Michael Tilson Thomas News

Trafalgar Releasing is excited to announce the forthcoming release of Metallica and San Francisco Symphony: S&M² in cinemas worldwide on Wednesday, October 9. Metallica and San Francisco Symphony reunite to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their original S&M (Symphony & Metallica) show with S&M², filmed at San Francisco's new Chase Center.

Today's top stories: CATS movie trailer, Moulin Rouge! casting recording, and more!

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts today announced the selection of five Honorees who will receive the 2019 Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements.

Violinist Itzhak Perlman, one of the reigning artists of our day, will make a rare appearance for a recital to inaugurate the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts' 2019-2020 Season on September 19 at 7pm.  Perlman is accompanied by Rohan De Silva, piano.

The GRAMMY Museum® Grant Program announced today that $200,000 in grants will be awarded to 15 recipients in the United States to help facilitate a range of research on a variety of subjects, as well as support a number of archiving and preservation programs. Research projects include work on musical anhedonia, musical training's relationship to complex memories, and the relationship between cognitive function and singing accuracy. Preservation projects include the archiving of uncirculated John Hartford jam tapes, 960 audio reels of Cajun and zydeco artists, and 221 rare interview recordings with African-American actors, performers, composers, musicians, and scholars, among many other preservation projects.

Tony Award nominee Tony Yazbeck will bring his one-man show, Both Feet Off the Ground, to Feinstein's at the Nikko for two performances only-Friday, August 16 (8 p.m.) and Saturday, August 17 (8 p.m.).

Eastern Music Festival (EMF), a nationally recognized music festival and summer educational program based in the heart of North Carolina, announces five new faculty members for the 2019 season. Christopher Caudill (horn), Netanel Draiblate (violin), and Demondrae Thurman (euphonium) will join the faculty this month. Also joining on one-year contracts are Yolanda Bruno (violin) and Erin Zehngut (violin), both serving for EMF faculty that are on-leave this season.

Grammy Award-winning American organist Paul Jacobs-deemed 'a grand New York institution' by James R. Oestreich of The New York Times (February 18, 2018)- will launch the fall season by highlighting the organ on the New York concert scene, performing in a three-recital series for solo organ in September 2019. Although months in the planning, these French programs assumed new meaning the night of April 15 to 16, 2019, when the Grand Organ of Notre-Dame Cathedral survived the devastating inferno in Paris.

Michael Tilson Thomas announced today that he is withdrawing from all engagements beginning June 17 until September 3 in order to undergo a cardiac procedure. The operation, which will take place in Cleveland, is scheduled to follow his performances of Mahler's Symphony No. 9 with the San Francisco Symphony on June 13, 14, 15, and 16.

The Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts is announcing several changes to the 2019/2020 Regional Arts MUSIC 'At Eight' and MUSIC 'At Two' Classical Concert Series, featuring an incredible roster of world-class orchestras and performing artists, including six internationally acclaimed piano soloists in one season: Emanuel Ax, Khatia Buniatishvili, David Fray, Olga Kern, Polina Osetinskaya, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. This popular series is sponsored by Leonard and Sophie Davis.

Opera San Jose is proud to introduce our new ensemble of resident artists. Conductor / Chorus Master / Principal Coach Christopher James Ray, Sopranos Kerriann Otaño and Elena Galvan, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Sanchez, and baritone Eugene Brancoveanu will join returning tenor Mason Gates during the 2019-20 season. 

Acclaimed Broadway performer Corey Cott and rising star Mikaela Bennett will headline Lyric Opera of Chicago's premiere of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's groundbreaking American musical West Side Story, presented from May 3 - June 2, 2019 at the Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago (press opening May 4, 2019).

