoven and transformed over time in a discourse that demonstrates how the existence of borders may be diluted in pursuit of the powerful idea that our potential future lies in recognizing our differences.
    — Gabriela Ortiz

    Latin Grammy nominated Gabriela Ortiz is one of the foremost composers in Mexico today, and one of the most vibrant musicians emerging in the international scene. Her musical language achieves an extraordinary and expressive synthesis of tradition and the avant-garde; combining high art, folk music and jazz in novel, frequently refined and always personal ways. Her compositions are credited for being both entertaining and immediate as well as profound and sophisticated; she achieves a balance between highly organized structure and improvisatory spontaneity.
            Gustavo Dudamel, the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, called her recent work Téenek "one of the most brilliant I have ever directed. Its color, its texture, the harmony and the rhythm that it contains are all something unique. Gabriela possesses a particular capacity to showcase our Latin identity."
            Ortiz has written music for dance, theater and cinema, and has actively collaborated with poets, playwrights, and historians. Indeed, her creative process focuses on the connections between gender issues, social justice, environmental concerns and the burden of racism, as well as the phenomenon of multiculturality caused by globalization, technological development, and mass migrations. She has composed three operas, in all of which interdisciplinary collaboration has been a vital experience. Notably, these operas are framed by political contexts of great complexity, such as the drug war in Only the Truth, illegal migration between Mexico and the United States in Ana and her Shadow, and the violation of university autonomy during the student movement of 1968 in Firefly.
            Although based in Mexico, her music is commissioned and performed all over the world. Her music has been commissioned and played by prestigious ensembles, soloists and orchestras such as Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, The National Orchestra of Bretagne, The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Gustavo Dudamel and Esa Pekka Salonen, Louis Langrée, Paolo Bartolameolli, Maria Dueñas, Zoltan Kocsis, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Kroumata and Amadinda Percussion Ensembles, Kronos Quartet, Dawn Upshaw, Sarah Leonard, Steve Schick, Cuarteto Latino-americano, Pierre Amoyal, Southwest Chamber Music, Tambuco Percussion Quartet, The Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra, The Malmo Symphony Orchestra, Simon Bolivar Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony, and The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic among others.
            Recent premieres include: Kauyumari, Yanga and Téenek commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, Fractalis for piano and orchestra dedicated to Simon Ghraichy and commissioned by the National Orchestra of Brtegne, Luciérnaga (her third opera) commissioned and produced by the National University of Mexico, Únicamente la Verdad (her first opera) with Long Beach Opera and Opera de Bellas Artes in Mexico among others.
            World premieres in 2022 included: Clara for orchestra commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Altar de Cuerda for violin and orchestra commissioned by The Los Angeles Philharmonic and dedicated to María Dueñas, and Tzam for orchestra commissioned by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
            Ortiz has been honored with the National Prize for Arts and Literature, (the most important award for writers and artists given by the government of Mexico), The Mexican Academy of Arts, The Bellagio Center Residency Program, Civitella Ranieri Artistic Residency; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; the Fulbright Fellowship; the First prize of the Silvestre Revueltas National Chamber Music Competition, the First Prize at the Alicia Urreta Composition Competition; Banff Center for the Arts Residency; the Inroads Commission, a program of Arts International with funds from the Ford Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mozart Medal Award.
            In 2022 Ortiz´s was been appointed curator of the Pan-American Music Initiative along with The Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel.
            Born in Mexico City her parents were musicians in the famous folk music ensemble Los Folkloristas founded in 1966 to preserve and record the traditional music of Mexico and Latin America. She trained with the eminent composer Mario Lavista at the National Conservatory of Music and Federico Ibarra at the National University of Mexico. In 1990 she was awarded the British Council Fellowship to study in London with Robert Saxton at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1992 she received the University of Mexico Scholarship to complete Ph.D. studies in electroacoustic music composition with Simon Emmerson at The City University in London.
            She currently teaches composition at the Mexican University of Mexico City. Her music has been published by Saxiana Presto and Tre Fontane. From 2022 her music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.            

