The New School’s College of Performing Arts Presents: Mannes Orchestra, Mavericks, Celebrating John Zorn, Viet Cuong, and Luciano Berio, and featuring Sandbox Percussion and Violinist Stefan Jackiw
The concert will include Zorn’s classical masterwork, Viet Cuong’s concerto dedicated to renewable energy initiatives and Berio’s audacious orchestral collage
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, April 11, 2025 at 7:30pm
New York, March 18, 2025 – Mannes Orchestra returns to Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in a dynamic program that celebrates pioneering orchestral work that breaks stylistic boundaries. Mannes Orchestra, Mavericks celebrates composers John Zorn, Viet Cuong, and Luciano Berio, featuring College of Performing Arts Ensemble-in-Residence Sandbox Percussion and Mannes faculty and violinist Stefan Jackiw. Conducted by David Hayes, the one-night-only April 11 performance at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall is presented by The New School’s College of Performing Arts.
Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music said: “A hallmark of our programming is the wide range of repertoire that we tackle each semester. Just last week the Mannes Opera presented Handel’s Alcina. This program brings forth three amazing works that plumb the imagination of what orchestras can do. From Berio, to Cuong, to Zorn, along with the Mannes Orchestra, and our faculty members Stefan Jackiw and Sandbox Percussion, I dare you to find a more interesting orchestral program this season.”
The range of innovation inherent in these compositions by John Zorn, Viet Cuong, and Luciano Berio reflects Mannes Orchestra’s ongoing dedication to finding and presenting singular works that reflect a bold and unique point of view, works by under-recognized composers, and overlooked masterpieces. “Mavericks” builds on this season’s theme of exploring the radical orchestra, with unusual orchestrations and non-standard symphonic structures. The program includes:
Viet Cuong: Re(new)al, featuring Sandbox Percussion
John Zorn: Contes de Fées, with soloist Stefan Jackiw
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia, with eight amplified singers
Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al – a piece in tandem with Earth Day and April’s world-wide focus on environmental conservation and innovation – reflects the composer’s deep interest in renewable energy initiatives, and is dedicated to the four-member Sandbox Percussion. Coincidentally, the theme for Earth Day 2025 is OUR POWER, OUR PLANET, inviting everyone around the globe to unite behind renewable energy, and to triple the global generation of clean electricity by 2030.
Cuong explains, “I have tremendous respect for renewable energy initiatives and the commitment to creating a new, better reality for us all. Re(new)al is a percussion quartet concerto devoted to finding unexpected ways to breathe new life into traditional ideas. The solo quartet performs on several ‘found’ instruments, including crystal glasses and compressed air cans. While the piece also features more traditional instruments, such as snare drum and vibraphone, I looked for ways to alter their sounds or find new ways to play them.”
Re(new)al comprises three continuous movements, each inspired by the power of hydro, wind, and solar energies.
John Zorn’s Contes de Fées (composed in 1999) is one of the musical polymath’s classical masterworks. The work – a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Music in 2000 – is a powerful violin concerto with a virtuosic and lyrical solo, performed for this program by violinist Stefan Jackiw, hailed as “brilliantly skillful and selflessly musical” (Financial Times).
“The concerto is one of the most exciting and enduring of all classical forms—a virtuoso soloist pitted against the color and dynamism of a larger ensemble. Berg, Schoenberg, Mozart, Stravinsky, all wrote some of their best works for this medium and the challenge of writing one is quite daunting for a composer. Very soon after the death of my father I composed the piano concerto/requia Aporias. Contes de Fées came just at the passing of my mother. A dramatic and structurally complex work, it is one of my most rigorous compositions. The notes of the solo violin are repeated through twice in the exact same order in the orchestral accompaniment—an enormous sequence of pitches I call a “pitch incantation.” This method of pitch organization was first used in Le Mômo (dedicated to Antonin Artaud) from earlier in 1999, and again in the solo violin piece Goetia from 2002.
