Orange County, Calif.—June 1, 2016—Cynthia Ellis designed “The Inextinguishable Project” as an opportunity for concert listeners to discover some of the masterful music written in spite of the conflict and oppression of World War II. Ellis, Pacific Symphony's flute and piccolo player, and a resident of Brea, won one of four “Musician Innovation Grants” awarded by the Symphony's board of directors in the 2015-16 season for her project's creativity and potential for creating deeper interest in classical music. Her concert explores the music of two composers who overcame political and geographical circumstances to bring their music into the world. Theo Smit Sibinga walked out of prison camp carrying a suitcase in one hand and the broken remains of his cello in the other. Bohuslav Martinu, blacklisted by the Nazis, fled Paris, sleeping on train platforms while trying to get to America. Both survived to write beautiful music—music that has become “inextinguishable.”
The 2016 May Festival, which celebrates and concludes Music Director James Conlon's 37-year tenure, ends Friday and Saturday, May 27-28 with grand scale performances at Music Hall. These will be the final performances at Music Hall prior to its closing for renovation. On Friday, May 27 at 8 p.m., Mr. Conlon leads Dvo?ak's deeply personal cantata, Stabat Mater, a work was written during a time of deep grief for the composer following the death of his children. This rarely-performed work is full of symbolism, following a journey of mourning to hope of Paradise. At the invitation of James Levine, Mr. Conlon made his May Festival debut in 1978 conducting Stabat Mater (the following year he began his storied tenure as Music Director). Joining the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival Chorus will be soloists Julianna DiGiacomo (soprano), Elizabeth DeShong (mezzo-soprano), Anthony Dean Griffey (tenor) and Kristinn Sigmundsson (baritone).
The Cincinnati May Festival is proud to announce the release of a new recording on Bridge Records. Under the leadership of Music Director James Conlon, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival Chorus (Robert Porco, director) recorded R. Nathaniel Dett's oratorio, The Ordering of Moses, live at Carnegie Hall in May 2014 during the beloved invitational Spring for Music Festival.
The Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra (HSO) concludes its 2015-2016 season with a glorious weekend of Russian masterworks on Saturday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 12 at 4 p.m. Titled "From Russia With Love," the season finale begins with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and is followed by Tchaikovsky's final composition, the Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat major featuring pianist Olga Kern - Gold Medal winner of the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Led by Maestro Victor Yampolsky, "From Russia With Love" also features Kern in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, the work that sealed Prokofiev's reputation as a composer. The concert program concludes with Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances op. 45, a symphonic work that celebrates a lush orchestral palette. We challenge concertgoers not to be moved by this performance. Tickets start at $34 and are on sale now.
Pianist Shai Wosner's eclectic new recording pairs concertos and solo pieces by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and György Ligeti (1923-2006), exploring their quirky humor and other connections across centuries. Performing with conductor Nicholas Collon and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Wosner plays Haydn's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G, Haydn's Piano Concerto No. 11 in D, and Ligeti's Piano Concerto, one of the most challenging piano works of the late 20th century. The concertos are interspersed with solo works including Haydn's Capriccio (Fantasia) in C, Haydn's Capriccio in G, “Acht Sauschnider mussen sein” (It takes eight to castrate a boar), and Ligeti's rarely heard Capriccios Nos. 1 and 2. The recording will be available from iTunes, Amazon.com and other music retailers on Friday, May 20 in the U.K. and Friday, June 3 in the U.S.
The New York Choral Society will present Handel's biblical oratorio Israel in Egypt under the baton of Music Director David Hayes, today evening, May 10th, 2016, 8pm at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium. Composed entirely from selected passages from the Bible's Old Testament, Israel in Egypt relates the harshness of the Israelites' captivity in Egypt and their subsequent triumphant escape from the Pharaoh's oppressive regime. Israel in Egypt is atypical in Handel's choral output, as it contains little solo material and is dominated by large-scale virtuosic choruses that exhibit Handel's mastery as a musical storyteller.
General Director Plácido Domingo announced today that he has selected six singers to join LA Opera's Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program in the 2016/17 season. The artists were chosen from 650 applicants, 300 live auditions and, ultimately, 28 final candidates. The finalists auditioned in April for a panel led by Mr. Domingo that included Music Director James Conlon, President and CEO Christopher Koelsch and Senior Director of Artistic Planning Joshua Winograde, who directs the program, along with Nino Sanikidze, head coach for the program.
General Director Plácido Domingo announced today that he has selected six singers to join LA Opera's Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program in the 2016/17 season.
? OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, is pleased to announce the latest recipients of Discovery Grants and Commissioning Grants from the Opera Grants for Female Composers program, made possible through the generosity of The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.
