Sunday (July 6) on medici.tv: Marin Alsop Conducts Brazil’s São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 for the World Cup

This month, while eyes around the globe remain fixed on Brazil for the final rounds of soccer’s World Cup, medici.tv will present a special free, exclusive live streaming event from São Paulo. One of today’s most compelling conductors will perform one of music’s most iconic works for the World Cup, as the Gramophone Award-winning Marin Alsop leads her Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de São Paulo in Beethoven’s “Choral” Symphony No. 9 live on medici.tv at 4:30 p.m. EST on July 6. One of the most popular scores in history, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony famously features in its last movement the “Ode to Joy,” which was chosen more than four decades ago as the European Union’s official anthem. Along with the São Paulo Symphony – Brazil’s major orchestra – the concert will feature two choirs: Coro Academico da OSESP and Coro da OSESP. The lineup of vocal soloists is an international one, befitting a World Cup event: American soprano Lauren Snouffer, Brazilian mezzo-soprano Denise de Freitas, English tenor John Mark Ainsley and Polish-Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot. Following the live webcast on July 9 – only on medici.tv – the Alsop/São Paulo performance of Beethoven’s Ninth will remain available for streaming free for 90 days before becoming part of the peerless and ever-growing medici.tv on-demand library. 

Marin Alsop

Music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 2007, Alsop was named principal conductor of the São Paulo Symphony in 2012 and became its music director the following year. In 2011, she was the only woman representing classical music to appear in the “Top 100 Women” ranking of the British newspaper The Guardian. In addition to her appointments in Baltimore and São Paulo, she has served as music director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (1993-2005) and as principal conductor of the UK’s Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (2002-2008). Alsop was named Gramophone magazine’s Artist of the Year in 2003. Two years later, she became the only conductor ever to receive the MacArthur Fellowship, or the “Genius Grant.” And in 2013, she became the first woman to conduct the BBC’s “Last Night of the Proms” concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, broadcast live around the world. The UK’s Daily Telegraph has said of Alsop: “She has shown herself to be a conductor who makes a difference.”

Alsop’s fully staged production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide with the New York Philharmonic was broadcast by PBS, nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005 and released on DVD via Image Entertainment. Her ever-growing discography includes a complete Brahms symphony cycle with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Naxos, as well as a long line of recordings in the label’s “American Classics” series and a version of Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony that was nominated for BBC Music magazine’s album of the year in 2008. She has also recorded for Sony Classical (John Corigliano’s chart-topping film score The Red Violin with Joshua Bell) and LPO Live (Jennifer Higdon’s Grammy Award-winning Percussion Concerto), among other labels. Her recordings with the São Paulo Symphony on Naxos include Prokofiev’s Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5. 

Beethoven in Brazil

July 6, 2014, 4:30 p.m. EST

Sala São Paulo, Brazil

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Choral”

Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de São Paulo; Marin Alsop, conductor 

Coro Academico da OSESP; Coro da OSESP; Lauren Snouffer, soprano; Denise de Freitas, mezzo-soprano; John Mark Ainsley, tenor; Paulo Szot, baritone

New medici.tv app

The latest innovation from medici.tv is a thoroughly updated new app for Android and Apple devices that offers music lovers a free virtual seat at the greatest classical performances and one-of-a-kind events from around the world. The previous edition of the app had already been named one of the top five classical apps by New York’s WQXR, which pointed out that the app “allows you to peek inside great European concert halls.” Part of the medici.tv all-devices strategy, this new, improved app for tablets and smart phones gives users the ability to intuitively navigate through more than 1,300 HD videos, including both performances and documentaries. Available for free at the Apple App Store and Google Play store, the app gives users access to more than 100 live concert webcasts each year from top classical artists and the finest music institutions across the globe – without ads and in the ideal video quality according to your internet connection. Users can watch a live event and then watch it again whenever and wherever they want. More than 60,000 music lovers have downloaded the medici.tv app since it was first created, enjoying an enriched experience of classical music unrivaled on the web. Read more about medici.tv apps here: http://www.medici.tv/#/mobile-apps. 

About medici.tv

Since its official launch in May 2008, medici.tv has gained international recognition, bringing together a community of 180,000 music and arts lovers from 182 countries. In addition to offering live concert hall events that music lovers can experience on their computers and entertainment systems, medici.tv now offers a free application (available at the Apple App Store and at Google Play for Android) that makes it possible to experience world-class artistry on iPads, iPhones and Android devices. Consumers of Samsung Smart TVs can now access the medici.tv application worldwide in 170 countries on the 2011, 2012 and 2013 models, as well as all future ones. More than 70 client universities around the world take advantage of medici.tv, including Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music.

In addition to webcasts of more than 100 live events each year, medici.tv has partnered with the world’s top artists and music institutions to offer subscriptions that give music lovers the opportunity to watch more than 1,300 video-on-demand programs. They include concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, masterclasses, artist portraits and archival material by such legendary musicians as Maria Callas, Glenn Gould, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Georg Solti and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.  

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