Stepping Out

Premiered

STEPHEN COHN'S "Finale" from his orchestral work, Two Together, American Folk Music Suite, will be given its world premiere by The Kansas City Symphony on March 25 at the Midland Theater in Kansas City. The work was originally released on CD in 2003 and won a Parents Choice Gold Award in 2004. Cohn has also received a commission from Universal Sacred Music to write a new work for choir and chamber orchestra which will be premiered in New York in October 2006.

RAPHAEL MOSTEL'S Night and Dawn, in its world premiere, featuring the combined brass sections of Royal Concertgebouw and Chicago Symphony orchestras. The work was created in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands from the Nazis, and commissioned by the American Friends of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Mostel's score had the RCO horns also double on shofars in commemoration of the Dutch Jews deported in the war, several of whom were members of the RCO itself. CSO principal trombone Jay Friedman conducted this historic one-time collaboration between the two orchestras in Chicago's Orchestra Hall on May 3rd, 2005. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Brass Ensemble gave the New York premiere of Night and Dawn on February 16 & 17, 2006.

STEPHEN PAULUS' Oratorio, commissioned by the Basilica in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of liberation of the concentration camps. This unique holocaust piece featured a children's chorus along with an adult chorus, soloists and an orchestra during the month of November 2005.

EZEQUIEL VINAO'S The Loss and the Silence, by the Juilliard String Quartet, at Zankel Hall in New York City on December 10. This work by the Argentina-born composer is inspired by medieval thought and traditions.