There were many exciting moments in the composition of Contes de Fées and I can still remember many epiphanies and revelations of problem-solving. One interesting detail is that the coda was actually written first, discarded and then brought back with its mirror image inserted as an interlude—the coda violin pitches are used in the orchestra accompaniment of the interlude, and the orchestra pitches of the coda are reiterated as the violin chords of the interlude.
Contes de Fées has had many excellent performances worldwide and I am extremely indebted to those who have championed this work through the years—conductors Jonathan Sheffer, David Fulmer, Micha Hamel, Jeff Meyers, and Ryan McAdams, violinists Kirk Nikkanen, Chris Otto, Jennifer Koh, Pauline Kim Harris, and Stephanie Nussbaum, George Steel, Melissa Smey, Richard Kessler, and Augusta Reed Thomas who are among my most fervent and active supporters, and of course Stefan Jackiw, David Hayes, and all the performers present on April 11.” – John Zorn
Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia was composed in 1968-69 and features eight amplified singers embedded in the orchestra. The vocalists represent a distorted history of culture in which they speak and shout excerpts from texts including Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable and Claude Lévi-Strauss’ The Raw and the Cooked. The work’s third movement includes a cut-up of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. Sinfonia was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 25th anniversary and, according to Leonard Bernstein in his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1973), was representative of the new direction classical music was taking after the pessimistic decade of the sixties.
Viet Cuong
The “alluring” (The New York Times), “irresistible” (San Francisco Chronicle), and “exhilarating” (Chicago Tribune) music of Vietnamese American composer Viet Cuong (b. 1990) has been commissioned and performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Sō Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Atlanta Symphony, and Sandbox Percussion, among many others. Cuong’s music has been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Library of Congress, and his works for wind ensemble have amassed several hundred performances worldwide, including at Midwest, WASBE, and CBDNA conferences. Cuong enjoys exploring the unexpected and whimsical, and he is often drawn to projects where he can make peculiar combinations and sounds feel enchanting or oddly satisfying. https://vietcuongmusic.com/about/
John Zorn
Born September 2, 1953 and raised in New York City, John Zorn is a composer, performer, artist, universalist, and aesthetic philosopher who has forged an independent path through stylistic domains that range from the classical avant-garde to many popular idioms. His work is remarkably diverse and draws inspiration from Art, Literature, Film, Theatre, Philosophy, Alchemy, Mysticism, as well as Music. He learned alchemical synthesis from Harry Smith, structural ontology with Richard Foreman, how to make art out of garbage with Jack Smith, and hermetic intuition from Joseph Cornell.
In addition to his composing, recording and performing Zorn is a firm believer in community and a tireless champion of experimental music, film, art, poetry, and theatre—organizing festivals, recordings, concerts, and helping to establish venues and opportunities for performance. He founded the Tzadik label in 1995, runs the performance space The Stone at The New School, and has edited and published ten volumes of musician’s writings under the title ARCANA.
Honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, the Cultural Achievement Award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the William Schuman Prize for composition from Columbia University. He was inducted into the Long Island Hall of Fame by Lou Reed in 2010 and has received honorary doctorates from The New School, SUNY Purchase, New England Conservatory, and the University of Ghent.
Hermetic Cartography, an extensive exhibit of his scores, notebooks, drawings, and visual works from 1967 to the present are now on view at The Drawing Center in Soho through May 11, 2025. https://drawingcenter.org/exhibitions/john-zorn
Luciano Berio (1925 –2003) is a revered Italian composer noted for his experimental work, in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled Sequenza. Berio was also known for his pioneering work in electronic music. His early compositions were influenced by Igor Stravinsky and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works explore indeterminacy and the use of spoken texts as the basic material for composition. Berio’s musical research is characterized by his attainment of an equilibrium between a keen awareness of tradition and a propensity to experiment with new forms of musical communication. In his various creative phases, the composer invariably tried to relate music to various fields of knowledge: poetry, theatre, linguistics, anthropology, and architecture. His interest in the multiple expressions of human musicality led him to return again and again to various repertories of the oral tradition (Folk songs, 1964; Questo vuol dire che…, 1968; Cries of London, 1974-76; Voci, 1984). He explored the vast patrimony of Western music in his adaptations of Monteverdi (Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda), Bach (Contrapunctus XIX), Boccherini (Ritirata notturna di Madrid), Mozart (Vor, während, nach Zaide), Schubert (Rendering), Brahms (Op. 120 N. 1), Mahler (the two cycles of Frühe Lieder), Puccini (the Finale of Turandot), and more. His ideal of uniting the various dimensions and traditions of successive civilizations can also be seen in such works as Sinfonia (1968), Coro (1975-76) and Ofanìm (1988-92).
