“Berkeley Symphony’s new music director, Portuguese-born Joana Carneiro, has her first season of concerts pulled together,” writes Sue Gilmore in Wednesday’s (4/15) Contra Costa Times (California), “and it’s both very reflective of her personal tastes and a Berkeley-centric sort of lineup indeed. As she indicated when I spoke with her after her appointment in January, Carneiro, 32, is front-and-centering the two composers closest to her heart, and they both happen to be Berkeleyites.” The season opens October 15 with a performance of “The Chairman Dances,” an “outtake” from John Adams’s 1987 opera Nixon in China, and Gabriela Lena Frank’s Peregrinos. Two works by Steven Stucky are included in the December 3 program. “Stucky’s ‘Radical Light,’ commissioned as a musical response to Jan Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7, is paired with that work on the program. Stucky’s ‘Lament,’ part of his LBJ-inspired oratorio ‘August 4, 1964,’ is also featured, and the concert concludes with Stravinsky’s famed Suite from ‘The Firebird.’ ” Cornucopia by another Berkeley composer, Paul Dasher, will be on the orchestra’s February 11 program.
Posted April 16, 2009
