Composer Mohammed Fairouz’s 2014-2015 season brings seven world premieres, notable performances of the young composer’s works in the US and around the world
Fairouz’s Deutsche Grammophon debut album with Ensemble LPR, Evan Rogister and Kate Lindsey to be released January 27, 2015
“One of the most talented composers of his generation.” BBC World News
“A post-millennial Schubert.” Gramophone
August 13, 2014 – For 28-year-old Arab American composer Mohammed Fairouz, the 2014-15 season is filled with performances of his chamber, vocal and orchestral works by some of the country’s leading artists including seven world premieres and his debut album on the Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Classics label.
Deutsche Grammophon Debut Album out January 27 On January 27, 2015, Deutsche Grammophon will release a new album of works by Mohammed Fairouz, marking the composer’s debut on the Yellow Label, and the first in Universal Music Classics’ Return to Language series. Produced by David Frost, the album includes the elegiac song cycle Audenesque sung by Kate Lindsey, and the ballet Sadat. Both works feature the Ensemble LPR conducted by Evan Rogister.
Seven World Premieres
Highlights of the Fairouz’s season include seven world premiere performances of repertoire ranging from chamber music, to songs – for voice and flute, voice and wind quintet, and chorus – to a full-scale opera-oratorio for large chorus, soloists and orchestra.
* Locales, Fairouz’s tribute to the cosmopolitanism embodied in the world’s great cities is written for oboe and string trio and will be presented by oboist Ian Shafer at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall in November 2014.
* Kaplansbündlertanz, for pianist David Kaplan will be performed in late November in a program entitled “The Schumann Project: New Dances of the League of David” to be presented by the Metropolis Ensemble at the Irish Historical Society.
* Deep Rivers, for baritone and wind quintet, will be presented by Clefworks in Montgomery, Alabama in March, commemorating the 50^th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Freedom Marches and the 150^th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Written for the GRAMMY-nominated Imani Winds, the piece sets the profoundly moving poetry by Langston Hughes (The Negro Speaks of Rivers; Let America be America Again), the Negro Soldier’s Civil War Chant, and the traditional American spiritual Deep River with a new melody by Fairouz.
* The Second Coming, a setting of the apocalyptic poem by W.B. Yeats, will be premiered by the Young New Yorker’s Chorus under the direction of Michael Kerschner on March 10^th at New York’s Merkin Hall. Alongside that premiere, the chorus will perform Fairouz’s first oratorio, Anything Can Happen, based on Apocalyptic texts selected for the work by Yeats’s fellow Irishman, poet Seamus Heaney.
* Mohammed Fairouz’s dramatic oratorio Zabur (http://eepurl.com/WtVmb?utm_source=01-14-09_Contacts&utm_campaign=ef2f1174e3-Mohammed+Fairouz&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1497688fe3-ef2f1174e3-59975090) will receive its world premiere by the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in April of 2015. Commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir with a consortium comprised of Jewish, Christian and Islamic congregational partners, the large-scale oratorio takes its name from the Arabic title for the Psalms of David. The work is scored for large chorus, children's choir, soloists and orchestra and sets several of the Arabic psalms within the context of an original libretto by Najla Saïd. Saïd re-imagines King David as a poet living and writing in the upheaval of the contemporary Middle East.
* A new song cycle on Wallace Stevens’s poetry exploring his complex relationship to Florida and the natural world will premiere on May 7 at New York’s SubCulture. The performance will feature flutist Claire Chase and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo.
* Fairouz’s ballet Sadat – snapshots from the extraordinary life of the late Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat – will be premiered by the Mimesis Ensemble at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall on May 27 following the work’s recorded premiere on Fairouz’s Universal Music Classics/Deutsche Grammophon debut album out in January.
