Pasadena Symphony Announces 2024-25 Season Its First Under Recently Appointed Music Director Brett Mitchell, Launching a New Era for the Esteemed Orchestra

Brett Mitchell
Music Director

Peter Boyer
Composer

Grammy-nominated PETER BOYER is one of the most frequently performed American orchestral composers of his generation. His works have received over 500 public performances by nearly 200 orchestras, and thousands of broadcasts by classical radio stations around the United States and abroad. He has conducted recordings of his music with three of the world’s finest orchestras: the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Boyer’s major work Ellis Island: The Dream of America, for actors and orchestra, has become one of the most-performed American orchestral works of the last 15 years, with over 200 performances by more than 100 orchestras since its 2002 premiere. Boyer’s recording of Ellis Island on the Naxos American Classics label was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. In 2017, Ellis Island was filmed live in concert with Pacific Symphony, conductor Carl St.Clair, and a cast of stage and screen actors for PBS’ Great Performances, America’s preeminent performing arts television series. The PBS national telecast premiere was in June 2018.

Boyer has received commissions from several of the most prestigious American institutions and ensembles, including the Kennedy Center for the National Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the Boston Pops, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for the Cincinnati Pops, the Pacific Symphony, and “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band. Other orchestras which have performed his music include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Houston Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, and Phoenix Symphony. He served as Composer-in-Residence of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and the Pasadena Symphony.

Boyer’s Silver Fanfare was the opening work of three consecutive Hollywood Bowl seasons (2015-17), in sold-out performances featuring the iconic rock bands Journey, Steely Dan, and The Moody Blues. In 2015, Boyer conducted shows for Josh Groban on his Stages tour. In 2010, Boyer was chosen for the Boston Pops 125th anniversary commission, honoring the legacy of John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy. Boyer’s The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers was narrated by actors including Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Alec Baldwin, conducted by Keith Lockhart; and received ten performances, two telecasts, and a commercial recording. The premiere of Boyer’s work was attended by many members of the Kennedy family, and received extensive national media attention.

His music has been performed in such venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall (seven different works, two premieres) and The Juilliard School at Lincoln Center, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and the U.S. Capitol, Los Angeles’s Hollywood Bowl and Royce Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, the Tanglewood Music Center, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Dallas’s Meyerson Symphony Center, Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall, Cincinnati’s Music Hall, and Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Concert Hall; and has been recorded in London’s Abbey Road Studios (two albums) and AIR Studios. His music appears on record labels including Naxos American Classics, BSO Classics, Koch International Classics, Albany, and Fanfare Cincinnati.

In 2019, Boyer received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which is officially recognized by both Houses of Congress as one of the most prestigious American awards, and has been presented to seven U.S. Presidents, as well as U.S. Secretaries of State, Supreme Court Justices, members of Congress, military leaders, and prominent Americans from many fields. Past medalists in the arts have included Renée Fleming, Quincy Jones, Rita Moreno, Gregory Peck, Itzhak Perlman, Chita Rivera, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Simon, to name a few.

In addition to his work for the concert hall, Boyer is active in the film and television music industry. He has contributed orchestrations (orchestral arrangements) to more than 35 feature film scores from all the major movie studios, for leading Hollywood composers including James Newton Howard (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 1 & 2, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Red Sparrow, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms), Michael Giacchino (Jurassic World, Inside Out, Star Trek, Up, Cars 2, Mission: Impossible III, Super 8), Thomas Newman (Finding Dory, the James Bond film Skyfall), the late James Horner (The Amazing Spider-Man), Alan Menken (Mirror Mirror), Mark Isham (Dolphin Tale, The Conspirator), Heitor Pereira (Minions), Harry Gregson-Williams (Arthur Christmas), and Aaron Zigman (Wakefield). Boyer also was an orchestrator for Pixar in Concert, which has been performed by major orchestras worldwide, and for Titanic Live (Horner). Boyer has arranged music for two Academy Awards telecasts, and composed music for The History Channel. His music has appeared in documentary films, short films, and — through the A&E Networks Production Music Library — a wide variety of television programs.

Boyer’s work has been profiled and/or reviewed in the Associated Press, USA TODAY, Variety, CNN.com, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Orange County Register, Symphony Magazine, BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, and many others. His multiple national awards have included two BMI Awards for young composers, the First Music Carnegie Hall commission, and the Lancaster Symphony Composer’s Award.

