HOUSTON (Feb. 1, 2018) – The Houston Symphony announced today that legendary actor and comedian Bill Murray is bringing his New Worlds: Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends tour to Jones Hall at 7:30 p.m. April 16, 2018, for a one-night-only event of music and literature.
One of film’s greatest performers and storytellers, Murray brings his irresistible charm in New Worlds, an evening of music and literature showcasing classical music and poetry. Part of a nationwide tour, the one-night-only event features some of the greatest American voices in literature and music from Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman to Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin and Stephen Foster.
This rare live performance features Murray as both singer and narrator along with distinguished German cellist Jan Vogler, violin virtuoso Mira Wang and Venezuelan pianist Vanessa Perez. The event will take place at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, 615 Louisiana Street, in Houston’s Theater District. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the Houston Symphony Patron Services Center at Jones Hall (Monday–Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.). The performance does not include the Houston Symphony. All programs and artists are subject to change.
NEW WORLDS: BILL MURRAY, JAN VOGLER & FRIENDS
Monday, April 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Bill Murray, actor
Jan Vogler, cello
Mira Wang, violin
Vanessa Perez, piano
About Bill Murray
The legendary actor and comedian Bill Murray has become one of the most thought after artists in America. He was born William J. Murray on September 21, 1950, in Wilmette, Illinois. After spending time as a member of the cast of Chicago’s famed Second City improvisational comedy troupe, Murray relocated to New York City, where he took his comedic talents to radio’s National Lampoon Hour (1973-74) alongside Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and John Belushi. In 1975, he was in an Off-Broadway spin-off of the comedy radio show when Howard Cosell recruited him for a show called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell (1975-1976). A year later, producer Lorne Michaels tapped Murray to replace Chevy Chase on a much bigger sensation, NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL).
Ironically insincere and yet somehow soft-hearted, Murray is the best-known star to emerge from the cast of Saturday Night Live. On SNL from 1977-1980, he created the cheesy lounge crooner, Nick, and other lovably smarmy characters. It didn’t take long for him to move from the small screen to the big screen, and his first major film role was in the 1979 box office hit Meatballs. He then starred in two of the top-grossing comedies of the 1980s: playing a woolly-headed groundskeeper in Caddyshack (1980) and a slick-talking investigator in Ghostbusters (1984, with fellow SNL alumnus Dan Aykroyd). Murray’s comedy hits in the 1990s included Groundhog Day (1993) and the Amish bowling story Kingpin (1996). He also took more serious roles, playing a mobster in Mad Dog and Glory (1993, with Robert DeNiro) and an eccentric businessman in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998), for which he won Best Supporting Actor from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his seriocomic role as a jet-lagged movie star in Tokyo in Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation (2003).
More recently, Murray earned rave reviews for his portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) and he also reunited with Anderson for a role in Moonrise Kingdom that same year. Murray was also in Anderson’s next film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), with Jude Law and Ralph Fiennes, as well as The Monuments Men (2014). He was nominated for a lead actor Golden Globe® for his role in the comedy St. Vincent (2014), co-starring Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts. That same year he starred as Jack Kennison in the acclaimed HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, for which he earned his second Emmy Award. In 2015, Murray was seen in the comedy Rock the Kasbah portraying a music manager who starts to handle the career of an Afghani teen. He recently voiced the character of Baloo in the Disney animated film, The Jungle Book (2016), and will have a cameo role in Danny McBride’s new HBO comedy, Vice Principals.
Recognized not only as an actor, but also as a humorist, Bill Murray was awarded The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in October 2016. He is an avid golfer and a particular fan favorite at the annual AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. His passion for baseball and golf is just as famous as his ability to turn everything into art, and his eccentric and irreverent style have caused him to be seen by many as a folk hero.
About Jan Vogler
Jan Vogler is one of today’s most renowned soloists, praised for his “soulful, richly hued playing” (New York Times) and his “spiralling virtuosity” (Gramophone Magazine).
