NJSO presents Lacombe’s final concerts as music director
Thu, June 9, at bergenPAC in Englewood
Sat, June 11, at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank
Sun, June 12, at NJPAC in Newark
- 2015–16 classical finale features Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé Suite No. 2 and La Valse
- Joyce Yang solos in Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto
- NJSO performs work by 2014 NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute composer Chris Rogerson
- NJSO Accents include chat with Rogerson, Prelude Performance
NEWARK, NJ (May 4, 2016)—The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Jacques Lacombe present the 2015–16 classical season finale—Lacombe’s final concerts as the Orchestra’s 13th music director—June 9–12 in Englewood, Red Bank and Newark. The concert features Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with guest pianist Joyce Yang and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé Suite No. 2 and La Valse. The program opens with Chris Rogerson’s Night in the City—a work the NJSO first performed at the inaugural NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute in 2014.
Performances take place on Thursday, June 9, at 7:30 pm at bergenPAC in Englewood; Saturday, June 11, at 8 pm at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank and Sunday, June 12, at 3 pm at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.
Music Director Jacques Lacombe says: “These are my farewell concerts as music director, and I wanted to really showcase the Orchestra. We’ve presented French music throughout the season, and on this program, we perform two works by one of my favorite composers, Maurice Ravel. Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with Joyce Yang, a wonderful artist, seemed like a great fit for the program.
“I also wanted to pay tribute to one of the things that I’ve done during my tenure with the NJSO—celebrating New Jersey’s musical culture through the New Jersey Roots Project, which led to the creation of the NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute in Princeton. I am looking forward to performing Institute composer Chris Rogerson’s Night in the City again; he is already such a well-accomplished composer, and he knows how to make the orchestra sound good. There’s a very youthful energy in his music, and yet it has a focus, purpose and a message that clearly carries through the piece.
“This program feels like coming full circle and looking back on what we’ve done together on this journey, celebrating the quality of the Orchestra and everything that’s happening in New Jersey.”
NJSO Accents include a pre-concert conversation with Rogerson about Night in the City in the Count Basie Theatre’s Carlton Lounge at 7 pm on June 11. A Prelude Performance beginning one hour before the June 12 concert at NJPAC features student musicians from the NJSO Academy.
Bank of America sponsors Lacombe’s last appearance as NJSO music director in each of the Orchestra’s six venues across the state. The concerts mark his final performances in Englewood, Red Bank and Newark; earlier this season, he led his final programs as NJSO music director in Morristown, Princeton and New Brunswick.
TICKETS
Tickets start at $20 and are available for purchase online at www.njsymphony.org or by phone at 1.800.ALLEGRO (255.3476).
THE PROGRAM
Lacombe Conducts Rachmaninoff & Ravel
Thursday, June 9, at 7:30 pm | bergenPAC in Englewood
Saturday, June 11, at 8 pm | Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank
Sunday, June 12, at 3 pm | NJPAC in Newark
Jacques Lacombe, conductor
Joyce Yang, piano
New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
ROGERSON Night and the City
RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 3
RAVEL La Valse
RAVEL Daphnis and Chloé Suite No. 2
Bank of America generously sponsors Jacques Lacombe’s final appearances this weekend.
Full program information is available at www.njsymphony.org/events/detail/lacombe-conducts-rachmaninoff-ravel.
NJSO ACCENTS
Inspired by the concerts and designed to inspire audiences, NJSO Accents are pre- or post-concert events that complement the concert experience and provide audience members with more opportunities to personally connect with the music and music makers. Learn more at www.njsymphony.org/accents.
Artist Chat—Sat, June 11, before the concert
Starting one hour before the concert in the Carlton Room (adjacent to the Box Office), chat with composer Chris Rogerson about his piece Night and the City and learn more about the NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute, where Rogerson was a member of the inaugural class.
Prelude Performance—Sun, June 12, before the concert
Enjoy live music in the lobby, spotlighting young musicians from the NJSO Academy.
The Prudential Foundation generously sponsors NJSO Accents in Newark.
THE ARTISTS
Jacques Lacombe, conductor
A remarkable conductor whose artistic integrity and rapport with orchestras have propelled him to international stature, Jacques Lacombe has been Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra since 2010 and of the Orchestre Symphonique de Trois-Rivières since 2006. After his finale season with the NJSO, he takes up the post of Chief Conductor of the Bonn Opera in Germany. He was previously Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and Music Director of orchestra and opera with the Philharmonie de Lorraine.
Lacombe has garnered critical praise for his creative programming and leadership of the NJSO. Time Out New York has named the Orchestra’s acclaimed Winter Festivals “an eagerly anticipated annual event” for their innovative content. The New York Times wrote, “It was an honor to be in the hall” for Lacombe’s NJSO performance of Busoni’s Piano Concerto with Marc-André Hamelin at the 2012 Spring for Music Festival at Carnegie Hall.
Lacombe began the 2015–16 season with the opening of the 75th season of the Tanglewood Music Festival in an All-American concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In addition to NJSO engagements, this season, Lacombe leads Werther with Juan Diego Florez, Joyce Di Donato and the Orchestre National de France; as well as introductory performances in Taiwan and Peru and his debut in Bonn with von Reznicek’s Holofernes.
