New Composers Showcase features works from acclaimed musicians who are shaping the future of classical music including Ellen Reid, Caroline Shaw, Michael Giacchino, Reena Esmail, Sydney Wang and Michael Abels
Pasadena, CA – Music Director David Lockington and the Pasadena Symphony announce its 92nd season with an exhilarating schedule of seven concerts, running October 19, 2019 through April 18, 2020. Alongside a stellar program of celebrated classical works, the symphony is introducing its Composers Showcase for the 2019-20 season, featuring work by both emerging and established contemporary composers at each concert, including two world premiere commissions – opening the season with a piece by aspiring composer Sydney Wang and closing with a new work by Michael Abels, composer of the critically acclaimed score for the film Get Out. All concerts take place at Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium with both matinee and evening performances at 2pm and 8pm. The season also includes the annually sold-out Holiday Candlelight Concert on Saturday, December 14, 2019 with both 4pm and 7pm performances at All Saints Church.
Lockington kicks off the 2019-20 season on October 19th with Brahms Symphony No. 1 and Naumburg Competition winner violinist Tessa Lark performing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. November 17th brings award-winning pianist Alessio Bax on Beethoven’s powerhouse “Emperor” Piano Concerto, along with cutting edge Los Angeles composer Ellen Reid’s Petrichor. The orchestra’s annual Baroque concert on January 25, 2020 will showcase the triumphant return of local violinist Simone Porter in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons paired with Reena Esmail’s Teen Murti. Virtuoso violinist Nick Kendall of Time for Three will perform a one-of-a-kind concerto based on Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess on February 15th alongside Debussy’s La Mer and Oscar and Grammy Award Winner Michael Giacchino’s Voyage.
Nicholas McGegan concludes his celebrated tenure as Principal Guest Conductor on March 21st with Mozart & McGegan, a Mozart Spectacular with Symphony No. 39 and the melodic perfection of his Piano Concerto No. 20. Also on the March program, the orchestra will perform Caroline Shaw’s Red, Red, Rose, which the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer wrote for McGegan’s Philharmonia Baroque orchestra. Lockington returns to the podium on April 18th to close the season with Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 performed by Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan, “one of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), plus Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and the new Abels commission.
The Pasadena Symphony provides a quintessential experience specially designed for the music lover, the social butterfly or a date night out, and the inner epicurean in us all. Audiences can enjoy a drink or a bite in the lively Symphony Lounge, yet another addition to the care-free and elegant concert experience the Pasadena Symphony offers. A posh setting at Ambassador Auditorium’s beautiful outdoor plaza, the lounge offers uniquely prepared menus from Claud & Co for both lunch and dinner, a full bar and fine wines by Michero Family Wines, plus music before the concert and during intermission.
All Symphony Classics concerts take place at Ambassador Auditorium, 131 S. St. John Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105, with performances at 2pm and 8pm. Subscription packages start at $99 with single tickets starting at $35. Both may be purchased online at pasadenasymphony-pops.org or by calling (626) 793-7172.
Brahms Symphony No. 1
October 19, 2019
David Lockington, conductor
Tessa Lark, violin
Sydney Wang Commission (world premiere)
Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1
Brahms Symphony No. 1
Beethoven “Emperor” Piano Concerto
November 16, 2019
David Lockington, conductor
Alessio Bax, piano
Ellen Reid Petrichor
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor”
DeFalla El amor brujo: Ritual Fire Dance
DeFalla Three-Cornered Hat: Suite No. 1
Marquez Danzόn No. 2
Holiday Candlelight
December 14, 2019
David Lockington, conductor
Soloist to be announced
Los Angeles Children’s Chorus
The Donald Brinegar Singers
L.A. Bronze Handbell Ensemble
Vivaldi Four Season
January 25, 2020
David Lockington, conductor
Marissa Benedict, trumpet
Simone Porter, violin
Albinoni Oboe Concerto (transcribed for trumpet)
Vivaldi Four Seasons
Bach Goldberg Variations for Strings
Reena Esmail Teen Murti
Piazzola “Spring” from Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
Gershwin Porgy & Bess
February 15, 2020
David Lockington, conductor
Nick Kendall, violin
Copland Fanfare for the Common Man
Michael Giacchino Voyage
Gershwin Porgy and Bess: Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra
Vaughn Williams The Lark Ascending
Debussy La Mer
Mozart & McGegan
March 21, 2020
Nicholas McGegan, conductor
Yerin Yang, piano
Caroline Shaw Red, Red Rose
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20
Mozart Symphony No. 39
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3
April 18, 2020
David Lockington, conductor
Inon Barnatan, piano
Michael Abels Commission (world premiere)
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3
Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition
The Pasadena Symphony Association
Recent Acclaim for the Pasadena Symphony and POPS:
“The Pasadena Symphony signals a new direction…teeming with vitality…dripping with opulent, sexy emotion.” – Los Angeles Times.
