February 10, 2025
Robert Thies shot to fame in 1995 when he became the first American in four decades—since Van Cliburn’s Cold War win in 1958—to win a Russian piano competition, but things didn’t quite work out as planned… Robert talks with us ending up at zero after his feted win and looking forward to performing Mozart’s Piano…
October 16, 2024
Kim Rooker is the Bay Area’s go-to expert in productions featuring movies with the soundtrack played by a live orchestra for over a decade. We go behind the scenes with Kim to learn how the orchestral, live movie magic comes together—so the images you see on screen stay in time with the music. California Symphony Orchestra:…
March 22, 2024
Robert Thies shot to fame in 1995 when he became the first American in four decades—since Van Cliburn’s Cold War win in 1958—to win a Russian piano competition, but things didn’t quite work out as planned… Robert talks with us ending up at zero after his feted win, diving into Clara Schumann’s diaries, and looking…
March 21, 2024
Saad Haddad (b. 1992) Mishwar (World Premiere, 2024) Saad Haddad, the California Symphony’s current Resident Composer, is acclaimed for his distinctive blend of Western art music and Middle Eastern idioms. Haddad has drawn Mishwar (Arabic مشوار(, meaning “A Trip,” out of his own memories. He tells us that: “Throughout my childhood, my family and I made frequent…
January 16, 2024
GERSHWIN IN NEW YORK guest artist Marcus Roberts has been called “the genius of the modern piano” and has the honors to show for it—he’s been a recipient of the Helen Keller Award for Personal Achievement, Artist-in-Residence for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, commissioned composer for Chamber Music America, and Grammy nominee for his 1996 album Portraits in Blue. We talked to Marcus to learn more about his music history and what it’s like to improvise classics such as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
January 2, 2024
Samuel Barber (1910–1981) Symphony No. 1, in One Movement, Op. 9 (1936, rev. 1942) It must have been lonely to be Samuel Barber there for a while. Almost alone of mid-twentieth-century American composers he eschewed the era’s prevailing bleak modernism in favor of a rich musical language that emphasized melody, opulent harmonies, and traditional structures….
September 14, 2023
Former Broadway “Fiddler on the Roof” star Kelly Hall-Tompkins talks with us about performing Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto—a piece she considers to be one of the greatest violin concertos of the 21st century—and about bringing Music Kitchen: Food for the Soul to Walnut Creek. Also covered: wine-tasting in Napa, and how Warner Brothers Cartoons influenced her career choice. …
September 5, 2023
Juan Pablo Contreras (b. 1987) MeChicano (2022) Juan Pablo Contreras joins a distinguished line of Mexican-born composers who have brought their sensibilities to concert audiences everywhere: consider Carlos Chavez, Silvestre Revueltas, Manuel Ponce, Arturo Marquez, and Gabriela Ortiz, and many others. Contreras brings his own particular approach to fusing Mexican folk music with the Western…
April 3, 2023
Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 (1844) Hector Berlioz never met an applecart he didn’t want to upset, or an envelope he didn’t want to stretch. It was simply not in his nature to kowtow to prevailing fashion or to acquiesce to the dictates of the proletariat. Nor was he just some obnoxious…
March 2, 2023
Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942) Lustspiel Overture (1891) He was the little quiet guy amidst a bunch of big loud personalities. His brother-in-law was Arnold Schoenberg. He fell in love with Alma Schindler, who rejected him—too short, too homely, she said—and married Gustav Mahler instead. One of his early boosters was Johannes Brahms. Among his students we…