Jan Vogler frequently performs with leading international orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston, Pittsburgh and Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg as well as the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia and collaborates with conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Fabio Luisi, Sir Antonio Pappano, Valery Gergiev, Thomas Hengelbrock, Manfred Honeck and Kent Nagano.
In the 2017-18 season he is Artist in Residence with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He will perform in London with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski, the Philharmonia Zurich and the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under the baton of Fabio Luisi, as well as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Peter Oundjian with Wolfgang Rihm’s Double Concerto for violin and cello. Further he has return invitations to Singapore Symphony Orchestra as well as Deutsche Symphonie Orchestra under the baton of Manfred Honeck.
He frequently appears in recitals with his duo partners Hélène Grimaud, Martin Stadtfeld and Lise de la Salle. He is also the creative mind and key player of the new project “Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends – New Worlds” which aims to intertwine American literature with European music. Twain, Hemingway, Whitman, Cooper, Bernstein, Gershwin and Foster are some of the strongest voices that influenced generations of humans in America and gave the world a picture of the charm, energy and creative force of the New World. This season sees two major US tours with the project, and in September 2017 the album “New Worlds” will be released by Decca Gold.
A prolific and multi-award-winning recording artist, Jan Vogler records exclusively for Sony Classical. Among his most recent albums by Sony Classical is a Tchaikovsky recording with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada, and the Moritzburg Festival Ensemble. that Hugh Canning of the Sunday Times comments: “Vogler’s witty and affectionate Rococo Variations are up there with the best”. For his recording of Bach’s six Suites for cello solo he was awarded his third ECHO Klassik award in the category “Instrumentalist of the Year 2014 (cello)”.
Jan Vogler has been Artistic Director of the Moritzburg Festival near Dresden since 2001, and Intendant of the Dresden Music Festival since 2008. In 2006, he was honoured with the European Award for Culture and in 2011 with the Erich-Kästner Award for tolerance, humanity and international understanding.
Jan Vogler plays the 1707 Stradivari ‘Ex Castelbarco/Fau’ cello.
About Mira Wang
Mira Wang has built a remarkable bridge from her time as a child prodigy in Beijing, China to an acclaimed soloist on the world stage today. She has appeared as a soloist with many prestigious orchestras all over the world including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Saarbrücken Radio Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic and NDR Philharmonic Hannover.
An avid chamber musician, Mira’s partners include Hélène Grimaud, Oli Mustonen, Alice Sara Ott, Lise de la Salle, Louis Lortie, Jeremy Denk, Heinrich Schiff, Daniel Müller-Schott, Gautier Capucon, Jan Vogler, Roberto Diaz, Lawrence Power, Lars Anders Tomter and Naoko Shimizu. She is an enthusiastic exponent of contemporary music, premiering the violin concerto Spring in Dresden by Chinese-American composer Chen Yi with the Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Ivan Fischer and John Harbison’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Carlos Kalmar. In 2015 she premiered the double concerto by Wolfgang Rihm, with Jan Vogler and the Orpheus Camber orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
Mira has recorded extensively for many labels including Sony Classical and Edel Classics. Her discography includes violin concerto No. 2 by Prokofieff with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony, the violin concerto No. 3 by Saint-Saens with NDR Philharmonic Hannover, a duo album with cellist Jan Vogler and several chamber music recordings with Artists of the Moritzburg Festival.
Mira has been Artistic Director of the Model Room Musicales concert series in New York City since 2005 and in 2013, she became Director of the Moritzburg Festival Academy in Germany, a training program for young musicians that is part of the annual Moritzburg Chamber Music Festival.
Born in China, Ms. Wang studied at Central Conservatory in Beijing. She was sponsored by renowned violin teacher, the late Roman Totenberg to further her studies at Boston University, where she graduated summa cum laude and received the prestigious Kahn Award given to outstanding performers. She has won 1st prizes in several international violin competitions including the Geneva Competition. Mira plays on a violin by Antonia Stradivari that once belonged to Joseph Joachim.