Additional highlights of the 2014-15 season will include performances by Rachel Barton Pine, Del Sol Quartet and Kathleen Supové, a tour of his Kol Nidrei by cellist Maya Beiser, performances of the opera Sumeida’s Song by the Pittsburgh Opera and his Violin Concerto by Chloë Hanslip and the Reno Philharmonic. A complete list of performance dates and details is below and at http://mohammedfairouz.com/calendar/?utm_source=01-14-09_Contacts&utm_campaign=ef2f1174e3-Mohammed+Fairouz&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1497688fe3-ef2f1174e3-59975090.
In March of 2015, Oxford University Press will release a new volume by author Robert Raines entitled Composition in the Digital World: Conversations with 21st Century American Composers. Raines devotes a chapter of the book to the life and work thus far of Mohammed Fairouz.
About Mohammed Fairouz
Mohammed Fairouz, born in 1985, is one of the most frequently performed, commissioned, and recorded composers of his generation. Hailed by The New York Times as “an important new artistic voice” and by BBC World News as “one of the most talented composers of his generation,” Fairouz integrates Middle-Eastern modes into Western structures, to deeply expressive effect. His large-scale works, including four symphonies and an opera, engage major geopolitical and philosophical themes with persuasive craft and a marked seriousness of purpose. His most recent symphony, In the Shadow of No Towers for wind ensemble, was described by Steve Smith of The New York Times as “technically impressive, consistently imaginative and in its finest stretches deeply moving.” His solo and chamber music attains an “intoxicating intimacy,” according to New York’s WQXR. Fairouz has been described by Gramophone as “a post-millennial Schubert” and Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called his debut opera Sumeida’s Song “intensely dramatic [with] a searing score.” Commissions have come from orchestras, chamber ensembles, and solo performers alike. Recordings of his work are available on the Naxos, Innova, Bridge, Dorian Sono Luminus, Cedille, Albany, GM/Living Archive, New Focus and GPR labels. His principal teachers in composition have included György Ligeti, Gunther Schuller, and Richard Danielpour, with studies at the Curtis Institute and New England Conservatory. Fairouz’s works are published by Peermusic Classical. He lives in New York City.
To learn more about Mohammed Fairouz, visit www.MohammedFairouz.com (http://mohammedfairouz.com/?utm_source=01-14-09_Contacts&utm_campaign=ef2f1174e3-Mohammed+Fairouz&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1497688fe3-ef2f1174e3-59975090) .
Upcoming Events for 2014-2015
September 21, 2014
Kaplansbündlertanz (world premiere)
David Kaplan, piano, Lyrica Chamber Music Chatham Township, NJ Presbyterian Church of Chatham Township
October 9, 2014
Symphony No. 4, In the Shadow of No Towers (Boston Premiere) Boston University Wind Ensemble (conducted by David Martins) Boston, MA Tsai Performance Center
October 27, 2014
A Prayer to the New Year, Refugee Blues & Tahwidah Mimesis Ensemble New York, NY Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall
November 1, 2014
Various Songs and Piano Works, The Artists Sessions Lara Downes San Francisco, CA Asian Art Museum
November 8, 2014
Kol Nidrei
Maya Beiser, cello
Washington, DC
Washington Performing Arts, Sixth and I Historic Synagogue
http://www.sixthandi.org/?utm_source=01-14-09_Contacts&utm_campaign=ef2f1174e3-Mohammed+Fairouz&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1497688fe3-ef2f1174e3-59975090 (http://www.sixthandi.org/?utm_source=01-14-09_Contacts&utm_campaign=ef2f1174e3-Mohammed+Fairouz&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1497688fe3-ef2f1174e3-59975090)
November 9, 2014
Piano Sonata No. 2, “The Last Resistance/The Named Angels/Piano Miniatures 1-17 Del Sol Quartet/Lara Downes Sacramento, CA Festival of New American Music
November 2014
Locales (world premiere)
Ian Shafer, oboe
New York, NY
Weill Hall – Carnegie Hall
November 2014
Kaplansbündlertanz
David Kaplan
New York, NY
Irish Historical Society