RAN DANK PERFORMS PROKOFIEV WITH THE PASADENA SYMPHONY ALONGSIDE A WORLD PREMIERE BY BRETT BANDUCCI AND BEETHOVEN’S NO. 5 FOR ITS SEASON FINALE AT AMBASSADOR AUDITORIUM

Keitaro Harada
Conductor

Conductor Keitaro Harada maintains a growing, international presence throughout North America, Asia, Mexico and Europe. With home bases in the United States and Japan, the 2020-21 season marked his tenure as Music & Artistic Director of the Savannah Philharmonic and Associate Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. Harada’s broad scope of musical interest in symphonic, opera, chamber works, pops, film scores, ballet, educational, outreach, and multi-disciplinary projects leads to diverse and eclectic programs.

Recent and upcoming highlights include the symphony orchestras of Houston, Seattle, NHK, Yomiuri Nippon, Osaka, Hawaii, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Memphis, Louisiana, Charlotte, West Virginia, Tucson, Phoenix, Virginia, as well as the Osaka Philharmonic, Kanagawa Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic and Orquesta Filarmónica de Sonora (México).

No stranger to the operatic cannon, Harada returns next season for Puccini’s La bohème with North Carolina Opera, for whom he has previously led productions of Pagliacci, Carmen and Britten’s Turn of the Screw. In 2017, he conducted Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar for Cincinnati Opera, as well as run of Carmen for Bulgaria’s Sofia National Opera and Ballet that reprised with a Japan tour in fall 2018. In past seasons and as Associate Conductor of Arizona Opera, he led productions of Don Pasquale, Le Fille du Regiment and Tosca. As a 2010 Seiji Ozawa Fellow at Tanglewood, Harada conducted critically-acclaimed performances of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos.

Having completed his fourth season as Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops, Harada regularly assisted Music Director Louis Langrée, conducted the CSO and POPS, and collaborated with James Conlon and Juanjo Mena.

Ran Dank
Piano  

Notable performances during Dank’s 2019/2020 season include appearances at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Hawaii Concert Society, Purdue Convocations, Gina Bachauer Concert Series, two consecutive recitals at the Pro Musica series in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, and a collaboration with Jayce Ogren and the Westchester Philharmonic. In addition, he returns to the Chanel Chamber Music Festival in Tokyo and to the Portland Symphony for a performance of Saint Saens’ 2^nd Piano Concerto under the baton of Eckart Preu.

Dank’s recent performances have included recitals at the San Francisco Performances Series, Gilmore, Ravinia, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel and Weill Halls, Steinway Hall, Gardner Museum, Kennedy Center, Town Hall, Yale School of Music, Philips Collection, Morgan Library, Pro Musica in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and Portland Ovations, and have garnered critical acclaim from The New York Times and the Washington Post. Dank has performed as a soloist with the orchestras of Cleveland, Sydney, St. Luke’s, Portland, Eugene, Toledo, Hawaii, Kansas City, Vermont, Charleston, Jerusalem, Valencia, Phoenix, and Hilton Head, among others, working under the batons of Michael Stern, Jahja Ling, Michael Christie, Kirill Karabits, Jun Märkl, Pinchas Zukerman, Jorge Mester, Jaime Laredo, and Ken-David Masur among many others. His chamber music festival appearances have included Santa Fe, Seattle, Chanel in Tokyo, Great Lakes, Bridgehampton, Cooperstown, Mänttä, Bowdoin, Maverick, Skaneateles, and Montreal, and he has collaborated with luminaries including Paul Watkins, Augustin Hadelich, Eugene Drucker, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, James Ehnes, and The Orion, Shanghai, Takács, and Dover String Quartets. Dank’s recent performance of the monumental set of variations “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” at the University of Chicago has been selected as one of the top ten performances of 2017 by the Chicago Classical Review.

Dank is an ardent advocate for contemporary music, and has performed in recent seasons Kevin Puts’ piano concerto “Night,” the Tobias Picker concerto, “Keys to the City,” Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated,” William Bolcom’s Pulitzer-winning set of “Twelve New Etudes,” and has given, alongside pianist and wife, Soyeon Kate Lee, the world premieres of Frederic Rzewski’s “Four Hands,” and Alexander Goehr’s “Seven Impromptus.” This season, Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee will feature the world premiere of multiple Grammy-nominated pianist and composer’s Marc-André Hamelin’s “Tango” for piano four-hands.

Ran Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee have established a series of concerts, Music by the Glass, held in a New York SoHo art gallery, where the audience of young professionals listen, mix and mingle with performing artists who play solo pieces and chamber works accompanied by treats sweet and savory, paired with wines by the glass. Ran Dank is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Naumburg Piano Competition and the Sydney International Piano Competition, and the First Prize winner of the Hilton Head International Piano Competition.

James Thatcher
Horn

James Thatcher began his professional career at age 16 when he played and studied in Mexico City with his uncle, Gerald Thatcher, former principal hornist with the National Symphony of Mexico. Subsequent instructors have included Fred Fox, Don Peterson, Wendell Hoss, James Decker, Vincent DeRosa and master classes with Hermann Baumann. Mr. Thatcher has been a member of the Phoenix Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the Pacific Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

He is currently principal horn of the Pasadena Symphony, the New West Symphony and the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, but principally he is a studio player, a recipient of the Most Valuable Player Award from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences and “arguably the most often heard horn player in the world” due to his performances on some 70 to 80 films per year for the last 20 years.

James has the enviable position of being the favored first horn of multiple Oscar-winning composer John Williams performing in such films as Always, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Sleepers (in which he received an on-screen credit), Nixon, Schindler’s List, JFK, Sabrina, Home Alone, Rosewood, Seven Years in Tibet and The Patriot as well as the fanfare for the 1992 Olympics. He also works regularly with other Hollywood greats Jerry Goldsmith, James Newton Howard, Randy Newman, John Barry, James Horner and Alan Silvestri to name a few and can be heard as well on the tracks to Glory, The Rocketeer, Field of Dreams, X-Men: The Last Stand, Spider-Man 3, Ice Age, Polar Express, Beowulf, Dances with Wolves, Toy Story, Cars, Apollo 13, Forrest Gump, Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Transformers, The Simpsons Movie, Night at the Museum, King Kong, Signs, Peter Pan, Hook, as well as Independence Day and the Star Trek films, among others. Most recently, Mr. Thatcher was deemed principal horn in James Newton Howard’s soundtrack of The Last Airbender directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Thatcher has joined Kristy Morrell on the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music as the co-professor of Horn. Notable students include J. Greg Miller.