“In his five years leading the PSO, Lockington has taken an ensemble that was already quite good and elevated it into one where excellence is the byword.” – Pasadena Star News.
Formed in 1928, the Pasadena Symphony and POPS is an ensemble of Hollywood’s most talented, sought after musicians. With extensive credits in the film, television, recording and orchestral industry, the artists of Pasadena Symphony and POPS are the most heard in the world.
The Pasadena Symphony and POPS performs in two of the most extraordinary venues in the United States: Ambassador Auditorium, known as the Carnegie Hall of the West, and the luxuriant Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Garden. Internationally recognized, Grammy-nominated conductor, David Lockington, serves as the Pasadena Symphony Association’s Music Director, with performance-practice specialist Nicholas McGegan serving as Principal Guest Conductor. The multi-platinum-selling, two-time Emmy and five-time Grammy Award-nominated entertainer dubbed “The Ambassador of the Great American Songbook,” Michael Feinstein, is the Principal Pops Conductor, who succeeded Marvin Hamlisch in the newly created Marvin Hamlisch Chair.
A hallmark of its robust education programs, the Pasadena Symphony Association has served the youth of the region for over five decades through the Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestras (PYSO), comprised of five performing ensembles with 300 gifted 4th-12th grade students from more than 50 schools all over the Southern California region. The PYSO has toured internationally at prestigious venues in New York, Vienna, and most recently San Jose, Costa Rica. They regularly perform throughout Southern California and have appeared on the popular television show GLEE.
The PSA provides people from all walks of life with powerful access points to the world of symphonic music.
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David Lockington
Music Director
David Lockington began his career as a cellist and was the Principal with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for two years. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Cambridge where he was a choral scholar, Mr. Lockington came to the United States on a scholarship to Yale University where he received his Master’s Degree in cello performance and studied conducting with Otto Werner Mueller. He was a member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and served as assistant principal cellist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra for three years before turning to conducting.
Over the past thirty years, David Lockington has developed an impressive conducting career in the United States. A native of Great Britain, he served as the Music Director of the Grand Rapids Symphony from January 1999 to May 2015, and is currently the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate. He has held the position of Music Director with the Modesto Symphony since May 2007 and in March 2013, Mr. Lockington was appointed Music Director of the Pasadena Symphony. He has a close relationship with the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Spain, where he was the orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor from 2012 through 2016, and in the 15/16 season was named one of three Artistic Partners with the Northwest Sinfonietta in Tacoma, Washington.
In addition to his current posts, since his arrival to the United States in 1978 Mr. Lockington has held positions with several other American orchestras, including serving as Assistant Conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra and Opera Colorado, and Assistant and Associate Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In May 1993 he accepted the position of Music Director of the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, assumed the title of Music Director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in September 1995 and was Music Director of the Long Island Philharmonic for the 96/97 through 99/2000 seasons.
Mr. Lockington’s guest conducting engagements include appearances with the Saint Louis, Houston, Detroit, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Oregon and Phoenix symphonies; the Rochester and Louisiana Philharmonics; and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall. Internationally, he has conducted the Northern Sinfonia in Great Britain, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra in Beijing and Taiwan,and led the English Chamber Orchestra on a tour in Asia.
Recent and upcoming guest conducting engagements include appearances with the New Jersey, Indianapolis, Utah, Pacific, Colorado, Nashville, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Stamford, Tucson and Kansas City symphonies, the Florida and Louisville Orchestras, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and the Buffalo, Calgary and Oklahoma Philharmonics. Mr. Lockington’s summer festival activities include appearances at the Grand Teton, Colorado Music, Interlochen, Chautauqua and Eastern Music festivals.
David Lockington began his career as a cellist and was the Principal with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for two years. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Cambridge where he was a choral scholar, Mr. Lockington came to the United States on a scholarship to Yale University where he received his Master’s Degree in cello performance and studied conducting with Otto Werner Mueller. He was a member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and served as assistant principal cellist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra for three years before turning to conducting.
Nicholas McGegan
Principal Guest Conductor
As he embarks on his sixth decade on the podium, Nicholas McGegan — long hailed as “one of the finest baroque conductors of his generation” (London Independent) and “an expert in 18th-century style” (The New Yorker) — is recognized for his probing and revelatory explorations of music of all periods. The 2018/19 season marks his 33rd year as music director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale and he is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Pasadena Symphony.
