Links to recent items of note about Yehudi Wyner. Let us know about other news items that we're missing.
Songs of the Poets, in Chamber Settings
New York Times, May 26, 2011 — Yehudi Wyner’s accessible, amusing “Mad Tea-Party,” a setting of a scene from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” closed the concert, with Ms. Slywotzky playing an astute Alice, Mr. Blumberg as the Mad Hatter, and Mr. Murphree as the March Hare. Here the concert’s palette expanded somewhat: the singers and Ms. Kampmeier were joined by Harumi Rhodes, violinist; Katherine Cherbas, cellist; and Jennifer Grim, flutist. They gave the music a bright, lively reading.
Woodlands Celebrates Students' Talents in Art, Music
Patch, May 15, 2011 — Under the direction of senior Kaitlin Donnelly of Winnetka, the 10-member a capella group, “Microscope,” will perform a number of their competition pieces, including Shir Ha-Shirim by Yehudi Wyner and Faith is the Bird That Feels the Light by Elizabeth Alexander, which earned the group a Gold rating award at the National Heritage Festival competition. The combined choirs and orchestra will end the evening with Adiemus, from Songs of Sanctuary by Karl Jenkins.
Yehudi Wyner — The Intimacy of Creativity
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, April, 2011 — Awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his Piano Concerto, "Chiavi in mano", Yehudi Wyner (b.1929) is one of America's most versatile musicians. His compositions include over 80 works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, solo voice and solo instruments, piano, chorus, and music for the theater, as well as liturgical services for worship.
“Give Thanks”: A premiere and inspiration
Harvard Arts Beat, November 8th, 2010 — As one who has had the transformative experience of studying in Harvard’s unique chamber music course Music 180 with Yehudi Wyner and Daniel Stepner, I am happy to report on what the Boston Globe called the “keenly anticipated” premiere of Yehudi Wyner’s composition, Give Thanks for All Things for orchestra and chorus. The work had its world premiere on Friday, November 5 and Saturday, November 6 at Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory performed by the Cantata Singers and Ensemble and conducted by David Hoose, music director of the Cantata Singers. Give Thanks for All Things is based on two Psalms, poems by Richard Wilbur and Walt Whitman, a passage from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and the Breton fisherman’s prayer, “Dear Lord be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.”
An Interview with Yehudi Wyner
The Berkshire Review, October 27, 2010 — Yehudi Wyner, whose career as a composer and a performing musician goes back some sixty years, finds himself entirely focused on the present at the moment, and very positively so. For one thing, Bridge Records, who have issued the most substantial body of his work on CD, have released his collected sacred music, and Mr. Wyner is very pleased to have it all together in one place. Secondly, he is anticipating the premiere of a new work, a secular cantata called Give Thanks for All Things. As he explains in the interview we now offer as our latest podcast, the work didn't come to him easily, and, although he refuses to pass judgment on it until he hears it played before an audience, he is looking forward to hearing it performed by one of his favorite groups and conductors, The Cantata Singers under David Hoose. Beyond that, he is busily at work revising his Fragments from Antiquity (1978) for a performance by his favorite soprano, Dominique Labelle, with the Lexington Symphony in February, 2011.
In this podcast we talk mostly about Mr. Wyner's formative experiences at the American Academy in Rome, musicians and composers, opera production — yes, Regieoper, too — and his own music and the musical traditions he draws upon, above all his upcoming premiere.
In this podcast we talk mostly about Mr. Wyner's formative experiences at the American Academy in Rome, musicians and composers, opera production — yes, Regieoper, too — and his own music and the musical traditions he draws upon, above all his upcoming premiere.
Festival Has Familiar Faces, if Not Always Music, for an Anniversary
New York Times, August 17, 2010 — Other flavors of accessibility included Yehudi Wyner’s plush, decidedly nonangular “Passage” (1983) and Steven Mackey’s “Gaggle and Flock” (2001), with its thick double string quartet texture and picturesque sliding string figures, both on Saturday.
Christopher Lydon: Yehudi Wyner's life in music: composer with piano hands
Huffington Post, February 24, 2010 — Yehudi Wyner is an approachable guy in a forbidding field: contemporary "serious" music. He gives us an opening here to ask where new sounds come from. In his case new music comes out of a sort of compost of the canon, from Bach to Bartok, and then everything else he's heard over 80 years, from his father's Yiddish art songs to boogie-woogie and gospel music. "Somehow it registers in the brain and has an effect," he says of the past. The other big thing you'll be hearing from Yehudi Wyner is that his music has its very bodily beginning in his hands. It's a physical, almost gymnastic test of what ten fingers can do, want to do, find themselves doing.
