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5 & 7 M A Y 2 0 1 1 K I N G S P L A C E N I C H O L A S C O L L O N F E A T U R I N G : N I C O M U H L Y A U R O R A O R C H E S T R A S E E I N G I S B E LI E V I N G T H O M A S G O U L D

Seeing is Believing

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On Saturday 7 May at 7.30pm, Aurora will be live-streaming a landmark concert from Kings Place marking the launch of the orchestra’s debut recording on Decca Classics. Nico Muhly’s concerto for electric violin, Seeing Is Believing, commissioned by Aurora in 2008 for its leader Thomas Gould, takes centre stage alongside works by John Adams, Thomas Adès, Paul Hindemith and Charles Ives. Described by The Daily Telegraph as ‘the hottest composer on the planet’, Muhly has collaborated with Björk, Sigur Rós and Antony and the Johnsons. He also composed the score for The Reader, and has been jointly commissioned by ENO and the Metropolitan Opera in New York to create a new work, Two Boys, which premieres at the Coliseum at the end of June. Live-streaming begins on this page from 6.30pm on Saturday 7 May 2011, with a pre-concert conversation between Nico and BBC Radio 3′s Sara Mohr-Pietsch. The concert will be available on this page for on-demand streaming for 48 hours subsequently.

Citation preview

5 & 7 MAY 201 1K INGS PLACE

NICHOLAS COLLON

FEATURING: NICO MUHLY

AURORA ORCHESTRA

SEEING IS

BELIEVING

THOMAS GOULD

Seeing is Believing

Kings Place, Hall One Saturday 7 May, 7.30pm

Charles Ives The Unanswered Question

Paul Hindemith Kammermusik No. 1 (Finale)

Nico Muhly Seeing is Believing

François Couperin (arr. Thomas Adès) Les barricades mystérieuses

William Byrd (arr. Nico Muhly) Two Motets

John Adams Chamber Symphony

Interval – 20 minutes

Pre-concert talk, 6.30pm

Nico Muhly and Sara Mohr-Pietsch in conversation.

Please note that this concert will be recorded for radio broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and for video streaming via the Guardian, Aurora and Kings Place websites.

Thomas Gould Electric violin

Nicholas Collon Conductor

Thomas Gould Leader (second half)

Jonathan Morton Leader (first half)

Aurora Orchestra

It’s been a thrilling year so far for Aurora, with confirmation that the orchestra has been selected as part of the new National Portfolio of arts organisations to be funded by Arts Council England, and a shortlisting for the 2011 Royal Philharmonic Society Ensemble Award alongside the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra.

This week’s mini-series marks another milestone in the shape of the launch of Aurora’s debut disc for Decca Classics: a recording of Nico Muhly’s music for chamber orchestra. The most prominent American composer of his generation, Nico possesses one of the most compelling voices in contemporary music: developing a close relationship with him over the five years since the orchestra first commissioned Seeing is Believing has been a profoundly enriching experience.

One of the striking features of Nico’s music is the sheer breadth of musical influences which it celebrates, ranging across continents and centuries from the English Renaissance to the distinctively American sound-worlds of Ives, Copland, Reich and Adams: the two programmes in this mini-series reflect this rich transatlantic spectrum. Motion (5 May) takes as its starting point the characteristic Muhly fascination with English choral composers, drawing a parallel with Benjamin Britten, whose music for string quartet features here alongside Nico’s setting of one of Orlando Gibbons’ best-loved anthems, and his own recent Gibbons-inspired piece Motion. Taking its inspiration from the title of the electric violin concerto written for Aurora and its leader Thomas Gould, Seeing is Believing (7 May) pairs this work with other music that reaches towards celestial mysteries – from Couperin’s exquisite Les barricades mystérieuses to Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question – together with the dazzling iconoclasm of Paul Hindemith and John Adams.

