New Worlds: Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends

The legendary actor and comedian Bill Murray has become one of the most thought after artists in America. He was born William J. Murray on September 21, 1950, in Wilmette, Illinois. After spending time as a member of the cast of Chicago’s famed Second City improvisational comedy troupe, Murray relocated to New York City, where he took his comedic talents to radio’s National Lampoon Hour (1973-74) alongside Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and John Belushi. In 1975, he was in an Off-Broadway spin-off of the comedy radio show when Howard Cosell recruited him for a show called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell (1975-1976). A year later, producer Lorne Michaels tapped Murray to replace Chevy Chase on a much bigger sensation, NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL).

Ironically insincere and yet somehow soft-hearted, Murray is the best-known star to emerge from the cast of Saturday Night Live. On SNL from 1977-1980, he created the cheesy lounge crooner, Nick, and other lovably smarmy characters. It didn’t take long for him to move from the small screen to the big screen, and his first major film role was in the 1979 box office hit Meatballs. He then starred in two of the top-grossing comedies of the 1980s: playing a woolly-headed groundskeeper in Caddyshack (1980) and a slick-talking investigator in Ghostbusters (1984, with fellow SNL alumnus Dan Aykroyd). Murray’s comedy hits in the 1990s included Groundhog Day (1993) and the Amish bowling story Kingpin (1996). He also took more serious roles, playing a mobster in Mad Dog and Glory (1993, with Robert DeNiro) and an eccentric businessman in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998), for which he won Best Supporting Actor from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his seriocomic role as a jet-lagged movie star in Tokyo in Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation (2003).

Murray earned rave reviews for his portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) and he also reunited with Anderson for a role in Moonrise Kingdom that same year. Murray was also in Anderson’s next film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), with Jude Law and Ralph Fiennes, as well as The Monuments Men (2014). He was nominated for a lead actor Golden Globe^® for his role in the comedy St. Vincent (2014), co-starring Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts. That same year he starred as Jack Kennison in the acclaimed HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, for which he earned his second Emmy Award. In 2015, Murray was seen in the comedy Rock the Kasbah portraying a music manager who starts to handle the career of an Afghani teen. He recently voiced the character of Boss in Anderson’s acclaimed animated film, Isle of Dogs (2018), and had a cameo role in Danny McBride’s HBO comedy, Vice Principals. ​His most recent work includes Anderson’s acclaimed film The French Dispatch (2021) as well as a return to his highly popular and acclaimed role as Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024).

Recognized not only as an actor, but also as a humorist, Bill Murray was awarded The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in October 2016. He is an avid golfer and a particular fan favorite at the annual AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. His passion for baseball and golf is just as famous as his ability to turn everything into art, and his eccentric and irreverent style have caused him to be seen by many as a folk hero.

In 2013, Bill Murray met internationally acclaimed cellist Jan Vogler during a transatlantic flight. Out of the friendship between the two men ‘New worlds’ was born in 2016. The show, which reconnected Mr. Murray with his love for singing, poetry, literature and music has been performed live in more than 60 cities across the globe. A filmed version was released in cinemas worldwide in 2022 New Worlds: Cradle of Civilization after its 2021 premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Jan Vogler’s distinguished career has brought him together with renowned conductors and internationally acclaimed orchestras around the world, such as New York Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and London Philharmonic Orchestra. His great ability allowed him to explore the sound boundaries of the cello and to establish an intensive dialogue with contemporary composers and artists. This includes regular world premieres, including works by Tigran Mansurian (with WDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Semyon Bychkov), John Harbison (with Mira Wang and the Boston Symphony Orchestra), Udo Zimmermann (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra), Wolfgang Rihm (Double Concerto with Mira Wang), Jörg Widman (Cello Concerto Dunkle Saiten, dedicated to Jan Vogler himself), Nico Muhly, Sven Helbig and Zhou-Long (Drei Kontinente – Konzert für Cello und Orchester, composed for Jan Vogler) and Sean Shepherd (On a Clear Day based on a cycle of poems by Ulla Hahn, for cello, choirs and orchestra, which was premiered in 2023 with the Philharmonic State Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano). The New York Times praises his “soulful, richly hued playing” and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung grants him the ability “to make his cello speak like a singing voice”.

In addition to his classical concert activities as a soloist, Jan Vogler is constantly looking for new ways to combine music with other arts In February 2024, he gave a highly acclaimed concert with inaugural-poet Amanda Gorman, performing Gorman’s contemporary poems with cello suites by J. S. Bach in the Isaac Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall. The duo appeared on the popular ‘Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert’ in March 2024. Jan Vogler has also collaborated with actor Bill Murray for their joint musical-literary project “Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends – New Worlds”. The innovative programme drew international attention and brought together works by Twain, Hemingway, Whitman, Cooper, Bernstein, Bach, Piazzolla, Mancini, Gershwin and Foster for an unexpected and exciting exploration of the relationship between literature and music.

