Orpheus' Summer 2022 Season

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Summer 2022 Season

For immediate release

• PBS All Arts will air and stream a special performance of Beethoven’s Egmont, Op. 84 performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, sung by Karen Slack, and narrated by Liev Schreiber

• Club Orpheus launches with a performance featuring violinist Charles Yang at Brooklyn’s MÔTÔ Spirits in collaboration with Groupmuse

• Newport Classical opens its summer season with Orpheus and violinist Chad Hoopes

• Orpheus performs Schoenberg’s “Kammersinfonie,” a fan favorite among Orpheus’s sweeping recorded repertoire, at the TIME:SPANS Festival

• Vadim Gluzman joins Orpheus for three performances, at Blossom Music Festival, Ravinia, and Manchester Music Festival

For Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, summertime is an opportunity for exploration, spending time with old and new friends, and reflecting on past experiences. This summer, Orpheus returns to old classics, delves into new works, and collaborates with captivating soloists while traveling to exciting locations. While engaging audiences in new ways this summer, Orpheus continues to produce music honoring collaboration, commitment, and shared artistry.

PBS All Arts will air a special program of Beethoven's “Egmont, Op. 84,” recorded in October 2020 with Orpheus, the luminous voice of soprano Karen Slack, and with narration from Tony/Golden Globe/Emmy Award-winning actor Liev Schreiber. Together, the musicians perform Beethoven’s fiery score while Schreiber revives Goethe’s play Egmont, a story of freedom and national liberation, in a new and more timely, Orpheus-commissioned English translation by Philip Boehm. PBS will offer on-demand streaming through its website.

On June 30, MÔTÔ Spirits in Bushwick, Brooklyn and Groupmuse will host Orpheus alongside the genre-bending violinist Charles Yang in an evening that unites timeless classics with new and original works. The night showcases Vaughn William’s “The Lark Ascending,” Gregg August’s “Variations on a Theme by Pérotin,” and a selection of original compositions by Yang. Additionally, the evening launches “Club Orpheus”, an exciting initiative offering a variety of pop-up club concerts to be announced throughout the upcoming season. MÔTÔ Spirits is the first of these innovative concerts, offering an intimate and less conventional environment to celebrate classical music.

Orpheus’ second concert of the summer will be held at Newport Classical in Newport, RI on July 1, with acclaimed violinist Chad Hoopes. The program includes Geminiani’s “La Follia” arranged by Michi Wiankco, Adolphus Hailstork’s “Sonata Da Chiesa,” and Vivaldi’s eternally-beloved “The Four Seasons” in collaboration with Hoopes, and performed using authentic Baroque bows.

In New York, Orpheus will perform Schoenberg’s Kammersinfonie on August 13 at the TIME:SPANS Festival . The program commences with Amy Williams’ “Telephone,” followed by Felipe Lara’s “Metafagote” performed by bassoonist Rebekah Heller and electronics musician Maciej Lewandowski, preceding Orpheus’s interpretation Kammersinfonie, which in its recorded version was celebrated by Gramophone: “...and the playing more characterful, the exemplary attention to detail never hindering appreciation of the larger structure. The Orpheus performance sustains the tensions and relishes the pungencies of this quirky yet cogent music with an ideal blend of wit and pathos.” The orchestra’s rendition, scored for 15 chamber musicians, explores the astonishing complexities of Schoenberg’s 22 minute score, once noted by Orpheus oboist James Austin Smith as “the future of music and an artistic challenge Orpheus is proud to undertake.”

Orpheus joins violinist Vadim Gluzman at three acclaimed venues, including Blossom Music Festival on August 27, Ravinia on August 29, and Manchester Music Festival on September 1. The program comprises Orpheus’ previous lineup of “La Follia,” “Sonata Da Chiesa,” and “The Four Seasons” with Gluzman’s collaboration, whose interpretation keeps “every moment fresh and alive with an unusual vigor” as noted by the Herald-Tribune.

ABOUT ORPHEUS

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a radical experiment in musical democracy, proving for fifty years what happens when exceptional artists gather with total trust in each other and faith in the creative process. Orpheus began in 1972 when cellist Julian Fifer assembled a group of New York freelancers in their early twenties to play orchestral repertoire as if it were chamber music. In that age of co-ops and communes, the idealistic Orpheans snubbed the “corporate” path of symphony orchestras and learned how to play, plan and promote concerts as a true collective, with leadership roles rotating from the very first performance.