There’s a feast of other music in store this summer: forthcoming highlights (see opposite page for full listings) include Mozart and Janácek programmes at Kings Place (20 May, 10 & 15 September); Beethoven and Brett Dean at LSO St Luke’s (10 July); and a return to the BBC Proms for the much-anticipated Horrible Histories Prom (30 July). And if you enjoy tonight’s performance, we hope you’ll consider joining our network of Supporters, Friends and Patrons, whose invaluable support is acknowledged at the end of this programme. Projects such as this evening’s concert would be impossible without such individual generosity. If you’d like to know more, please visit the Aurora desk outside Hall One this evening: for as little as £30 a year, you can help us bring great live music to new audiences, and secure a vibrant future for orchestral music in the UK.

Full details of all Aurora projects are posted online at www.auroraorchestra.com, where you can also sign up for monthly email updates from the orchestra.

Enjoy the show!

John HarteGeneral Manager

Seeing is Believing

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The Unanswered Question, composed ‘sometime before June 1908,’ as Charles Ives recollected, presents a simple yet compelling musical allegory. In the composer’s words:

‘The strings play pianissimo throughout with no change in tempo. They are to represent The Silences of the Druids who Know, Hear and See Nothing. The trumpet intones The Perennial Question of Existence and states it in the same voice each time. But the hunt for The Invisible Answer undertaken by the flutes and other human beings becomes gradually more active, faster and faster… The Fighting Answerers, as the time goes on seem to realise a futility and begin to mock The Question – the strife is over for the moment. After they disappear, The Question is asked for the last time, and the The Silences are heard beyond in Undisturbed Solitude.’

The Unanswered Question anticipated musical developments that occurred over half a century later. Its fusion of disparate musical materials, its free rhythmic co-ordination among performers, its structure as a scenario to be enacted by instruments – all these foreshadowed tendencies of the 1960s and ‘70s avant garde. And like so many of Ives’s works, it lay for decades unknown and unheard (apart from an early reading that Ives arranged for his own edification with a theatre orchestra). Its first public performance occurred in May 1946 when, at the urging of composer Elliott Carter, the piece was performed on a concert of Ives’s work at Columbia University. Since then, The Unanswered Question has emerged as Ives’s most famous work and a classic – perhaps the classic – piece of modern American music.

Nicholas Collon, 2007

The Unanswered QuestionCharles Ives (1874–1954)

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Along with Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith is perhaps the prime representative of the post-World War I generation of German composers who seemed intent on sweeping away the last vestiges of Romanticism. Their pursuit of tight discipline, textural transparency and rhythmic energy came to be labelled Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) of which Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 1 is arguably the most perfect example. The composer’s mischievous suggestion in the score that the twelve performers ‘be positioned in such a way as to be invisible to the public’ has been dispensed with by interpreters as nothing more than a dash of satire to complement his scoring a part for a bucket of sand. Yet this dismissal fails to acknowledge the earnest quality in Hindemith’s musical philosophy – namely his wish to reject (and deride) the traditional Germanic perception of music as a deeply personal, superhuman, transcendental and idealistic force. Instead, Hindemith insisted on the importance of accessibility, understanding music as a utilitarian and functional entity, capable of educating audiences into positive social participation.

Lloyd Moore / Kate Wakeling, 2011

Kammermusik No. 1: FinalePaul Hindemith (1895–1963)

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Nico Muhly writes:

Seeing is Believing references the ancient practice of observing and mapping the sky; while writing it, I wanted to mimic the process by which, through observation, a series of points becomes a line — this seemed like the most appropriate way to think about a soloist versus an orchestra. The electric violin is such a specifically evocative instrument and has always reminded me of the 1980s; I tried at times to reference the music attendant to 80s educational videos about science, which always sounded vast and mechanical, and sometimes quite romantic.

The music begins and ends with the violin creating its own stellar landscape through a looping pedal, out of which instruments begin to articulate an unchanging series of eleven chords which governs the harmonic language of the piece. Two-and-a-half minutes in, the woodwinds begin chirping in what seems to be random, insect-like formations. Eventually, the piano and solo violin ‘map’ them into the celestially pure key of C major; rapturous pulses ensue. A slightly more stylized and polite version of the insect music appears, and the violin sings long lines above it. After a brief return to the first music, slow, nervous music alternates with fast, nervous music. The fast music takes over, pitches are scattered around, the violin calls everybody back to order with forty repeated notes; rapturous pulses again ensue. The piece ends as it began, with looped educational music depicting the night sky.

