NEC Philharmonia + Earl Lee: Wang, Mahler
Guest conductor and NEC alumnus Earl Lee (’15 GD) leads the NEC Philharmonia in a performance of The Labyrinth of Light by fellow NEC alumnus Erqing Wang ('20) and Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D Major ("Titan").
View the concert program in light mode & dark mode, recommended for in-person audiences.
About Earl Lee
Winner of the 2022 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Earl Lee is a renowned Korean-Canadian conductor who has captivated audiences worldwide. Currently Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra his appearances in the 21/22 season included leading the San Francisco Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic, and Ann Arbor Symphony in subscription; the New York Philharmonic in its annual Lunar New Year Gala; debuts with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at New York’s Lincoln Center, the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, and with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam as a participant in the Ammodo masterclasses led by Fabio Luisi. This season includes a return to the San Francisco Symphony and his Boston Symphony subscription debut.
Beginning with the 22-23 season, Earl joins the Ann Arbor Symphony as Music Director.
Earl recently concluded his position as the Associate Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony where he led various concerts and its programming. He also served as the Resident Conductor of the Toronto Symphony from 2015 to 2018.
In all of his professional activities, Earl seeks ways to connect with fellow musicians and audiences on a personal level. His concerts to date in Canada, the U.S., China and South Korea have often been accompanied by outreach events beyond the concert hall in the community at large. He has taken great pleasure in mentoring young musicians as former Artistic Director and Conductor of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, and as Music Director of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra and is a regular guest conductor with the orchestras of North America’s top music schools such as Manhattan School of Music and the New England, San Francisco, and Royal Conservatories.
As a cellist, Earl has performed at festivals such as the Marlboro Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, Caramoor Rising Stars, and Ravinia’s Steans Institute and has toured as a member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO), with Musicians from Marlboro, with and Gary Burton & Chick Corea as a guest member of the Harlem String Quartet.
Earl has degrees in cello from the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School and in conducting from Manhattan School of Music and New England Conservatory. He was the recipient of the 50th Anniversary Heinz Unger Award from the Ontario Arts Council in 2018, of a Solti Career Assistance Award in 2021 and has been awarded a Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Scholarship by Kurt Masur and the Ansbacher Fellowship by the American Austrian Foundation and members of the Vienna Philharmonic. He lives in New York City with his wife and their daughter.
This is an in-person event with a private stream available to the NEC community here: https://necmusic.edu/live.
Erqing Wang '20 | The Labyrinth of Light: Cityscape for Orchestra (2019)
Program note
Wang The Labyrinth of Light: A Program Note (3 years later)
When I wrote The Labyrinth of Light in the fall of 2019—retrospectively a rather nostalgic period, a fragilely peaceful time right before the outbreak of a brewing chaos—I gave it the subtitle “An Elegy of Birds” and wrote a short program note describing the composition as a bio-sociological comment on the deaths of birds triggered by urban light pollution. Looking back, I see a naïve composer who was eagerly trying to use the medium of music to take part in the debates of sociological topics.
Three years later, I have removed that program note, disillusioned now by the powerlessness of Art when functioning as social critique, by its impotence and its opportunistic hypocrisy when superficially dealing with tragedies, be they of humans or animals. That note now seems to me to be almost unbearably redundant, even comically superfluous. I have given the piece a new subtitle, “Cityscape for Orchestra”, an image that is open to more multifaceted interpretations of the composition’s flourishing virtuosity, its polyphonic denseness depicting crowds and its outbursts of metallic colors. These reflect my very personal, therefore sincere and deeply-felt, perceptions after having lived in several of the world’s massive metropoles.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the composition and orchestral departments of NEC, for their efforts to let the composition make its way onto the stage, despite its occasionally unreasonable difficulties resulting from my clumsy handling of orchestral instruments, more or less inevitable for such a début.
Last, but not least, I would like to dedicate the present composition to Mr. Stratis Minakakis, with whom I studied from 2018 to 2020 at NEC, and under whose guidance I was able to absorb a considerable amount of compositional knowledge, much of it displayed in The Labyrinth of Light.
