Summer Highlights from The Knights, Conductor Edwin Outwater, and Cellist Joshua Roman

This summer, New York-based orchestral collective The Knights takes its innovative programming on a tour of top summer festivals, including Central Park’s Naumburg Concert series and Tanglewood. Celebrated conductor Edwin Outwater launches his inaugural season in the specially created new position of Director of Summer Concerts at the San Francisco Symphony. Joshua Roman, “a virtuoso on the cello” (Daily News), will not only be featured as a recitalist this summer but will also act as a curator, composer, and conductor at Seattle’s TownMusic concert series and the Music Academy of the West. 

The Knights resume their annual two-concert summer collaboration with Central Park’s Naumburg Orchestral Concerts for the sixth consecutive season (June 24 & July 22). In the review of last year’s concert, the New York Times remarked, “Camaraderie and shared enthusiasm for playing music are what drive the ensemble, and those qualities came through on Tuesday in an adventurous program.” The orchestral collective is known for juxtaposing nontraditional rarities and premieres of new music with repertory staples, drawing out unexpected parallels for interesting and unexpected listening. The first Central Park concert encompasses a broad range of musical periods, featuring works by Boccherini, Ives, and young American composers Andrew Norman and Timo Andres. The collective performs Andres’s re-composition of Mozart’s “Coronation Concerto” with the composer himself at the piano. The second concert juxtaposes examples of different musical genres, combining the U.S. premiere of a new suite from the album Run Rabbit Run by songwriter Sufjan Stevens, arranged by Knights solo hornist Michael P. Atkinson; Stravinsky’s neoclassical masterpiece Dumbarton Oaks; Ligeti’s Old Hungarian Ballroom Dances; and, in keeping with the Hungarian theme, Bartók’s Divertimento. Both concerts will be streamed, archived, and rebroadcast at WQXR. 

Having launched the summer with a number of innovative programs at California’s Ojai Music Festival, where they were in residence, The Knights also look forward to heading to Tanglewood with soloists Hakan Hardenberger and Dawn Upshaw, who “represents the highest ideals of pristine musicianship, intellectual curiosity, and artistic integrity” (Opera News), for a program that includes a performance of Maria Schneider’s multiple Grammy-award winning work Winter Morning Walks (July 23). Their summer season concludes at the Ravinia Festival with two concerts. The first features Upshaw, and in the second their longtime musical partner, superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma, joins as soloist on Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo” Variations. 

For more information, visit www.theknightsnyc.com. 

This summer marks Edwin Outwater’s first season as Director of Summer Concerts at the San Francisco Symphony. He has had a long relationship with the SFS, where he was resident conductor from 2001-2006, and his newly-created position involves creative leadership of the Symphony’s annual “Summer and the Symphony” concerts for two years. Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas welcomed back Outwater, saying “he is one of the most innovative conductors on the scene today. … I look forward to a new level of creativity in our summer programming.” This season Outwater conducts ten performances beginning with Pink Martini (July 2-3). He leads an exploration of the fusion of jazz and orchestral music with works by Bernstein, Gershwin, and Ravel, featuring jazz pianist Makoto Ozone (July 5), as well as two free SFS concerts, one at the Stern Grove Festival (July 6), and the other in Civic Center Plaza with violinist Benjamin Beilman (July 27). On August 1, Outwater and the Orchestra perform an all-Beethoven concert featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and the Triple Concerto with frequent collaborator the Gryphon Trio. 

Outwater’s new appointment also includes duties that reach beyond the orchestra’s summer season. This season he will curate and lead the San Francisco Symphony’s Music For Families concerts, where he will introduce a new and engaging format, making the concerts contemporary, educational, and entertaining for all ages. Later in the season Outwater, a celebrated champion of new music, teams up with composer Nathaniel Stookey in a program that provides an in-depth look at the California musical counterculture, including an important commission by composer Nicole Lizée, at the San Francisco Symphony’s new alternative performance space, SoundBox.

More information about the artist is available at his newly redesigned website EdwinOutwater.com

This summer sees Joshua Roman wear all his different hats: cellist, composer, programmer and leader. In Seattle’s TownMusic series, where he is in his seventh season as artistic director, Roman features as both recitalist and composer. He is joined by Mary Mackenzie, “a soprano of extraordinary agility and concentration” (New York Times) for Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire as well as new works, including the world premiere performance of his own new composition for voice and ensemble, a piece that will be the first part of a song cycle based on Tracy K. Smith’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection Life on Mars (June 24). As Seattle Metropolitan magazine observes, TownMusic“found a good thing in Joshua Roman: a young artistic director whose main concern in life is moving forward.” The second part of the song cycle is commissioned by and will be performed at The Music Academy of the West, where Joshua will spend his second season as Alumnus in residence. He will conduct the Academy orchestra in a performance which includes this work and other contemporary compositions including John Adams’s minimalist, high-energy piece, Shaker Loops (August 2). 

