ROB KAPILOW: 2007-2008 SEASON PREVIEW Kapilow is keynote speaker at annual conference of Young Presidents’ Organization, in Kyoto, Japan. Lincoln Center inaugurates its new series of video podcasts featuring Kapilow’s “What Makes It Great?”© programs, to be available on its web site and at iTunes. Kapilow’s first Live from Lincoln Center television broadcast will air nationally on PBS on January 10, exploring Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. Kapilow reaches new audiences in Chicago and Cerritos; appears at the annual Chamber Music America Conference in New York City; and is Artist-in-Residence at Canada’s Banff Centre. Conductor, composer, and musical tour guide Rob Kapilow will be busier than ever this season, adding new series and new cities to his already amply-filled itinerary of regular engagements in a half-dozen North American municipalities. Programs bearing Kapilow’s memorable trademarks – What Makes It Great?© and FamilyMusik© – will be added in Chicago and Cerritos respectively, and he’ll perform his ever-popular original composition “Green Eggs and Hamadeus” with the Detroit Symphony when he makes his debut in the Motor City. His home base, Lincoln Center, honors Kapilow with two special events this season. The world’s largest performing arts center inaugurates its institutional video podcasts with a series of Kapilow’s What Makes It Great?© programs produced by Lincoln Center’s John Goberman that will be available for free download at www.lincolncenter.org as well as from iTunes. And “Live from Lincoln Center”, the hugely successful PBS-TV series also produced by Mr. Goberman, will present Rob Kapilow for the first telecast in its 32-year history on January 10 – an appropriate honor for the only artist with his own series at Lincoln Center. The work to be presented is Schoenberg’s haunting and evocative Verklärte Nacht. Rob Kapilow gives “regular” performances as well, performing chamber music, giving lectures, and – for the first time – spending a week as artist-in-residence at the spectacular Banff Centre in Canada. A special occasion for Kapilow, who won’t have to travel far from his home near New York City, is his appearance at the annual national conference of Chamber Music America, taking place this year in New York the first week in January. Although Kapilow is not one to sit still for very long – his calendar bears witness to that – he will spend a full week in March as artist-in-residence at Canada’s Banff Centre, one of the country’s most renowned cultural institutions. In partnership with the center, Kapilow will help develop projects to train emerging artists in the roles they play in community engagement. Kapilow’s regular performing season opens on September 19, in Cerritos, with an examination of What Makes Ravel’s String Quartet in F Great – but a few days later he takes on an entirely new role, as keynote speaker for the Young Presidents’ Organization’s annual conference in Kyoto, Japan. Kapilow’s name is added to a list of distinguished previous speakers (including the Dalai Lama) for the YPO, whose conference takes place between September 23 and 30. The YPO’s mission is to create better leaders through education and the exchange of ideas, something of great significance to Kapilow. This season Kapilow’s collaborators include the Pacifica Quartet, crack chamber ensemble Concertante, harpsichordist Bradley Brookshire, early music vocal septet Lionheart, the Flux and Daedalus Quartets, pianist Angela Cheng and many more. What Makes It Great?© from coast to coast: What Makes It Great?© takes Kapilow to two new cities in addition to the original Boston/New York City axis: Chicago, and Cerritos, where he’s given FamilyMusik© performances for many years. On January 10, before the “Live from Lincoln Center” cameras, Kapilow offers a special What Makes It Great?© event at the Lincoln Center, examining Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht. And worldwide audiences will get a chance to experience Kapilow’s unique WMIG presentations when they are made available on a new series of video podcasts, produced by Lincoln Center. At his east-coast base, Kapilow will present no fewer than six What Makes It Great?© programs during the “Great Performers at Lincoln Center” season, between October 22 and April 14. On October 22, Kapilow examines Mendelssohn’s early masterpiece, the Octet, with Concertante forming the required double string quartet. In his five additional New York WMIG concerts Kapilow will present Bach’s Italian Concerto (Nov. 12, with Bradley Brookshire on harpsichord); music by Palestrina, assisted by the renowned vocal ensemble Lionheart (Dec. 10); the disentanglement of John Adams’s popular Shaker Loops, with the Flux Quartet (Jan. 28); Schumann’s monumental Piano Quintet, with Benjamin Hochman and the Daedalus Quartet (Mar. 3); and Schubert’s great piano Fantasy in C, with Angela Cheng (Apr. 14). On November 9, Kapilow joins forces with the Pacifica Quartet during its Chicago-based Beethoven Festival at the Music Institute, to demonstrate and discuss the composer’s revolutionary string quartets. This will mark Kapilow’s first What Makes It Great?