Highlights of Jan Vogler’s career as a soloist are concerts with the New York Philharmonic – both in New York and Dresden at the occasion of the reopening of the rebuilt Dresdner Frauenkirche under the direction of Lorin Maazel in 2005 –, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh and Montréal Symphony Orchestras, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra dell’ Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic as well as with The Knights.  He collaborates with conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Fabio Luisi, Sir Antonio Pappano, Valery Gergiev, Thomas Hengelbrock, Manfred Honeck and Kent Nagano.

Under the artistic direction of Jan Vogler and conductor Kent Nagano, Wagner’s “Ring Tetralogy” will be performed in the artistic context of the period in which it was composed, based on the latest findings of research into Wagner and performance practice, and integrated into an extensive supporting program as part of the multi-year project “The Wagner Cycles” of the Dresdner Musikfestspiele from 2023 to 2026. The prelude was the performance of “Das Rheingold” at the Dresden Music Festival in 2023 and the tour to Cologne, Ravello and Lucerne under the musical direction of Kent Nagano. With “Die Walküre,” the second work in the epochal narrative will follow in 2024.

Jan Vogler has been working successfully with the Sony Classical label since 2003 and in the course of this cooperation around 20 CDs have been produced so far. The most recent releases were with the cello concertos of Edouard Lalo and Enrique Casals in March 2023, The Dvorak Album in July 2022 with musicians from the Moritzburg Festival, which focused on works by the composer, and Pop Songs in May 2022, in which Jan Vogler explores the history of pop song over the past centuries with Omer Meir Wellber and the BBC Philharmonic. June 2020 also saw the release of his recording of the cello concerto Three Continents written especially for the cellist by Nico Muhly (USA), Sven Helbig (D) and Zhou Long (CHN) with the WDR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Cristian Măcelaru, as well as the Second Cello Concerto by Shostakovich with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev.

Previous recordings include a recording of double concertos for violin & violoncello by Rihm, Brahms and Harbison, together with violinist Mira Wang, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor Peter Oundjian (May 2018), as well as Schumann’s cello concerto together with the Dresden Festival Orchestra and Ivor Bolton (October 2016), Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the Moritzburg Festival Ensemble (March 2016), Concerti di Venezia with La Folia Baroque Orchestra featuring Venetian cello Concertos from the 18th century from Vivaldi, Caldara, Porpora e.a., the Schumann album Dichterliebe with Hélène Grimaud e.a., and his critically acclaimed recording of Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. After the success of his CD My Tunes featuring short character pieces, a volume 2 was published. It was followed by an award-winning recording of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the New York Philharmonic under David Robertson (Pizzicato Supersonic Award, Diapason d’Or Janvier, Choc – Le Monde de la Musique Mars).

Jan Vogler has been Intendant of the renowned Dresden Music Festival since October 2008 as well as Artistic Director of the Moritzburg Festival since 2001. In 2017 the Moritzburg Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary as one of the most established chamber music festivals internationally.

In 2006, he received the European Award for Culture and in 2011 the Erich-Kästner Award for tolerance, humanity and international understanding. In June 2018 he received the European Award for Culture TAURUS as Director of the Dresden Music Festival. 2021 Jan Vogler was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Jan Vogler plays the Stradivari ‘Ex Castelbarco/Fau’ 1707 cello.

As the Washington Post lauded, Venezuelan-American pianist Vanessa Perez “is not to be taken lightly.” Praised for her bold, passionate performing style allied with musicianship of keen sensitivity, Ms. Perez has performed on most of the world’s great concert stages. But her first performance in New York wasn’t in an uptown classical concert hall – it was at the downtown jazz shrine of the Blue Note, where Latin jazz star Arturo Sandoval invited her to perform his “Sureña,” a piece laced with Venezuelan folk melodies. This special ability to move with ease through the classical, folk, and popular music worlds has become her hallmark, and Ms. Perez continues to broaden the definition of the classical pianist.

Ms. Perez’s traditional performance highlights have ranged from concerts with conductors such as Carlos Miguel Prieto, John Axelrod, Gustav Meier, David Gimenez Carreras, James Judd, Gustavo Dudamel, Diego Matheuz, Nikolaj Znaider, among others. Concerts in Puerto Rico’s Casals Festival, Carnegie Hall, NY, to the Chopin Festival of Majorca, symphony orchestras in the U.S. from Miami to Minnesota to Vermont and in solo recitals from Manhattan to San Diego. In Europe, as soloist, Perez has performed at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Montpellier Festival in France, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Beethoven’s Bonn Festival, Wigmore Hall in London among others. In chamber music, collaborators include Daniel Hope, Gabriela Montero, Ingrid Fliter, Joshua Bell, Philippe Quint, the American, Avalon and Dali String Quartets. 

