BMOP Features Frog, Two Cellos & Violin

With their now customary elan and enterprise, Gil Rose and Boston Modern Orchestra Project enlightened, stretched, and amused the audience Friday evening with its concert in Jordan Hall. “Trouble” reflected at least two nuances of the programming: an engaging work of that very name by Vijay Iyer (b.1971), played fearlessly and flawlessly by guest violinist Jennifer Koh, and a 1966 example by Lucas Foss’s Cello Concert (1966), played equally stunningly by Opera Boston’s principal cellist David Russell.

Media Date 
December 5, 2018
Media Source 
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Contact Name 
John Ehrlich
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Haroun and the Sea of Stories a surreal, timely treat

Those of you who are faithful Schmopera readers will likely recall that, when I reviewed Brokeback Mountain at the conclusion of last year’s New York City Opera season, I pointed at the paradox of Wuorinen’s highly dissonant score used to depict a romance, and the ways that paradox works in that opera’s favor. At the time, I figured it was a logical choice, considering how Annie Proulx’s prose worked to set up such a paradox.

Media Date 
January 20, 2019
Media Source 
Schmopera
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Contact Name 
Arturo Fernandez
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Through a Storm to Haroun

Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s innovative semi-staged concert production of the complex, rich and fanciful two-act opera, Haroun and the Sea of Stories deserved more than the single Boston premiere performance Saturday at Jordan Hall. The multiple levels and nested plots of the story have so much depth that listeners need multiple iterations fully to appreciate the work. Based on the children’s novel by Salman Rushdie, with 12-tone music by the contemporary American composer Charles Wuorinen and intricate libretto by James Fenton, a renowned British poet and friend of Rushdie, this satirical 2004 work was created in the post 9-11 era, yet it is even more than relevant to our times. Opera News entitled a conversation about the New York City Opera’s opening night as a “Fearsome Fairyland;” their writer Leighton Kerner had interviewed Wuorinen and Rushdie together, and that seems apt. Gil Rose made use of all of the score’s electricity, eerie sounds, fright, joy and fancy to go along with a production replete with bright costumes, mechanical birds, water genies and beautifully bizarre beasts.

Media Date 
January 20, 2019
Media Source 
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Contact Name 
Julie Ingelfinger
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Music Across Generations and Culture

Composers who were born in China, studied music both in their homeland and in the U.S., and remained here to build their careers have become a distinct current within the chaotic ocean of 20th- and 21st-century American music.

Media Date 
April 25, 2018
Media Source 
The Wall Street Journal
Media Location 
New York, NY
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Composers with connections to both the U.S. and China have found a distinct place in contemporary music highlighted by a recent concert by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Media Contact Name 
Allan Kozinn

BMOP's Mission Still Excites

With a thoughtful and absorbing tribute bringing four works by “American Masters,” the Boston Modern Orchestra Project opened its season at Jordan Hall on Saturday night. Founder and director Gil Rose celebrates the 20th year of this very active orchestra this year.  The concert especially excited me for two reasons: seldom-heard orchestral works by four Americans, and a gesture in memory of Steven Stucky, who died unexpectedly earlier this year. Robert Kirzinger of the BSO gave an able and helpful talk about the music before the concert began.

Media Date 
October 10, 2016
Media Source 
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 
Media Contact Name 
Mark DeVoto
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Rose, BMOP wax ecstatic in glorious, unsettling ‘Alice’

Let’s say for the sake of context that I first became aware of the American composer David Del Tredici and his extensive string of extensive works based on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” fantasies through a 1983 recording of “In Memory of a Summer Day,” the first part of a larger work, “Child Alice” (1977-81). It’s fair to say that I’d been waiting three decades to hear “Child Alice” in full. The opportunity came at last on Friday in a concert presented at Jordan Hall by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project to conclude its 20th-anniversary season.

Media Date 
March 26, 2016
Media Source 
The Boston Globe
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Contact Name 
Steve Smith

Alice Project From Essential Modern Orchestra

The capacity crowd at Jordan Hall Friday night knew they were gathered for an Event. For only the second time, and probably the last time in his lifetime, composer David Del Tredici heard his complete Child Alice, the hugest and most elaborate of his many settings from Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. Thanks to the generosity of the Recording Industry’s Music Performance Trust Fund, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s superb show with soprano Courtenay Budd under the direction of Gil Rose was free.

Media Date 
March 27, 2016
Media Source 
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Media Location 
Boston, MA
Media 
Media Contact Name 
Vance R. Koven

American Record Guide reviews Fantastic Mr. Fox

Boston's Jordan Hall was host to a concert version of Tobias Picker's 1998 setting of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox on December 7. A good-sized crowd from very young to older folks had assembled to hear Gil Rose lead his two ensembles, Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera, in a costumed semi-staged performance of this "family opera". Picker prefers to use this term to describe his morality tale, fearing that "children's opera" is a term frightened with an assumption of "dumbing-down".

Media Date 
March 1, 2015
Media Source 
American Record Guide
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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If all the charm of the Jordan Hall performance is captured in digital form, it is sure to delight listeners of any age.

Media Contact Name 
John Ehrlich

Moravec’s stunning “Blizzard Voices” receives powerful premiere from BMOP

Disastrous winters live long in historical memory. For example, there is the blizzard that hit the Great Plains in January of 1888, which caught many who lived in the Midwestern territories unawares. Known as the Children’s Blizzard, the storm trapped students and teachers in their one-room schoolhouses where they remained for days. Many who ventured out into the storm succumbed to frostbite. Others froze to death. In conservative estimates, several hundred people died.

Media Date 
March 6, 2015
Media Source 
Boston Classical Review
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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With deliberate gestures, Rose conjured fine playing from the orchestra, the musicians laying a sturdy frame of accompaniment.

Media Contact Name 
Aaron Keebaugh

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