Distributed November 13, 2002, 2002
For Immediate Release

News Service Contact: Mary Jo Curtis



Brown University Orchestra to perform broadcast concert in Montreal

The Brown University Orchestra will join the McGill Chamber Singers and Opera Chorus in concert Saturday, Nov. 16, 2002, at McGill University in Montreal. The concert will be broadcast nationally by the Canadian Broadcast Company and recorded by ARSIS Records.


PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Brown University Orchestra will travel this week to Montreal, where it will join the McGill Chamber Singers and the McGill Opera Chorus in performing a concert Saturday, Nov. 16, 2002, at 8 p.m. in Pollack Hall at McGill University.

The concert, to be conducted by Paul Phillips, director of orchestras and chamber music at Brown, and Julian Wachner, associate professor of music and chair of the choral area at McGill, will be broadcast throughout Canada by the Canadian Broadcast Company and recorded by ARSIS Records, a division of E. C. Schirmer, Boston. The evening’s program will include the world premiere of Anthony Burgess’ “Song for St. Cecilia's Day” and the Canadian premieres of Carlyle Sharpe’s “Proud Music of the Storm” and Phillips’ “Brownian Motion.” The program also features Francis Poulenc’s “Gloria.”

A web-cast of the concert will be available at http://www.mcgill.ca/music-events/internet/.

The Brown University Orchestra

The Brown University Orchestra, founded in 1918, is now in its 85th season. It is composed of 95 students from Brown, the Rhode Island School of Design, Johnson and Wales University and other members of the Brown community; it has been led by its current music director, Paul Phillips, since 1989. Its alumni include members of the Chicago Symphony, the Beijing String Quartet and other leading musical organizations. A member of the American Symphony Orchestra League, the Brown Orchestra is a four-time recipient of the ASCAP Award for “adventuresome programming of contemporary music,” having won this prestigious honor in 1994, 1997, 1999 and 2001.

The Orchestra has performed in Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, among other venues, and has performed in concert with such luminaries as Itzhak Perlman, Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Eugenia Zukerman, Joseph Kalichstein and the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Paul Phillips

Paul Phillips is an internationally recognized conductor, composer and music scholar. He has conducted the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, Pro Arte Orchester of Vienna and recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, which is issuing his second CD later this year. He is also music director of the Pioneer Valley Symphony and Chorus in Massachusetts and a frequent guest conductor of opera and ballet. This season he will conduct Puccini’s Tosca with Opera Providence and the Boston Academy of Music. Phillips is a Columbia graduate and holds advanced degrees from Columbia and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music; his teachers include Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Gunther Schuller and Kurt Masur. As a scholar, he is best known for his work on Igor Stravinsky and Anthony Burgess, the British author-composer best known for his novel “A Clockwork Orange.” Phillips contributed the Burgess entry in “The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians” (2nd edition) and is a featured commentator in “The Burgess Variations,” a recent BBC television documentary.

Julian Wachner

Named “one of the most admired conductors of the year” in 1999 by Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe, Julian Wachner – known locally as artistic director of the Providence Singers – is a prize-winning composer and a conductor of unusual versatility, engaged by orchestras, choruses, opera companies and contemporary ensembles throughout North America. As a composer, his works have been presented at Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, Tanglewood and festivals in St Petersburg, Russia and Athens, Greece, among other locations. His debut CD on ARSIS Audio, the first in a series of four, was released to critical acclaim in 2000. Wachner has been director of the Young Artists’ Composition Program at Tanglewood, a member of the Board of Examiners for the American Guild of Organists and served as visiting lecturer in music composition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1994-2000. At the age of 20, he was appointed to the faculty of Boston University where, from 1990-2001, he taught courses in composition, conducting, music theory, solfége, improvisation and organ. He was appointed last year as associate professor of music at McGill University.

######