July 20, 1995

Contact: Helen Dalrymple (202) 707-1940
Concert Line: (202) 707-5502

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"Plethora of Premieres" and "Jamboree of Jazz" Highlight Library of Congress 70th Aniversary Concert Season

The Library of Congress, now celebrating 70 years of chamber music performances, offers seven world premieres during the 1995-96 season. New works from some of the most respected American composers in classical music will be featured in concerts by the California E.A.R. Unit, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, Verdehr Trio, pianist Robert Taub, as well as the Library's resident ensembles, the Juilliard String Quartet and Beaux Arts Trio. The season will also include the Washington area debut of harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï and the American debut of the London-based Medieval and Renaissance group, the Dufay Collective. All performances will take place in the Terrace Theater of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Also this season, the Music Division will incorporate its first jazz festival into the concert series with a three-night extravaganza on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, June 6, 7 and 8, 1996. The performances will take place at the recently renovated Lincoln Theater -- a first for the Library -- and will pay homage to three jazz greats, all major bandleaders, composers, arrangers and instrumentalists: Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, and Buddy Collette.

THE CONCERT SCHEDULE

Sunday, Oct. 22, at 2 p.m. The season begins with the Verdehr Trio, violinist Walter Verdehr, clarinettist Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, and pianist Gary Kirkpatrick. The Verdehr Trio has developed a wide range of works for violin, clarinet and piano through research and commissions. This season, the Verdehr Trio will premier Trio, by eminent composer David Diamond, commissioned by the Library's Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation. The Trio will also perform works by Larsen, Bolcom, and Chihara.

Sunday, Oct. 22, at 7:30 p.m. David Amram has been a distinguished composer elite for nearly 30 years, since his days as the New York Philharmonic's first composer-in-residence in 1966. On Oct. 22, he will conduct the premiere of his Letters of Jefferson, a work scored for narrator, woodwind quintet, and string orchestra, and commissioned by the Carolyn Royall Just Fund in the Library of Congress. World-renowned actor and "Chicago Hope" television star E.G. Marshall and members of the National Symphony Orchestra will be featured in this new work. The program will also include other works by Mr. Amram as well as music of Still, Chavez, and McMillan.

Monday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. As ensemble-in-residence at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the California Ear Unit is known for imaginative programming and definitive performances of avant garde works, 20th century classics, and multimedia collaborations. The Ear Unit comes to the Terrace Theater with a new work for violin and keyboard by Nixon in China composer John Adams, commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress.

Tuesday and Wednesday, Jan. 23 and 24, at 7:30 p.m. The series resumes in January with a pair of concerts by the Juilliard String Quartet. The ensemble -- violinists Robert Mann and Joel Smirnoff, violist Samuel Rhodes, and cellist Joel Krosnick -- now in its 49th season, offers a new piece for solo viola by Donald Martino, commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in the Library of Congress.

Wednesday, March 6, at 7:30 p.m. The Beaux Arts Trio -- pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist Ida Kavafian, and cellist Peter Wiley -- returns to the Terrace Theater with two premieres. Ms. Kavafian and Mr. Pressler will give the first performance of Romance by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, commissioned by the Library's McKim Fund. Clarinettist Richard Stolzman will then join the Beaux Arts Trio in William Bolcom's Second Piano Quartet, commissioned by the Isenbergh Clarinet Fund in the Library of Congress.

Thursday, May 2, at 7:30 p.m. What is old is new again when the Library of Congress concert series continues in May with two of early music's rising attractions. Great Britain's Dufay Collective makes its American debut in the Terrace Theater on May 2. This six-member ensemble regularly plays at most of the world's early-music festivals. The Dufay Collective will offer selections from Cantigas de Santa Maria, the collection of 400 songs and instrumental pieces compiled by Alfonso X, the 13th century King of Castile and Leon.

Friday, May 3, at 7:30 p.m. French harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï recently won Gramophone magazine's Record of the Year award with his recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. On May 3 Mr. Hantaï makes his Washington and Library of Congress debut. The program for Mr. Hantaã's Terrace Theater recital will be announced later.

Wednesday, May 15, at 7:30 p.m. For this performance pianist Robert Taub will be joined by violinist Rolf Schulte, violist Toby Appel, and cellist Fred Sherry in a new piano quartet by Milton Babbitt, commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in the Library of Congress. The musicians will also offer works by Brahms and Beethoven.

Thursday, May 16, at 7:30 p.m. The Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio returns to the Library of Congress concert series on May 16. These innovative San Franciscans will premier a work for violin and piano by Steven Mackey, commissioned by the Library's McKim Fund. The trio will also perform Peter Garland's Love Songs, Terry Riley's Ritmos Melos, and the TrioConcertant by Ralph Shapey.

Thursday-Saturday, June 6-8. In June, the Library of Congress concert series moves, for the first time ever, to the "hot, chic and cool" Lincoln Theatre for a mini jazz festival featuring three of the genre's most beloved musicians: Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, and Buddy Collette. Eighty-six-year-old Benny Carter has been at the top of his craft for more than half a century, arranging and performing on the soundtracks of films from Hollywood's Golden Age. Flutist, alto saxophonist, and clarinettist William "Buddy" Collette was the first African American musician to appear as a regular in a television band (Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life"), and he was a longtime member of the renowned Chico Hamilton Quintet. Legendary trumpeter and composer Gerald Wilson -- also the arranger for Stan Kenton and Ella Fitzgerald -- is renowned for his works written for television and films and for such jazz greats as Nancy Wilson, Johnny Hartman and Sarah Vaughan. All three gentlemen will bring their bands to the Lincoln Theatre this June for three consecutive evenings of some of their best-known compositions and arrangements.

All Library of Congress concerts are free and open to the public. Performances at the Terrace Theater and those at the Lincoln Theatre will require tickets, however, and all seating will be reserved. (Specific ticket information for all performances will be given at a later date.)

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PR 95-105
7/20/95
ISSN 0731-3527