Jennifer Koh played the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s new Violin Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra led by guest conductor Gemma New.<\/p>\n
From The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n “The program\u2019s molten core was the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli\u2019s \u201cViolin Concerto (Procession),” a work in five short (mostly conjoined) movements. Like Vaughan Williams, Mazzoli taps into and transforms a hymnal history \u2014 albeit with a more \u201cmessed-up\u201d (her words) twist.<\/p>\n Composed over the course of 2021, the concerto\u2019s themes are inspired by medieval rituals that emerged through the Plague. (\u201cIt can always be worse,\u201d Mazzoli deadpanned from the stage before the performance). Over its 20-minute run, Mazzoli conjures penitential processions, \u201cmelting hymns,\u201d spells cast over broken bones and a conclusory ascent to the heavens. (And sure, that included some writhing in my seat here and there. Not everything needs to be nice.)<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Koh and Mazzoli have a decade of collaborative work behind them \u2014 including a short piece for \u201cAlone Together\u201d \u2014 and the \u201cViolin Concerto\u201d puts this long-brewed chemistry on full display. It\u2019s an unsettling work that opens like a trapdoor, or the moment you fall asleep.<\/p>\n Koh didn\u2019t ride atop the orchestra so much as engage in a prolonged tug-of-war with it \u2014 her solos tensing like a tendon within the body of the music. She attacked short solos as if she were sawing through a pipe; elsewhere she strung silvery threads through a dense fabric of dark strings and darting flutes. Her slow-burning centerpiece cadenza was a searing highlight of the evening.”<\/p>\n From DC Metro Theater Arts<\/a><\/p>\n “Mazzoli\u2019s healing journey consists of five parts that sometimes run into one another without interruption, starting with \u201cProcession in a Spiral.\u201d Koh doubled as a sort of mad shaman in a series of airy arpeggiated figures with sharp edges that sent bow hairs fluttering in the still air. Orchestra musicians propelled her forward like so many fasting, barefooted faithful walking in robes of penitence during an imaginary ritual.<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n The concerto emerged from more than a decade of collaboration, and friendship, between Mazzoli and Koh \u2014 a champion of new music \u2014 starting with the solo violin piece \u201cDissolve, O My Heart\u201d (2010). That LA Philharmonic commission begins with the D minor opening chord of Bach\u2019s evocative Chaconne before spiraling seemingly out of control into a series of differentiated chords and fast passages.<\/p>\n The powerful performance and warm reception to the premiere brought to life by a composer-soloist-conductor trio of women point to a hopeful future of enlightened curiosity for a field too often dominated by older white males and overplayed works. The true measure of that new chapter could be a time when works created and performed by women and non-white artists are so frequent that they become part of the norm.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jennifer Koh played the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s new Violin Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra led by guest conductor Gemma New. From The Washington Post “The program\u2019s molten core was the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli\u2019s \u201cViolin Concerto (Procession),” a work in five short (mostly conjoined) movements. Like Vaughan Williams, Mazzoli taps into … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3685,7137,7138,4436,7135,3669,7136],"class_list":["post-10069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-concerto","tag-female-composer","tag-female-conductor","tag-jennifer-koh","tag-missy-mazzoli","tag-violin","tag-world-premiere"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10070,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10069\/revisions\/10070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/9002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}