McGegan has established the San Francisco-based Philharmonia as one of the world’s leading period-performance ensembles, with notable appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the London Proms, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the International Handel Festival, Göttingen. One of their greatest successes was the recent fully-staged modern-day premiere of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s 1745 opera-ballet Le Temple de la Gloire. A recording of the live performance was released in summer 2018, marking the 10thalbum produced on the Philharmonia Baroque Productions label. As part of their initiative of performing new music written for period instruments, PBO gave the world premiere of Sally Beamish’s The Judas Passion in 2017.
Highlighting PBO’s 2018/19 season is the completion of a PBO-commissioned song cycle by Caroline Shaw featuring mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter. The program will be toured to Alice Tully Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center. McGegan and PBO also bring Handel’s Atalanta to Caramoor Music Festival in addition to presenting Saul, one of the composer’s most inventive and popular oratorios, on their west coast subscription series.
Throughout his career, McGegan has defined an approach to period style that sets the current standard: intelligent, infused with joy, and never dogmatic. Under his leadership Philharmonia continues to expand its repertoire into the Romantic Era and beyond. Calling the group’s recent recording of the Brahms Serenades “a truly treasurable disc,” James R. Oestreich in The New York Times made special note of the performance’s “energy and spirit.” The recording, said Voix des Arts, offers “evidence that ‘period’ instruments are in no way inhibited in terms of tonal amplitude and beauty. These are … exceptionally beautifully played performances.”
McGegan’s ability to engage players and audiences alike has made him a pioneer in broadening the reach of historically informed practice beyond the world of period ensembles to conventional symphonic forces. His guest-conducting appearances with major orchestras — including the New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong Philharmonics; the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Toronto, Sydney, and New Zealand Symphonies; the Cleveland and the Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Scottish Chamber Orchestra — often feature Baroque repertoire alongside Classical, Romantic, 20th-century and even brand-new works: Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Britten, Bach and Handel with the Utah Symphony; Poulenc and Mozart with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Mahler and Mozart with the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra; and the premiere of Stephen Hough’s Missa Mirabilis with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, paired with Haydn, Brahms and Mendelssohn. His position in Pasadena provides the opportunity to conduct a wider range of his favorite repertoire, including Dvořák, Britten, Elgar, Mahler, Brahms and Wagner.
His 18/19 guest appearances in North America include his annual return to St. Louis Symphony as well as engagements with Baltimore, Detroit, Calgary, National and Pasadena Symphonies. Abroad, McGegan makes returns to the New Zealand Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and appears with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in performance and in the recording studio for an upcoming release with soloist Gil Shaham. Summer Festivals include Aspen, Music Academy of the West, and MDR Musiksommer in Germany. In the summer of 2017, McGegan conducted the Royal Northern Sinfonia for the BBC Proms in Hull, marking 300 years since Handel’s Water Music was first famously performed on the River Thames. It was the first time since the 1930s a festival performance had been moved outside London.
Active in opera as well as the concert hall, McGegan was principal conductor of Sweden’s perfectly preserved 18th-century Drottningholm Theater from 1993 to 1996, Artistic Director and conductor at the Göttingen Handel Festival for 20 years (1991-2011), and Principal Guest Conductor at Scottish Opera in the 1990s. Guest appearances have brought him to the podium at Covent Garden, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Washington. Mr. McGegan has enjoyed a long collaboration with groundbreaking choreographer Mark Morris, notably the premiere performances of Morris’s production of Rameau’s Platée at the Edinburgh Festival, and Handel’s Acis and Galatea and L’Allegro at venues including the Ravinia Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, and Cal Performances in Berkeley.
McGegan’s prolific discography includes more than 100 releases spanning five decades. Having recorded more than 50 albums of of Handel, McGegan has explored the depths of the composer’s output with a dozen oratorios and close to twenty of his operas. Under its own label, Philharmonia Baroque Productions (PBP), Philharmonia has recently released almost a dozen acclaimed albums of Handel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Brahms, Haydn, Beethoven, and more. McGegan’s latest release with PBO is the first-ever recording of the recently rediscovered 300-year-old work La Gloria di Primavera by Alessandro Scarlatti, recorded live at the U.S. premiere. Since the 1980s, Nic has released more than 20 recordings with Hungary’s Capella Savaria on the Hungaroton label, including groundbreaking opera and oratorio recordings of repertoire by Handel, Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Telemann and Vivaldi. Recently, the collaboration has produced albums of Kraus, Mendelssohn, Schubert, a 2-CD set of the complete Mozart violin concerti, and in fall of 2018, Haydn’s Symphonies 79, 80, and 81. A new album of early horn concertos was released in spring of 2018, with McGegan conducting the Swedish Chamber Orchestra along with soloist Alec Frank-Gemmill. Grammy nominations include Handel’s Susanna for Best Choral Performance and Haydn’s Symphonies 104, 88 & 101 for Best Orchestral Performance, both with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
Mr. McGegan is committed to the next generation of musicians, frequently conducting and coaching students in residencies and engagements at Yale University, the Juilliard School, Harvard University, the Colburn School, Aspen Music Festival and School, Sarasota Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West. He returns to Yale in Fall 2018 for a residency and performance with the Institute of Sacred Music. He has been awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; an honorary professorship at Georg-August University, Göttingen; and in 2016 was the Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Harvard. McGegan’s fun and informative lectures have delighted audiences at Juilliard, Yale Center for British Art, American Handel Society, and San Francisco Conservatory.
