News
June 29, 2016Albany Symphony to Perform at 2018 SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras
Albany Symphony is one of four American orchestras selected to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and showcase recent works by Tower, Daugherty, Torke and more.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Washington Performing Arts has announced that the Albany Symphony has been selected to participate in the second Annual SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras, taking place at the Kennedy Center and other locations around Washington D.C. from April 9-15, 2018.
SHIFT shines a weeklong spotlight on North American orchestras of all sizes, and celebrates their vitality, identity, and extraordinary artistry by creating an immersive festival experience in the nation’s capital.
The Albany Symphony is one of four orchestras chosen from a pool of applicants from across the country- each of which will offer a Kennedy Center Concert Hall performance and a city-wide residency. For their Kennedy Center debut on April 11, 2018, the Albany Symphony will feature tuba soloist Carol Jantsch and pianist Joyce Yang on a program of works by Joan Tower, Michael Daugherty, Dorothy Chang and Michael Torke.
As part of the SHIFT Festival residency, the Albany Symphony’s 16-member new music ensemble, Dogs of Desire, will collaborate with Theo Bleckmann and the six composers of Sleeping Giant on a full-evening “lieder-abend,” and bring its treasured composer residency program to D.C. area middle schools.
Co-Presented by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Washington Performing Arts, the festival’s title, SHIFT, recognizes the dynamic, evolving work of orchestras in the 21st century and expresses a commitment to shifting pre-conceived notions about orchestras.
In announcing the Albany Symphony’s selection, David Alan Miller commented: “The Albany Symphony and I are deeply honored to represent the Capital Region in the nation’s capital at the 2018 SHIFT Festival. We are particularly excited to have the opportunity to showcase not only the unique programming of the full orchestra, but also our one-of-a-kind new music ensemble, “Dogs of Desire,” and our very special community outreach and engagement activities. We hope all of our Capital Region friends will journey with us to the Festival to celebrate our community, its uniqueness, and the rivers that surround and connect us to each other and to the larger world.”
The festival’s presence in Washington also provides an opportunity for orchestras to interact with elected representatives in order to educate members of Congress about the value of the arts and orchestras in particular. The League of American Orchestras will partner with SHIFT to facilitate engagements on Capitol Hill and conversations about the impact and value that the arts and orchestras can provide to their communities.
Generous support of SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras is provided through a matching grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support is provided by Daniel R. Lewis.
The program explores the history of upstate New York through the lens of bodies of water that surround and connect communities. Three of the featured works were commissioned and premiered by the Albany Symphony: Michael Torke’s major new work for piano and orchestra, Three Manhattan Bridges, an homage to Torke’s adopted city, its diversity and multicultural richness; Joan Tower’s Still/Rapids, a reworking of her earlier meditation on water, Rapids, into a full piano concerto (Tower turns 80 in 2018); and Dorothy Chang’s delightful mini-oratorio for children’s chorus and orchestra, The Grand Erie Canal. Chang’s homage to the building of the Erie Canal, for fifth-grade chorus and orchestra, grew out of an extensive arts-in-education school program she created as part of an Albany Symphony residency.
For more information, visit albanysymphony.com.