Nico Muhly, 2011

Nico Muhly

Seeing is BelievingNico Muhly (b. 1981)

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Couperin’s harpsichord work continues to beguile its many admirers. Composed as part of the Sixiéme Ordre of Couperin’s Pièces pour Clavecin (published 1716–17), the origin and meaning of the piece’s provocative title still eludes explanation: what are these barricades, and why are they mysterious? Scholarly speculation has ranged from possible associations with courtly masked divertissement to free masonry, while the flowing suspensions of the work’s lute-like writing have been proposed as a ‘barricade’ to harmonic orthodoxy, suggesting Couperin perhaps intended the word in its modern, revolutionary sense. Thomas Adès’s 1994 arrangement for clarinet, bass clarinet, viola, cello and double bass may not solve the mystery, but certainly illuminates new slivers of melody and alternative harmonic crushes within the piece’s many shifting planes of sound. Indeed, Adès has noted that ‘my ideal day would be staying at home and playing the works of Couperin – [there is] new inspiration on every page,’ and stated that arranging this piece proved the best composition lesson Adès ever received: a revelation in creating melody from harmony and, in turn, harmony from melody.

Kate Wakeling, 2011

Les barricades mystérieusesFrançois Couperin (1668–1733) arr. Thomas Adès (b. 1971)

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i. Miserere mei, Deus ii. Bow thine ear, O Lord

Nico Muhly writes:

William Byrd’s music has always fascinated me both as a composer and as an erstwhile choirboy; on the page it looks like so little, but then in its realization, an enormous emotional landscape unfolds. When Nicholas Collon asked if I might try to orchestrate a few motets for Aurora, I jumped at the chance. There is a moment in Byrd’s Miserere mei, Deus wherein the key suddenly shifts into an unexpected major, and the rhythmic footprint slows down. I aimed for an outrageous, but quiet, amplification of this moment that fascinated me as a treble; here, it is punctuated by registral extremes in the piano: gamelan gongs in the left hand and toy piano in the right. The second piece I arranged is Bow thine ear, O Lord, which is said to be one of Byrd’s most personal expressions of faith and the turmoil surrounding it. It has in it one of the high-water marks of the choral tradition which is Byrd’s setting of the phrase ‘Sion is wasted and brought low,’ which he sets twice in two different octaves, and it is scandalously lush even when performed by the most austere of choirs. Here, it’s brass, marimba, and ghostly strings, a texture that expands into the celeste and woodwinds intoning the word ‘Jerusalem.’ I should point out that these are very liberal arrangements of the originals; occasionally, I have rendered out the effect of one alto holding onto a note too long, a wayward tenor, a daydreaming treble.

Nico Muhly, 2011

Two MotetsWilliam Byrd (1543–1623)

arr. Nico Muhly

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i. Mongrel Airsii. Aria with Walking Bassiii. Roadrunner

John Adams writes:

The Chamber Symphony, written between September and December of 1992, was commissioned by the Gerbode Foundation of San Francisco for the San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players, who gave the American premiere on 12 April . The world première performances was given in The Hague, Holland by the Schoenberg Ensemble in January of 1993.

Written for fifteen instruments and lasting twenty-two minutes, the Chamber Symphony bears a suspicious resemblance to its eponymous predecessor, the Opus 9 of Arnold Schoenberg. The choice of instruments is roughly the same as Schoenberg’s, although mine includes parts for synthesizer, percussion (a trap set), trumpet and trombone. However, whereas the Schoenberg symphony is in one uninterrupted structure, mine is broken into three discrete movements, ‘Mongrel Airs’; ‘Aria with Walking Bass’ and ‘Roadrunner.’ The titles give a hint of the general ambience of the music.

I originally set out to write a children’s piece, and my intentions were to sample the voices of children and work them into a fabric of acoustic and electronic instrumets. But before I began that project I had another one of those strange interludes that often lead to a new piece. This one involved a brief moment of what Melville called ‘the shock of recognition’: I was sitting in my studio, studying the score to Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, and as I was doing so I became aware that my seven year old son Sam was in the adjacent room watching cartoons (good cartoons, old ones from the ‘50s). The hyperactive, insistantly aggressive and acrobatic scores for the cartoons mixed in my head with the Schoenberg music, itself hyperactive, acrobatic and not a little aggressive, and I realised suddenly how much these two traditions had in common.

