Alec Baldwin's New Job: Voice Of The New York Philharmonic

[Brian Damage]

NEW YORK — The New York Philharmonic will perform for the first time in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi next season and is getting Alec Baldwin to host its weekly national radio broadcasts.

Alan Gilbert, in his debut season as music director of the nation's oldest orchestra, will lead the musicians in the three-week tour in October, the Philharmonic announced Monday.

The orchestra, which made a historic trip to communist North Korea last winter, has performed in 59 countries but never in Vietnam or in Abu Dhabi, an oil-rich Middle Eastern emirate.

"I think we can actually do a lot to present a wonderful face of America to the world," Gilbert said in a statement. "This was very powerfully demonstrated with the concert in North Korea last year. Other plans we have _ to perform in Vietnam, for example _ can be a great way to show what's best about cultural life in the United States."

The 2009-2010 season, the orchestra's 168th, starts Sept. 12 with a free open rehearsal in the morning and an afternoon of chamber music and discussions.

The gala opening concert on Sept. 16 will feature soprano Renee Fleming and the world premiere of a work by Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. The concert will be televised nationally on PBS. The last world premiere at a Philharmonic gala opener was in 1962, when Leonard Bernstein conducted Copland's "Connotations for Orchestra."

Lindberg's piece will be on the program during the October tour, which starts in Tokyo, the orchestra said.

Gilbert, 41, who is succeeding Lorin Maazel as music director, will also lead world premieres of Lindberg's clarinet concerto and Christopher Rouse's "Zhizn," an orchestral work commissioned by the orchestra celebrating the life of a Russian friend of the American composer.


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