Born in England, Nicholas McGegan was educated at Cambridge and Oxford and taught at the Royal College of Music, London. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2010 “for services to music overseas.” His awards also include the Halle Handel Prize; an honorary professorship at Georg-August University, Göttingen; the Order of Merit of the State of Lower Saxony (Germany); the Medal of Honour of the City of Göttingen; and an official Nicholas McGegan Day, declared by the Mayor of San Francisco in recognition of his distinguished work with Philharmonia.
Visit Nicholas McGegan on the web at www.nicholasmcgegan.com.
Tessa Lark
Violin
Violinist Tessa Lark, Silver Medalist in the 9th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, recipient of a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and winner of the 2012 Naumburg International Violin Competition, is one of the most captivating artistic voices of our time. She has consistently been praised by critics and audiences for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility, and musical elegance. A budding superstar in the classical realm, she is also a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky, delighting audiences with programming that includes Appalachian and bluegrass music and inspiring composers to write for her.
Ms. Lark has been a featured soloist at numerous U.S. orchestras since making her concerto debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at age sixteen. She performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2017 on Carnegie’s Distinctive Debuts series, and again the following year as part of APAP’s Young Performers Career Advancement showcase. Ms. Lark has appeared at such venues as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Artist Recital Series at Oberlin College, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Perlman Music Program, San Francisco Performances, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, Ravinia’s Bennett-Gordon Classics series, Troy Chromatic Concerts, Chamber Music Tulsa, Caramoor’s Wednesday Morning Concerts, the Seattle Chamber Music Society, and the Marlboro, Yellow Barn, Olympic, and Music@Menlo festivals.
Her 2018-19 season includes debut appearances with the Seattle Symphony, where she will partner with cellist Jay Campbell in the Brahms Double Concerto, and with the Albany (NY) Symphony Orchestra in concerts featuring the world premiere of Sky: Concerto for Violin, a bluegrass-inspired work written for her by Michael Torke. Also planned for 2018-19 is Ms. Lark’s debut CD, a fantasy-themed release exploring that musical form from the Baroque era to today; works include fantasias by Telemann, the Fantasie in C Major by Schubert, Ravel’s Tzigane, the Viennese Rhapsodic Fantasietta by Fritz Kreisler, and Ms. Lark’s own Appalachian Fantasy. The album’s producer is four-time Grammy winner Judith Sherman.
Other season highlights will include appearances with the Louisville Orchestra, the Evansville, Binghamton and South Carolina philharmonics, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Knoxville, Eastern Connecticut, Ridgefield and Williamsburg symphony orchestras, Moab Music Festival, and the Louisville, Maryland and Telluride chamber music societies, as well as recitals at Kaufman Music Center and Baruch College in New York and the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, MD.
A passionate chamber musician, she has toured with musicians from Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute and Musicians from Marlboro. Her piano trio, Trio Modêtre, took top prize in the 2012 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Ms. Lark has collaborated with such renowned artists as Mitsuko Uchida, Itzhak Perlman, Miriam Fried, Donald Weilerstein, Pamela Frank, Kim Kashkashian, Peter Wiley, and Ralph Kirshbaum. She joined Caramoor Virtuosi as a result of her participation in Caramoor’s Rising Stars Series.
Keeping in touch with her Kentucky roots, Ms. Lark performs and programs bluegrass and Appalachian music regularly and collaborated with Mark O’Connor on his CD “MOC4,” released in June 2014. She also plays jazz violin, most recently performing with the Juilliard Jazz Ensemble at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola in New York City. She premiered her own Appalachian Fantasy as part of her Distinctive Debuts recital at Carnegie Hall, where she also gave the world premiere of Michael Torke’s Spoon Bread, written specifically for her stylistic capabilities.
