NEW YORK CITY BALLET NAMES BRIGHT SHENG FIRST-EVER COMPOSER IN RESIDENCE

New York City Ballet Media Relations

January 2006

New York City Ballet announced today that composer Bright Sheng will join NYCB at the start of the 2006 winter repertory season as the Company’s first-ever Composer in Residence.  Mr. Sheng’s residency will run through 2007.

A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship “Genius” Award in 2001, the Chinese-born Mr. Sheng is a composer of stage, orchestral, chamber and vocal works that have been performed throughout the world, and is also active as a conductor and pianist.  In 2003 Mr. Sheng was named the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1995.  Mr. Sheng studied composition and conducting with Mr. Bernstein from 1985-1990.

As part of his residency, NYCB has commissioned Mr. Sheng to compose two pieces of music that will be used for world premiere ballets during the Company’s 2007 and 2008 seasons.  In addition, existing compositions by Mr. Sheng will be used for a new Diamond Project ballet by Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux that will premiere during NYCB’s 2006 spring season.

Mr. Sheng will work with the Company in a variety of ways, including conducting the NYCB Orchestra, and participating in educational events.  Mr. Sheng will also work with choreographers and composers at the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of NYCB, that provides selected choreographers with opportunities to explore the choreographic process.

Mr. Sheng’s residency is part of New York City Ballet’s Artist in Residence program, which was begun in 2000 to bring artists of various disciplines to the Company for an extended period of time.  The first Artist in Residence was Christopher Wheeldon, who subsequently was named NYCB’s Resident Choreographer.  The program has also included costume designers and conductors.

 “New music and the commissioning of scores is traditionally a vital element in the life of NYCB,” says Andrea Quinn, NYCB’s Music Director. “We are very proud and honored, therefore, to have the world-renowned composer Bright Sheng join the music staff as Composer in Residence.  Bright’s music is characterized by extraordinary beauty and textural exoticism as well as rhythmic drive, and we are truly looking forward to having such an experienced and exciting composer as part of our team.”

Mr. Sheng was born in Shanghai in 1955.  In 1982, after the Cultural Revolution, he moved to New York to continue his studies; among his important teachers were Leonard Bernstein, George Perle, Hugo Weisgall, Chou Wen-Chung, and Jack Beeson.  Mr. Sheng has received many notable commissions, including Colors of Crimson (2004), commissioned by the Luxembourg Philharmonic for percussionist Evelyn Glennie; The Phoenix (2004), co-commissioned by the Seattle Symphony and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra for soprano Jane Eaglen; The Song and Dance of Tears (2003), a quadruple concerto for the New York Philharmonic featuring Western and Eastern solo instruments; Red Silk Dance (2000), a piano concerto for Emanuel Ax and the Boston Symphony; and, for the New York Chamber Symphony,  H’un (Lacerations) (1988), considered to be his breakthrough piece. 

In 2003, the Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere of Mr. Sheng’s Madame Mao, with a libretto by Colin Graham.  In 2002, the Spoleto Festival USA mounted Mr. Sheng’s music theater piece The Silver River (1997, rev. 2000), based on a Chinese fable about star-crossed lovers, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang. While in residence at the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1989 to 1992, Mr. Sheng wrote The Song of Majnun (1992), and a one-act “Persian Romeo and Juliet,” in collaboration with librettist Andrew Porter.  In 2002, choreographer Helgi Tomasson compiled three of Mr. Sheng’s extant pieces into a new work entitled Chi-Lin for San Francisco Ballet. 

In the chamber music world, Mr. Sheng’s works have been commissioned and performed by such musicians as Yo-Yo Ma, the Verdehr Trio, the Shanghai String Quartet, Peter Serkin, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

In addition to composing, Mr. Sheng enjoys an active career as a conductor and concert pianist and frequently serves as music advisor and artistic director to orchestras and festivals.  Since 1998, Mr. Sheng has been the Artistic Advisor to the Silk Road Project, an international program created by Yo-Yo Ma that identifies, archives, and interprets musical traditions of the Far Eastern trade routes.

New York City Ballet’s winter repertory season runs from January 3 through February 26, and the spring 2006 repertory season begins April 24 and runs through June 25, at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center.  For more information on NYCB, please visit www.nycballet.com.

Bright Sheng’s participation in NYCB’s Artist in Residence program is made possible in part by the Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro Fund for Musical Excellence and by unrestricted endowment funds raised through The Campaign for New York City Ballet.