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts presents pianist Inon Barnatan, recently named music director of the La Jolla's prestigious SummerFest, who makes his Wallis debut with an adventurous program of piano suites by Bach, Handel, Ligeti and others on Saturday, June 22, 2019, 7:30 pm, at The Wallis' Bram Goldsmith Theater. The solo recital features Handel's Chaconne in G Major, HWV, 442, Couperin's L'Atalante, Ravel's Rigaudon from Le Tombeau de Couperin, Bach's Allemande from Partita in D Major, BWV, 828, and Ades' Blanca Variations. Barnatan also performs Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, Nos. 11 & 10, Rameaus's Courante from Suite in A minor, RCT. 5, Barber's Fugue from Sonata for Piano, Op. 26, and Brahms' Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24. Celebrated for his poetic sensibility, musical intelligence and consummate artistry, Barnatan has been hailed by the New York Times as "one of the most admired pianists of his generation." A regular soloist with many of the world's foremost orchestras and conductors, the Israeli pianist recently completed his third and final season as the inaugural Artist-in-Association of the New York Philharmonic. He is the recipient of both the 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, which recognizes "young artists of exceptional accomplishment."

Hailed as a dream team of performers, longtime musical collaborators and friends, violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Jeremy Denk, will unite this spring 2019 for their first-ever trio tour stoping at The Soraya on May 8. The three artists will perform hallmarks of the trio repertoire in acclaimed venues across the East and West coasts. Though Bell, Isserlis and Denk have previously released the landmark 2016 recording For the Love of Brahms together on Sony Classical, these performances mark the first occasions in which they will tour live as an ensemble. The Brahms album has been praised as Absolutely essential listening for the classical fan well-crafted, flawless killer stuff.

The Jewish Museum will present Israeli-American pianist Daniel Gortler and Brazilian violinist Daniel Guedes performing the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Edward Grieg, and contemporary Brazilian composer Mozart Camargo Guarnieri on Thursday, May 16 at 8 pm. This is Mr. Gortler's fifth appearance at the Jewish Museum, and Mr. Guedes's first.

The New World Symphony presents the world premiere of The Abandoned Castle, a work for string quartet composed by 12-year-old Jordan Millar, a member of the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composer (VYC) program. The New World Symphony's 'Collective Quartet' will perform this and other works during the hourlong program,

The MET Orchestra returns to Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage for a series of three concerts this May and June. For the first concert on Saturday, May 18 at 8:00 p.m., Valery Gergiev leads the orchestra in Schumann's Piano Concerto featuring pianist Daniil Trifonov and Schubert's Symphony No. 9, Great. On Monday, June 3 at 8:00 p.m. new Music Director Yannick N zet-S guin leads The MET Orchestra for the first time at Carnegie Hall in a program of French works with mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard singing Dutilleux's Le temps l'horloge and Ravel's Sh h razade, alongside Debussy's La mer and Ravel's Daphnis et Chlo Suite No. 2. Maestro N zet-S guin returns the following week on Friday, June 14 at 8:00 p.m. with the orchestra and mezzo-soprano El na Garan a singing Mahler's R ckert Lieder on a program that also includes Bruckner's Symphony No. 7.

The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Most have announced that Nathaniel Silberschlag will join the Orchestra as Principal Horn beginning the week of August 5. Mr. Silberschlag will sit in The Cleveland Orchestra's George Szell Memorial Endowed Chair.

BroadwayWorld has learned that The Muny announced today 25 principal cast members for the first season of its second century. Complete company casting will be announced throughout April and May. The 101st season opens on a brand new, state-of-the-art stage with Muny favorite Guys and Dolls followed by the U.S. regional premiere of Kinky Boots. The season continues with 1776, Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella, Footloose and a newly-reimagined Lerner and Loewe's Paint Your Wagon. Season 101 closes with the highly-anticipated Muny debut of Roald Dahl's Matilda.

Distinguished pianist Misha Dichter will appear in recital alongside pianist Cipa Dichter, as part of Bargemusic's Masterworks Series, Sunday afternoon, May 19, 2019, at 4 pm. The pair will perform Brahms' Five Hungarian Dances and Dvorák's Complete Slavonic Dances.