In addition to her busy performance schedule, Ms. Lark has served on the faculty of the Great Wall International Music Academy in Beijing, and as an alumna of NPR’s From the Top she is active in that radio show’s arts leadership program as a performer and educator. Ms. Lark’s primary mentors include Cathy McGlasson, Kurt Sassmannshaus, Miriam Fried, and Lucy Chapman. She is a graduate of New England Conservatory and completed her Artist Diploma at The Juilliard School, where she studied with Sylvia Rosenberg, Ida Kavafian, and Daniel Phillips.
Tessa Lark is represented worldwide by New York-based Sciolino Artist Management, www.samnyc.us.
Sydney Wang
Violin
Sydney Shanshan Wang is an aspiring composer studying with Professor Ian Krouse of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. She was part of the 2017-2018 Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Composer Fellowship Program. Her works have won top prizes in national and international competitions for young composers, including the Robert Avalon International Competition and the BMI Student
Alessio Bax
Piano
Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Alessio Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions, and is now a familiar face on four continents, not only as a recitalist and chamber musician, but as a concerto soloist who has appeared with more than 100 orchestras, including the London and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, Dallas and Cincinnati Symphonies, NHK Symphony in Japan, St. Petersburg Philharmonic with Yuri Temirkanov, and the City of Birmingham Symphony with Sir Simon Rattle.
Alessio Bax graduated with top honors at the record age of 14 from the conservatory of Bari, his hometown in Italy, where his teacher was Angela Montemurro. He studied in France with Francois-Joël Thiollier and attended the Chigiana Academy in Siena under Joaquín Achúcarro. In 1994 he moved to Dallas to continue his studies with Achúcarro at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, where, with Lucille Chung, he is now the Johnson-Prothro Artist-in-Residence. He also serves with Chung as co-artistic director of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation, created to support young pianists’ careers. A Steinway artist, Bax lives in New York City with Chung and their four-year-old daughter, Mila. Beyond the concert hall he is known for his longtime obsession with fine food; as a 2013 New York Times profile noted, he is not only notorious for hosting “epic” multi-course dinner parties, but often spends his intermissions dreaming of meals to come.
Ellen Reid
Composer
Ellen Reid is one of the most innovative artists of her generation. A composer and sound artist whose breadth of work spans opera, sound design, film scoring, ensemble and choral writing, she recently became the first composer to have works premiered by Los Angeles’ four leading musical institutions — the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Los Angeles Master Chorale — all within one year.
Alessio Bax graduated with top honors at the record age of 14 from the conservatory of Bari, his hometown in Italy, where his teacher was Angela Montemurro. He studied in France with Francois-Joël Thiollier and attended the Chigiana Academy in Siena under Joaquín Achúcarro. In 1994 he moved to Dallas to continue his studies with Achúcarro at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, where, with Lucille Chung, he is now the Johnson-Prothro Artist-in-Residence. He also serves with Chung as co-artistic director of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation, created to support young pianists’ careers. A Steinway artist, Bax lives in New York City with Chung and their four-year-old daughter, Mila. Beyond the concert hall he is known for his longtime obsession with fine food; as a 2013 New York Times profile noted, he is not only notorious for hosting “epic” multi-course dinner parties, but often spends his intermissions dreaming of meals to come.
Marissa Benedict
Principal
Marissa Benedict has been a freelance trumpeter in the Los Angeles area for 38 years. As well as playing Principal in the Pasadena Symphony/Pops she is also Associate Principal trumpet in The Long Beach Symphony and Pops Orchestra. She actively performs with the Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Orchestra Santa Monica and The Long Beach Municipal Band, and is a founding member of the Modern Brass Quintet.
A very active and in-demand studio player, she can be heard on nearly 150 motion picture recordings including The Incredibles II, Coco, Moana, SpiderMan Homecoming, Jurassic World, Meet the Millers, Indiana Jones IV, Avatar, The Polar Express, Spider-Man 2, Monsters, Inc., War of the Worlds and many more. Her television studio recording credits include Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Voyager, JAG, Commander in Chief, Galavant and Agent Carter.
Marissa is also an active and dedicated music educator. She is on the faculty at The Colburn School of Performing Arts, California State University at San Bernardino, Glendale Community College and is also a trumpet coach at Burbank High School and Harvard Westlake Academy. While staying busy with her music and teaching career she and her husband Mike just celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary and have raised three children.
Simone Porter
Violin
Violinist Simone Porter has been recognized as an emerging artist of impassioned energy, interpretive integrity, and vibrant communication. In the past few years she has debuted with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and with a number of renowned conductors, including Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Stéphane Denève, Nicholas McGegan, Ludovic Morlot, and Donald Runnicles. Born in 1996, Simone made her professional solo debut at age 10 with the Seattle Symphony and her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London at age 13. In March 2015, Simone was named a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
At the invitation of the composer, Simone has just concluded a busy season with an appearance at the New York Philharmonic’s presentation of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Foreign Bodies,” a multi-sensory performance experience involving live dance and a video installation. During the season she visited orchestras in Rhode Island, Albany (NY), Oregon, Texas and Alabama with recitals in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and performances at U.S. summer festivals in Aspen and Bellingham as well as Dublin and Edinburgh’s International Festival.
