PROGRAM
Witold Lutosławski
Partita for Violin and Orchestra
Sam Weiser '19, violin
John Luther Adams
Become Ocean
PERFORMERS
SFCM Orchestra
Christopher Rountree, conductor
Sam Weiser '19, violin
ARTIST PROFILES
Conductor, composer, and curator Christopher Rountree has distinguished himself as one of classical music’s most forward-thinking innovators in programming, conducting, and community building. Whether presenting his beloved chamber group wild Up in a museum bathroom or leading the country’s most renowned ensembles through new music’s most exciting works at the world’s greatest concert halls, Rountree is the linchpin between orchestral music and the future of performance.
Rountree founded the renegade ensemble wild Up in 2010. The group’s eccentric mix of new music, pop, and performance art quickly jumped from raucous DIY bar shows to being lauded as the vanguard for classical music by critics for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and public radio’s Performance Today. The success of wild Up has led Rountree to collaborations with Björk, John Adams, David Lang, Scott Walker, and many of the planet’s greatest orchestras and ensembles.
This season, Rountree’s vision is fully realized as he curates and conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s sixteen-concert FLUXUS Festival, the experimental music component of the Phil’s 100th season in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute. Rountree’s 2018-19 season also includes debuts with the Cincinnati and Berkeley Symphonies, and the New York premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up. He takes wild Up on tour with audience-interactive programs, celebrating local communities and the intersection of art and social justice; unveils an evening-length program with Ted Hearne, George Lewis, Jen Hill, and Weston Olencki about religion, space, and the Internet called of Ascension; makes his debut on the Ecstatic Music Festival; plays a live radio show at the ACE Hotel with Nadia Sirota, Andrew Norman, and Caroline Shaw; curates a joint program with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Four Larks; and conducts a new program called Eve with Martha Graham Dance Company.
In September 2018, Rountree debuted with Martha Graham Dance Company and Opéra national de Paris conducting The Rite of Spring, Barber’s Medea, and the Paris premiere of the Graham-Copland Appalachian Spring at Palais Garnier. Recently, Rountree made his Lincoln Center debut premiering Ashley Fure’s Pulitzer Prize finalist piece Bound to the Bow on the New York Philharmonic’s Biennial; conducted Ted Hearne’s Law of Mosaics with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; gave the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s opera Proving Up; conducted the world premiere of David Lang’s opera anatomy theater at Los Angeles Opera; and premiered Annie Gosfield and Yuval Sharon’s War of the Worlds with Sigourney Weaver and Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, simultaneously performed across downtown Los Angeles and at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
A seventh-generation California native, Rountree lives in Los Angeles.