https://www.lucianoberio.org/, https://www.praemiumimperiale.org/en/laureate/berio/
Sandbox Percussion
Described as “exhilarating” by The New York Times and “utterly mesmerizing” by The Guardian, the GRAMMY®-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion champions living composers through its unwavering dedication to contemporary chamber music. In 2011, Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, and Terry Sweeney were brought together by their love of chamber music and the simple joy of playing together; they have since captivated audiences with performances that are both visually and aurally stunning. In 2024, Sandbox Percussion became the first percussion ensemble to be awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
The 2021 album Seven Pillars, featuring Andy Akiho’s title piece, was nominated for two GRAMMY® awards. Following performances throughout the United States and Europe, Sandbox Percussion performs Seven Pillars in October at the Beijing Music Festival. They will also perform the piece at select dates throughout the 2024-25 season.
This season, Sandbox Percussion and the Tyshawn Sorey Trio collaborate on a special Max Roach tribute with live performances that include the 92nd Street Y and the Library of Congress. Together, the two groups explore the extraordinary legacy of jazz pioneer Max Roach, who was born 100 years ago.
Sandbox Percussion recently teamed up with composer Michael Torke, who created the hourlong piece BLOOM for the group. The world premiere of BLOOM will take place in December at Tishman Auditorium, at The New School, New York City, following the album release in August, via Ecstatic Records.
In October, Sandbox Percussion performs at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, collaborating with the London-based Gandini Juggling. Over the season, Sandbox Percussion will also perform music by Viet Cuong, Julius Eastman, Gabriel Kahane, Gabriella Smith, Paola Prestini, and Doug Cuomo.
Sandbox Percussion recently recorded percussion music for its first feature film: The Wild Robot (DreamWorks, 2024), an animated science fiction survival film with music by Kris Bowers. The first recording of Lifeline, a vibrant percussion quartet composed by Ellis Ludwig-Leone for Sandbox Percussion, will be released on the album Past Life / Lifeline in December, on Better Company Records. A new album celebrating the group’s long-standing collaboration with Christopher Cerrone will be released in February on PENTATONE Records, including the piece Ode To Joy, co-commissioned by the group in 2023.Sandbox Percussion holds the positions of ensemble-in-residence and percussion faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and The New School’s College of Performing Arts. Starting in 2024-25, Sandbox Percussion will also be on faculty at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. https://sandboxpercussion.com/about/
Stefan Jackiw is one of America’s foremost violinists. He has appeared as a soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, and performs worldwide. He recently released his recording of the complete violin sonatas of Charles Ives with his longtime collaborator, pianist Jeremy Denk on Nonesuch (The New Yorker’s Alex Ross said “Jackiw sets a new standard”). He is also a member of the chamber music supergroup Junction Trio with pianist Conrad Tao and cellist Jay Campbell—the trio recently made its Carnegie Hall debut with a program including Charles Ives, Beethoven, and John Zorn. Jackiw is a faculty member in the string department at the Mannes School of Music at The New School’s College of Performing Arts. https://www.stefanjackiw.com/about
The College of Performing Arts at The New School was formed in 2015 and draws together the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama. With each school contributing its unique culture of creative excellence, the College of Performing Arts is a hub for bold experimentation, vigorous training, innovative education, cross-disciplinary collaboration and world-class performances.
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