From 22 to 27 October 2012 at The Warehouse, London

Enterprising and highly spirited contemporary music specialist Odaline de la Martinez and her ensemble Lontano present the Fourth London Festival of American Music at The Warehouse, Waterloo, from 22 to 27 October. The centrepiece of this year’s programme is the UK premiere of Pulitzer prize-winning composer John Harbison’s opera Full Moon in March.

Since its initiation in 2006 the festival has become a biennial fixture in celebration of contemporary American music. The 2012 festival includes works by cardinal figures such as Yehudi Wyner, Bright Sheng, and Milton Babbitt, and by Guggenheim Fellowship winners Shih Hui Chen and Arthur Levering. Lontano will also be performing world premieres of works by emerging composers William Dougherty, Carlos Carrillo and Daniel Thomas David, as well as a new work by Arlene Sierra specially commissioned for the ensemble.

Three evenings of the festival are given to the first UK performance of Full Moon in March (24, 26, 27 October), a 1976 opera by John Harbison, a composer of “sure compositional technique and musical sophistication” (New York Times), and one of America’s finest living composers. Harbison came to world-wide attention with his 1999 opera The Great Gatsby (based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald), commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. The opera was well received by critics, who saw it as a work that would last into posterity: “the score’s craft and accessibility are strong advocates for an opera that should win an audience in time”, writes Peter G. Davis (New York Magazine). Drawn by the promise that the man who sings most eloquently of his passion will win the queen’s hand in marriage, a swineherd approaches the throne… Two attendants describe the events that unf old. The libretto is a play by Irish poet W. B. Yeats, who envisaged the work set to music. “Compelling… fluid vocal writing… Harbison has devised a score that bubbles in fits and spasms in the pit, while moving smoothly onstage”, writes Richard Pontzious (San Fransisco Examiner). Harbison himself intended the work to form the second half of a concert, and the first half of each evening will include a range of composers of different generations, genders and geographies.

Other highlights of the festival include the opening nights The British Connection, a concert featuring music by composers who live or have lived in the UK, includinga new work by American born UK resident Arlene Sierra called Meditation on Violence,commissioned by Lontano. On the 23 October, the Fidelio Piano Trio take to the stage, performing Piano Trios by Harbison and Wuorinen, and New York City Ballet’s composer in residence Bright Sheng’s Four Movements. On 25 October, Soprano Nadine Mortimer-Smith sings a programme of vocal music, accompanied by pianist Tomasz Lis, including a selection of Gershwin songs, and Samuel Barber’s poetic Knoxville: Summer of 1915