– Erqing Wang
Erqing Wang is currently pursuing his master’s degree at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz with Beat Furrer. He studied at the Middle School of Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and subsequently at New England Conservatory, under the guidance of Wenchen Qin, Kati Agócs and Stratis Minakakis.
Gustav Mahler | Symphony No. 1 in D Major "Titan"
Langsam, schleppend - Immer sehr gemächlich
Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell - Recht gemächlich
Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen
Stürmisch bewegt - EnergischPersonnel
First Violin
Yiliang Jiang
Minami Yoshida
Joshua Brown
Tsubasa Muramatsu
Haekyung Ju
Claire Byeol Kim
Evelyn Song
Kathryn Amaral
Haeun Honney Kim
Passacaglia Mason
Qiyan Xing
Dorson Chang
Jason Qiu
Tiffany Chang
Second Violin
Claire Thaler
June Chung
Natalie Boberg
Thompson Wang
Caroline Jesalva
Jeffrey Pearson
Nozomi Murayama
Anthony Chan
Angela Sin Ying Chan
Yilei Yin
Yixiang Wang
Rachel Yi
Ian Hsu
Viola
Elton Tai
Ruoran Yu
Haelim Kong
Asher Boorstin
Wonjeong Seol
Yi Chia Chen
Chiau-Rung Chen
Rituparna Mukherjee
Jacqueline Armbruster
Njord Fossnes
John Harry Clark
Samuel M. Zacharia
Cello
Macintyre Taback
Anthony Choi
Lily Uijin Gwak
Josephina YK Kim
Yi-l Stephanie Yang
Heechan Ku
Barna Zsolt Károly
Jeremy Tai
Aixin Vicky Cheng
Hechen Sun
Trés Foster
Bass
Gregory Padilla
Cailin Singleton
Alyssa Peterson
Daniel Slatch
Shion Kim
Minyi Wang
Flute
Javier Castro *
Anna Kevelson
Jay Kim
Yang Liu
Elizabeth McCormack §
Dianne Seo
Piccolo
Jeong Won Choe *
Anna Kevelson §
Jay Kim
Dianne Seo
Oboe
Dane Bennett
Donovan Bown §
Kian Hirayama *
Sojeong Kim
Kelley Osterberg
Sam Rockwood
English horn
Kelley Osterberg
Clarinet
Thomas Acey §
Tyler J. Bourque
Tristen Broadfoot
Chenrui Lin
Soyeon Park *
E-flat Clarinet
Tyler J. Bourque *§
Chenrui Lin
Bass Clarinet
Chenrui Lin
Bassoon
Zoe Beck
Andrew Flurer §
Matthew Heldt *
Evan Judson
Richard Vculek
Contrabassoon
Adam Chen *
Evan Judson §
French horn
Logan Fischer
Sam Hay
Karlee Kamminga
Xiang Li **
Hannah Messenger
Yeonjo Oh
Willow Otten *
Paolo Rosselli §
Tasha Schapiro
Sophie Steger
Trumpet
Jake Baldwin
Daniel Barak
Reynolds Martin §
Nelson Martinez *
David O’Neill **
Alex Prokop
Dimitri Raimonde
Trombone
Eli Canales *
Zachary Johnson
Noah Korenfeld **
Jianlin Sha §
Bass Trombone
Chance Gompert
Luke Sieve
Tuba
James Curto §
David Stein *
Timpani
Eli Geruschat
Ariel Pei Hsien Lu §
Parker Olson *
Percussion
Eli Geruschat
Ross Jarrell
Ariel Pei Hsien Lu *
Jeff Sagurton
Hayoung Song
Zesen Wei §
Yiming Yao
Harp
Yoonsu Cha *
Yvonne Cox §
Piano, Celeste
Sung Ho Yoo
Principal players
*Wang
**Wang offstage
§Mahler