This season she will join Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in subscription concerts honoring John Williams, in addition to concerts with orchestras in Oklahoma City, Boise, Orlando, Erie, Lexington, Fort Worth, Spokane, Asheville, Edmonton, Long Beach and Costa Rica.
Simone’s emergence on the international concert circuit has occurred simultaneously with her studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel came in 2015 followed soon after by performances with orchestras in Detroit, Cincinnati, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Indianapolis, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Baltimore and Rochester. She also made her Ravinia Festival recital debut, her debut at the Grand Teton Music Festival, and multiple solo performances as a guest artist at the Aspen Music Festival. Having spent her formative years in Seattle, Simone made a rousing homecoming return engagement with the Seattle Symphony in 2016.
Internationally, Simone has performed with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra with Gustavo Dudamel; the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro; the Costa Rica Youth Symphony; the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong; the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Milton Keynes City Orchestra, and the Royal Philharmonic in the United Kingdom; and the Opera de Marseilles.
Simone is a devoted chamber musician, and has most recently performed in the Seattle Chamber Music Society series with James Ehnes in January 2018. She has appeared in multiple Colburn Chamber Music Society Series concerts with artists such as violinists Arnold Steinhardt and Scott St. John; on the South Bay Chamber Music Society series with violist Paul Coletti; and at the Miami International Piano Festival. Internationally, she has participated in the Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music Sessions and the Koblenz International Music Festival in Germany.
A 2015/16 Performance Today Young-Artist-in-Residence, Simone’s performances and interviews have been broadcast nationally on the APM syndicated network on several different occasions. She has also been featured on the renowned syndicated NPR radio program From the Top, hosted by Christopher O’Riley and featuring America’s best young classical musicians. Her performance in July 2012 marked her third appearance on the program; her first was in 2007 at the age of 11. Simone made her Carnegie Zankel Hall debut on the Emmy Award-winning TV show From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall. In June 2016, her featured performance of music from Schindler’s List with Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and members of the American Youth Symphony was broadcast nationally on the TNT Network as part of the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams.
Raised in Seattle, Washington, Simone studied with Margaret Pressley as a recipient of the Dorothy Richard Starling Scholarship, and was then admitted into the studio of the renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett, with whom she presently studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Summer studies have included many years at the Aspen Music Festival, Indiana University’s Summer String Academy, and the Schlern International Music Festival in Italy.
Simone Porter plays on a 1745 J.B. Guadagnini violin on generous loan from The Mandell Collection of Southern California
Reena Esmail
Composer
Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces. In recent seasons, Esmail has worked with the Kronos Quartet, Albany Symphony, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, Salastina Music Society, SOLI, and American Composers
Orchestra. Her work is performed regularly throughout the US and abroad, and has been programmed at Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre in London, Schloss Esterhazy in Hungary, and throughout India. She has served as Composer in Residence for Albany Symphony (2016-17), Street Symphony (2016-present) in downtown Los Angeles, Concerts on the Slope (2015-16) in Brooklyn, NY and the Pasadena Master Chorale (2014-16) in Pasadena, CA.
Esmail received a 2011-12 Fulbright-Nehru to study Hindustani music in India, where she was also a 2011 INK Fellow (in association with TED). In 2010, Esmail co-founded of Yale’s Hindi a cappella group, Sur et Veritaal. Esmail’s doctoral thesis, entitled Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers. Her teachers include Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Saili Oak.
Esmail holds degrees in composition from The Juilliard School (BM’05) and the Yale School of Music (MM’11, MMA’14, DMA’18). Her primary teachers have included Susan Botti, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis and Martin Bresnick, Christopher Rouse and Samuel Adler. She has won numerous awards, including the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (and subsequent publication of a work by C.F. Peters) and two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
Esmail was on the composition and theory faculty at Manhattan School of Music Precollege from 2006-2011. She taught the music theory core curriculum at Yale College from 2012-14. Recently, Esmail has worked with young composers through mentorship programs including Shastra’s Arranging with Hindustani Music, Pasadena Master Chorale’s Listening to the Future. This season, she will mentor young women composers through Kaufmann Center’s new program, The Luna Lab.
