“One of the nobler aspects of the NY Phil Biennial, the New York Philharmonic’s festival of new music, is the involvement of young performers from educational institutions,” writes James R. Oestreich in Monday’s (6/6) New York Times. “On Sunday afternoon, high school students of the venerable Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan … took the stage of David Geffen Hall with the ‘Young Americans’ program.… With Christopher Rountree as guest conductor, the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra (trained by Ara Sarkissian) opened with ‘Machine’ by Jennifer Higdon, 53 … The brief work, with brass utterances emerging from a swirling texture, had the feel of a fanfare.… Hannah Lash, 34, took a similarly conservative tack in her attractive ‘Chaconnes’ for string orchestra, here in its premiere.… Episodes of flavorful dissonance aside, it sounded post-Romantic in its lush melodism.” In ‘Bound to the Bow,’ Ashley Fure, 33, “reimagined Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ … The strings are thwacked in a percussive manner, with allowance for birdlike squeals … inchoate texture creaks and twists and rises over oceanic swells.… The program closed with ‘So Far So Good,’ a 2012 work by Nico Muhly, 34.… The Interlochen students responded brilliantly to Mr. Rountree’s lead.”
Posted June 7, 2016
Pictured: At the NY Phil Biennial in New York, students from Interlochen Arts Academy Dance Company perform Christopher Williams’s choreography to Nico Muhly’s “So Far So Good,” accompanied by Interlochen musicians. Photo: Chris Lee
