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  • SATIRIST PETER SCHICKELE GLEEFULLY SKEWERS CLASSICAL MUSIC IN SPECIAL HOLIDAY PROGRAM WITH CONDUCTING FELLOW JOANA CARNEIRO AND LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC AT WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL
  • Dec. 16, 2005
  • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2005, AT 8 PM

    This concert is generously sponsored by Acura.

    In a break from the traditional holiday fare, Peter Schickele, the composer, performer and satirist best known as the tireless rehabilitator of (the fictional) P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742?), gleefully skewers the conventions of classical music through his own brand of concert hall antics and musical mayhem in Peter Schickele Meets P.D.Q. Bach, at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday, December 16, at 8 p.m.

    Conducting Fellow Joana Carneiro leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an evening which continues the LA Phil’s Deck the Hall concert series. This evening’s program features favorite carols, the traditional “Swing Sweet, Low Chariot” and Schickele’s Songs from Shakespeare, as well as P.D.Q. Bach’s Oedipus Tex, S. 150 and Cantata No. 11, also known as “‘Thank God It’s Friday,’ for soprano and a about a dozen instruments, depending on how you count the percussion.”

    Whether offering comfort and joy, camaraderie and a good laugh, or ringing in 2006, the yuletide spirit fills Walt Disney Concert Hall with Deck the Hall, a two-week schedule of festive concert events offering an array of artists bringing their personal touch to the season. Other Deck the Hall concerts include: ‘Twas the Week Before Christmas with Assistant Conductor Alexander Mickelthwate and the Los Angeles Philharmonic on December 17 and 18; Christmas with Chanticleer on December 20; The Manhattan Transfer Christmas on December 21; Lila Downs, Calexico and Mariachi Luz de Luna on December 22; Go Tell It on the Mountain: The Blind Boys of Alabama Christmas Show on December 23; and New Year’s Eve with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

    At the age of 27, JOANA CARNEIRO has already attracted considerable attention as an outstanding young conductor. She is the recipient of the Young Musicians Foundation Conducting Grant and the BMI Foundation, Inc. Lionel Newman Conducting Study Grant. She serves as Music Director of the YMF Debut Orchestra, having won the Young Musicians Foundation's 2002 National Conductor Search. She continues in the footsteps of such YMF alumni as André Previn, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Myung-Whun Chung. As Conducting Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Carneiro is a member of the American Conducting Fellows Program, a national conductor training program developed and managed by the American Symphony Orchestra League. A native of Lisbon, Portugal, Carneiro began her musical studies as a violist before receiving her conducting degree from the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon, where she studied with Jean-Marc Burfin. Carneiro received her master's degree in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University, where she studied with Victor Yampolsky and Mallory Thompson. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Michigan, where she studies conducting with Kenneth Kiesler and has served as Music Director of the Campus Philharmonia Orchestra. Carneiro's great promise has been recognized with awards and scholarships at the world's most important conducting institutes. In 2003/04 Carneiro participates in the International Conductors' Academy of the Allianz Cultural Foundation with Kurt Masur and Christoph von Dohnányi in London. As a 2002 finalist of the prestigious Maazel-Vilar Conductor's Competition at Carnegie Hall, Carneiro was invited by the jury to conduct the Prelude to Act III of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin. She was a Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival in 2003.

