OTTAWA (Canada) – On Sunday February 14, spend the afternoon with Alexander Shelley at “Rising Stars - My First NAC”, a free concert featuring the phenomenal Ottawa-born flutist Lindsay Bryden. Presented by Corus Entertainment, the concert begins at 2:00 p.m. in the NAC lobby, and will include an interesting mix of works by Canadian, American, Hungarian, French and Dutch composers and an enlightening discussion with Maestro Shelley.

Bryden will perform a lively array of music from Bartók, Messiaen, Smit, Taffanel and Copland with Piano accompaniment by Jean Desmarais, as well as an original solo for Flute she composed in 2013.

A professional freelance musician based in London, UK, Bryden has served as principal flute of L’Orchestre de la francophonie, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas and Orchestra Vitae. She is active in recording for emerging composers and is a frequent collaborator in chamber music projects. As a soloist, she has performed in festivals such as Music and Beyond in Ottawa, Spitalfields in London and Vianden in Luxembourg, and in the outstanding venues of St Martin in the Fields and the Royal Albert Hall’s Elgar Room.

"...we were dazzled by the virtuosity of the music, by a flute which married clarity of expression, fluidity and colour, where the blooming soundscape brought with it an equal ease in the low and high registers, a flexibility of phrasing and expressive power. It has been a long time since a flute impressed me so much," said Jean-Jacques Van Vlasselaer, in Le Droit of Bryden.

Bryden earned her MA in Flute Performance under William Bennett, OBE at the Royal Academy of Music in 2015, where she was also the winner of the Jonathan Myall Piccolo Prize. She is a graduate of both the Royal College of Music (2013), where she was an RCM Scholar and Rising Star, and of the Interlochen Arts Academy (2009), where she received the Fine Arts Award for flute. Additional studies have been with Royal Concertgebouw principal Emily Beynon and Nicola Mazzanti of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

In 2013, Bryden was a recipient of the Sylva Gelber Music Award, and in 2014 was awarded the Young Artist grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

This is a performance not to be missed!

ALEXANDER SHELLEY BIOGRAPHY

In September 2015 Alexander Shelley took up the mantle as Music Director, leading a new era for the National Arts Centre’s Orchestra. He is currently in his seventh year as Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra where he has transformed the orchestra’s playing, education work and touring activities which have included tours to Italy, Belgium, China and a re-invitation to the Musikverein in Vienna. In January 2015 Shelley was named Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, in which capacity he will curate and perform a series of concerts at Cadogan Hall each season and will lead the orchestra on a tour of Korea in 2016.

Born in the UK in 1979, Shelley first gained widespread attention when he was unanimously awarded first prize at the 2005 Leeds Conductors Competition and was described as "the most exciting and gifted young conductor to have taken this highly prestigious award. His conducting technique is immaculate, everything crystal clear and a tool to his inborn musicality."

He is the son of celebrated concert pianists, the grandson of a talented cellist and the great grandson of an equally talented organist. He has been described in the press as a “musician of considerable gifts and extraordinarily impressive interpretive qualities” (Strauss, Elgar and Sibelius in London), a conductor with "exceptional artistic authority" (Brahms with DSO Berlin) and described his Verdi Requiem in Salzburg as an "original, intelligent, thoroughly convincing and well-crafted interpretation."

Since then he has been in demand from orchestras around the world including the Philharmonia, City of Birmingham Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Stockholm Philharmonic, Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, DSO Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Simon Bolivar, Seattle and Houston Symphony Orchestras.  Further afield Shelley is a regular guest with the top Asian and Australasian orchestras.

Shelley’s operatic engagements have included The Merry Widow and Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet for Royal Danish Opera; La Bohème for Opera Lyra at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Iolanta with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Cosi fan tutte in Montpellier and a new production of The Marriage of Figaro for Opera North in 2015.

Alongside his regular appearances in London, Ottawa and Nuremberg, Shelley will in the coming seasons return to, among others, the DSO Berlin, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, NDR Radio Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Hong Kong, New Zealand and Melbourne Symphony orchestras. Forthcoming debuts include Camerata Salzburg, Czech Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Orchestra Svizzera Italiana, Oslo Philharmonic and RTÉ Orchestra. His first recording for Deutsche Grammophon, an album with Daniel Hope and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, was released in September 2014.

In Germany he enjoys a close relationship with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, with whom he performs regularly both in subscriptions in Bremen, and around Germany, and in October 2013 he took the orchestra on tour to Italy with a signature programme of Strauss, Wagner and Brahms.  Alexander Shelley and which uses music as a source for social cohesion and integration He is artistic director of their Zukunftslabor project - an award-winning series which aims to build a lasting relationship between the orchestra and community, winning over a new generation of concert-goers through grass-roots engagement.  

Inspiring future generations of musicians and audiences has always been central to Shelley’s work. In spring 2014, he conducted an extended tour of Germany with the Bundesjugendorchester and Bundesjugendballett which included a collaborative concert at the Baden-Baden Easter Festival with Sir Simon Rattle and members of the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2001, during his cello and conducting studies in Dusseldorf, he founded the Schumann Camerata with whom he created "440Hz", an innovative concert series involving prominent German television, stage and musical personalities, conceived by him as a major initiative to attract young adults to the concert hall.

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TO BOOK AN INTERVIEW, PLEASE CONTACT:

Andrea Ruttan

Communications Officer, NAC Orchestra
National Arts Centre
(613) 947-7000, ext. 335
Andrea.Ruttan@nac-cna.ca