Yo-Yo Ma News

The Music Institute of Chicago, now in its 84th year, hosts its annual gala Monday, May 12 at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, 120 East Delaware Place. The oldest community music school in Illinois and one of the three largest community music schools in the nation, the Music Institute is planning a celebratory evening highlighted by the presentation of the Dushkin Award to conductor, composer, and pianist Andre Previn.

Portland Ovations brings the matchless vocal improviser with a breathtaking range and Ten-time Grammy Award-winner Bobby McFerrin to Merrill Auditorium for a Sunday evening concert on April 13th at 7 pm. Bobby McFerrin was exposed to a multitude of musical genres during his youth - classical, R&B, jazz, pop and world music - and has absorbed them all to create his own unparalleled sound. Whether it is a rendition of the Bach prelude Ave Maria, his incomparable interpretations of Beatles songs, collaborations with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, or conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, McFerrin awes audiences.

Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as a 'serious triple threat,' and 'an arranger and orchestrator of great imagination' (SF Classical Voice), Grammy Award nominee Clarice Assad is making her mark in the music world as a pianist, arranger, vocalist and a composer. Ms. Assad will make her Harris Center debut on the heels of her critically acclaimed performance at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

CSO Music Director Riccardo Muti returns to Chicago in March for two weeks of CSO programs that continue the cycle of Schubert's symphonic works which began at the start of the 2013/14 season. Concerts with Maestro Muti take place on March 20-22 and 26-29, 2014. The first week's program includes Schubert's Symphony No. 9, the “Great” C Major and Schumann's Piano Concerto featuring pianist Mitsuko Uchida.

The UW World Series brings Seattle audiences some of the most exciting artists and companies from around the globe. The tradition continues into the 2014-15 season with a stellar line-up of living masters and emerging talents curated by Artistic Director Michelle Witt in her third year of programming the Series. 23 artists and companies from over 21 countries will be represented, including Israel, Mali, Ukraine, Great Britain, Spain, France, Canada, Russia, Hungary, the USA, and the eleven countries that make up the Nile basin.

Tan Dun's The Map will be performed by the NYU Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Cyr and featuring cellist Wendy Sutter on Monday, May 12 to close the second annual Visions + Voices Global Performance Series at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. This year's Visions + Voices focuses on China; it began in February and runs through May 12.

Yefim Bronfman, the New York Philharmonic's 2013-14 Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, will be spotlighted in a chamber music concert co-presented with 92nd Street Y. Mr. Bronfman will be joined by Philharmonic Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow; Associate Principal Clarinet Mark Nuccio, replacing Principal Clarinet Stephen Williamson; Associate Principal, Second Violin Group, Lisa Kim; Associate Principal Viola Rebecca Young; and cellist Maria Kitsopoulos for the program, featuring Schubert's Sonatina in A minor; Bartok's Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano; and Brahms's Piano Quintet, Sunday, March 30, 2014, at 3:00 p.m. at 92nd Street Y.

Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts announces its 2014 summer symphony productions.

Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), and an internationally celebrated conductor, can now add three more awards to the dozens he has received over the course of his career.

Celebrity Series of Boston will present the eclectic Brazilian sounds of The Assad Family on Saturday, April 5, 2014 at 8:00pm at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston, MA. Sponsored by The D.L. Saunders Real Estate Corporation and The Boston Park Plaza Hotel LLC.

Bringing its historic message of peace through music, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO), joined by Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda, will return to Houston for the first time in 20 years on Thursday, March 27, 2014, at 8 p.m. at Jones Hall, presented by Society for the Performing Arts. Houston is one of 14 cities on the Orchestra's U.S. Tour - and the only Texas stop.

Join the American Classical Orchestra for HANDELFEST, the first festival event from ACO that celebrates the music of Handel during the month of March. The festivities get under way with a family-friendly concert at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament (152 W 71st St) featuring some of Handel's most uplifting works. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased by calling 212-362-2727.

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter will make her New York Philharmonic debut in Mary Chapin Carpenter with the New York Philharmonic and Special Guests, a retrospective program featuring songs from throughout her career, some newly arranged for orchestra.

This April, Lorin Maazel conducts the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in two concerts of works by Richard Strauss at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage. On Friday, April 11 at 8:00 p.m., the orchestra performs Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30, and Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28, and is joined by pianist Emanuel Ax for Burleske. The following evening, Saturday, April 12 at 8:00 p.m., soprano Karita Mattila sings the composer's Four Last Songs. Also on the program is Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, and the Der Rosenkavalier Suite. The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra last performed at Carnegie Hall in 2002.

Ravinia's 2014 season, dubbed 'Summer of Love/Season of Stars,' was announced today by Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman. Brimming with talent and romance, the festival's 2014 schedule brings some the biggest names in the world of music as well as repertoire that explores the theme of great love in its various manifestations. No fewer than three musical incarnations of the most famous love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet, will be featured, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing Tchaikovsky's Overture-Fantasy (July 27), a suite from Prokofiev's ballet setting of the story (July 16) and the score of West Side Story as the classic film is shown (July 17-18). In other examples of love, soprano Deborah Voigt describes it as 'Something Wonderful' on a Broadway evening (July 13), the legendary Broadway team of Lerner and Loewe will be celebrated (July 20), and Chanticleer even jabs at the battle of the sexes in an evening titled 'She Said/He Said' (July 6). In fact, love lurks, longs and lingers across genres in most of the more than 130 events that Ravinia will present in 2014, its 110th year and its 78th as the summer residence of the CSO.

New York City Ballet announced today that JR, the prize-winning artist and creator of NYCB's 2014 Art Series installation, The Eye of New York City Ballet, will next collaborate with the Company on an original theatrical work that will premiere on Tuesday, April 29, on the opening night of the Company's 2014 Spring Season.

Pablo Heras-Casado will make his New York Philharmonic debut conducting Barto?k's Piano Concerto No. 3, featuring pianist Peter Serkin; Britten's Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes; and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, Wednesday, April 2, 2014, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, April 4 at 11:00 a.m.; and Saturday, April 5 at 8:00 p.m.

Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma will return to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) to perform Elgar's Cello Concerto on Wednesday, April 2, 2014, at 8:00 p.m. in Atlanta Symphony Hall at the Woodruff Arts Center.

Celebrated violinists Jaime Laredo and Jennifer Koh join the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) and guest conductor James Feddeck for the West Coast premiere of Anna Clyne's impressionistic Prince of Clouds on Saturday, March 22, 8 pm, at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, and Sunday, March 23, 2014, 7 pm, at UCLA's Royce Hall. Clyne's work, heralded by the Washington Post as 'captivating' and 'exhilarating from beginning to end,' is a LACO co-commission with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, IRIS Orchestra and the Curtis Institute of Music. Feddeck, winner of the prestigious Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award in 2013 who is making his Los Angeles debut, also conducts Bach's Concerto in D minor for Two Violins, BWV 1043, Mendelssohn's 'The Fair Melusina' Overture, with its distinctive aquatic theme, and Schubert's graceful Symphony No. 3 in D major.

American Symphony Orchestra's 2014-2015 season explores Strauss's marriage music, posthumous discoveries, 20th century darkness, Mona Lisa the opera, and a special holiday presentation - the journey to 'Botsteinburg' continues...