For a long time my music has been conceived for large forces and has involved broad brushstrokes on big canvasses. These works have been either symphonic or operatic, and even the ones for smaller forces like Phrygian Gates, Shaker Loops or Grand Pianola Music have essentially been studies in the acoustical power of massed sonorities. Chamber Music, with its inherently polyphonic and democratic sharing of roles, was always difficult for me to compose. But the Schoenberg symphony provided a key to unlock that door, and it did so by suggesting a format in which the weight and mass of a symphonic work could be married to

Chamber SymphonyJohn Adams (b. 1947)

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the transparency and mobility of a chamber work. The tradition of American cartoon music – and I freely acknowledge that I am only one of a host of people scrambling to jump on that particular bandwagon – also suggested a further model for a music that was at once flamboyantly virtuosic and polyphonic. There were several other models from earlier in the century, most of which I come to know as a performer, which also served as suggestive: Milhaud’s La création du monde, Stravinsky’s Octet and L’Histoire du Soldat, and Hindemith’s marvelous Kleine Kammermusik, a little known masterpiece for woodwind quintet that predates Ren and Stimpy by nearly sixty years.

Despite all the good humor, my Chamber Symphony turned out to be shockingly difficult to play. Unlike Phrygian Gates or Pianola, with their fundamentally diatonic palettes, this new piece, in what I suppose could be termed my post-Klinghoffer language, is linear and chromatic. Instruments are asked to negotiate unreasonably difficult passages and alarmingly fast tempi, often to inexorable click of the trap set. But therein, I suppose, lies the perverse charm of the piece. (‘Discipliner et Punire’ was the original title of the first movement, before I decided on ‘Mongrel Airs’ to honor a British critic who complained that my music lacked breeding.)

The Chamber Symphony is dedicated to Sam.

John Adams, 2010

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Electric violin Thomas Gould

Conductor*Nicholas Collon

Leader Thomas Gould Jonathan Morton

Aurora Orchestra

Flute/piccolo* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jane Mitchell

Flute 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rebecca Larson

Oboe 1* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Barber

Clarinet 1/E-flat clarinet*. . . . . . . Timothy Orpen

Clarinet 2/Bass clarinet . . . . . . . . Tom Lessels

Bassoon* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chris Cooper

Bassoon 2/contrabassoon. . . . . . Gordon Laing

Horn* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nicolas Fleury

Trumpet* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Simon Cox

Trombone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Knight

Bass trombone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel West

Piano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Reid

Percussion* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henry Baldwin

Accordion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karen Street

Violin 1* (second half) . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Gould

Violin 1 (first half) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jonathan Morton

Violin 2*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jamie Campbell

Viola* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Max Baillie

Cello* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oliver Coates

Double Bass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ben Griffiths

Artists

* A-Train-sponsored chair: see p.17 for details.

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‘To launch a new orchestra, Aurora, in the cut-throat musical marketplace that is London requires courage and conviction. To sustain it through five seasons, during which you programme everything from the Baroque sounds of Gabrieli and Lully to the avant-garde scores of Berio and Adams, shows brilliance as well as bravado.’ (Richard Morrison, The Times, January 2011)

Since its creation in 2005, Aurora Orchestra has established itself over just six seasons as the most significant new British chamber orchestra in a generation. With flourishing London residencies at LSO St Luke’s and Kings Place, a busy regional touring calendar, and an ambitious integrated Participation and Learning programme, it has developed a reputation for virtuosic live performance, innovative programming and adventurous cross-arts collaboration, engaging new audiences in London and throughout the UK.

Recent highlights include concerts as part of the Kings Place Mozart Unwrapped series (alongside guest artists including Rosemary Joshua, Samuel West, and the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge); a touring production of Alexander Goehr’s Promised End with English Touring Opera; and a debut appearance at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms. Aurora’s New Moves series at LSO St Luke’s has reinvented the classical concert format with eclectic cross-arts programming, fusing orchestral music with film, theatre and dance. As part of its commitment to broadening access to music, the orchestra has worked in scores of schools within and outside London, brought reduced arrangements of symphonic works to audiences with no regular access to orchestral music, and staged family concerts at venues including the Wigmore Hall and Snape Maltings. It was shortlisted for the RPS Ensemble Award, the UK’s flagship award for live classical music, in both 2010 and 2011.

