(CAMBRIDGE,
Mass.—June 18, 2010) The
Mercury Orchestra has been selected as
the national winner of the 2010 American Prize in Orchestral
Performance, community orchestra division, in a competition
including orchestras from 26 states and the District of
Columbia.
The American Prize is a series of new non-profit national
competitions designed to recognize and reward the very best in
the performing arts in the United States. Founded in 2009, the
American Prize rewards the best recorded performances of music
by individuals and ensembles in the United States at the
professional, community/amateur, college/university, church and
school levels.
The 97-member
Mercury Orchestra, directed by the young American
conductor Channing Yu, brings together some of the most talented
amateur musicians in the Cambridge/Boston area to perform some
of the most challenging works in the symphonic repertoire. Now
in its third season, the orchestra will perform two highly
colorful and evocative works—Stravinsky’s Petrushka (1911) and
Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique—on July 17 in Sanders Theatre at
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In their evaluations, the competition judges praised the
orchestra’s “excellent interpretations” and made special mention
of the orchestra’s “thrilling rendition of the Rondo-Finale from
the Mahler Symphony No. 5,” taken from a live recording of the
orchestra’s performance in July 2009.
”What an incredible honor for the
Mercury Orchestra,” says
Maestro Yu, who is also a finalist in the 2010 American Prize
for Conducting competition. “The musicians in our orchestra are
some of the most dedicated, serious, and expressive artists I
have ever worked with, and it is a thrill to make music
together.”
The Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra of West Windsor, N.J., took
second prize, and the Auburn University/ Community Orchestra of
Auburn, Ala., won third prize. The judges’ decision was
announced on June 18, 2010, on the American Prize website, where
the three orchestras were congratulated “for their outstanding
achievement, ranked among the finest community orchestras in the
country.”
Justin Albstein, Mercury Orchestra’s general manager, says,
“it’s wonderful that our orchestra has received this recognition
in only its second year. The musicians deserve tremendous credit
for taking on some of the most challenging pieces in the
repertoire and succeeding brilliantly.”
Adds Brian Van Sickle, principal flutist: “This is really an
honor to receive such recognition. What I love most about
playing in this orchestra is how sensitively all of the players
work together and listen to one another. It’s a thrill to be a
part of it all.”
Channing Yu, 余建寧
music director
American orchestra and
opera conductor Channing Yu is Music Director of the
Mercury
Orchestra in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Music Director of Bay
Colony Brass in Watertown, Massachusetts. He is national winner
of the 2010 American Prize in Orchestral Conducting in the
community orchestra division.
He has also served as Artistic Director and Conductor of the
Lowell House Opera, the oldest opera company in New England,
where he conducted over thirty fully staged performances with
orchestra, including Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Richard
Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Puccini’s Turandot, Verdi’s Otello,
and Puccini’s Tosca. For his musical direction of Tosca, he was
awarded second prize in the 2011 American Prize in Opera
Conducting national competition.
His 2013–14 invitational engagements include conducting the Fall
River Symphony Orchestra (Fall River, MA) and Berlin Sinfonietta
(Berlin, Germany), and adjudicating for the James Pappoutsakis
Memorial Flute Competition, the Brookline Symphony Orchestra
Concerto Competition, and the Foundation for Chinese Performing
Arts Concerto Competition.
Of the Lowell House Opera’s performance of Otello, The Harvard
Crimson wrote, “The production’s hero was the orchestra, under
the keen direction of Channing Yu. Yu was able to channel all
the energy of the 80-member ensemble into moments that spanned
the entire emotional spectrum—from sheer joy to complete misery.
The sound produced by the orchestra was stylish, heartfelt, and
on the whole, refined.” The Boston Musical Intelligencer noted,
“The real star of the performance was the orchestra, led with
great skill by Channing Yu.”
He served as guest conductor at the University of North
Carolina, Charlotte, in its 2008 production of Marc-Antoine
Charpentier’s baroque opera Les arts florissants. He guest
conducted the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra in 2008 and 2009.
He was invited as one of fourteen conductors worldwide to work
with conductors Neeme Järvi, Leonid Grin, and Paavo Järvi in
master classes at the 2009 Leigo Lakes Music Days Festival in
Estonia. In 2010, he worked with George Pehlivanian and
L’Ensemble Orchestral de València in Spain. In 2013 he worked
with Johannes Schlaefli and conducted the Plovdiv Philharmonic
Orchestra in Bulgaria.
He began formal study of conducting at Harvard University with
James Yannatos; there he served as assistant conductor of the
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and conductor of the Toscanini
Chamber Orchestra. Since then, he has worked with a number of
conductor teachers in the master class setting, including
Kenneth Kiesler, Diane Wittry, Charles Peltz, and Frank Battisti.
Channing Yu grew up in Pennsylvania. Originally trained as a
pianist, he was a divisional grand prize winner of the American
Music Scholarship Association International Piano Competition,
and he has appeared as piano soloist with numerous orchestras
including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Westmoreland
Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orchèstra
Nova. He has been praised by The Boston Globe for his
“imaginative piano work.” He performs with the chamber ensemble
sul ponticello, in Cambridge, MA. As a violinist, he has served
as concertmaster of the Brahms Society Orchestra and as
violinist in the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He was a
founding member of the string quartet Quartetto Periodico. As a
lyric baritone, he has performed with the Boston Opera
Collaborative, in the Richard Crittenden Opera Workshop in
Boston, and in the Neil Semer Vocal Institute in Coesfeld and
Aub, Germany. He also sings with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
the Grammy award-winning chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
and the Boston Pops. He is a member of the faculty of the Powers
Music School in Belmont, Massachusetts. Channing Yu lives in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
|