Jörg Widmann Composer-in-Residence at Marlboro Music

Jörg Widmann serves as Composer-in-Residence this month at Marlboro Music, the acclaimed music institution in Vermont led by Richard Goode and Mitsuko Uchida where master artists collaborate with young professionals in studying, rehearsing and performing a range of works. After three weeks of intensive daily rehearsals, Marlboro presents a portion of its musical collaborations at concerts held each weekend from mid July until the final concert on Sunday, August 10. The musicians of the Marlboro Festival have included several works by Jörg Widmann in their reading sessions and concerts during his residency. Among the works being performed are Jagdquartett (String Quartet No. 3), Fieberphantasie (for piano, string quartet and clarinet) and Air (for solo horn).

One of the premier, young composing talents of today, Jörg Widmann's numerous honors include the Arnold Schoenberg Medal, the Belmont Award for Contemporary Music of the Forberg Schneider Foundation, the Schneider-Schott Music Award, the Honorary Award of the Munich Opera Festival, the Paul Hindemith Prize, the Ernst von Siemens Foundation Encouragement Award, and the Composition Award of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Academy. Widmann has served as resident composer with the Salzburg Festival, Oxford Chamber Music Festival, Dortmund Konzerthaus, Essen Philharmonic, and the Heidelberg Spring Festival among others.

In February 2008, Paavo Järvi and the Hessian Radio Symphony Orchestra premiered his Antiphon, which then saw its US premiere by Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra the following month. Widmann's solo piano cycle Eleven Humoresques was premiered in May 2008, by Yefim Bronfman at Carnegie Hall. Other recent premieres include, in 2007, his orchestral work Armonica performed by Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the world premiere of his Violin Concerto by the Young German Philharmonic under the direction of Manfred Honeck. Widmann serves as Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow with The Cleveland Orchestra beginning in the 2009/10 season when he will compose a new flute concerto commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra for its principal flutist Joshua Smith. Widmann is currently completing a short orchestral concert opener inspired in part by Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 which will be premiered by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich on September 25, 2008.

To learn more on Marlboro Music, visit www.marlboromusic.org.