Matthias Pintscher, conductor

Matthias Pintscher is the Music Director of the Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris. In the 2020-21 season, he began a three-season appointment as the Cincinnati Symphony’s new Creative Partner. Known equally as one of today’s foremost composers, his works are frequently commissioned and performed by major international orchestras.

Mr. Pintscher opened his 2021-22 season as the “Theme Composer” of Suntory Hall’s 2021 festival, including the world premiere of his work neharot, which he conducted with the Tokyo Symphony. In January 2022, his violin concerto written for Leila Josefowicz, Assonanza II, was be premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony under Mr. Pintscher’s baton. This season he makes debuts with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, Lahti Symphony and Musikkollegium Winterthur. He returns to the Houston Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Barcelona Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra at the Holland Festival, Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boulez Ensemble. In recent seasons, Mr. Pintscher has begun to conduct staged operas, and in the 2021-22 will return to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin to lead Lohengrin, for which he gave the production’s premiere the prior season.

Mr. Pintscher has held many titled positions, most recently as the BBC Scottish Symphony’s Artist-in-Association for nine seasons. During the 2018-19 season, he served as the Season Creative Chair for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, as well as Artist-in-Residence at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He was Principal Conductor of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra from 2016-2018.

Mr. Pintscher began his musical training in conducting, studying with Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös in his early 20s, during which time composing soon took a more prominent role in his life. Mr. Pintscher's music is championed by some of today's finest performing artists, orchestras and conductors. His works have been performed by such orchestras as the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris, among many others. He is published exclusively by Bärenreiter. Mr. Pintscher has been on the composition faculty of the Juilliard School since 2014.

Ensemble intercontemporain

In 1976 Pierre Boulez founded the Ensemble intercontemporain with the support of Michel Guy (who was Minister of Culture at the time) and Nicholas Snowman.

The Ensemble’s 31 soloists share a passion for 20th- and 21st-century music. They are employed on permanent contract, enabling them to fulfill the major aims of the Ensemble: performance, creation and education for young musicians and the general public. Under the artistic direction of Matthias Pintscher the musicians work in close collaboration with composers, exploring instrumental techniques and developing projects that interweave music, dance, theater, film, video and visual arts.

In collaboration with IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), the Ensemble intercontemporain is also active in the field of synthetic sound generation. New pieces are commissioned and performed on a regular basis.

The Ensemble is renowned for its strong emphasis on music education: concerts for kids, creative workshops for students, training programs for future performers, conductors, composers, etc.

Resident of the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris, the Ensemble performs and records in France and abroad, taking part in major festivals worldwide.

The Ensemble is financed by the Ministry of Culture and receives additional support from the Paris City Council.

This 2023 tour has received support from the Jazz & New Music programme of the Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, the French Institute and the City of Paris, and SACEM (Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Éditeurs de musique), as well as the Centre national de la musique.

Jake Arditti, countertenor

Already a professional singer at the age of 11 when he sang Yniold in Pelléas et Mélisande for Glyndebourne Festival Opera and in several productions at English National Opera, Jake Arditti has had a meteoric rise to fame since his prize-winning performance at the 2012 Innsbruck Baroque Singing Competition.

Mr. Arditti’s “… show-stealing riches of vocal colour and stage presence” (Daily Telegraph) have already brought him widespread critical and public acclaim, not only in such baroque virtuoso warhorses as Handel’s Rinaldo (titlerole at Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow), Serse (title-role at Longborough Festival Opera), Riccardo Primo (title-role at the London Handel Festival), Sesto in Giulio Cesare (Teatro Colón and Oper Halle), but also in such rarities as Emone in Traetta’s Antigone (Wiener Kammeroper), Euripilo/La Discordia/Polluce in Cavalli’s Elena (Festival d’Aix en Provence, Lille and Lisbon) and Apollo in Legrenzi’s La Divisione del Mondo with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques (Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Colmar, Nancy, Versailles and Köln).

Mr. Arditti’s extended vocal range has also seen him encompass such roles as Amore (Theater an der Wien and Zürich Opera) and Nerone in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (Pinchgut Opera Sydney), as well as Nerone in Agrippina (Theater an der Wien and Göttingen Handel Festival). He sung David in Handel´s Saul (Theater an der Wien, a role debut in a new production directed by Claus Guth and conducted by Laurence Cummings. Mr. Arditti most recently sung the title-role in Robert Carsen’s production of Handel’s Rinaldo for Glyndebourne, as well as the title-role in Corselli’s Achille in Sciro conducted by Ivor Bolton and directed by Mariame Clément at the Teatro Real Madrid.

Mr. Arditti’s Romantic and modern roles include Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel and Gretel (Wiener Kammeroper), Voice of Apollo in Death in Venice (Stuttgart and Opéra National du Rhin), Prince Gogo in Ligeti’s Le grand macabre (Essen) and SUM by Max Richter and Wayne McGregor, premiered at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre in 2012.

On the concert platform, Mr. Arditti has displayed a similarly remarkable versatility, from Ernesto in Vinci’s Gismondo, re di Polonia (Vienna, Moscow, Dortmund and Bayreuth), Contre-ténors with Il Pomo d’Oro (Sablé and Nice) and From Soul to Soul with the Pera Ensemble (Heidelberg and Cologne), to Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater under Ivor Bolton, or the premieres of Hilda Paredes’ Canciones Lunáticas and Sciarrino’s Cosa Resta with the Arditti Quartet in numerous other venues on both sides of the Atlantic. Most recently he performed Olga Neuwirth’s Hommage à Klaus Nomi along with the Ensemble intercontemporain (Philharmonie in Paris and Cité de la Musique in Strasbourg).

During the 2021-22 season, Mr. Arditti sang the role of Sesto in a new production of Giulio Cesare under the direction of Ivor Bolton (Theater an der Wien). He will returned to Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea singing the role Amore under the direction of Ottavio Dantone (Oper Zürich), and Nerone under the direction of Leonardo Garcia Alarcon (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence). In spring, the countertenor sang Bach’s St Matthew Passion in Los Angeles with Musica Angelica conducted by Martin Haselbock.

Nick León, DJ