Reviewing Ms. Perez’ performance of Mozart’s D Minor Piano Concerto in Germany with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the Dortmunder Zeitung called her “a virtuosa with a wild heart and a gentle touch,” combining “spontaneous freshness and poetic expression.” An eclectic performer, Vanessa Perez can be seen in an episode of Amazon’s hit TV series Mozart in the Jungle, performing Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony for inmates at New York’s Rikers Island prison, alongside Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, and ondist Suzanne Farrin. She also played Chopin’s mazurkas with the Limón Dance Company in Manhattan’s Bryant Park and the Joyce Theatre in New York City.

A first in Perez’ unique career was her role in the concert documentary New Worlds: Cradle of Civilization, with violinist Mira Wang, created by cellist Jan Vogler, and led by American Actor Bill Murray. The ensemble toured the world from 2017-19, including stops at most of the world’s most prestigious concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, Royal Festival Hall in London, Sydney Opera House, Elbphilharmonie, and more. Director Andrew Muscato filmed their final stop of their 2018 European tour at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and this unprecedented feature was officially selected by the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.The film was released in theaters in the United States, on February 2nd, 2022, and made its European, Australian, New Zealand premiere in theaters on March 2022. 

One of Ms. Perez’ missions is to stage Latin American music with different ensembles and collaborations. Together with her husband and artistic partner Stephen Buck, arranger/composer for New Worlds and other projects, they have embarked on different journeys to include Latin American works from the classical genre and beyond, including mariachi, boleros, salsa, and more. The programs are inspired by the richness, diversity, and political history of the American continents. Most recently Ms. Perez collaborated with Latin Grammy winner Kristhyan Benítez on A fuego lento for two pianos, a program that combines standard two-piano repertoire with new arrangements by Stephen Buck, and the Dalí Quartet on a program that moves from the streets of Panama to the classical concert stage, including music by Latin legends Willie Colón and Simón Díaz, reimagined for piano quintet by Stephen Buck; Miguel del Águila’s CLOCKS; and Clarice Assad’s quintet.

Perez was raised to her pre-teen years in Venezuela, where she began her studies with Luminita Duca at the Emil Friedman in Caracas. At age 11, she was invited to make her concert debut performing Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Orquesta Sinfonica Municipal de Caracas, and conductor Carlos Riazuelo for a sold-out 2,500-seat auditorium. In the U.S., she studied with noted Claudio Arrau pupils Ena Bronstein and Rosalina Sackstein; at 17, she won a full scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music to study with Christopher Elton. She continued her studies with pianists Lazar Berman and Franco Scala in Italy at the renowned Accademia Pianistica Incontri Col Maestro in Imola; she then completed post-graduate studies with Peter Frankl at Yale University and pianist Daniel Epstein in New York City. Perez currently resides in Manhattan with her husband and their children.

Vanessa Perez is a Steinway artist, and a professor of Piano at Purchase College Conservatory of Music in NY.

Mira Wang has built a remarkable bridge from her time as a child prodigy in Beijing, China to an acclaimed soloist on the world stage today.

She has appeared as a soloist with many prestigious orchestras all over the world including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Saarbrücken Radio Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic and NDR Philharmonic Hannover.

An avid chamber musician, Mira’s partners include Hélène Grimaud , Oli Mustonen, Alice Sara Ott, Louis Lortie, Jeremy Denk, Pamela Frank, Daniel Müller-Schott, Gautier Capucon, Jan Vogler and Lawrence Power.

She is an enthusiastic exponent of contemporary music, premiering the violin concerto Spring in Dresden by Chinese-American composer Chen Yi with the Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Ivan Fischer and John Harbison’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Carlos Kalmar.  In 2015 she premiered the double concerto by Wolfgang Rihm, with Jan Vogler and the Orpheus Chamber orchestra at Carnegie Hall. In 2018, She premiered a triple concerto “Alisma” by Swiss composer William Blank with Jan Vogler, Daniel Ottensamer and the Philharmonische Staatsorchester Hamburg, conducted by Kent Nagano at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.

Mira has recorded extensively for many labels including Sony Classical and Edel Classics.  Her discography includes violin concerto No. 2 by Prokofieff with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony, the violin concerto No. 3 by Saint-Saens with NDR Philharmonic Hannover, a duo album with cellist Jan Vogler and several chamber music recordings with Artists of the Moritzburg Festival.

Mira has toured the world with famous Hollywood actor Bill Murray, cellist Jan Vogler, and pianist Vanessa Perez in a project called The “New Worlds.” An innovative program with unexpected and exciting exploration of the relationship between literature and music. A live documentary movie of the show was premiered in movie theaters around the world in the spring of 2022.  The recording of “New Worlds” can be found under the Decca Gold label.

A founder of the Model Room Musicales concert series in New York City, she has been Artistic Director of the series since 2005 and in 2013, she became Director of the Moritzburg Festival Academy in Germany.  Mira joined the faculty at Bard conservatory in 2022.

Born in China, Ms. Wang studied at Central Conservatory in Beijing.  She was sponsored by renowned violin teacher, the late Roman Totenberg to further her studies at Boston University, where she graduated summa cum laude and received the prestigious Kahn Award given to outstanding performers.  She has won 1st prizes in several international violin competitions including the Geneva Competition.