Phillip Gainsley Presents New Podcast Series LET'S TALK MUSIC

Phillip Gainsley is presenting a new podcast series, devoted to classical music and music theater.

Listen to the podcast HERE!

Phillip Gainsley, has been giving talks on music and music theater for over 40 years. He is also a practicing attorney in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is primarily a commercial litigator and the author of many significant appellate court briefs.

For 30 years, he served as a panelist on the Opera Quiz, heard during the second intermission of the live Saturday afternoon international radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. Gainsley has spoken for the New York City Opera, and for opera companies in Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Sarasota, and Washington D.C., and for the Aspen Music Festival and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, for both of whom he also has written program annotations and synopses.

He currently provides regular pre-concert discussions and occasional program notes for the Minnesota Orchestra.

Over the last six years, Gainsley has led Classical Conversations for the Sarasota Orchestra, interviewing guest performers and conductors.

For over 15 years he has hosted discussions for the Longboat Key, FL Education Center focusing on the repertoire of the Sarasota Opera and moderating panel discussions on the performing arts.
In September 2019, he spoke on Verdi's Macbeth for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, for whom he is scheduled to speak, by podcast, in December 2020 on Beethoven's Fidelio.

In December 2009, he was a panelist as Macalester College in St. Paul celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ballets Russes and the life of Serge Diaghilev.

In April, 2010 he moderated a panel discussion of an opera work in process, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, commissioned by the Minnesota Opera, based on the novel by Giorgio Bassani. Gainsley was joined by composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Michael Korie.

In March 2000 he spoke on André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire, "From Page to Stage" in San Diego, using excerpts of his recorded interviews with Mr. Previn and librettist, Philip Litell; and he led discussions of the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess for the New York City Opera, which he repeated in 2002.

In 2000, Gainsley spoke on Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat in Sarasota for the VanWezel Performing Arts Center and Barnes & Noble, using excerpts of recorded interviews with Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim.

In 2002, he moderated a discussion in Chicago with Mr. Sondheim, as the Lyric Opera presented his Sweeney Todd, and in February 2003 he participated in a similar discussion with him and choreographer Susan Stroman and director Scott Ellis at the Guggenheim Museum in New York as City Opera revived its production of A Little Night Music.

In 2004 he was a panelist with the late June LeBell and the late Marni Nixon for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's series, "The Sounds of Broadway 50 Years ago."

In 2011 Gainsley moderated a panel in conjunction with The Minnesota Opera and the Minneapolis Jewish Arts Counsel, celebrating the opera company's April premiere of Bernard Herrmann's only opera, Wutheruing Heights. He showed movie clips demonstrating Herrmann's effect on the many motion pictures on which he collaborated with some of Hollywood's most notable directors.