For more information, visit JoshuaRoman.com.

June 24: The Knights

Naumburg Orchestral Concerts

New York, NY

Central Park, 7:30 pm

Timo Andres, piano/composer

Boccherini: Quintet in C major Op. 30, No. 6, “La Musica Notturna delle strade di Madrid,” arranged for string orchestra

Andrew Norman: Light Screens

Ives: Three Places in New England

Timo Andres: Re-composition of Mozart’s “Coronation Concerto”

June 24: Joshua Roman 

TownMusic at Town Hall Seattle

Seattle, WA

Original Works by composers Raymond Lustig, Amir Shpilman, Wang Jie, and Joshua Roman

Mary Mackenzie, soprano

Bill Kalinkos, clarinet

Daria Binkowski, flute

Karen Kim, violin/viola

Joshua Roman, cello

David Kaplan, piano

July 2-3: Edwin Outwater

San Francisco Symphony 

“Pink Martini at the Symphony”

July 4: Edwin Outwater

San Francisco Symphony

Fourth of July Celebration at Shoreline Amphitheater

July 5: Edwin Outwater

San Francisco Symphony

Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (Makoto Ozone, piano)

Bernstein: Selections from Divertimento for Orchestra

Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunte (with Makoto Ozone and Ensemble)

Ravel: Bolero (With Makoto Ozone and Ensemble)

July 6: Edwin Outwater

San Francisco Symphony

Free Concert at Stern Grove

July 21 – August 3: Joshua Roman

Music Academy of the West

Santa Barbara, CA

Alumnus-in-Residence

July 22: The Knights

Naumburg Orchestral Concerts

New York, NY

Central Park, 7:30 PM

Ligeti: Old Hungarian Ballroom Dances

Bartók: Divertimento

Sufjan Stevens (arr. Atkinson): Suite from Run Rabbit Run (U.S. Premiere)

Ljova: Ori’s Fearful Symmetry

Stravinsky: Concerto in E-flat, “Dumbarton Oaks”

July 23: The Knights

Tanglewood Music Festival

Lenox, MA

Dawn Upshaw, soprano

Hakan Hardenberger, trumpet

Ligeti: Old Hungarian Ballroom Dances

Various: Selections from Both Sides, Now (with Hakan Hardenberger)

Ljova: Ori’s Fearful Symmetry

Stravinsky: Concerto in E-flat, “Dumbarton Oaks”

Maria Schneider: Winter Morning Walks (with Dawn Upshaw)

July 24-25: Edwin Outwater

San Francisco Symphony

“Hello Gorgeous!” Cheyenne Jackson Goes to the Movies

July 26: Edwin Outwater

San Francisco Symphony

Green Center for the Performing Arts, Sonoma, CA

Tchaikovsky: Marche slave

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Simon Trpceski, piano)

Tchaikovsky: Selections from Swan Lake

Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture

July 27: Edwin Outwater

San Francisco Symphony

Free Concert at Civic Center Plaza

Tchaikovsky: Marche slave

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor (Benjamin Beilman, violin)

Tchaikovsky: Selections from Swan Lake

Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture

Aug 1: Edwin Outwater

San Francisco Symphony

Beethoven: Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus

Beethoven: Triple Concerto (Gryphon Trio)

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5

Aug 2: Joshua Roman

Music Academy of the West

Friar: Scale 9

Roman: TBA (world premiere)

Cerrone: The Night Mare

Adams: Shaker Loops

Joshua Roman, conductor

Aug 10: Edwin Outwater

Kyoto Symphony Orchestra

Kyoto, Japan

Fauré: Pelléas et Mélisande: Suite

Mozart: Symphony No. 35 in D major, “Haffner”, K. 385

Rutter: Magnificat (Maki Mori, soprano; Kyoto Symphony Chorus)

Aug 12: Joshua Roman

Sun Valley Summer Symphony

Ketchum, ID

Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1

Alasdair Neale, Conductor

Aug 16: Joshua Roman 

The Stone

New York, NY

Works by Lisa Bielawa

Lisa Bielawa, voice

Joshua Roman, cello

Evelyne Luest, piano

Aug 20: The Knights

Ravinia Festival

Highland Park, IL

Dawn Upshaw, soprano

Ives: Three Places in New England

Dowland (arr. Bruce): Two Laments

Stravinsky: Concerto in E-flat, “Dumbarton Oaks”

Sufjan Stevens (arr. Atkinson): Suite from Run Rabbit Run

Maria Schneider: Winter Morning Walks

Aug 21: The Knights

Ravinia Festival

Highland Park, IL

Yo-Yo Ma, cello

Stockhausen (arr. Shaw): Tierkreis (Leo)

Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C, K. 551 (“Jupiter”)

Boccherini: Quintet in C major Op. 30, No. 6, “La Musica Notturna delle strade di Madrid,” arranged for string orchestra

Milhaud (arr. The Knights): Le boeuf sur le toit

Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33