The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation's leading orchestra dedicated exclusively to performing, commissioning, and recording new music, will present its final concert of the 2009-10 season, Full Score, at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall (30 Gainsborough Street), on Friday, May 28 at 8:00pm. After three instrument-centric performances ("Big Bang" for percussion, "Band in Boston" for winds, and "Strings Attached" for strings), the BMOP season will culminate with a full orchestral program uniting over 70 musicians and guest baritone Sanford Sylvan. With a continued commitment to providing diversified programming of important 20th- and 21st-century music, Gil Rose, BMOP's Artistic Director, is thrilled to present a season finale of both perennial and recent compositions: "We're very excited to close our 13th season with this concert of exciting works for full symphony orchestra, including the voices of both American masters and younger composers. It's a perfect microcosm of BMOP's mission."
The program will open with Anthony De Ritis's Legerdemain (1993-94), an acoustic orchestration of electronic music improvisations. The performance will include five strategically placed microphones, the signals of each which are controlled and processed in real-time by a keyboardist MIDI'd to a Macintosh computer. A vast departure from the electro-acoustic opener, is Leon Kirchner's Orchestra Piece (Music for Orchestra II) (1990), a kaleidoscopic work that evolved from a short piece the late Harvard professor wrote in celebration of Leonard Bernstein's 70th birthday. Also echoed is the music of Stravinsky and Schoenberg, in its fiery and unrestrained implementation of brass, percussion, and strings.
New England Conservatory faculty composer Kati Agócs will see the U.S. premiere of her richly orchestrated Requiem Fragments (2008), a commission from the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver. Highlighting the evening is Grammy and Emmy Award-winning baritone, Sanford Sylvan, who will be making his third appearance with BMOP. He will be performing Steven Stucky's American Muse, for baritone and orchestra (1999) and the important Boston-based composer, Martin Boykan's largest symphonic work, Symphony, for baritone and orchestra (1989). In American Muse, Stucky borrows texts from literary greats John Berryman, E.E. Cummings, A.R. Ammons, and Walt Whitman, and integrates them into a traditional song cycle, which concentrates on national character and the American experience.