Florestan and BMOP join forces to celebrate American vocal repertoire

This evening’s double concert in the Distler Performance Hall of Tufts’ Granoff Music Center began a 3-day festival involving a partnership between the Florestan Recital Project and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project to highlight American vocal music. The former’s presentation was the 1st of 3 concerts which together would span the entire vocal opus of Samuel Barber, aptly titled, “BarberFest,” while the latter highlights contemporary compositions for vocalist(s) and chamber orchestra.

Media Date 
September 25, 2009
Media Source 
Classical Voice of New England
Media 
Media Quote 

These two programs were admirable additions to the Boston artistic calendar.

Media Contact Name 
Robert Myers

A congress of noise convened in Jordan Hall

The human desire to produce a loud noise by striking one object with another must be as old as communication itself, and like all histories, it has its high points and lows. The period between the two world wars, for instance, was a very good time for the art and science of banging. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project reminded us of this fact on Friday night with a memorable concert that was in equal parts ambitious musical event, cultural time warp, and sonic magical mystery tour.

Media Date 
November 16, 2009
Media Source 
The Boston Globe
Media 
Media Quote 

Antheil's score has not lost its ability to harass and delight the senses with its sheer audacity.

Media Contact Name 
Jeremy Eichler
Media Contact Title 
Globe Staff

Classical music review: BMOP's Big Bang

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) began its season in Jordan Hall on November 13 with an unusual and enthralling concert that it advertised as a “Big Bang” event. In all three works on the program the emphasis was on a huge assortment of percussion instruments both familiar and exotic.

Media Date 
November 16, 2009
Media Source 
The Arts Fuse
Media 
Media Quote 

This concert was as enterprising an undertaking as the season will offer, and the result was a dazzling success.

Media Contact Name 
Caldwell Titcomb

Ballet mécanique

The avante-garde and complexity of George Antheil’s Ballet mécanique probably explains why it hasn’t been performed for a live audience since 2001 and why it’s only been performed a few times since its original composition in 1924.

Media Date 
November 15, 2009
Media Source 
Object-Idea
Media 
Media Quote 

It was an amazing and amusing aural experience and a true ballet of mallets, musicians, and mechanical mayhem.

With hammer and feather BMOP goes percussive

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project has been all over the news for the promise of hearing the Boston premiere of the near-original version of George Antheil’s Ballet mécanique, which it delivered under the direction of Gil Rose at Jordan Hall on Friday the Thirteenth. About that more later, but the real story of this concert was the variety of sound and expression of which percussion ensembles are capable.

Media Date 
November 15, 2009
Media Source 
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Media 
Media Quote 

As satisfying and revelatory as a whole as its parts were individually distinguished.

Media Contact Name 
Vance R. Koven

Big Bang: music of Antheil, Varèse, and Harrison

This performance earns a near perfect score for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) It’s not often that we hear George Antheil’s notorious Ballet Mécanique, partly because it is scored for sixteen synchronized player pianos. Back when Antheil wrote it, there was no way these speedy automatons could be synchronized; but now, in the electronic age, they can be. And they were. While this performance featured only eight player pianos, they effectively produced the intense sound Antheil could only dream about.

Media Date 
November 13, 2009
Media Source 
Stylus
Media 
Media Quote 

This performance earns a near perfect score for the BMOP.

Media Contact Name 
Martin Chuzzlewit

Classical Music Review: Boston Modern Orchestra Project

The Jordan Hall stage was crammed full of seventy players for the season’s final concert by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) on May 28. Under its artistic director Gil Rose, we heard music by five composers, the earliest dating from 1989. For two works the distinguished baritone Sanford Sylvan (b. 1953) was the soloist.

Media Date 
June 1, 2010
Media Source 
The Arts Fuse
Media 
Media Quote 

This music by a real master was the most impressive work on the BMOP's program and was gloriously performed.

Media Contact Name 
Caldwell Titcomb

BMOP proves that new music can be moving

On Friday, May 28, in Jordan Hall, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, a.k.a. BMOP, presented its last concert of the season -— five works composed in the past 25 years, two of which featured the great baritone Sanford Sylvan. BMOP’s past season had featured concerts showcasing groups within the orchestra (strings in “Strings Attached,” percussion and keyboards in the “Big Bang” concert, winds in “Band in Boston”). For this concert, deploying the full orchestra, BMOP presented works by four living composers, all in attendance, and Orchestra Piece by Leon Kirchner, who died last fall.

Media Date 
May 29, 2010
Media Source 
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Media 
Media Quote 

I repeatedly thought how I'd like to hear each piece again.

Media Contact Name 
Susan Miron

Stylus reviews Full Score

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project commissions, performs, and records music of the twentieth and twenty first centuries exclusively, allowing listeners to hear full-sized orchestral performances of modern compositions, previously performed more typically by small groups like the Kronos Quartet and the Chameleon Arts Ensemble.

Media Date 
May 28, 2010
Media Source 
Stylus
Media 
Media Quote 

Dynamic, engaging, exciting and challenging—the kind of performance Boston deserves and needs.

Media Contact Name 
Carolyn Gregory

What's new

The timely highlight of Gil Rose’s latest BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project) concert, “Strings Attached,” was a new/old piece (2004, revised 2009) for two string orchestras by Scott Wheeler now called Crazy Weather — the new title taken from a John Ashbery poem that begins, “It’s this crazy weather we’ve been having.” Thunderous snaps of antiphonal bass strings set off pizzicato raindrops that turn into Allegro sheets of musical rain. Of course, it’s an emotional landscape, as the exquisite Adagio makes even clearer.

Media Date 
March 23, 2010
Media Source 
The Boston Phoenix
Media 
Media Quote 

Slowly overlapping high violins create pungent harmonies, with delicate pizzicato punctuation.

Media Contact Name 
Lloyd Schwartz

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