Jenny Lin
Lilac
from Flower Catalog
Program notes.
Lilacs are my favorite flower, this probably arising from a childhood spent running around in the back yard of my home that was graced by two gigantic lilac bushes whose blooms appeared for two weeks every May. It made sense to have lovely things in twos: after all, the back yard was a secret garden playspace only inhabited by two little Boyd girls as their childhood together ran its span. My little sister and I would take cuttings of the fragrant purple fronds and make small bouquets for our bedroom dresser but try as we might, our bouquets would always wilt and die within mere hours.
Nonetheless, we kept making those tiny bouquets, year after year. In the next chapter of my life, I made prom corsages out of cuttings from those same bushes. In college, I would time my trips home from Chicago for the end of May so that I could be present for their period of blooming.
Now that I live in Manhattan, I visit the bodega on the corner about once a week in May and June and spend too much money on bouquets of lilacs that hang on for a few days, pumping my apartment full of purple perfume and the memories that are now intrinsically bonded with it. I'm so pleased that Jenny Lin asked for small pieces from us ICEBERG composers; works that were to be an amuse bouche but still have depth and character. I'm grateful to her for championing these works and for summoning in particular these memories of mine and this music out of the ether and on to ink and paper.
Background.
Flower Catalog is a book of twelve preludes for piano, inspired by Debussy’s Preludes in terms of scope and structure. The idea for this project started with a short work, Lilac, commissioned by Jenny Lin in 2018. The other eleven preludes have been commissioned by other piano soloists, each about her own favorite flower, and are all between 2.5-5 minutes in length so that the entire collection can live and breath as a full concert set but each prelude can also be utilized as a uniquely personal encore.
Flower Catalog is a commission by Lise de la Salle, Marianne Parker, Diane Katzenberg Braun, Eunbi Kim, Holly Roadfeldt, Adrienne Park, Susie Maddocks, Sarah Bob, Marta Aznavoorian, Jenny Lin, and Lucille Chung.
“…she was beautifully attentive to the Neo-Classical formalities and elegance of the Shostakovich works, while bringing out the modernist twists and harmonic pungencies”
- Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
About Jenny.
Jenny Lin is one of the most respected young pianists today, admired for her adventurous programming and charismatic stage presence. Her ability to combine classical and contemporary literature has brought her to the attention of international critics and audiences. She has been acclaimed for her “remarkable technical command” and “a gift for melodic flow” by The New York Times. The Washington Post praises “Lin’s confident fingers… spectacular technique… “, “…surely one of the most interesting pianists in America right now…” and Gramophone Magazine has hailed her as “an exceptionally sensitive pianist”. Martha Argerich wrote: “Miss Jenny Lin is a very gifted young musician and a brilliant pianist.”
Jenny’s orchestral engagements have included Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with Collegiate Chorale and American Symphony, Valentin Silvestrov’s Metamusik with Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Garden of Spain with La Orquesta Sinfónica de Gijón; Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 with SWR Rundfunkorchester; world premiere of Stefano Gervasoni’s Piano Concerto with Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI, and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. She has also worked with NDR Radiophilharmonie, Flemish Radio Orchestra, Nürnberger Symphoniker, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and performed with conductors such as Lothar Zagrosek, James Bagwell, Jiri Starek, Urs Schneider, Alexander Mickelthwate, Peter Bay, Jac van Steen, Ovidiu Balan, Wen-Pin Chien, Kek-Tjiang Lim, John Kennedy, Carlos Amat, Oliver Diaz, and Celso Antunes.
Her concerts have taken her to Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center’s Great Performers, Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre, MoMA, Whitney Museum, San Francisco Performances, SF Jazz, Freer Gallery of Art, Morgan Library, Stanford LIVE, (Le) Poisson Rouge, National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery, Spivey Hall, throughout Europe and the Far East; as well as Festivals worldwide at Mostly Mozart, BAM’s Next Wave, Spoleto and Portland International Piano Festivals in the USA, Chopin Festival in Austria, Flanders and Ars Musica Festivals in Belgium, Shanghai New Music Festival in China, Divonne Festival in France, Schleswig-Holstein, Potsdam and Husum Piano Rarities Festivals in Germany, Kings Place in London, Millennium Festival in Spain, Festival Archipel in Switzerland, and Winnipeg New Music in Canada. Since 2014, she has joined Philip Glass in his ongoing world tour of his complete Piano Etudes.
Jenny’s extensive discography includes critically acclaimed recordings on Steinway & Sons, hänssler CLASSIC, eOne Records, BIS Records, Albany Records, Sono Luminus and Naxos Records. Since 2000, she has over thirty albums to her credit. The New York Times called her disc of Federico Mompou’s Musica Callada “…beautifully recorded…”. Classicstoday praised her 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 87 by Dmitri Shostakovitch “…hands down the finest version of this massive work” and was voted Best of 2009 by the Washington Post, All-Music Guide raved: “The 11th Finger is a thrill ride for musical adventurers” and “Lin’s playing is nothing less than superhuman”, and Gramophone reported on her CD of Stravinsky’s solo piano music “superbly recorded… another notable achievement from this gifted and imaginative artist.” Other notable recordings have included Liszt Sonata and Schumann Fantasie, music for Piano and Orchestra by Ernest Bloch and Xavier Montsalvatge, “Get Happy” – Broadway song arrangements, complete Chopin Nocturnes, Piano Etudes of Philip Glass and music of Artur Schnabel. Upcoming release include The Etudes Project Volume One: ICEBERG featuring piano etudes from Chopin to contemporary composers.
A passionate advocate for education, Jenny created “Melody’s Mostly Musical Day“, a musical picture book for children following the adventures of an imaginative little girl from breakfast to bedtime, told in a collection of 26 classical piano works from Mozart to Gershwin. A multimedia concert version has since been developed for her tours at schools and educational institutions throughout the USA and Canada.
Jenny is the central figure in Cooking for Jenny by Elemental Films, a musical documentary portraying her journey to the north of Spain and meeting with composer Javier López de Guereña for the preparation of the world premier of his piano concerto ZAHARA. Other media appearances include CBS Sunday Morning, NPR Performance Today, and “Speaking for Myself”, a film about Manhattan as seen through the eyes of eight contemporary artists by filmmaker Bert Shapiro.
Born in Taiwan and raised in Austria, Jenny studied with Noel Flores at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, with Julian Martin at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and with Dominique Weber in Geneva. She has also worked with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, and Blanca Uribe, and with Dimitri Bashkirov and Andreas Staier at the Fondazione Internazionale per il pianoforte in Como, Italy. She holds a bachelor’s degree in German Literature from The Johns Hopkins University and currently resides in New York City.
Read more about Jenny at her website here.
Jenny Lin plays Lilac
Jenny Lin, Piano