In addition to appearances as part of Mozart Unwrapped at Kings Place, forthcoming projects include a return to the BBC Proms, an appearance alongside Angelika Kirchschlager at the Wigmore Hall, the release of a debut disc on Decca Classics, première performances of Orlando Gough’s Imago with Glyndebourne Community Opera, and New Moves projects fusing orchestral music with klezmer, break dance and jazz.

For further details and to sign up for regular updates, visit www.auroraorchestra.com.

Aurora Orchestra

Artist biographies

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Nicholas Collon is establishing an enviable reputation as a commanding and inspirational interpreter in an exceptionally wide range of music. In addition to his work as Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra, he is increasingly in demand as a guest conductor with other ensembles in the UK and abroad. In 2008 he was awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship for conducting, having been chosen from a list of twenty nominated British conductors, and was the 2011 classical music nominee for the South Bank Sky Arts / The Times Breakthrough Award.

Engagements in 2010/11 include a joint collaboration with the London Sinfonietta and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a London Symphony Orchestra UBS Soundscapes Young Pioneers première, and concerts with Manchester Camerata, Sinfonia ViVA and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s Ensemble 10/10. He will also record works for broadcast with the BBC Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestras. and will appear at the Bregenz Festival with Symphonieorchester Vorarlberg in a programme of works by Judith Weir. In 2011/12 he will make his debuts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia, the London Mozart Players and the Münchener Kammerorchester.

His operatic work in 2010 included The Knight Crew by Julian Phillips for Glyndebourne, which featured in a major BBC Two series, and Elena Langer’s The Lion’s Face for The Opera Group at the Linbury Theatre (Royal Opera House). His conducting of Walton’s The Bear and Stravinsky’s Renard in 2008 was described by Opera magazine’s critic as ‘one of the most electrifying evenings I’ve spent at the opera in recent seasons ... brilliant playing [by] the Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon, whose feel for Stravinsky’s Russian colourings were beyond reproach’. In 2007 he conducted Mozart’s The Magic Flute in Ramallah and Bethlehem – the first-ever staged opera to tour the Occupied Palestinian Territories – returning in 2009 with Puccini’s La Bohème. In June 2011 Nicholas conducts the world premiere of Seven Angels by Luke Bedford for The Opera Group with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

www.nicholascollon.co.uk

Nicholas Collon Conductor

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Described by The Sunday Times as ‘a soloist of rare refinement’ (2011), Thomas Gould combines a busy solo career with orchestral leading and directing. He is leader of Aurora Orchestra and co-leader (acting leader in 2011) of Britten Sinfonia.

As soloist Thomas has appeared with the Hallé Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of Opera North, London Contemporary Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, Sinfonia ViVA, Britten Sinfonia, Aurora Orchestra, Camerata Zürich and Gävle Symfoniorkester, in venues including the Royal Albert Hall, MEN Arena, National Indoor Arena, Barbican and Bridgewater Hall. His concerto repertoire includes many 20th century and contemporary works by composers including Adams, Adès, Glass, MacMillan, Panufnik and Piazzolla.

Thomas performs frequently in recital alongside pianist Alasdair Beatson, and has appeared at venues and festivals across the UK including the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room and Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the Aldeburgh, Bath, Perth Schubertiad, Plush, Presteigne and Spitalfields festivals. Thomas is a guest with some of the country’s foremost chamber ensembles including the Nash Ensemble, Razumovsky Ensemble, Scottish Ensemble, London Bridge Ensemble and New Music Players. He is a regular participant in Open Chamber Music at IMS Prussia Cove in Cornwall, as well as festivals in Ernen and Verbier in Switzerland, and Nürnberg in Germany.

In addition to his work with Aurora and Britten Sinfonia, Thomas also guest leads the Philharmonia, London Sinfonietta, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, City of London Sinfonia, London Chamber Orchestra and Montreal’s McGill Chamber Orchestra.