He has conducted performances with orchestras including the Pasadena Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Rhode Island Philharmonic, as well as recording sessions on the major scoring stages of London and Los Angeles. He also has served as assistant/cover conductor for The Lord of the Rings in Concert, presented by CAMI Music, in productions in Melbourne, Munich, Seattle, and Barcelona.

Boyer was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1970, and began composing at the age of 15. His first major composition was a large-scale Requiem Mass in memory of his grandmother, composed while only a teenager. He was named to the first All-USA College Academic Team, comprised of “the 20 best and brightest college students in the nation,” by USA TODAY in 1990. Boyer holds degrees from Rhode Island College (B.A.), which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2004, and The Hartt School at the University of Hartford (M.M., D.M.A.), which named him Alumnus of the Year in 2002. He also studied privately with John Corigliano, and completed the Film and Television Scoring program at the USC Thornton School of Music, where his teachers included the late Elmer Bernstein. Boyer holds the Helen M. Smith Chair in Music at Claremont Graduate University. He resides in Altadena, in the San Gabriel Foothills just north of Los Angeles.

Stewart Goodyear
Piano

Proclaimed “a phenomenon” by the Los Angeles Times and “one of the best pianists of his generation” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stewart Goodyear is an accomplished concert pianist, improviser and composer. Mr. Goodyear has performed with, and has been commissioned by, many of the major orchestras and chamber music organizations around the world.

Last year, Orchid Classics released Mr. Goodyear’s recording of his suite for piano and orchestra, “Callaloo” and his piano sonata. His recent commissions include a Piano Quintet for the Penderecki String Quartet, and a piano work for the Honens Piano Competition.

Mr. Goodyear’s discography includes the complete sonatas and piano concertos of Beethoven, as well as concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Rachmaninov, an album of Ravel piano works, and an album, entitled “For Glenn Gould”, which combines repertoire from Mr. Gould’s US and Montreal debuts. His Rachmaninov recording received a Juno nomination for Best Classical Album for Soloist and Large Ensemble Accompaniment. Mr. Goodyear’s recording of his own transcription of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker (Complete Ballet)”, was chosen by the New York Times as one of the best classical music recordings of 2015. His discography is released on the Marquis Classics, Orchid Classics, Bright Shiny Things and Steinway and Sons labels. His newest recording, Adolphus Hailstork’s Piano Concerto with the Buffalo Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta, was released in March 2023 on the Naxos label. His composition for solo cello and piano, “The Kapok” was recorded by Inbal Negev and Mr. Goodyear on Avie Records, and his suite for solo violin, “Solo”, was commissioned and recorded by Miranda Cuskson for the Urlicht Audiovisual label.

Highlights for the 2023-24 season are his performances at Summer for the City (Lincoln Center, NY), Southbank Centre (UK), Schleswig-Holstein Festival, his recital debut at Wigmore Hall, his debut with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and his return with the Milwaukee Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and his Carnegie Hall debut with the Royal Conservatory Orchestra.

Mason Bates
Composer

Inon Barnatan
Piano

“One of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), Inon Barnatan has received universal acclaim for his “uncommon sensitivity” (The New Yorker), “impeccable musicality and phrasing” (Le Figaro), and his stature as “a true poet of the keyboard: refined, searching, unfailingly communicative” (The Evening Standard). A multifaceted musician, Barnatan is equally celebrated as soloist, curator and collaborator.

As a soloist, Barnatan is a regular performer with many of the world’s foremost orchestras and conductors. He was the inaugural Artist-in-Association of the New York Philharmonic from 2014-17 and has played with the BBC Symphony for the BBC Proms, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and most major orchestras in the US, as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra Symphony and the London, Helsinki, Hong Kong, and Royal Stockholm Philharmonics. He performed a complete Beethoven concerto cycle in Marseilles; Copland’s Piano Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco and at Carnegie Hall; and multiple U.S. tours with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, playing and conducting from the keyboard. With the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä, Barnatan played Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto on New Year’s Eve, followed by a Midwest tour that culminated in Chicago, and a return to the BBC Proms in summer 2018.

