NEW YORK: The New York Philharmonic will celebrate its home city in the coming season with an exploration of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" and a live performance of music from Woody Allen's "Manhattan."
The 2016-17 season announced Wednesday will be the last for music director Alan Gilbert, whose successor, the Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden, was announced last week.
The season will open September 21 with Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, written by the Czech composer based in part on Native American and African American music he heard while traveling.
The Philharmonic, which commissioned and premiered the so-called "New World Symphony" in 1893, will return to the work throughout the season including with free summer concerts in parks and programs in schools and libraries.
"One of the things that I said early on when I started here was that we wanted, in a meaningful way, not only to be an orchestra that happens to be in New York but an orchestra that is essentially about New York," said Gilbert, the son of two Philharmonic musicians.
In a world first, the Philharmonic will perform live the music from Woody Allen's "Manhattan" during a screening of the classic movie about the city.
The 1979 black-and-white film featured the work of New York native George Gershwin, with "Rhapsody in Blue" both opening and closing the movie, and the New York Philharmonic recorded most of the original soundtrack.
The Philharmonic, which is based at the Lincoln Center cultural complex, is focusing on New York themes as well in the season's premieres.
Trumpet great Wynton Marsalis, who runs the separate Jazz at Lincoln Center program, will premiere a new work with the Philharmonic during the season.
The Philharmonic said it would also premiere, but during the 2018-19 season, a song cycle by composer Sean Shepherd inspired by the Metropolitan Diary of The New York Times, a weekly column in which city dwellers offer fleeting observations.
Van Zweden, who will conduct performances in November before taking the orchestra's helm in the 2018-19 season, is best known for his mastery of the classical music canon, although he said he is also interested in contemporary works.
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