Recent commissions include: I Rise: Women in Song, for Lehigh University’s women’s chorus and orchestra, a Clarinet Concerto for Hindustani/Western crossover clarinetist Shankar Tuckerand Albany Symphony Orchestra (where she was the 2016-17 Composer Fellow), The Light is the Same for Imani Winds, and a new major sacred work, This Love Between Us for chorus, orchestra, sitar and tabla, written for Yale Schola Cantorum and Juilliard 415 which toured India in March 2017. This season’s highlights include new works for Chicago Sinfonietta, Albany Symphony, and violinist Vijay Gupta.
In addition to her work as a composer, Esmail is the Co-Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that promotes cross-cultural music that connects the great musical traditions of India and the West. She is also the Composer-in-Residence with Street Symphony, where she works with communities experiencing homelessness and incarceration in Los Angeles.
Esmail currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
Nick Kendall
Violinist
Nicolas (Nick for short) Kendall connects people through music. He picked up his first violin at the age of three. With an insatiable appetite for a diversity of expression, he went to the streets of Washington D.C. to play trash cans for lunch money as a teenager. By college, he was forming pick-up rock bands at Curtis Institute between concert debuts at the most prestigious halls in the world.
Nick is one of our generation’s most persuasive champions of bringing new audiences to concert halls across America. Irreverent, funny, and relentless, Nick has become a force for bringing people together through music, on stage and off. His work is based on the simple idea that the energy you exude greatly impacts the relationships that you build.
Nick’s leadership comes from a long personal history with collective action. Years ago, Nick gathered his friends to form a band whose direction comes from the power of the collective, now the critically acclaimed East Coast Chamber Orchestra. His genre-bending trio, Time for Three, or TF3, creates new communities of audiences who otherwise might not participate in the performing arts.
Trained in the Suzuki method, which his grandfather, John Kendall, brought to America in the 1960s, Nick continues the teaching tradition. As a caretaker of his craft, he is passing on the vitality of classical music to a new generation
Michael Giacchino
Composer
Composer Michael Giacchino (pronounced “Juh-key-no”) has credits that feature some of the most popular and acclaimed film projects in recent history, including Inside Out, The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Zootopia, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which marked the first score to be composed for a Star Wars film following John Williams.
Giacchino’s 2009 score for the Pixar hit Up earned him an Oscar®, a Golden Globe®, the BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Critics’ Choice Award and two GRAMMY® Awards.
Giacchino studied filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. After college, he landed a marketing job at Disney and began studies in music composition, first at Juilliard, and then at UCLA. He moved from marketing to producing in the newly formed Disney Interactive Division where he had the opportunity to write music for video games.
After moving to DreamWorks Interactive, he was asked to score the temp track for the video game adaptation of The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Subsequently, Steven Spielberg hired him as the composer and it became the first PlayStation game to have a live orchestral score, recorded with members of the Seattle Symphony. Giacchino went on to score numerous video games including Spielberg’s Medal of Honor series.
Giacchino’s work in video games sparked the interest of J.J. Abrams, and thus began their long-standing relationship that would lead to scores for the hit television
series Alias and Lost, and the feature films Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Super 8 and Star Trek Into Darkness.
Additional projects include collaborations with Disney Imagineering on music for Space Mountain, Star Tours (with John Williams) and the Ratatouille ride in Disneyland Paris. Giacchino also was the musical director of the 81st Annual Academy Awards®. His music can be heard in concert halls internationally with Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond, and Ratatouille films being performed live-to-picture with a full orchestra.
Last year, Giacchino scored War for the Planet of the Apes, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Pixar’s Coco. Upcoming projects include two highly anticipated sequels, The Incredibles 2, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, both being released this summer.
Giacchino serves as the Governor of the Music Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the advisory board of Education Through Music Los Angeles.
Eliza Bagg
Soprano
Eliza Bagg is a Los Angeles-based experimental musician. Along with her own work, she has collaborated with a number of prominent composers on projects ranging from avant-garde operas by Michael Gordon to motets by John Zorn. Her 2018-2019 season includes Meredith Monk’s Atlas with the LA Philharmonic, new operas by David Lang and Bryce Dessner with Roomful of Teeth, soloing with the North Carolina Symphony and on the San Francisco Symphony’s Soundbox Series, a collaboration with Daniel Wohl for voice, electronics, and string quartet, and new works by Ben Frost and Julianna Barwick for a performance on the Liquid Music Series.
Bagg has been noted for her unique sound, which Pitchfork compared to “a lovelorn alien reaching out from the farthest reaches of the galaxy.”
Bagg performs with her band Pavo Pavo, whose music “sounds like it was beamed down from a glimmering utopian future” (Stereogum). Critically acclaimed for its “washed-out playfulness and wistful exuberance” (The Guardian), Pavo Pavo will release their second album, Mystery Hour, on Bella Union in early 2019. She also writes, records, and performs a solo future-pop performance project as LISEL.