  3. INTERMISSION

  4. Aaron Copland | Third Symphony

    Molto moderato
    Allegro molto
    Andantino quasi allegretto
    Molto deliberato

  5. Personnel

    First Violin
    Joshua Brown
    Youngji Choi
    Anna Junghyun Lee
    Claire Byeol Kim
    Yiliang Jiang
    Aidan Ip
    Wangrui Ray Xu
    Yulia Watanabe-Price
    Anatol Toth
    Tsubasa Muramatsu
    Hyeon Hong
    Theresa Katz
    Stella Ju
    SooBeen Lee

    Second Violin
    Clayton Hancock
    Nick Hammel
    Minami Yoshida
    Eric Chen
    Tiffany Chang
    Seunghee Lee
    Masha Lakisova
    Hanks Tsai
    Angela Sin Ying Chan
    Caroline Jesalva
    Natalie Boberg
    Felicitas Schiffner

    Viola
    Aidan Garrison
    Chiau-Rung Chun
    Elton Tai
    Kwong Man To
    Yeh-Chun Lin
    Yi Chia Chen
    Junghyun Ahn
    Lydia Plaut
    Sophia Tseng
    Rituparna Mukherjee
    Cara Pogossian
    Ayano Nakamura

    Cello
    Ga-Yeon Kim
    Soobin Kong
    Nicholas Tsang
    Adi Muralidharan
    Andres Sanchez-Linares
    Lexine Feng
    Travis Scharer
    Isaac Berglind
    Yi-I Stephanie Yang
    Josephina YK Kim

    Bass
    Daniel Slatch
    Yihan Wu
    Christopher Laven
    Minyi Wang
    Shion Kim
    Chiyang Chen

    Flute
    Javier Castro ‡
    Anne Chao *  
    Jeong Won Choe
    Elizabeth Kleiber
    Amelia Libbey  
    Yang Liu §

    Piccolo
    Jeong Won Choe *
    Elizabeth Kleiber
    Amelia Libbey
    Elizabeth McCormack §‡

    Alto Flute
    Amelia Libbey  

    Oboe
    Dane Bennett ‡
    Kian Hirayama §
    So Jeong Kim
    Alexander Lenser
    Nathalie Vela *

    English horn
    Dane Bennett §
    Alexander Lenser *‡

    Clarinet
    Tyler J. Bourque ‡
    Tristan Broadfoot
    Hyunwoo Chun *
    Chenrui Lin
    Soyeon Park §
    Erica Smith

    E-flat Clarinet
    Tristen Broadfoot

    Bass Clarinet
    Hyunwoo Chun §
    Soyeon Park ‡
     
    Bassoon
    Zoe Beck §
    Andrew Brooks
    Andrew Flurer
    Matthew Heldt
    Evan Judson ‡
    Julien Rollins *

    Contrabassoon
    Andrew Brooks §
    Andrew Flurer ‡

    French horn
    Xiang Li
    Yeonjo Oh
    Willow Otten §
    Paolo Rosselli ‡
    Tasha Schapiro *
    Jenna Stokes

    Trumpet
    Jake Baldwin ‡
    Daniel Barak §  
    Sarah Heimberg
    Eddy Lanois
    Reynolds Martin
    David O’Neill *

    Trombone
    Eli Canales §
    Puyuan Chen ‡
    Alex Knutrud *
    Quinn McGillis

    Bass Trombone
    Roger Dahlin *§
    Chance Gompert ‡

    Tuba
    Jimmy Curto §‡
    David Stein *

    Timpani
    Ross Jarrell §
    Michael Rogers ‡
    Jeff Sagurton *

    Percussion
    Ross Jarrell ‡
    Doyeon Kim
    Eli Reisz §
    Michael Rogers
    Jeff Sagurton
    Leigh Wilson *

    Harp
    Yvonne Cox *‡
    Shaylen Joos §

    Keyboard
    Kyuree Kim, piano ‡
    Rafe Schaberg §
    Lihyeon Kim, celeste ‡
    Ranfei Wang, celeste §



    Principal players
    *Debussy
    §Ortiz
    ‡Copland

     

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