Leon Botstein News

The Park Theatre performing arts center in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, will present one of Europe’s top guitarist virtuosos Pedro Jóia as he guest stars with The North Country Chamber Players in GUITAR HERO: A History of The Guitar From Baroque to Led Zeppelin.

Opening Friday, July 22, Richard Strauss's comic opera, The Silent Woman (“Die Schweigsame Frau”), receives a rare American presentation at Bard SummerScape. Harold Wilson, “a stentorian bass … with impressive focus, carrying power and quiet charisma” (New York Times), heads a strong cast in a new production by Christian Räth, whose SummerScape staging of Das Wunder der Heliane prompted Musical America to declare: “Opera productions don't get much better than this.”

The American Symphony Orchestra completes its 60th anniversary season on Friday, July 15, 2022 at 8 PM. The program, part of the Orchestra’s Vanguard Series and presented in a special collaboration with the Bard Music Festival, is conducted by Music Director Leon Botstein and features the U.S. premiere of Sergei Taneyev’s final work, At the Reading of a Psalm.

The American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) continues its 60th anniversary season on Sunday, June 5 with American Masters, a free symphonic concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center featuring the world premiere of Roberto Sierra’s newly commissioned Concerto for Electric Violin performed by acclaimed electric violinist Tracy Silverman. The program will also offer works by three Pulitzer Prize-winning composers: Melinda Wagner, Richard Wernick, and Shulamit Ran.

The American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) continues its 60th anniversary season on Sunday, June 5 with American Masters, a free symphonic concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center featuring the world premiere of Roberto Sierra’s newly commissioned Concerto for Electric Violin performed by acclaimed electric violinist Tracy Silverman.

The Bard Music Festival returns for its 32nd season this August, with an intensive two-week exploration of “Rachmaninoff and His World.” In twelve themed concert programs, Bard examines Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943), perhaps the last great exponent of Russian Romanticism, who nevertheless embodied many contradictions.

The Verdi Chorus kicks off its 39th season with their Spring Concert, Hélas mon Coeur, dedicated to the memory of Verdi Chorus patriarch Maestro Aurelio De La Vega, for two performances only at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica on May 14 and 15. 

Starlight will present the Kansas City premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA! at Starlight Theatre from May 13-15.

The Orchestra Now performs the final concert in its Carnegie Hall season on Thursday, May 12 at 7 pm, offering seldom-heard masterpieces from the late 1930s.

Brevard Music Center (BMC) presents The Brevard Project: Reimagining the Future of Orchestral Programming, a six-day intensive seminar and think-tank on orchestral programming intended for professionals and influencers in the orchestral field. Presented by Brevard Music Center in partnership with Bard College, the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the South Dakota Symphony, the University of Michigan School of Music, and Project Director Joseph Horowitz, The Brevard Project takes place July 11-16, 2022. The central goals of The Brevard Project are to re-evaluate the artistic mission of the American orchestra and to share the skills needed to curate a more comprehensive, more inclusive American orchestral repertoire.

Broadway Dallas and Broadway Across America will present the Dallas premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA! at the Winspear Opera House from May 31 – June 12, 2022 as part of the Germania Insurance Broadway Series presented by Broadway Dallas. 

Since its inception, the annual Bard SummerScape festival has presented a series of stellar revivals of important but neglected operas. This year's immersion in “Rachmaninoff and His World” features The Silent Woman (“Die Schweigsame Frau”), the only true comic opera by Rachmaninoff's close contemporary Richard Strauss.

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) will present the final program in the 2021-22 season of its popular Sight & Sound series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, April 10. 

Music Director Leon Botstein will lead the American Symphony Orchestra on March 24 in a tribute to the genre-defying genius of the great Duke Ellington with an all-Ellington symphonic concert at Carnegie Hall, where the composer played a series of annual concerts and premiered many of his greatest works, including Black, Brown, and Beige and New World A-Comin'.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will present the Washington, D.C. premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA! at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater April 5–10, 2022.

 Bard SummerScape will return this year with eight weeks of live dance, theater, music, and opera in New York’s Hudson Valley, June 23–August 14, 2022. SummerScape 2022 presents the world premieres of new commissions in both dance and theater.

The Kimmel Cultural Campus will present the Philadelphia premiere of the reimagined Rodgers & Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA!, running March 8 through March 20 at the Forrest Theatre. The 2021-22 national tour will mark the first time a First-Class Equity production of Oklahoma! has toured North America in more than 40 years.

The Orchestra Now presents the second program of the 2021-22 season in its popular Sight & Sound series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, February 20.

The American Symphony Orchestra celebrates its return to Carnegie Hall and its 60th anniversary season in 2021-22 on Friday, January 28, 2022 at 8 PM. The program, part of the Orchestra’s Vanguard Series conducted by Music Director Leon Botstein, features the U.S. premiere of Sergei Taneyev’s final work, At the Reading of a Psalm.

The Best of Broadway will present the Lowcountry premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA! at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center  May 21 & 22, 2022.  Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Monday, December 13 at 10AM.