Isaac Stern News

Birdland Jazz Club has announced its August 2017 lineup, featuring The Birdland Big Band, John Pizzarelli, Borislav Strulev, The Legendary Count Basie Orchestra, Benny Green Trio, Michelle Lordi, Charlie Parker Birthday Celebration, Jim Caruso's Cast Party, and more. Scroll down for details!

Robert Schumann said he was “in seventh heaven” after hearing Schubert's Ninth Symphony. From its majestic opening horn call to the finale that salutes Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”, the subtitle “Great” is entirely suited to this marvellous musical feast.

America's Longest Running Chamber Music Festival, Music Mountain, continues its 88th Season with Alexander Fiterstein, Clarinet, Michael Brown, Piano, and Nicholas Canellakis, Cello performing Beethoven, Debussy, and Brahms on Sunday, June 18th (3pm). The weekend begins with the first Twilight Series concert of the summer featuring The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players on Saturday, June 17th (6:30pm)! Concerts are scheduled thru September 17th!

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is featured in a free outdoor concert at Central Park's historic Naumburg Bandshell on Tuesday, July 18 at 7:30 p.m., presented by Naumburg Orchestral Concerts and hosted by WQXR's Annie Bergen.

It took just two notes-found in the theme to Steven Spielberg's movie "Jaws," (dun-DUN...dun-DUN)-to make a major, permanent impression on the minds of moviegoers for generations to come.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) today announces the launch of a new channel on Apple Music, curated by SFCM. The Conservatory will begin to publish playlists on a weekly basis, highlighting the commercial recordings of SFCM's guest artists, faculty members, and other musicians within the SFCM community.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will present internationally renowned soprano Patricia Racette with an honorary doctorate at the institution's annual commencement ceremony on May 19, 2017. Racette, highly sought after for her dramatic interpretations of roles both iconic and new, is known the world over for her lyrical expressivity and dynamism. She has performed on the stages of La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Royal Opera House, among many others. She is also the recipient of the prized Richard Tucker Award and the Opera News Award.

The Conservatory Orchestra closes out the year with a program of 20th-century masterpieces, highlighting SFCM's spring focus on folk influences. Ruth Crawford Seeger's Rissolty, Rossolty explores heavy use of folk tunes, and the score to the iconic ballet, Petrushka, is ripe with Russian songs, expressed in a way that can only be termed 'Stravinskian.' Graduating voice student and concerto competition winner Natalie Image '17 joins the orchestra mid-concert for Samuel Barber's luscious Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) today announces the appointment of Cordula Merks, concertmaster of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and Chen Zhao, a member of the San Francisco Symphony and SFCM graduate, to its violin faculty.

The 5 Browns are delivering on their dream to wake up classical music by introducing it to the widest, largest and most excited audience they can find. Whether performing individually or together in various combinations from duo to complex five-piano arrangements, The 5 Browns reveal a deep connection to the intent of their material while bringing a fresh energy and dynamic character to the color and tonal spectrum of their sound.

The New School's Mannes School of Music will celebrate its centennial with a concert at Carnegie Hall honoring the school's rich history on Tuesday, April 25 from 7 to 10 p.m.

The short, one-act opera, Mavra, highlights Igor Stravinsky's early flirtations with neoclassicism, a period which saw the composer produce other popular works such as Pulcinella and Symphony of Psalms. As Mavra looks to the past in both music and narrative, Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas  does the same. A Russian iconoclast reflects on his heritage and an English master takes on Greco-Roman mythology.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) joins the Bay Area's celebration of Lou Harrison's centennial with a birthday concert presented by the SFCM New Music Ensemble, conducted by Nicole Paiement. This performance features important works by Harrison, whose style is known for incorporating non-Western traditions, relating to his activism, and showcasing a world of non-traditional techniques and sounds. 

On Sunday, May 7, 2017 at 4pm, Israeli-American cellist Inbal Segev, known for her “warm, pure and beautiful tone” (Strings Magazine), will give the world premiere of Tangle Eye, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, by California Symphony Young American Composer-in-Residence Dan Visconti, with the California Symphony at Lesher Center for the Arts, in a concert led by Music Director Donato Cabrera. The concert will also include Beethoven's Coriolan Overture and Bruckner's Symphony No. 6. A free pre-concert talk with Cabrera will begin at 3pm.

SFCM presents a double bill of two one-act operas by romantic-era masters, Massenet's Le portrait de Manon and Puccini's Suor Angelica -- one, a story of love and determination, and the other, a tale of secrets from within a Florentine convent.

Mannes School of Music will celebrate its centennial with a concert at Carnegie Hall honoring the school's rich history and its vision for the future. The concert will feature live performances by esteemed alumni, past and present faculty, and students.

 Music Director Donato Cabrera leads the California Symphony in the world premiere of the newly-commissioned cello concerto, Tangle Eye, by its current Young American Composer-in-Residence, Dan Visconti, with soloist Inbal Segev on Sunday, May 7 at 4 pm at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. The Israeli-American cellist, now based in New York, is a champion of contemporary music, and performs as a soloist with a Bay Area orchestra for the first time in the Orchestra's May 7 season finale. This is Visconti's final work as a Young American Composer-in-Residence with the Orchestra; his residency ends this year. The California Symphony also performs Bruckner's Symphony No. 6 for the first time in its 30-year history, and the program opens with Beethoven's Coriolan Overture.

Inspired by vintage recordings of strings giants Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern and more, Grammy-nominated cellist Bion Tsang presents eighteen virtuoso miniatures for cello and piano on Bion Tsang: The Blue Rock Sessions, now available oniTunes and Amazon.com, a culmination of Tsang's lifelong fascination with the violin repertoire and the musicality and intimacy of miniature compositions such as Tchaikovsky's “Melodié in E Flat” and Giovanni Sgambati's “Serenata Napoletana.”

Inspired by vintage recordings of strings giants Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern and more, Grammy-nominated cellist Bion Tsang presents eighteen virtuoso miniatures for cello and piano on Bion Tsang: The Blue Rock Sessions, now available on iTunes and Amazon.com.

Boston Lyric Opera's Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director Esther Nelson announced today an eclectic 2017/18 Season designed to please die-hard opera fans as well as newcomers to the art form.  Each of the Company's productions will be presented on a different area stage, starting October 13-22, 2017 with a new production of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca featuring the American debut of award-winning rising global star Elena Stikhina in the title role. The World Premiere of The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare (a.k.a. Burke & Hare) by composer Julian Grant and librettist Mark Campbell follows November 8-12, 2017.  From March 16-25, 2018, BLO presents Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's pivotal early-20th century work The Threepenny Opera.  BLO closes its Season in May with Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, paired with his Arias and Barcarolles, to mark the Lawrence, Mass.-born composer's centennial.