Bagg has performed with ensembles such as Roomful of Teeth, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, HOWL, A Far Cry, Lorelei Ensemble, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, NOW Ensemble, TENET, Conspirare, and Victoire (among others). Recent work with electronic, pop, and indie-rock artists include Lorde, Tim Hecker, GABI, Olga Bell, Nick Zammuto, Helado Negro, Julianna Barwick, and San Fermin. Other recent performances include Michael Gordon’s opera Acquanetta at the 2018 Prototype Festival, and appearances at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s musicNOW series, Duke Performances, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kitchen, the Guggenheim, Infinite Palette, Alice Tully Hall, Tanglewood, Iceland Airwaves, and the Ecstatic Music Festival.
Bagg graduated in 2012 with a BA in Music from Yale University. She was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina where she spent most of her time playing violin and studying modern dance.
Yerin Yang
Piano
Yerin Yang’s most recent success was winning the National MTNA competition in Junior Division in March 2017. She also won awards in many competitions in Chicago area, where she currently lives.
Yerin was awarded first prizes in both the Sejong Music Competition and the Chinese Fine Arts Society Competition for three consecutive years in different divisions. She also placed first in the Los Angeles Young Musician international Competition in 2013.
As the winner of the 2013 DePaul Concert Festival, she performed with the Oistrach Symphony Orchestra and appeared on 98.7 WFMT: Introductions, a classical music podcast out of Chicago that features young classical musicians. Yerin participated in masterclasses with such notable musicians as Ilana Vered, John O’Conor, Gila Goldstein, Gabriel Kwok, Matti Raekallio, to name a few.
Caroline Shaw
Composer
Caroline Shaw is a New York-based musician—vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer—who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member.
Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming with Inon Barnatan, Dawn Upshaw with Sō Percussion and Gil Kalish, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with John Lithgow, the Dover Quartet, TENET, The Crossing, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the Baltimore Symphony, and Roomful of Teeth with A Far Cry. The 2018-19 season will see premieres by pianist Jonathan Biss with the Seattle Symphony, Anne Sofie von Otter with Philharmonia Baroque, the LA Philharmonic, and Juilliard 415.
Caroline’s film scores include Erica Fae’s To Keep the Light and Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline as well as the upcoming short 8th Year of the Emergency by Maureen Towey. She has produced for Kanye West (The Life of Pablo; Ye) and Nas (NASIR), and has contributed to records by The National, and by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Once she got to sing in three part harmony with Sara Bareilles and Ben Folds at the Kennedy Center, and that was pretty much the bees’ knees and elbows. Caroline has studied at Rice, Yale, and Princeton, currently teaches at NYU, and is a Creative Associate at the Juilliard School. She has held residencies at Dumbarton Oaks, the Banff Centre, Music on Main, and the Vail Dance Festival. Caroline loves the color yellow, otters, Beethoven opus 74, Mozart opera, Kinhaven, the smell of rosemary, and the sound of a janky mandolin.
Inon Barnatan
Piano
“One of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), Inon Barnatan is celebrated for his poetic sensibility, musical intelligence, and consummate artistry. He is the recipient of both a prestigious 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center’s 2015 Martin E. Segal Award, which recognizes “young artists of exceptional accomplishment.” He was recently named the new Music Director of the La Jolla Music Society Summerfest, beginning in 2019.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Inon Barnatan started playing the piano at the age of three, when his parents discovered his perfect pitch, and made his orchestral debut at eleven. His musical education connects him to some of the 20th century’s most illustrious pianists and teachers: he studied first with Professor Victor Derevianko, a student of the Russian master Heinrich Neuhaus, before moving to London in 1997 to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Christopher Elton and Maria Curcio, a student of the legendary Artur Schnabel. Leon Fleisher has also been an influential teacher and mentor. Barnatan currently resides in New York City. For more information, visit www.inonbarnatan.com.
Michael Abels
Composer
Michael Abels has been described as a composer with a gift for “[juxtaposing] elements unleashed in an irresistible display of orchestral color” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), who possesses a “keen ear and a deft ability to adapt structural elements from popular music into the symphonic idiom,” (Houston Chronicle).
Born in Phoenix, AZ, Abels grew up in rural South Dakota where he began piano lessons at a young age. He attended the University of Southern California, studying with James Hopkins and Robert Linn. In 1985-86, he studied West African music with Alfred Ladzekpo at the California Institute for the Arts. He currently serves as Director of Music for New Roads School in Santa Monica, overseeing a program that provides hands-on instruction in the latest technologies integrally important to contemporary popular music. Aside from his activities as a composer, arranger, and educator, Abels is also an amateur triathlete.