Steven Banks, photo by Chris Lee
(PRINCETON, NJ) -- The Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s 2023-2024 Season opens September 9-10, 2023 with Princeton-based composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s inspirational work Forward Into Light, inspired by women suffragists, and Henri Tomasi’s expressive Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, performed by 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant winner Steven Banks. William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, one of the first full-length works by a Black composer to be performed by a major US orchestra, completes the program.
Edward T. Cone Music Director Rossen Milanov conducts the performances which take place Saturday, September 9 at 8pm and Sunday, September 10 at 4:00pm at historic Richardson Auditorium. Sunday’s concert includes a pre-concert talk by Maestro Milanov at 3:00pm.
Saxophonist Steven Banks was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2022 and was a chosen artist for WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab. He was the first saxophonist to be awarded First Prize at the Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. Banks has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Utah Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and Aspen Festival Orchestra, and has enjoyed working with such conductors as Franz Welser-Most, Xian Zhang, Nicholas McGegan, Rafael Payare, John Adams, Peter Oundjian, Jahja Ling, Matthias Pintscher, Alain Altinoglu, and Roderick Cox. In 2023 and 2024 Banks will premiere and tour with a commissioned concerto from Grammy-winning composer Billy Childs. His primary saxophone teachers have been Taimur Sullivan, Otis Murphy Jr., and Galvin Crisp. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, as well as a Master of Music degree from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music.
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Forward Into Light was inspired by the American women suffragists Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frances E.W. Harper, Ida B. Wells, Zitkála-Šá, Mabel Lee Ping-Hua, and others who believed in equal rights for women. Henri Tomasi’s two-movement saxophone concerto offers an intriguing dialogue between soloist and orchestra as well as a rich soundscape integrating diverse influences and musical styles. William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony recalls orally transmitted African American folk songs, and is an important work of African American classical music.
Single tickets are now available for all 2023-24 Princeton Symphony Orchestra orchestral concerts as well the PSO’s popular Holiday POPS! concert. Additional guest artists featured this season are 2022 Grammy Award winners violinist Jennifer Koh and Metropolitan Opera star Anthony Roth Costanzo, trailblazing pianist Sara Davis Buechner, the Westminster Symphonic Choir, and the 2023 Grammy Award-winning trio Time For Three.
Performances take place on Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 4:00pm at Richardson Auditorium. 6-Concert Subscriptions start at $180. Youths 5-17 receive a 50% discount with an adult purchase. To subscribe or purchase single tickets to any classical concert or Holiday POPS! (Saturday, December 16, 3:00pm & 6:00pm), visit the Princeton Symphony Orchestra website at princetonsymphony.org or call 609-497-0020.
Programs, artists, dates, and times are subject to change.
Health and Safety: The Princeton Symphony Orchestra is closely monitoring and adhering to the New Jersey Department of Health’s COVID-19 Requirements. Attendees will receive information regarding safety procedures, entry, seating directions, etc. in advance of their selected live performance(s).
Accessibility: The Princeton Symphony Orchestra is committed to ensuring all programming is accessible for everyone, working with venues such as Richardson Auditorium to provide needed services. Contact ADA Coordinator Kitanya Khateri for questions about available services at [email protected] or 609-905-0973. Note: some services require at least two weeks’ notice to arrange.
Rossen Milanov conducting the Princeton Symphony Orchestra (PSO). Photo by PSO Staff
Respected and admired by audiences and musicians alike, Rossen Milanov has established himself as a conductor with considerable national and international presence. In addition to leading the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and heading its annual June Princeton Festival, Mr. Milanov is music director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, and chief conductor of the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra in Ljubljana. During his eleven-year tenure with The Philadelphia Orchestra, he conducted more than 200 performances. In 2015, he completed a 15-year tenure as music director of the nationally recognized training orchestra Symphony in C in New Jersey and in 2013, a 17-year tenure with the New Symphony Orchestra in his native city of Sofia, Bulgaria.
Mr. Milanov has collaborated with Komische Oper Berlin (Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtzensk), Opera Oviedo with the Spanish premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Mazzepa and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle (awarded best Spanish production for 2015), and Opera Columbus (Verdi’s La Traviata). He has been seen at New York City Ballet and collaborated with choreographers such as Mats Ek, Benjamin Millepied, and most recently Alexei Ratmansky in the critically acclaimed revival of Swan Lake in Zurich with Zurich Ballet and in Paris with La Scala Ballet.
Mr. Milanov is deeply committed to music education, presenting Link Up education projects with Carnegie Hall and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and leading the annual PSO BRAVO! School Day concerts. He was named Bulgaria’s Musician of the Year in 2005; he won a 2011 ASCAP award for adventurous programming of contemporary music at the PSO; and he was selected as one of the top 100 most influential people in New Jersey in 2014. In 2017, he was recipient of a Columbus Performing Arts Prize awarded by The Columbus Foundation. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School.
The Princeton Symphony Orchestra (PSO) is a cultural centerpiece of the Princeton community and one of New Jersey’s finest music organizations, a position established through performances of beloved masterworks, innovative music by living composers, and an extensive network of educational programs offered to area students free of charge. Led by Edward T. Cone Music Director Rossen Milanov, the PSO presents orchestral, pops, and chamber music programs of the highest artistic quality, supported by lectures and related events that supplement the concert experience. Its flagship summer program the Princeton Festival brings an array of performing arts and artists to Princeton during multiple weeks in June. Through PSO BRAVO!, the orchestra produces wide-reaching and impactful education programs in partnership with local schools and arts organizations that culminate in students attending a live orchestral performance.
The PSO receives considerable support from the Princeton community and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, regularly garnering NJSCA’s highest honor. Recognition of engaging residencies and concerts has come from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the PSO’s commitment to new music has been acknowledged with an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming and a Copland Fund Award. The only independent, professional orchestra to make its home in Princeton, the PSO performs at historic Richardson Auditorium on the campus of Princeton University.
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