About Vanessa Perez
About Venezuelan-American pianist Vanessa Perez, The Washington Post called it right: “Vanessa Perez is not to be taken lightly.” Ms. Perez has been praised for a bold, passionate performing style allied to musicianship of keen sensitivity.
Perez has performed as soloist across the United States, Latin America and Europe. She has performed with musicians such as pianists Gabriela Montero, Ingrid Fliter, cellist Jan Vogler, Violinist Daniel Hope, and conductors Gustavo Dudamel, John Axelrod, Enrique Batiz, Gustav Meier, James Judd, David Gimenez Carreras, and Diego Matheuz. In the studio, Perez joined violinist Joshua Bell for his At Home with Friends album, released by Sony Classical in 2009. She also teamed with Jan Vogler for the cellist’s 2008 Sony album, Tango.
Vanessa Perez is also the pianist for the project New Worlds, a multifaceted project of music and literature with actor Bill Murray, cellist Jan Vogler, and violinist Mira Wang, which premiered in Dresden in 2017. Their recent performances in Europe, and North America, including Carnegie Hall, have been received to rave reviews, as well as their release on Decca Gold this 2017.
As a solo artist, the pianist has recorded for VAI – “Presenting Vanessa Perez,” and received high praise for her Telarc recording of Chopin, “The Complete Preludes” The Washington Post wrote: “Perez dove into the Preludes as if discovering them for the first time, flinging them out into the hall with a kind of wild intensity that was often breathtaking.” Her most recent recording, “Spain,” was released by Steinway & Sons in 2016, and described by Fanfare Magazine as ” The main thing to note is that the piano is stunningly played and extremely well recorded… this is an enjoyable program, the music making vital, and Perez is clearly a musician of distinction.”
Performance highlights have included appearances at the International Keyboard Institute & Festival in New York, the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, a recent Tour of North America with Violinist Daniel Hope and concerts with the Orquesta de la Juventud Simon Bolívar under Gustavo Dudamel in Caracas as well as Conductor Nikolaj Znaider She was guest soloist on a tour with the YOA, under the batons of Carlos Miguel Prieto and Jean Philippe Tremblay.
She has performed as soloist in the cultural capitals of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and Peru, as well as North America. She has performed at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Montpellier Festival in France, Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Germany, Wigmore Hall in England, Carnegie Hall in New York, as well as the famed Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
Perez has been featured on such radio stations as WQXR New York, WFMT Chicago, Sirius XM, WGBH Boston, Minnesota Public Radio, Texas Public Radio, NPR‘s “All things Considered,” and American Public Media’s “Performance Today.”
Future performances includes performances as soloist in the US, Europe, and continued tours with the New Worlds project for 2018, in the US, Iceland, Europe, and Australia.
Vanessa Perez is a Steinway Artist.
About the Houston Symphony
During the 2017-18 season, the Houston Symphony celebrates its fourth season with Music Director Andrés Orozco- Estrada and continues its second century as one of America’s leading orchestras with a full complement of concert, community, education, touring and recording activities. The Houston Symphony, one of the oldest performing arts organizations in Texas, held its inaugural performance at The Majestic Theater in downtown Houston June 21, 1913. Today, with an annual operating budget of $33.9 million, the full-time ensemble of 88 professional musicians presents nearly 170 concerts annually, making it the largest performing arts organization in Houston. Additionally, musicians of the orchestra and the Symphony’s four Community-Embedded Musicians offer over 900 community-based performances each year, reaching thousands of people in Greater Houston. For tickets and more information, please visit houstonsymphony.org or call 713-224-7575.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Vanessa Astros: (713) 337-8560, vanessa.astros@houstonsymphony.org
Mireya Reyna: (713) 337-8557, mireya.reyna@houstonsymphony.org
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