The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards - Arrivals
Life, January 31, 2010 — Composer Yehudi Wyner and daughter arrive at the 52nd Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on January 31, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.
52nd Annual Grammy Award Nominees
Grammy.com, January, 2010 — Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Wyner, Yehudi: Piano Concerto "Chiavi In Mano"
Yehudi Wyner (Robert Spano)
Track from: Wyner, Yehudi: Orchestral Works
[Bridge Records]
Yehudi Wyner (Robert Spano)
Track from: Wyner, Yehudi: Orchestral Works
[Bridge Records]
Ambition Abounds in Tanglewood’s Exultation Over Contemporary Works
New York Times, August 12, 2009 — ... a polished ensemble, led by Zachary Boeding’s carefully shaped oboe-playing, performed Yehudi Wyner’s rugged Quartet for Oboe and String Trio (1999).
A musical mensch-in-residence, with 'keys in hand'
Boston Globe, June 21, 2009 — If you go to a classical concert in Boston - one with music that really matters, whether old or new - there’s a good chance you’ll find the composer Yehudi Wyner perched near the back of the hall, surveying the scene with warm eyes and a knowing presence. Bump into him at intermission and he might dispense a wry joke or a casual but penetrating remark about what you’ve just heard. He’s not there simply for a pleasant night out but because, in short, he is one of the most actively engaged composers you will meet.
Wyner, who is also a fine pianist and conductor, an adored teacher, and the city’s all-around musical mensch-in-residence, turned 80 this month and there have been generous tribute concerts here and in New York. And a new CD out on the Bridge label finally gives listeners a chance to encounter or meet again his Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto “Chiavi in Mano,’’ in a superb performance by Robert Levin and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, recorded in concert under the baton of Robert Spano in February 2005.
Wyner, who is also a fine pianist and conductor, an adored teacher, and the city’s all-around musical mensch-in-residence, turned 80 this month and there have been generous tribute concerts here and in New York. And a new CD out on the Bridge label finally gives listeners a chance to encounter or meet again his Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto “Chiavi in Mano,’’ in a superb performance by Robert Levin and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, recorded in concert under the baton of Robert Spano in February 2005.
Two Pulitzer Winners and One Eclectic Mix
New York Times, May 29, 2009 — In time for Yehudi Wyner’s 80th birthday, on Monday, the Bridge label has released a splendid recording of four major works by this respected American composer, including his piano concerto “Chiavi in Mano,” awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for music.
A comprehensive musician, Mr. Wyner is an elegant pianist, a fine conductor, a prolific composer and a revered teacher. His works show a deep understanding of what sounds good and is technically efficient. His musical interests range widely. I have heard him discuss insightfully both Monteverdi’s approach to recitative and Frank Sinatra’s legato singing.
A comprehensive musician, Mr. Wyner is an elegant pianist, a fine conductor, a prolific composer and a revered teacher. His works show a deep understanding of what sounds good and is technically efficient. His musical interests range widely. I have heard him discuss insightfully both Monteverdi’s approach to recitative and Frank Sinatra’s legato singing.
Whimsy, resonance on night 2 of Ditson fest
Boston Globe, September 20, 2008 — Yehudi Wyner's "On this most voluptuous night" is an arresting setting of poetry by William Carlos Williams (persuasively sung by soprano Karyl Ryczek), full of lean harmonies and sinewy expressive writing. The first movement, with its silvery sonorities and hushed violin arpeggios, seems to breathe the air of Schoenberg's "Verklärte Nacht." David Rakowski's "Imaginary Dances" were fast, dense, and vigorous.
Yehudi Wyner Wins Pulitzer Prize for Music
Playbill Arts, April 17, 2006 — Yehudi Wyner has won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his piano concerto Chiavi in Mano, Columbia University announced today.
The concerto was premiered by the Boston Symphony, with Robert Levin as soloist, on February 17, 2005. ...
In a review of the premiere performance, Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer wrote, "The allusions—not quotations—range from Baroque briskness through Prokofievian percussive motor rhythms to torch song, jazz, rock, and honky-tonk with washboard accompaniment, all viewed through the lens of a personal, flexible, and highly chromatic musical language."
The concerto was premiered by the Boston Symphony, with Robert Levin as soloist, on February 17, 2005. ...
In a review of the premiere performance, Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer wrote, "The allusions—not quotations—range from Baroque briskness through Prokofievian percussive motor rhythms to torch song, jazz, rock, and honky-tonk with washboard accompaniment, all viewed through the lens of a personal, flexible, and highly chromatic musical language."