    DAVID DÜSING has a varied career as conductor, singer, and composer. He has performed in concerts, cabaret, and Broadway shows throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. In the classical field he has sung as soloist under the batons of Robert Shaw (Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Haydn’s Creation), Pierre Boulez (Stravinsky’s Renard), Klaus Tennstedt (Orff’s Carmina Burana), Michael Tilson Thomas and Gunther Schuller. In the folk and pop fields he has sung with or under the direction of Robert De Cormier, Harry Belafonte, Norman Luboff, Joanna Gleason, Pearl Bailey, Jean Ritchie, Michael Crawford, Oscar Brand, John Raitt, Morton Gould, and Garrison Keillor, among others. Additional credits include radio, television, the occasional commercial, and more than 130 recordings. Dusing held the position of Associate Conductor of Choruses at New England Conservatory in Boston, where he also taught conducting. He served as chorusmaster for the Peter Sellars Mozart opera productions at the PEPSICO Summerfare and conductor of the Norman Luboff Choir on tour. His own group, the Dusing Singers, can be heard on Rags and Riches (Newport Classic) and The Cool of the Day (Greenhays), and on the soundtrack of the film Dead Man Walking. As composer and arranger Dusing has over 35 works in print and a series under his own imprint with Lawson-Gould Music Publishers. He contributed several arrangements to three holiday recordings by the Robert De Cormier Singers: A Victorian Christmas, Christmas Eve, and Children Go Where I Send Thee. With De Cormier he also arranged music for an album of early 20th century popular music, Oh, You Beautiful Doll (all of the above on the Arabesque label). His works are also heard on recordings by The New York Choral Society, Pamela Warrick-Smith’s Work, Fight and Pray (Greenhays), and The Muse Machine’s The Muse Machine on Broadway, Tonight at Eight, and Heart & Music. David Dusing regularly appears with composer Peter Schickele in a song program that tours throughout the country. In addition, with Mr. Schickele’s alter ego, P.D.Q. Bach, and soprano Michèle Eaton, he appears in P.D.Q. Bach and Peter Schickele: The Jekyll & Hyde Tour as well as two programs with orchestras, entitled Peter Schickele Meets P.D.Q. Bach and P.D.Q. Bach Strikes Back. He also appears with Schickele and his wife, poet Susan Sindall, in The Condition of My Heart, a program about the joys and trials of a long marriage.

    Soprano MICHÈLE EATON has earned praise for her pure voice and her sensitive interpretations. Highly respected for her mastery of many styles, she is best known for her performances of Baroque and Renaissance music. On the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in New York City, she has performed Handel’s Solomon and Saul, Bach’s Mass in B minor, Tavener’s Lament of the Mother of God and Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. She frequently tours and records with the acclaimed Renaissance vocal group Pomerium, long recognized as one of the world’s premiere ensembles for its beautiful phrasing and perfect intonation. With the Ensemble for Early Music she has appeared in staged productions of Sponsus, a medieval morality play. She has also been a featured soloist with the period instrument orchestra, The New York Collegium, under the direction of Andrew Parrott. Eaton’s other solo oratorio performances have included Handel’s Israel in Egypt, Judas Maccabaeus, and Messiah, Mozart’s Vesperae Solennes de Confessore and Requiem, Bach’s St. John and St. Matthew Passions and Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, Fauré’s Requiem, Haydn’s Missa Sancti Johanni, Vivaldi’s Magnificat, Carissimi’s Jephte, Purcell’s Come Ye Sons of Art, and Schubert’s Mass in G. In addition, she tours annually with Peter Schickele and tenor David Dusing in performances of Peter Schickele Meets P.D.Q. Bach and Peter Schickele and P.D.Q. Bach: The Jekyll & Hyde Tour. She is equally at home in performances of contemporary music. She is the newest member of Equal Voices, an a cappella sextet that performs a wide range of vocal styles including jazz and pop to contemporary classical and world music. Eaton has sung John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music with the Jacksonville Symphony, and she has toured internationally with the Philip Glass Ensemble in performances of Einstein on the Beach; she has also performed and recorded Glass’ Hydrogen Jukebox. At the Aspen Music Festival, she was a Vocal Chamber Music Fellow and premiered Henry Brant’s Rain Forest Requiem. She can be heard on the soundtrack for the film Dead Man Walking, and has recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon, Angel, Dorian, Sony Classical, Nonesuch, Arabesque, Glissando, and Delos labels. She lives in New Rochelle, New York.

