Sunday, May 4th, 2025 at 3:00 PM
BMOP presents Turning Point
Christopher Theofanidis This dream, strange and moving (1995)
Han Lash Zero Turning Radius, Concerto for Orchestra (2024) *
Jeremy Gill Four Legends from the Silmarillion (2023)*
- I. Ainulindalë
- II. Narsilion
- III. Tinúviel
- IV. Eärendil
Gil Rose, conductor
*World Premiere and commissioned by Boston Modern Orchestra Project
This concert is made possible with the generous support of Alice Ditson
Fund, Jody and Martin Grass, Lucy and Martin Murray, Conrad Cummings,
and an Anonymous donor.
Partial funding for this event was provided by the Recording Industry’s
Music Performance Trust Fund.
Celebrating the diversity, profundity, and versatility of the orchestra, composers Chris Theofanidis, Han Lash, and Jeremy Gill present virtuosic handlings of this enormous, instrumental assemblage, de- and re-constructing its history, sound, and power.
Exemplifying a complete mastery of orchestration is Chris Theofanidis’s This Dream, strange and moving (1995). Theofanidis speaks to his sensitivity to musical composition as a partner to the human mind: “Writing a piece of music is like creating a dream that you want to have. The feeling that pervades the work is one of a sense of mystery, and this sentiment is primarily conveyed through the harmonies and orchestration.”
Han Lash’s Zero Turning Radius began with a question (how can the orchestra continue to be relevant?); a challenge (“I must now do my utmost to remove a delimiting frame”); and a “prayer sent out to the future that the orchestra – such a beautiful, multi-limbed, amphibious creature – can be a playground in contexts and for musics that remain yet unimagined and can be created in any number of different ways.” This composition marks a threshold of ability for Lash’s compositional experience, a level at which the orchestra can now be wielded with both tremendous power and deftness. “Zero Turning Radius is about the joy of steering a powerful, enormous, and fleet entity like an orchestra: shifting and dancing, turning on a dime. The idea for the piece was inspired while using a zero turning radius mower.”
Jeremy Gill takes us behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, where there lies a quiet masterpiece, a mythological labyrinth of history, society, and power: The Silmarillion is J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumously published history of Middle-earth – that of the world in which the now more famous sagas take their course. After years of encouragement from a childhood friend, Gill has finally taken up the task of setting selected tales from The Silmarillion to music. Divided into four tone poems, the set presents “Ainulindalë” (Music of the Ainur), “Tolkien’s creation myth, in which the creation of our world is effected through music,” “Narsilion” (Song of the Sun and Moon), “Tinúviel” (the love saga of Beren and Lúthien), and “Eärendil” (the Mariner). Four Legends from the Silmarillion sojourns, in the vehicle of the symphonic tone poem, through a sprawling epic that spans from the unseen deeps of the ocean to “the uttermost rim of the world” – from the ultimate future to the “place among the stars… before the Earth was created.”
– from the words of Chris Theofanidis, Han Lash, and Jeremy Gill
Concert are subject to change
Composer
Han Lash
Jeremy Gill
