George Walker News

The nation's most diverse orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta is thrilled to present the standout 2019-2020 season opening concert, Forces + Fates: The Beauty and Volatility of Planet Earth, a performance centered on awe, imperfection and disorder found on Earth and how the future may rest in the hands of the human race. Forces + Fates looks not only to push boundaries, but also help raise awareness and spread knowledge on this critically timely topic through music.

Before the first line of PCPA's The Addams Family had left the mouth of Gomez Addams (George Walker), my seatmate was already chuckling. And the laughs kept coming until the players took their bows to a standing audience. The cast's comic timing synchronized perfectly with Erik Stein's fluid staging for a frightfully fun evening.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra will play at the Tianjin Concert Hall July 2.

A friend remarked to British actor, Edmund Gwenn, on his deathbed 'This must be very hard,' to which Gwenn replied, 'It is. But not as hard as farce.' PCPA's production of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder met the challenge of the dangerously delicate timing demanded of a musical farce. Set in England in the Edwardian period, lowly office clerk, Monty Navarro (George Walker), discovers that, through his mother's line, he is connected to the aristocracy as a member of the D'Ysquith family. With eight D'Ysquiths standing between him and an Earldom, he makes his way through his family tree by what Lady Macbeth referred to as 'the nearest way,' discreetly murdering his way to the top.

A true collaboration among four of the region's largest performing arts groups highlight this year's central Ohio organizations receiving grants from the PNC Foundation through PNC Arts Alive.

The nation's most diverse orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, is proud to present a lineup of fresh and collaborative programming for its 2019-2020 season, Dialogue. Each of the five concerts in the 2019-2020 series boasts an engaging, thematically-curated repertoire of pieces written by underrepresented composers, each encouraging a different conversation or call to action.

A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, which took the 2014 Tony Awards by storm with 10 nominations - winning four, including Best Musical, will play in the Marian Theatre April 25 through May 12 and in the Solvang Festival Theater June 13 - 30.

André Raphel conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on March 8 and 9, 2019 in its annual Classical Roots Concert taking place in Orchestra Hall.  The Saturday, March 9 performance will be a gala concert and a live webcast.  This year's tribute honors  George Walker,  the esteemed composer, pianist and educator who was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1996 for Lilacs, and who passed away this past August at age 96.  Composer Robert A. Harris will be a special Classical Roots Honoree.   It will be the 41st year that the DSO has presented Classical Roots, honoring the achievements of African American composers. 

The Sylvan Winds announce the opening concert of the 2019 Spring Season celebrating music, art, and history. Performing in important cultural and historic New York City buildings, the ensemble creates imaginative and informative programs that reflect the environs of each space.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and Music Director Louis Langree announced details of the much-anticipated 125th Anniversary Season beginning in September at Music Hall. The 2019-20 season welcomes acclaimed guest artists including Renee Fleming, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Artist-in-Residence Guy Braunstein and Grammy winner Isabel Leonard, among others. The season includes performances of Beethoven's legendary Akademie program, a fully staged production of Ravel's opera, L'Enfant et les sortileges, seven CSO commissions, five world premieres, three U.S. premieres, as well as an experimental new concert series titled CSO Proof. The 125th Anniversary Season marks the launch of new initiatives both on and off the stage that build on the CSO's legacy. Leading up to the season, the Orchestra presents CSO Look Around, a first-of-its-kind event celebrating community, diversity, and inclusivity on August 3.

Directors Guild of America President Thomas Schlamme today announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2018. 

Celebrating its 50th year, the New York String Orchestra Seminar (a program of the Mannes School of Music) presents its two annual holiday concerts in December, led by conductor Jaime Laredo, who is concurrently celebrating 26 years with NYSO. This year's orchestra is comprised of 64 musicians (ages 16–23), selected after a rigorous audition process, hailing from more than 20 US states as well as Canada, Australia, China, Korea, and Taiwan. They are joined on stage at Carnegie Hall by notable guest artists and more than 20 NYSO alumni to celebrate and kick off the program's milestone anniversary.

Carnegie Hall celebrates the holiday season with a variety of festive concerts this December. On Friday, December 21 at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, December 22 at 8:00 p.m., Broadway's original Mary Poppins Ashley Brown rings in the holiday season with The New York Pops and Music Director Steven Reineke with Essential Voices USA offering two evenings of classic and contemporary carols including “Deck the Halls,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “I'll Be Home for Christmas.”

A musical the entire family will cherish and long remember, Peter Pan, is playing in Santa Maria's Marian Theatre November 8 through December 23. Based on the J.M. Barrie classic tale, Peter Pan is full of magic, warmth, and adventure, making it one of the most beloved stories for the stage of all time. Peter and his mischievous fairy sidekick, Tinkerbell, visit the nursery of the Darling children late one night and, with a sprinkle of pixie dust, begin a magical adventure of a lifetime. The travelers come face to face with a ticking crocodile, a fierce Neverland tribe, and a band of bungling pirates led by the villainous Captain Hook.

On the morning of Wednesday, December 19, sixty-four of the nation's most gifted music students between the ages of 16 and 23 will meet for the first time under the baton of conductor Jaime Laredo to form the 50th New York String Orchestra, a program under the auspices of The New School's Mannes School of Music.

Sphinx Virtuosi Kicks off National US Tour on September 30   Sphinx Virtuosi, one of the country's most dynamic chamber orchestras comprised primarily of alumni of the internationally renowned Sphinx Competition, returns to Carnegie Hall on Thursday, October 11 at 6:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage. Under the auspices of The Sphinx Organization-a Detroit-based national organization dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts-the self-conducted ensemble makes a timely statement in a program entitled Music Without Borders that highlights music from communities around the globe. The evening also marks the Carnegie Hall debut, and first-ever public appearance by EXIGENCE, Sphinx's first vocal ensemble highlighting excellence and diversity through choral music. Led by founding member Eugene Rogers, the ensemble creates a platform for soloists and composers of color while inspiring and challenging audiences around the country and world. For this performance, EXIGENCE will be joined by pianist and Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient Damien Sneed.

Cleverly plotted, delightfully comic, and incessantly thought-provoking, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, produced by PCPA, is showing now until September 9th in Solvang. The action takes place in a room of the Coverly estate in two different eras: the early 19th century and the present. The plots of the two periods interweave like the interlacing mahogany marquetry that covers the floor of the stately set. The production keeps the audience wondering how these two distinct worlds on their own linear trajectories of time will join together. When they do, they bend time and action into a twirling circle of recurrence.

 Carnegie Hall's 2018-2019 season is fast approaching, and we are looking forward to exciting new projects and outstanding concerts! Highlights below include Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala with the San Francisco Symphony led by Michael Tilson Thomas as he embarks on his season-long Perspectives series; the launch of pianist Yuja Wang's Perspectives series; concerts curated and performed by Chris Thile, holder of the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair; the debut of Decoda, featuring alumni of Ensemble Connect; concerts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the New York String Orchestra and the 90th birthday of pianist Leon Fleisher; and, coming in spring 2019: a citywide festival-Migrations: The Making of America.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will perform George Walker's Lyric for Strings on its opening-weekend program in memory of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning composer. A longtime Montclair resident and former chairman of the music department at Rutgers University, Walker passed away on August 23 at the age of 96.