In 2014, Lacombe launched the NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute for young composers, which grew out of the New Jersey Roots Project he introduced in his first season with the Orchestra. Recent NJSO highlights include the “Sounds of Shakespeare” Winter Festival, featuring both violinist Sarah Chang and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey; the theater company returned for the festival this January.
Lacombe appears regularly with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and at L’Opera de Monte Carlo. He has conducted several productions at the Metropolitan Opera and Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, as well as with opera companies in Vancouver, Turin, Marseille, Munich and Philadelphia.
He has appeared with the Cincinnati, Columbus, Québec, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras. This season, he returns to orchestras in Nice and Mulhouse, France, and debuts with orchestras in San Antonio, Omaha and Nancy, France.
Lacombe has recorded for the CPO and Analekta labels; he has recorded Verdi’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Janáček’s Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen with the NJSO. His performances have been broadcast on PBS, the CBC, Mezzo TV and Arte TV, among others.
Born in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Québec, Lacombe attended the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal and Hochschule für Musik in Vienna. He was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Québec in 2012 and a Member of the Order of Canada in 2013—among the highest civilian honors in the country.
Joyce Yang, piano
Pianist Joyce Yang came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. At 19 years old, she was the youngest contestant; she also took home the awards for Best Performance of Chamber Music and of a New Work. A Steinway artist, Yang received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2010.
Yang has performed with the New York, Los Angeles and BBC philharmonics; Philadelphia Orchestra and Chicago, Houston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Sydney symphony orchestras, among many others. She has worked with such distinguished conductors as James Conlon, Edo de Waart, Lorin Maazel, Peter Oundjian, David Robertson, Leonard Slatkin, Bramwell Tovey and Jaap van Zweden. Yang has appeared in recital at New York’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum, Washington’s Kennedy Center, Chicago’s Symphony Hall and Zurich’s Tonhalle.
In the 2015–16 season, Yang reunites with the New York Philharmonic under Bramwell Tovey for Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain; makes her New Jersey Symphony Orchestra debut; performs and records the world premiere of Michael Torke’s Piano Concerto (a piece created expressly for her and commissioned by the Albany Symphony) and plays Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Melbourne Symphony. Additional appearances showcasing her vast repertoire include performances with orchestras nationwide.
Born in Korea, Yang moved to the United States in 1997 to begin studies at the pre-college division of The Juilliard School. After winning the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Student Competition, she performed Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with that orchestra at just 12 years old. Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Chris Rogerson, composer
Composer Chris Rogerson has had works commissioned and performed by major orchestras in Atlanta, Buffalo, Charlotte, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Spokane. The Attacca, Brentano and JACK string quartets have all played his music. He is currently completing a two-year stint as composer-in-residence for the Amarillo Symphony and is a doctoral candidate in composition at Princeton University.
A graduate of the Curtis Institute and the Yale School of Music, Rogerson studied with Martin Bresnick, Jennifer Higdon and Aaron Jay Kernis. Currently represented by Young Concert Artists, Inc., he is the co-founder and artistic director of Kettle Corn Music, a new-music presenting organization in New York City. He participated in the inaugural Edward T. Cone Composition Institute, where Night and the City was workshopped and performed by Jacques Lacombe and the NJSO.
THE NEW JERSEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Named “a vital, artistically significant musical organization” by The Wall Street Journal, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra embodies that vitality through its statewide presence and critically acclaimed performances, education partnerships and unparalleled access to music and the Orchestra’s superb musicians.
Under the bold leadership of Music Director Jacques Lacombe, the NJSO presents classical, pops and family programs, as well as outdoor summer concerts and special events. Embracing its legacy as a statewide orchestra, the NJSO is the resident orchestra of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark and regularly performs at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, Richardson Auditorium in Princeton, Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown and bergenPAC in Englewood. Partnerships with New Jersey arts organizations, universities and civic organizations remain a key element of the Orchestra’s statewide identity.
In addition to its lauded artistic programming, the NJSO presents a suite of education and community engagement programs that promote meaningful, lifelong engagement with live music. Programs include school-time Concerts for Young People performances and multiple offerings—including the NJSO Youth Orchestras family of student ensembles and El Sistema-inspired NJSO CHAMPS (Character, Achievement and Music Project)—that provide and promote instrumental instruction as part of the NJSO Academy. The NJSO’s REACH (Resources for Education and Community Harmony) chamber music program annually brings original programs—designed and performed by NJSO musicians—to a variety of settings, reaching as many as 17,000 people in nearly all of New Jersey’s 21 counties.
For more information about the NJSO, visit www.njsymphony.org or email information@njsymphony.org. Tickets are available for purchase by phone 1.800.ALLEGRO (255.3476) or on the Orchestra’s website.
The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s programs are made possible in part by The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, along with many other foundations, corporations and individual donors.
PRESS CONTACT
National & NYC Press Representative:
Dan Dutcher, Dan Dutcher Public Relations | 917.566.8413 | dan@dandutcherpr.com
Regional Press Representative:
Victoria McCabe, NJSO Communications and External Affairs | 973.735.1715 | vmccabe@njsymphony.org
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