John Adams News

Gotham Chamber Opera continues its 2012-2013 Season with GOTHAM @ LPR: Gotham Chamber Opera and Missy Mazzoli Conspire, a collaboration with composer Missy Mazzoli. The show will be performed on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 7:30pm (doors open at 6:30pm) at (le) poisson rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, NYC. Tickets are $15-$25 and are available online at lepoissonrouge.com.

Robert Plant, of Led Zeppelin fame, has announced an upcoming tour featuring the Sensational Space Shifters, according to USA today. The tour will kick off June 20th and you can check out a preview of what's to come with their rendition of Willie Dixon's blues hit, Spoonful.

Bang on a Can celebrates summer in the city with seven free (or nearly free) performances in New York, showcasing the breadth and diversity of its continuously adventurous curatorial vision.

The Muny announced principal casting for the fifth show of its fantastic 95th season, Les Miserables. Broadway veterans Hugh Panaro and Norm Lewis make their Muny debuts starring as Jean Valjean and Javert, respectively. Also starring is Michael McCormick as Thenardier. The production is directed by Richard Jay-Alexander, who served as the associate director and executive producer of the original Broadway, touring and Canadian companies of Les Miserables.

The Shattered Glass Ensemble and its Artistic Director, violinist Elizabeth Woo, will offer a smashing artistic experience when the conductor-less string ensemble makes its Carnegie Hall debut at Zankel Hall tonight, May 7, 2013 at 8 PM, with Ms. Woo as soloist.

Along the banks of the Delaware River in picturesque Lower Bucks County, Morrisville is rarely referred to as "historic," although it's filled with American Revolutionary history. The borough will show off its historic chops when Morrisville's "A Revolutionary Weekend" kicks off Thursday, Sept. 19 through Sunday, Sept. 19th and will be brimming with historical education and entertainment.

James Rocco is the vice president of programming and producing artistic director of the Ordway Center for Performing Arts in Saint Paul, Minn. He is also the director, host and a performer in the Ordway's latest edition of BROADWAY SONGBOOK, this time, focusing on American musical theatre master, Cole Porter. I recently sat down to learn about James, the BROADWAY SONGBOOK: Cole Porter and what's next for the theatre.

In an ongoing quest to make new musical discoveries through its acclaimed American Composers Festival (ACF), Pacific Symphony, led by Music Director Carl St.Clair, this year celebrates the music of two seemingly disparate figures—representing past and present: the iconic Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974) and living saxophonist-composer Daniel Schnyder, neither of whom fit neatly into a single musical category. ACF, an annual celebration of American composers, seems somehow incomplete without the inclusion of Ellington, whose works have inspired countless composers and musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries—including Schnyder. This year, the Symphony doesn't just refer to Ellington, but presents the ensemble that carries his name and has been playing together in one form or another for more than eight decades; the other half of the equation is this year's ACF composer-in-residence Schnyder—both of whom defy definition.

The New York Choral Society (NYCS) announced today that award-winning stage and screen star Kathleen Turner will introduce Ralph Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony at Carnegie Hall on April 25 with a reading of the moving and evocative text written by the American poet Walt Whitman.

The third release in Silva Screen's TV theme compilation series offering a comprehensive snapshot of the very best music on television is now available.

Participants will consider multiple views of the future of orchestras at the League of American Orchestras' 68th National Conference, June 18-20, 2013 in St. Louis. The Conference, under the theme Imagining 2023, will include a keynote and breakout sessions with futurist thinkers and industry leaders, live participatory performances and traditional concerts, and a master class with conductor David Robertson, music director of the St. Louis Symphony, which is co-hosting the Conference. Nearly 1000 professionals and volunteers from across the orchestra field are expected to attend the three-day event. The closing general session will be video streamed live.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's 44th season concludes with a flourish as Alisa Weilerstein, lauded by The New York Times as a 'brilliant young American cellist,' performs Shostakovich's thrilling Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107, originally composed for legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, on Saturday, May 18, 2013, 8 pm, at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, and Sunday, May 19, 2013, 7 pm, at Royce Hall, UCLA. Music Director Jeffrey Kahane, who conducts the program and has long been committed to championing artists early in their careers, also presents the US premiere of up-and-coming French composer Hugo Gonzalez-Pioli's The Love of Zero, an intriguing bassoon concerto, featuring LACO Principal Bassoon Kenneth Munday and played with Robert Florey's avant-garde 1927 short silent film of the same title. Gonzalez-Pioli, whose work adds a touch of Hollywood to the program, is a 2012 graduate of USC's prestigious Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program.

The highly anticipated world premiere of Music in Circles III, a new piece by Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) Composer-in-Residence Andrew Norman, is the centerpiece of LACO's 'Concertos: Handel & Mozart' orchestral concert tonight, April 20, 2013, 8 pm, at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, and Sunday, April 21, 2013, 7 pm, at Royce Hall, UCLA.

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) announced that the contract for Music Director Peter Oundjian has been extended through the end of the orchestra's 95th concert season in 2016-17. Toronto-born Peter Oundjian is the 10th Music Director in the history of the TSO. With the contract extension, Mr. Oundjian will be the longest serving Music Director since Sir Andrew Davis (1975-1987), who now serves as Conductor Laureate.

Internationally recognized for its adventurous opera and classical music programming, Spoleto Festival USA offers an eclectic program of music and opera for its 37th season. In addition to the American premiere of Matsukaze-the first of Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa's operas to be produced in the United States-the program includes American premiere performances of P?teris Vasks' Credo and Pierre Boulez's arrangement of Ravel's Frontispice. Also to be performed are a double-bill of rarely performed Italian operas, Puccini's Le Villi and Giordano's Mese Mariano, and Verdi's Messa da Requiem conducted by Joseph Flummerfelt in his farewell appearance as Spoleto's Artistic Director for Choral Activities.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) Music Director Marin Alsop leads the BSO and the string ensemble Time for Three in Jennifer Higdon's Concerto 4-3 on Thursday, May 2nd at 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore and Saturday, May 4th at 8 p.m. at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The performance also features John Adam's Shaker Loops and the 1947 version of Prokofiev's Symphony No. 4. Please see below for complete program details.

The 2013 New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, will return for the 48th season with five free outdoor concerts, conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn (July 10); Cunningham Park, Queens (July 11); the Great Lawn in Central Park, Manhattan (July 13 and 15); and Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx (July 16). In addition, the New York Philharmonic Brass will give a Free Indoor Concert at the Center for the Arts, College of Staten Island, CUNY (July 14).

ACME, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble performs tonight, April 18 at 7:30pm. presented by The Morgan Library and Museum (225 Madison Avenue) and the Polish Cultural Institute New York. ACME pays homage to the late, largely unsung Polish composer Mieczys?aw Weinberg with an elegiac chamber music program that includes his exquisite Piano Quintet Op. 18, plus Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67 and selections from Henryk Gorecki's String Quartet No. 3.

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues the 2012-13 season of its Composer Portraits series with Oliver Knussen, tonight, April 18, 2013.