© presentation in Chicago, and the city’s radio station, WFMT, will be on hand to record and broadcast the debut event. In other cities, WMIG concerts include Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Palo Alto, Nov. 2); one of Beethoven’s earliest piano sonatas (Cerritos, Nov. 28); songs by George Gershwin (Boston, Feb. 2); the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, with chamber orchestra (Cerritos, Feb. 27); songs to texts by Goethe (Palo Alto, Apr. 2); and Beethoven’s “Waldstein” sonata in Boston on May 10 – the last concert in Kapilow’s varied and busy season. Lincoln Center video podcasts: To inaugurate Lincoln Center’s new video podcast series, which will be made available to the public for download at no charge from Lincoln Center’s web site and from iTunes, John Goberman is producing video podcasts of select programs from Kapilow’s Lincoln Center What Makes It Great?© series. The first podcast, to be made available for download a week after its performance date (October 22), will be the Mendelssohn Octet, with Concertante. Further details about the podcasts will be announced shortly. FamilyMusik© for families of all ages and sizes: Recognizing the value of bringing families into the concert hall together, Rob Kapilow has developed his FamilyMusik© for families of all ages and sizes in cities all over the country. This season he adds new cities. From March 7 to 9, Kapilow’s innovative dance incarnation of Peter and the Wolf will draw St. Louis youngsters and their families into the world of classical music. And Kapilow makes his debut in Detroit with the Detroit Symphony on March 29, with his own most popular creation, “Green Eggs and Hamadeus”, the two-part concert that pairs beloved immortals – Dr. Seuss and Mozart. “GE&H” will also be given in Cerritos on April 23, in Kapilow’s first FamilyMusik© event in the California city where he’s demonstrated What Makes It Great?© for many years. Other cities enjoying FamilyMusik© this season are Boston, Vancouver, and Toronto. His FamilyMusik© collaborators include Concertante, the Pacifica Quartet, Bradley Brookshire, Lionheart, Flux Quartet, Toronto Symphony, Daedalus Quartet, Barbara Hochman, Angela Cheng, and the Detroit Symphony. In Boston, Kapilow presents Carnival of the Animals and his own winning piece, Play Ball!. In Toronto he gives no fewer than eight concerts between February 18 and 21, presenting his original work “And Furthermore, They Bite!” for kids in grades K through three, and two more for families two days later. And of course, his debut with the Detroit Symphony on March 29 is with “Green Eggs and Hamadeus”, one of the most frequently-performed works for families published by G. Schirmer. Highlights of Kapilow’s previous season: Kapilow’s 2006-07 season featured tenth-anniversary celebrations at New York’s Lincoln Center and the Boston Celebrity Series, where his incomparable WMIG concerts have enthralled sold-out audiences for a decade. Also in those two cities, where Kapilow enjoys an unprecedented double subscription series (of both What Makes It Great?© and FamilyMusik©), as well as in Vancouver, he introduced his new Tap Dance Concerto; the piece, written for tap dancer and a twelve-piece instrumental ensemble, was a joint commission by Lincoln Center Great Performers, Boston’s Celebrity Series, and Vancouver’s Music in the Morning, and represented the first major collaborative commission between the prestigious concert presenters in New York and Boston. Kapilow’s collaborator on the work was Ayodele Casel, whose energy and youthfulness – comparable only to Kapilow’s own – belie her depth of experience and range as a seasoned and sought-after performer and choreographer. Kapillow also worked with pianists Jeremy Denk and Adam Neiman, with the Colorado, Enso, Pacifica, Ying, and St. Lawrence String Quartets, with singer Christopheren Nomura and violinist Jennifer Frautschi, and with several symphony orchestras and ensembles. Looking ahead: Kapilow has received a distinguished invitation to write a book for publication by the new dual imprint between John Wiley & Sons and Lincoln Center during the 2008-09 season. Details about the book will be announced in the New Year. As well as his What Makes It Great?© and FamilyMusik© shows, Kapilow is also famous for his Citypieces, commemorative works that involve large communities in their inspiration and compositional process. His most recent such project examined and reflected on the historic impact of the Lewis and Clark expedition (commemorating its bicentennial) from the perspective of the Native American Indian; Darrell Kipp, a writer and educator from the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana, collaborated with Kapilow as librettist. The large choral/orchestral work, Summer Sun, Winter Moon, received its premiere performances in the fall and winter of 2004. A documentary film, Summer Sun, Winter Moon, following the process of the composition from conception through to its premiere, is being produced for broadcast on public television in fall 2008/spring 2009. Independent filmmaker Hugo Perez is producing and directing the documentary for New York-based illume productions; the documentary has recently received the prestigious and competitive honor of completion funds from the Independent Television Service (ITVS) arm of PBS.
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