Thomas is also an accomplished jazz violinist and improviser, and has shared the stage with Québecoise singer Dorothée Berryman, saxophonists Tim Garland and Andy Sheppard, pianist Gwilym Simcock, American singer-songwriter Sam Amidon, and Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto (at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club). As well as his main instrument, a 1754 Gennaro Gagliano violin, Thomas also plays a six-string electric violin made by John Jordan.

www.thomasgould.com

Thomas Gould Violin

Patrons:

Monica Bertoni

GML International Ltd

An Anonymous Foundation

An Anonymous Donor

Eduardo Tamraz

Thomas Ponsonby

Graham and Jackie Brown

The Paul Morgan Foundation

Friends: SponsoringHelen and Richard Sheldon Principal Conductor

Paul Barber Principal Oboe

Dominique Collon Principal First Violin

Gill and Andy Cooper Principal Bassoon

Alastair and Elisabeth Colquhoun Principal Flute

Toni Griffiths and Peter Scott Principal Clarinet

Eleanor and David Harte Principal Cello

Valli and Gregorio Kohon Principal Percussion

Anne Lee Principal Horn

Richard Lee Principal Second Violin

Irene Mackay Principal Trumpet

Clive Tulloch Principal Viola

Supporters:

Monika Pruetzel-Thomas

Sebastian Scotney

Sona Watt

Aurora gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the

following bodies:

Aldeburgh Music

London Symphony Orchestra

Orchestras Live

Kings Place Music Foundation

FUSE Ltd

The Partners

Stanton Media

This project was developed through an Aldeburgh Residency.

Aurora’s Friends & Patrons scheme was renamed The A-Train

after Duke Ellington’s jazz classic Take the A-Train, played

as the encore to the orchestra’s fifth birthday concert on

19 March 2010.

Acknowledgments

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Honorary Patron Sir Colin Davis

Honorary Advisory Patron Dr Jill White

Trustees Hannah Barry, Michael Collon, Jonathan Deakin, Sanjivan Kohli, Thomas Ponsonby, Louis Watt

Principal Conductor & Artistic DirectorNicholas Collon

Principal First Violin & Leader Thomas Gould

General ManagerJohn Harte

Participation and Learning ManagerJane Mitchell

Orchestral ManagerSarah Roseblade

Concerts Administrator & LibrarianJack Lowe

Arranger-in-ResidenceIain Farrington

Aurora Orchestra is a UK-registered charity, no. 1116352.

Aurora OrchestraThe Music Base Kings Place90 York WayLondon N1 9AGUK

+44 (0)20 7014 [email protected]

www.auroraorchestra.com

Photography pp. 11 and 19: [email protected]. 12: Ruth Crafer (www.ruthcrafer.co.uk)p. 13: Samantha West

DesignThe Partners (www.the-partners.com)

21Sunday 10 July, LSO St Luke’sWhen Doves CryBrett Dean (viola)Choir of London

Three contrasting visions of the pastoral idyll: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, Brett Dean’s Pastoral Symphony and Vaughan Williams’ Flos Campi

Friday 20 May, Kings PlaceOpera NightDima Bawab (soprano)Andrew Tortise (tenor)

Mozart opera highlights including extracts from Così fan tutte, The Magic Flute, and Idomeneo

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Saturday 10 September, Kings PlaceFrom the Street

Ivana Gavric (piano)Nicholas Mulroy (tenor)

BBC Music Magazine’s Newcomer of the Year Ivana Gavric joins Aurora for a mini-series celebrating the electrifying chamber music of Leoš Janácek

Thursday 15 September, Kings PlaceFrom the Ridiculous to the Sublime

Lara Melda (piano), Christian Immler (baritone), Samuel West (narrator)

A ravishing Mozart programme featuring 2010 BBC Young Musician of the Year winner Lara Melda, actor Samuel West, and baritone Christian Immler.

3Saturday 30 July, Royal Albert HallHorrible Histories PromLouise Fryer (presenter)Horrible Histories cast

Aurora returns to the BBC Proms alongside the cast of BAFTA award-winning comic TV series Horrible Histories

Aurora Orchestra London summer highlights

For details of all Aurora events and booking information, visit www.auroraorchestra.com

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