Tradition, a desire to embrace the new and the ever increasing international profile are the predominant features of the 2016 edition of the Festival Verdi in Parma and Busseto. This year's festival, returning for the month of October (www.festivalverdi.it), will be dedicated to the German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller, who has always been a source of inspiration and subject matter for Italian composers throughout time, including above all Giuseppe Verdi.
Tradition, a desire to embrace the new and the ever increasing international profile are the predominant features of the 2016 edition of the Festival Verdi in Parma and Busseto. This year's festival, returning for the month of October (www.festivalverdi.it), will be dedicated to the German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller, who has always been a source of inspiration and subject matter for Italian composers throughout time, including above all Giuseppe Verdi.
Van Cliburn Competition Gold Medalist Stanislav Iodenitch, a piano virtuoso hailed for playing with "laserlike clarity" (The Boston Globe), performs Tchaikovsky's iconic Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Young Artists Symphony Orchestra, led by Artistic Director Alexander Treger, in a free concert capping the orchestra's highly successful inaugural season on Sunday, May 1, 2016, 6 pm, at UCLA's Royce Hall. The all-Russian program also includes Tchaikovsky's enthralling Suite from Swan Lake and Lyadov's Kikimora, a tone poem about a malicious spirit from Russian folklore. Additionally, to celebrate the conclusion of its first season, YASO is hosting a separate ticketed post-concert soiree, featuring a buffet dinner and jazz performances by Nigel Armstrong, former concertmaster under Treger, Julian Zheng, YASO principal horn, and other YASO artists.
A live recording of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, as performed by LA Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 2015, has been released as part of PENTATONE's newly launched American Opera Series. The audio was captured by Boston-based production company SoundMirror. The new recording is available as a two-CD (SACD) album and as a digital download through numerous platforms including Amazon, iTunes and Spotify.
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation is thrilled to announce that soprano Tamara Wilson – whose “voice of steely beauty and great power” (Houston Chronicle) has already won international accolades – has been named as winner of the 2016 Richard Tucker Award. Dubbed the “Heisman Trophy of Opera,” the Tucker Award carries the foundation's most substantial cash prize of $50,000, and is conferred each year by a panel of opera industry professionals on an American singer at the threshold of a major international career. Featuring such luminaries as Renée Fleming, Stephanie Blythe,Lawrence Brownlee, David Daniels, Christine Goerke and Joyce DiDonato, the list of past winners reads like a who's who of American opera.
Bramwell Tovey returns to the New York Philharmonic to conduct Massenet's Ballet Music from Le Cid; Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain, with pianist Joyce Yang as soloist; and Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat (complete ballet), with mezzo-soprano Virginie Verrez in her Philharmonic subscription debut, Today, March 30, 2016, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, April 1 at 11:00 a.m.; Saturday, April 2 at 8:00 p.m.; and Tuesday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m.
The New York Choral Society will present Handel's biblical oratorio Israel in Egypt under the baton of Music Director David Hayes, on Tuesday evening, May 10th, 2016, 8pm at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium. Composed entirely from selected passages from the Bible's Old Testament, Israel in Egypt relates the harshness of the Israelites' captivity in Egypt and their subsequent triumphant escape from the Pharaoh's oppressive regime. Israel in Egypt is atypical in Handel's choral output, as it contains little solo material and is dominated by large-scale virtuosic choruses that exhibit Handel's mastery as a musical storyteller.
?After a months-long series of competitions at the district, regional, and national levels, a panel of expert judges named five young singers as the winners of the nation's most prestigious vocal competition, the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Each winner receives a $15,000 cash prize and the prestige and exposure that come with winning the competition that launched the careers of many of opera's biggest stars.
?The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in collaboration with the Manhattan School of Music and Oratorio Society of New York, presents the world premiere of a transcription for organ, vocal soloists, and choruses, of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, on Thursday, April 7th, at 7:30 p.m. at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue (at 112th Street), Manhattan. This event follows the two performances of the symphony in its original orchestration at the Cathedral on February 24th and 25th.
After an international search, Houston Grand Opera (HGO) has chosen three new singers and one new pianist/coach for the 2016-17 HGO Studio. The artists are Yelena Dyachek, soprano, the Ana Maria Martinez Encouragement Award recipient at Concert of Arias 2016; Zoie Reams, mezzo-soprano, the second-place prize winner at Concert of Arias 2016; Sol Jin, baritone, the Audience Choice Award winner at Concert of Arias 2016; and Peter Walsh, pianist/coach. One of the most respected and highly competitive young artist programs in the world, the HGO Studio provides comprehensive career development to young singers, pianist/coaches, and conductors who have demonstrated potential to make major contributions to the field of opera. The HGO Studio received applications from 475 artists; of those, about 275 were heard in auditions in Houston, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles. For singers, the audition process culminates in HGO's annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, held this year on February 4.
