The Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra
SEASON FOUR BEGINS
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Music!
with guest artist Judy Kuhn
Join Music Director Gary S. Fagin at the World Financial Center Winter Garden on Saturday, January 14, 2012, at 7pm for the first concert of Season 4, when the KCO musically commemorates the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty and the 200th anniversary of Castle Clinton. You'll hear compositions inspired by Lady Liberty; works from historic performances at Castle Clinton by Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale;” and treasures by American masters Stephen Foster, Charles Ives and Aaron Copland.
Three-time Tony-nominated actress Judy Kuhn (left) will make a special appearance, and the evening will conclude, as it always does to the delight of the audience, with a rousing waltz -- this one by John Philip Sousa.
Photo of Gary Fagin above right by Paula Court.
The KCO: Season Three
The KCO concluded its third season in June 2011 with performances of Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale (L'histoire du soldat)," a collaboration with Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects, on June 9, 10 and 11, 2011 at Pace University's Schimmel Center for the Arts. Please click here for a feature story entitled "Stravinsky's Devil, Reignited" in The New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section of June 3.
The New York Times also covered the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra and KCO Music Director Gary Fagin's work in "Sing of the Master Builder," an article that appeared on January 12, 2011, on the front page of the Arts section, and described our upcoming production of "Visions and Voices" on January 15, 2011 in the World Financial Center Winter Garden.
Please click here to learn more about the third season of the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra.
Photo by Adam Hume, www.Adamimage.com
Over the past three years the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra has performed in Lower Manhattan’s most inspiring performing spaces -- the soaring atrium of the World Financial Center Winter Garden, the inspiring vaulted space of Trinity Church, Pace University's cutting edge Schimmel Center for the Arts -- and at smaller venues around Lower Manhattan, including numerous schools.
We've featured soloists of world-renown at these concerts, and given prominence to KCO's own stellar musicians. Audiences have waltzed under the palms of the Winter Garden, and children have sat entranced in their school auditoriums, absorbed by the subtlety and range of classical music.
Under the direction of Gary S. Fagin, the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra was founded to reintroduce people to their musical heritage by performing great music in distinctive downtown venues and by offering innovative educational outreach.
The orchestra comprises 25 of the region's top musicians, and was launched on January 17, 2009 at the World Financial Center Winter Garden with "The Red Violin Concert" featuring Elizabeth Pitcairn playing her 1720 Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius violin. One year later, after a triumphant first season, the KCO returned to the Winter Garden and drew 1,500 fans to "Musical Tales and Adventures," a concert starring renowned author Neil Gaiman narrating Prokofiev's "Peter & the Wolf" and Broadway star Jason Danieley in Mr. Fagin's composition "And Bold to Fall Withal – Henry Hudson in the New World" celebrating the 400th anniversary of Hudson's sail into New York Harbor.
This past season, the renowned Brooklyn Youth Chorus joined the KCO for "A Celebration of Spirit " at the Winter Garden, where the civic-savvy downtown audience was treated to a preview of Mr. Fagin's new music theatre work about controversial New York city planner and buider Robert Moses, "Robert Moses Astride New York," featuring tenor Rinde Eckert.
The Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra is a meshing of the old and the new—classical music played by top contemporary musicians, performed in the fast-growing neighborhoods of old New York, in venues steps away from cobblestone streets and wireless skyscrapers. Please join us as we continue to present superb music in Season 4!