It’s one thing for the four players of a string quartet to lean into the group sound and react spontaneously, but with 20 or 30 musicians together, the complexities and payoffs get magnified exponentially. Within its first decade, Orpheus made Carnegie Hall its home and became a global sensation through its tours Europe and Asia. Its catalogue of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch and other labels grew to include more than 70 albums that still stand as benchmarks of the chamber orchestra repertoire, including Haydn symphonies, Mozart concertos, and twentieth-century gems by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ravel and Bartók.

The sound of Orpheus is defined by its relationships, and guest artists have always been crucial partners in the process. Orpheus brings the best out of its collaborators, and those bonds deepen over time, as heard in the long arc of music-making with soloists such as Richard Goode and Branford Marsalis, and in the commitment to welcoming next-generation artists including Nobyuki Tsujii and Tine Thing Helseth. Breaking down the barriers of classical repertoire, partnerships with Brad Mehldau, Wayne Shorter, Ravi Shankar and many others from the sphere of jazz and beyond have redefined what a chamber orchestra can do. Relationships with composers and dozens of commissions have been another crucial way that Orpheus stretches itself, including a role for Jessie Montgomery as the orchestra’s first ever Artistic Partner. Having proven the power of direct communication and open-mindedness within the ensemble, the only relationship Orpheus has never had any use for is one with a conductor.

At home in New York and in the many concert halls it visits in the U.S. and beyond, Orpheus begins its next fifty years with a renewed commitment to enriching and reflecting the surrounding community. It will continue its groundbreaking work with those living with Alzheimer’s Disease through Orpheus Reflections, and the Orpheus Academy as well as the Orpheus Leadership Institute spread the positive lessons of trust and democracy to young musicians and those in positions of power. Each year, Access Orpheus reaches nearly 2000 public school students in all five boroughs of New York City, bringing music into their communities and welcoming them to Carnegie Hall. Always evolving as artists and leaders, the Orpheus musicians carry their legacy forward, counting on their shared artistry and mutual respect to make music and effect change.

PBS All Arts Performance Selects

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra performs Beethoven’s Egmont With Karen Slack and Narration by Liev Schreiber

Groupmuse Presents Charles Yang x Orpheus, Club Orpheus Launches
Thursday, June 30 - 7:30pm EDT
MÔTÔ Spirits Distillery - Brooklyn, NY

Charles Yang, violin

Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending
Gregg August - Variations On A Theme By Pérotin
Charles Yang - Loopy
Charles Yang - Streets of Berlin

Orpheus & Chad Hoopes 
Friday, July 1
Newport Classical, Newport, RI - 8:00 pm EDT

Geminiani (arr. Michi Wiankco) - La Follia
Adolphus Hailstork - Sonata Da Chiesa
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons with Chad Hoopes, violin

TIME:SPANS Festival
Saturday, August 13 - 7:30pm EDT
New York, NY

Amy Williams - Telephone
Felipe Lara - Metafagote (Rebekah Heller and Maciej Lewandowski)
Schoenberg - Kammersinfonie - Op. 9 (Chamber Symphony No. 1)

Orpheus & Vadim Gluzman
Blossom Music Festival
Saturday, August 27 - 8:00pm EDT
Cuyahoga Falls, OH

Geminiani (arr. Michi Wiankco) - La Follia
Adolphus Hailstork - Sonata Da Chiesa
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons with Vadim Gluzman, violin

Orpheus & Vadim Gluzman
Ravinia 
Monday, August 29 - 7:30pm CDT
Highland Park, IL

Geminiani (arr. Michi Wiankco) - La Follia
Adolphus Hailstork - Sonata Da Chiesa
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons with Vadim Gluzman, violin

Orpheus & Vadim Gluzman
Manchester Music Festival 
Thursday, September 1 - 7:30pm EDT
Manchester, VT

Geminiani (arr. Michi Wiankco) - La Follia
Adolphus Hailstork - Sonata Da Chiesa
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons with Vadim Gluzman, violin

Grace Robinson
grace@wildkatpr.com

+1 517 648 2339