UNCSA Chancellor to Conduct National Symphony At Kennedy Center

UNCSA CHANCELLOR JOHN MAUCERI TO CONDUCT
THE NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AT THE KENNEDY CENTER
Event on Sept. 8 To Commemorate 10th Anniversary of Sept. 11

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WINSTON-SALEM – Chancellor John Mauceri of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) will conduct the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts during a private concert to commemorate, in words and music, the 10th anniversary of the tragedies that took place on Sept. 11, 2001. The concert is co-presented with The New Republic.

More than 2,000 people are expected to attend “9/11: 10 Years Later: An Evening of Remembrance and Reflection,” which begins at 7:30 pm on Thursday, Sept. 8. The by-invitation-only audience at the Kennedy Center will include members of the 9/11 community and other special guests.

Christiane Amanpour, moderator of ABC News’ This Week, will host the event. At press time, confirmed featured performers and soloists include Tony Award-nominated actor Raúl Esparza, mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, folk and country singer Emmylou Harris, and Grammy Award-winning jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. Commemorative remarks and readings will be delivered by speakers including former secretaries of state Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

A world-renowned conductor, Maestro Mauceri will lead the National Symphony Orchestra as it performs the National Anthem, Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” Stephen C. Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More,” “A City Called Heaven,” and more.

Mauceri conducted the first public concerts in Los Angeles after Sept. 11, 2001. His three commemorative concerts at the Hollywood Bowl included the world premiere of a work by Jerry Goldsmith (“September 11, 2001″), composed for those concerts, which brought 54,000 people to the amphitheater. One year later, Mauceri led the first anniversary concert in New York City at the invitation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in which orchestras in each of the city’s five boroughs performed in the city parks. Mauceri conducted the Brooklyn Philharmonic that night, Sept. 11, 2002.

Both Maestro Mauceri and the School of the Arts have extensive connections with both Washington and the Kennedy Center. Mauceri served as Music Director of the Washington Opera, Music Director of Orchestras at the Kennedy Center, and Consultant for Music Theater at the Kennedy Center for more than a decade. Among the many UNCSA alumni who live and work in Washington are UNCSA School of Music alumnus Robert Oppelt, principal double bass for the National Symphony, and UNCSA Board of Trustees member Dan DeVany, vice president and FM general manager WETA, Washington.

John Mauceri is the Chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) and the Founding Director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. His distinguished and extraordinary career has taken him not only to over 25 of the world’s greatest opera companies and more than 50 symphony orchestras, but also the musical stages of Broadway and Hollywood, as well as the most prestigious halls of academia.

Maestro Mauceri has served as music director of four opera companies: Washington (National), Scottish (Glasgow), the Teatro Regio (Turin, Italy), and Pittsburgh. He is the first American to have held the post of music director of an opera house in either Great Britain or Italy. He was the first music director of the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall after its founding director, Leopold Stokowski, with whom he studied. He was Consultant for Music Theater at Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for more than a decade, and, for 15 years, he served on the faculty of Yale University. For 18 years, Mauceri worked closely with Leonard Bernstein and conducted many of the composer’s premieres at Bernstein’s request.

On Broadway, he was co-producer of On Your Toes, and served as musical supervisor for Hal Prince’s production of Candide as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance. He also conducted the orchestra for the film version of Evita. Among his many awards and honors are a Tony, Grammy, Billboard, Olivier, and two Emmys. Last year, his recording of Erich Korngold’s Between Two Worlds was selected by Gramophone magazine as one of the 250 Greatest Recordings of All Time. In April, Gramophone named two of his recordings with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra among the “10 great studio re-creations” of classic movie soundtracks.

Chancellor Mauceri holds the lifetime title of Founding Director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, which was created for him in 1991 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and with whom he led over 300 concerts to a total audience of over 4 million people. He has written for and appeared on radio and television and has delivered keynote speeches and papers for major artistic and educational institutions, such as Harvard University, the American Academy in Berlin, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the American Musicological Society, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He recently published articles for Cambridge University Press and Gramophone magazine.

Mauceri has taken the lead in the preservation and performance of many genres of music and has supervised/conducted important premieres by composers as diverse as Debussy, Stockhausen, Korngold, Hindemith, Bernstein, Ives, Elfman, and Shore. He is a leading performer of music banned by the Third Reich and especially music of Hollywood’s émigré composers, and can be seen and heard on many recent DVD releases of classic films.

Recent performances include an October 2010 debut in Spain at the Bilbao Opera as musical director of Susannah, with composer Carlisle Floyd present; and a November 2010 debut in Denmark with The Danish National Orchestra, conducting “Emigrés and Protégés – The Hollywood Diaspora.” He has just completed a critically acclaimed run as musical director and artistic supervisor of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, an all-UNCSA production and restoration of the original 1943 Broadway production which has been videotaped for broadcast on UNC-TV on Oct. 12.

One of the world’s preeminent experts on film music, Chancellor Mauceri appeared on June 29 at an event celebrating the life of film composer Bernard Herrmann, at WQXR in New York City, which can be heard online at WNYC’s The Greene Space. In addition, a studio recording of George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 hit Broadway musical, Strike Up the Band, conducted by John Mauceri, has just been released (June 21) by PS Classics. Maestro Mauceri recently made his debut at the Aspen Music Festival conducting his edition of Dmitri Shostakovich’s score to Hamlet, adapted from the 1964 Soviet film score for six actors and symphony orchestra.

In August 2011, Chancellor Mauceri returned to the Hollywood Bowl, where he led the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in Walt Disney’s Fantasia. He returns to Los Angeles in October to conduct a benefit performance for the Motion Picture & Television Fund. The annual event, “A Fine Romance,” features a breathtaking array of singers from film and stage musicals performing the songs that have tied New York and Hollywood together for decades.  Catherine Zeta-Jones and Hugh Jackman will host.

And in January 2012, Maestro Mauceri travels to Denmark for a live, televised performance with the Royal Danish National Orchestra, honoring Queen Margrethe on her 40th anniversary as monarch.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from high school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu<http://www.uncsa.edu>.

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September 6, 2011 at 9:58 am Leave a comment