Nicholas McGegan Brings a Trio of Baroque Masters for the Best of Bach, Vivaldi and Handel – January 26, 2019

and Chorale and he is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Pasadena Symphony. Best known as a baroque and classical specialist, McGegan’s approach— intelligent, infused with joy and never dogmatic — has led to appearances with many of the world’s major orchestras. At home in opera houses, McGegan shone new light on close to twenty Handel operas as the Artistic Director and conductor at the Göttingen Handel Festival for 20 years (1991-2001) and the Mozart canon as Principal Guest Conductor at Scottish Opera in the 1990s.

His 17/18 guest appearances include his return to the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl for two programs (his 21st consecutive appearance at the Hollywood Bowl); Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Pasadena, Dallas, Nashville, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras. A residency at the Juilliard School this fall will lead to performances in New York and a side-by-side with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Juilliard415 on the West Coast. He will make his annual return to The Aspen Music Festival as well. Abroad, he appears at Casa da Musica (Portugal) and with SWR Sinfonieorchester, Gottingen Symphonieorchester, and Jerusalem Symphony.

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.

One of Philharmonia’s greatest successes was the recent fully-staged modern-day premiere of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s 1745 opera-ballet Le Temple de la Gloire. PBO’s 2017/18 season opens in October with the North American premiere of Sally Beamish’s The Judas Passion, co-commissioned by PBO and London’s Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment (OAE). McGegan conducts the world premiere of the piece with OAE earlier in the fall. Other season highlights include Handel’s Messiah and his oratorio Joseph and his Brethren, a program with cellist Steven Isserlis, and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Mass in C Major.

McGegan’s prolific discography includes more than 100 releases spanning five decades. Having recorded over 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. Most recently, the collaboration has produced releases of Haydn, Kraus, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and a 2-CD set of the complete Mozart violin concerti.

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. In 2013 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 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 Arts, American Handel Society, and San Francisco Conservatory.

English-born Nicholas McGegan was educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to music overseas.” Most recently, McGegan was invited to join the board of Early Music America. Other awards include the Halle Handel Prize; the Order of Merit of the State of Lower Saxony (Germany); the Medal of Honour of the City of Göttingen, and a declaration of Nicholas McGegan Day, by the Mayor of San Francisco in recognition of his work with Philharmonia. In 2013, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Music.

Visit Nicholas McGegan on the web at www.nicholasmcgegan.com.

voice, and she discovered that she was drawn to the supporting role it often plays in the repertoire.

Currently, Corrigan is principal bassoonist of Pacific Symphony, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the Pasadena Symphony, and a former member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra. Corrigan is a graduate of the University of Southern California where she studied with Michael O’Donovan, a teacher whose pedagogy included exposure to great cinema, literature and restaurants. She returned to the university as an adjunct professor, teaching bassoon from 1993 until 2011.

Corrigan has played bassoon and contrabassoon on the soundtracks of over 500 motion pictures, working with composers such as Michael Giacchino, Patrick Doyle, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, John Powell, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, James Horner, Michel Legrand, Michael Kamen and William Ross. A few of the films that include her playing are Ice Age, Life of Pi, Bolt, Despicable Me, Dances with Wolves, A River Runs Through It, Aladdin, The Lion King, Cars, Enchanted, WALL-E and Pirates of the Caribbean. Her bassoon solos are prominent in March of the Penguins, one of the only movies to list a bassoonist in its closing credits. She has also performed on hundreds of records for stars like Paul McCartney, Tony Williams, Barbra Streisand and Natalie Cole.

Rose lives in Sierra Madre with her trombonist-composer husband Steven Williams and their three children.  An enthusiastic organic gardener, tending vegetables and over 50 different fruit trees, she enjoys sharing baskets of avocados and other produce with friends and colleagues.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1998, Ms. Kreston joined the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra as Concertmaster, and in June of 2000, she was engaged as Concertmaster of the Pasadena Symphony. Ms. Kreston has performed in nearly every European country, having appeared as soloist at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and as a chamber musician at the Chatelet Chamber music series in Paris, the Reims music festival, and at the Queluz Chateau festival in Portugal. Ms. Kreston was a prizewinner of the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition in Switzerland in 1989 and at the WAMSO Young artist’s competition in Minneapolis in 1988.

Kreston is on the faculty of the Colburn School and the Pasadena Conservatory. Ms. Kreston’s students have won numerous awards, and her graduating seniors have been invited to attend the Colburn Conservatory, Indiana University, San Francisco Conservatory, New England Conservatory, Juilliard and the USC Thornton School of Music, among others.

Ms. Kreston is the Executive Director of the Eastern Sierra Symphony, a summer music festival in beautiful Mammoth Lakes California, and a member of the Pasadena String Quartet.

He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees of Music in Performance at the University of Southern California and has performed in Master Classes for Karen Tuttle, Gerald Stanick, Robert Vernon and Roland Vamos.

Internationally, Sara has participated at the Taklos Festival in Zurich, The Wels Unlimited Festival, the Festival Internationale de Cadaques in Spain and in Eisenstadt, Austria. Sara is featured on Phillips Classics, Victo, Avant and Tzadik recording labels. Other international performances include, but are not limited to, Buenos Aries, Ljubljana, Prague, Russia, Austria and Germany as a Chamber Musician and Soloist.

Sara attended the Curtis Institute of Music and SUNY at Stony Brook. She lives in Los Angeles and loves the sunshine despite the traffic!

A member of the Pasadena String Quartet, he has performed with the Music Guild concert series in Bel Air,  as well as at venues throughout Southern California. He has appeared as a guest artist with the Henschel String Quartet, the Lafayette String Quartet, the Felici Piano trio and has recorded with the Coup d’Archer String quartet. As a conductor, he has led the orchestra at the Rocky Ridge Music Festival in Estes Park, CO.

A dedicated pedagogue, Andrew is on the faculty of Pepperdine University as well as the Colburn School and Pasadena Conservatory of Music. His students have matriculated into many of the top music schools in the country including Juliard, Oberlin, New England Conservatory, Boston University, Colburn Conservatory and USC. Andrew is married to Pasadena Symphony Concertmaster Aimée Kreston.

Mr. Scholes first noticed the cello watching the Lawrence Welk Show with his family in Oklahoma. Piano and cello lessons started at age five, and after rapidly advancing on both instruments, Kim was enchanted by chamber music. He eventually was drawn to New York by the eloquent and elegant playing of cellist Bernard Greenhouse of the Beaux Arts Trio. Before graduating from the Manhattan School of Music, he unexpectedly won an audition to tour and record as a member of folk-rock artist Harry Chapin’s five member band playing the cello and keyboards. He performed in 200-250 cities a year worldwide, and recorded on Elektra Records. He also composed the film score for the B horror film The Nesting.

Returning to classical performance, and during post-graduate studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, Kim won the Concert Artists Guild Competition and the US Trust Artist Award. He also won an award for Excellence in Teaching in the Gregor Piatigorsky Competition in Boston. He has held faculty positions at M.I.T. as an instructor of cello and chamber music, Hartt School of Music, University of Toronto, Longy School of Music and Chicago’s Roosevelt University. He has recorded on the Titanic, Summit and Cedille labels, among others. He had the good fortune to commence his orchestral career with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, followed by a decade as principal cellist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In California, he has served as principal cellist of Opera Pacific, international tours as an extra player with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a frequent recorder on Hollywood film scores and is currently Principal Cello of the Pasadena Symphony. George is very happy to reside in the Carson Valley of northern Nevada.