Press Release - July 26, 2010
BAY-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY MUSIC DIRECTOR JED GAYLIN MAKES MUSIC AROUND THE WORLD
BRIDGETON, NJ—When he is not leading the Bay-Atlantic Symphony or back home in Baltimore leading the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, Jed Gaylin is globe-trotting fulfilling conducting engagements. Indeed, his contagious music-making is in demand throughout the world these days.
As principal conductor for Spain’s Cervera Music Festival in late July, he conducted a pan-European Youth Orchestra, the members of which are in their late teens and early twenties. Gaylin is no stranger to Spain, having conducted often in nearby Barcelona.
Last March, he was in the Xinjiang Province of northwest China recording a CD set of music of that province, as well as of other contemporary Chinese composers. The two-CD set, which also features choral/orchestral works by Handel and Beethoven, will be released in early 2011.
Late August brings another recording project closer to home that continues Gaylin’s connection with China. He and the Bay-Atlantic Symphony will be in Pfleeger Concert Hall of Glassboro’s Rowan University recording She Comes to Shore--a journey for piano and orchestra by the contemporary Hong Kong-born composer and pianist Lee Pui Ming. The composer will be the soloist and will play improvised sections as part of the concerto. The work, premiered earlier this year by Gaylin and the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, has been described by the conductor as “hauntingly beautiful—at times, pulsating with rhythmic vigor and, at times, luxuriating in sensual melody and counterpoint.”
Pui Ming’s Erhu Concerto Awakening was enthusiastically received by Bay-Atlantic Symphony audiences in May 2008 when performed with soloist Jiebing Chen.
The St. Petersburg Symphony in Russia will welcome Gaylin in December. This trip to his ancestral homeland will mark the conductor’s return to Russia after many years away. His initial visit was to Moscow, for an extended conducting residency funded by the Presser Foundation.
Gaylin sees this overseas experience as positive for a musician. "Traveling and conducting orchestras abroad is greatly rewarding, and expanding, as an artist,” he said. “What people say about music being a universal language certainly has a lot of truth.” He notes, however, that people speak the language of music throughout the world with different accents, working styles, and playing styles. “Sometimes the approach to tone production and the basic sound and orchestra is creating can hugely affect how I view a given work,” Gaylin said. “In addition, I invariably make new friends and discover new talents who have come here to perform with us with the Bay-Atlantic Symphony.” At least as important, he adds, is simply soaking up the impressions, speech intonations, some language, and connecting with people in different cultures. “Working in these fresh environments changes how you see your part of the world, and somehow affects how we make music, with a greater breadth perhaps, and a deeper sense of humanity."
Gaylin and the Bay-Atlantic Symphony will be back before area audiences on Saturday, August 28, to conclude Avalon, NJ’s “Symphony by the Sea” summer concert series with an all-Beethoven program featuring the renowned Italian pianist Enrico Elisi. The 7 p.m. concert will take place at the Avalon Elementary School, 235 32nd St. He will then open the orchestra’s 27th season and his 14th season as Music Director of the Bay-Atlantic Symphony with “Classical Mystery Tour”—a gala symphonic tribute to The Beatles—on Sunday, September 26, at 3 p.m., at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, in Atlantic City. For more information on the Bay-Atlantic Symphony, its programs, and concerts, please call (856) 451-1169 or visit their website at www.bayatlanticsymphony.org.
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