HOUSTON (Sept. 20, 2019) – The Houston Symphony and Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada celebrate the return of French piano star Jean-Yves Thibaudet to Jones Hall in a program that explores the former’s interest in music of the Americas and the latter’s penchant for jazz in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto & Porgy and Bess at 8 p.m. Sept. 27 & 28 and 2:30 p.m. Sept. 29.
Featuring works by North American composers, the program opens with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez’s Symphony No. 2, Sinfonía india. Then, pianist Thibaudet’s virtuosity, style, and interpretive flair are all showcased in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto, full of vibrant, jazzy, and colorful melodies. Also on the program is Copland’s musical sketch of his own favorite slice of Mexico: a colorful dance hall called El Salón Mexico. Orozco-Estrada closes out the program with a symphonic suite from one of Gershwin’s greatest achievements, the opera Porgy and Bess. The suite is full of well-known tunes such as “Bess You Is My Woman Now,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “I Got Plenty ‘o’ Nuttin’,” and “Summertime.”
Gershwin’s Piano Concerto & Porgy and Bess, part of the Shell Favorite Masters, takes place at the Houston Symphony Sept. 15 at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, 615 Louisiana Street, in Houston’s Theater District. For tickets and information, please call 713.224.7575 or visit houstonsymphony.org. Tickets may also be purchased at the Houston Symphony Patron Services Center in Jones Hall (Monday–Saturday, 12–6 p.m.). All programs and artists are subject to change.
GERSHWIN’S PIANO CONCERTO & PORGY AND BESS
Friday, Sept. 27, 8 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 28, 8 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 29, 2:30 p.m.
Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Music Director
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano
Chávez: Symphony No. 2, Sinfonía india
Gershwin: Piano Concerto
Copland: El Salón México
Gershwin: Catfish Row: Symphonic Suite from Porgy and Bess
About Andrés Orozco-Estrada
Energy, elegance and spirit—these are the qualities that distinguish Andrés Orozco-Estrada as a musician. Since the 2014–15 season, he has been music director of the Houston Symphony and principal conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Beginning in the 2020–21 season, he will be chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony.
Andrés conducts many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Orchestre National de France, and American orchestras in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago. He has also directed successful concerts and opera performances at the Glyndebourne and Salzburg festivals.
Highlights of the 2019–20 season include performances with the Vienna Philharmonic at the BBC Proms and the Lucerne Festival, as well as tours to China, South Korea, and Japan. In the spring, Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts his debut concert with the New York Philharmonic and returns as a guest to the rostrum of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In May 2020, the Dutch National Opera Amsterdam premieres a new production of Carmen under his direction. With the Houston Symphony, he presents a new two-week Schumann Festival in February featuring the composer’s symphonies, concertos, choral works, and chamber music. The same month, he conducts three concerts at the Wiener Musikverein, leading the Vienna Symphony as principal conductor designate.
Andrés is particularly committed to new concert formats in which spoken commentary and visual elements complement the music as he rediscovers known repertoire together with the audience—be it a Spotlight concert with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra or a Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra family concert.
His CD releases at Pentatone have attracted critical praise. His Dvořák cycle with the Houston Symphony was praised by Pizzicato as a “vital Dvořák with warm colors.” With the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, recordings of Stravinsky’s Firebird and The Rite of Spring were hailed as “beguiling” by Gramophone, and the same publication recently described him as “a fine Straussian” in a review of their recent recording of the Alpine Symphony from his Richard Strauss cycle. In addition, his interpretations of all the Brahms and Mendelssohn symphonies are available on recordings.
Born in Medellín, Colombia, Andrés began his musical education with the violin. He received his first conducting lessons at 15 and began study in Vienna in 1997, where he was accepted at the prestigious University of Music and Performing Arts in the conducting class of Uroš Lajovic, a student of the legendary Hans Swarowsky. Andrés has since lived in Vienna.
About Jean-Yves Thibaudet
For more than three decades, Jean-Yves Thibaudet has performed world-wide, recorded more than 50 albums, and built a reputation as one of today’s finest pianists. From the start of his career, he delighted in music beyond the standard repertoire, from jazz to opera, which he personally transcribed to play on the piano. His profound professional friendships crisscross the globe and have led to spontaneous and fruitful collaborations in film, fashion, and visual art.
During the 2018–19 season, he renewed many longstanding musical partnerships, including touring a program of Schumann, Fauré, Debussy, and Enescu with Midori, touring the great concert halls of Europe with Lisa Batiashvili and Gautier Capuçon, and performing chamber music with brothers Renaud and Gautier Capuçon. With Gautier Capuçon, he also premiered Richard Dubugnon’s Eros Athanatos, a fantaisie concertante for cello and piano, with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. With The Cleveland Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Jean-Yves introduced another piece to the world: James MacMillan’s Piano Concerto No. 3. As one of the premiere interpreters of the solo part in Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety, Jean-Yves continued to perform the piece around the world as the composer’s centennial year came to a close.
He expresses his passion for education and fostering young musical talent as the first-ever artist-in-residence at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, where he makes his home. The school has extended the residency for an additional three years and has announced the Jean-Yves Thibaudet Scholarships to provide aid for students, whom Jean-Yves will select for the merit-based awards, regardless of their instrument choice.
Jean-Yves’s recording catalogue has received two Grammy nominations, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the Diapason d’Or, the Choc – Le Monde de la Musique, the Edison Prize, and multiple Gramophone awards. He was the soloist on the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning and critically acclaimed film Atonement, as well as on the soundtracks of Pride and Prejudice, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and Wakefield.
His concert wardrobe is designed by Dame Vivienne Westwood. In 2010, the Hollywood Bowl honored Jean-Yves Thibaudet for his musical achievements by inducting him into its Hall of Fame. Previously a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, he was awarded the title Officier by the French Ministry of Culture in 2012.
About the Houston Symphony
During the 2019–20 season, the Houston Symphony celebrates its sixth 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 $35.2 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 1,000 community-based performances each year at various schools, community centers, hospitals, and churches reaching nearly 200,000 people in Greater Houston annually.
The Grammy Award-winning Houston Symphony has recorded under various prestigious labels, including Naxos, Koch International Classics, Telarc, RCA Red Seal, Virgin Classics and, most recently, Dutch recording label Pentatone. In 2017, the Houston Symphony was awarded an ECHO Klassik award for the live recording of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck under the direction of former Music Director Hans Graf. The orchestra earned its first Grammy nomination and Grammy Award at the 60th annual ceremony for the same recording in the Best Opera Recording category.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Eric Skelly: 713.337.8560, eric.skelly@houstonsymphony.org
Mireya Reyna: 713.337.8557, mireya.reyna@houstonsymphony.org
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