    Composer, musician, author, satirist PETER SCHICKELE is internationally recognized as one of the most versatile artists in the field of music. His works, now well in excess of 100 for symphony orchestras, choral groups, chamber ensembles, voice, movies and television, have given him “a leading role in the ever-more-prominent school of American composers who unselfconsciously blend all levels of American music.” (John Rockwell, The New York Times). He has performed with leading American orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many others. In Schickele’s well-known other role as perpetrator of the oeuvre of the now-classic P.D.Q. Bach, he is acknowledged as one of the great satirists of the 20th century. In testimony, Vanguard has released 11 albums of the fabled genius’s works; Random House has published 11 editions of The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach (which has also been translated into German; Theodore Presser has printed numerous scores; and VideoArts International has produced a cassette of P.D.Q. Bach’s only full-length opera, The Abduction of Figaro, which was premiered by the Minnesota Opera (in the 1989 summer season it was given 28 successive sold-out performances in Sweden by the Dramatiske Ensemblen). Schickele was born in Ames, Iowa, and brought up in Washington, D.C., and Fargo, North Dakota, where he studied composition with Sigvald Thompson. He graduated from Swarthmore in 1957, having had the distinction of being the only music major (as he had been, earlier, the only bassoonist in Fargo. Then, under a Ford Foundation grant, he composed music for high schools in Los Angeles before returning to teach at Juilliard in 1961. In 1965 he gave up teaching to become the freelance composer/performer he has been ever since. Schickele and his wife, the poet Susan Sindall, reside in New York City and at an upstate hideaway where he concentrates on composing.

    The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, under Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, presents the finest in orchestral and chamber music, recitals, new music, jazz, world music and holiday concerts at two of the most remarkable places anywhere to experience music — Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. In addition to a 30-week winter subscription season at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the LA Phil presents a 12-week summer festival at the legendary Hollywood Bowl, summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and home of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. In fulfilling its commitment to the community, the Association’s involvement with Los Angeles extends to educational programs, community concerts and children's programming, ever seeking to provide inspiration and delight to the broadest possible audience.

    EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

    FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2005 at 8 PM

    WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, 111 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles


    Peter Schickele Meets P.D.Q. Bach


    LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC

    JOANA CARNEIRO, conductor

    PROFESSOR PETER SCHICKELE, intellectual guide and Johann of all trades, assisted by

    MICHÈLE EATON, off-coloratura soprano

    DAVID DÜSING, tenor profundo and

    GIAN-CARLA TISERA, mezzo-soprano

    P.D.Q. Bach A Consort of Choral Christmas Carols, S. 359 (ed. Schickele)

    1. Throw the Yule Log On, Uncle John

    2. O Little Town of Hackensack

    3. Good King Kong Looked Out
    P.D.Q. Bach Cantata No. 11, 532.9: “Gott sei dank, daß heute Freitag ist” (“Thank God It’s Friday”), S. 5 for soprano and about a dozen instruments, depending on how you count the percussion

    1. Sinfonia Balonia

    2. Recitative: “Montag”

    3. Aria: “Gott sei dank”
    TRADITIONAL Swing Sweet, Low Chariot (arr. Schickele)
    Schickele If Love Is Real
    Schickele Songs from Shakespeare

    1. Macbeth’s Soliloquy

    2. Hamlet’s Soliloquy

    3. Three Witches from “Macbeth”

    4. Juliet’s Soliloquy

    5. Funeral Oration from “Julius Caesar”
    P.D.Q. Bach from THE ART OF THE GROUND ROUND, S. 1.19/lb.

    Please, Kind Sir

    Nellie is a Nice Girl
    P.D.Q. Bach from OED IPUS TEX, S. 150

    Recitative: “Well” (narrator)

    Aria: “Howdy there” (Oedipus Tex)

    Recitative: “And it wasn’t long” (narrator)

    Duet: “My Heart” (Oedipus Tex and Billie Jo Casta)

    Recitative: ‘But” (narrator, Billie Jo and Oedipus Tex)

    Chorale and Finale: “The”

    This concert is generously sponsored by Acura.

    Tickets ($15-$129) are on sale now at the Walt Disney Concert Hall box office, online at LAPhil.com, or via credit card phone order at 323.850.2000. A limited number of $10 rush tickets for seniors and full time students may be available at the Walt Disney Concert Hall box office two hours prior to the performance. Valid identification is required; one ticket per person; cash only. Groups of 12 or more may be eligible for special discounts for selected concerts and seating areas. For all information, please call 323.850.2000.

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  • Contact:

    Cathy Williams, 213.972.3689; Photos: 213.972.3034