Equally at home as a curator and chamber musician, Barnatan is Music Director of La Jolla Music Society Summerfest in California, one of leading music festivals in the country. He regularly collaborates with world-class partners such as Renée Fleming and Alisa Weilerstein, and plays at major chamber music festivals including, Seattle, Santa Fe, and Spoleto USA. Barnatan was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) from 2006 to 2009 and continues to perform with CMS in New York and on tour. His passion for contemporary music has resulted in commissions and performances of many living composers, including premieres of new works by Thomas Adès, Sebastian Currier, Avner Dorman, Alan Fletcher, Joseph Hallman, Alasdair Nicolson, Andrew Norman and Matthias Pintscher, among others.

Barnatan’s 2023-24 season highlights include concerto performances in the U.S. with the Colorado Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and internationally with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and London Philharmonic Orchestra. Barnatan will give solo recitals presented at Spivey Hall, The Phillips Collection, Leeds International Piano Series, Wigmore Hall, The Norwegian Opera and Ballet, and The 92nd Street Y. Barnatan will also have collaborations throughout the season with Renée Fleming at the University of Michigan’s University Music Society, Celebrity Series of Boston, McCallum Theatre, and La Jolla Music Society, as well as with Alisa Weilerstein at Modlin Center for the Arts, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Wigmore Hall, and Barcelona Obertura, among many other collaborations with other artists this season. Barnatan will also have a residency at the University of Michigan’s University Musical Society which will include performances with Renée Fleming, the Jerusalem Quartet, as well as various masterclasses, coachings, and more.

In November 2023, Barnatan releases his album, Rachmaninoff Reflections, offering some of the composer’s most cherished piano works, including his Moments musicaux, Prelude in G-Sharp Minor, and Barnatan’s own arrangement of the Vocalise. The centerpiece of this project is Barnatan’s breathtaking new piano arrangement of the Symphonic Dances. Barnatan’s acclaimed discography also includes a two-volume set of Beethoven’s complete piano concertos, recorded with Alan Gilbert and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on Pentatone. In its review, BBC Music Magazine wrote “The central strength of this first installment of Inon Barnatan’s piano concertos cycle is that, time and again, it puts you in touch with that feeling of ongoing wonderment.”  In 2021 he released his Time-Traveler Suite album on Pentatone, a program that merged Baroque movements by Bach, Handel, Rameau and Couperin with movements by Ravel, Ligeti, Barber and Thomas Adès, culminating in Brahms’ Variations on a theme by Handel. He has also released a live recording of Messiaen’s 90-minute masterpiece Des canyons aux étoiles (“From the Canyons to the Stars”), in which he played the exceptionally challenging solo piano part at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. In 2015 he released Rachmaninov & Chopin: Cello Sonatas on Decca Classics with Alisa Weilerstein, earning rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. His solo recording of Schubert’s late piano sonatas on Avie won praise from such publications as Gramophone and BBC Music, while his account of the great A-major Sonata (D. 959) was chosen by BBC Radio 3 as one of the all-time best recordings of the piece. His 2012 album, Darknesse Visible, debuted in the Top 25 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart, and was named BBC Music’s “Instrumentalist CD of the Month” and won a coveted place on the New York Times’ “Best of 2012” list. He made his solo recording debut with a Schubert album, released by Bridge Records in 2006, that prompted Gramophone to hail him as “a born Schubertian”.

Barnatan’s 2022-23 season included concerto performances in the U.S. with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Princeton Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, and internationally with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia, and Philharmonie Zuidnederland. Barnatan gave solo recitals in London, Kansas City, Aspen and Santa Fe, and played chamber music at festivals through the USA. Barnatan also toured North America with Les Violons du Roy, performing concertos by CPE Bach and Shostakovich.

Previous career highlights include return performances with the Chicago Symphony and the London Philharmonic, as well as debuts with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony orchestras, and a recreation of Beethoven’s legendary 1808 concert, which featured the world premieres of his Fourth Piano Concerto, Choral Fantasy, and Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, with Louis Langrée and the Cincinnati Symphony. Barnatan gave solo recitals at Celebrity Series of Boston, Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, and London’s Southbank Centre, and made his debut at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Chamber music highlights included tours with Renée Fleming, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, the Calidore Quartet, violinist Sergey Khachatryan, and percussionist Colin Currie. As Artistic Director of the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, Barnatan has collaborated with Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, visionary director and visual artist Doug Fitch, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Garrick Ohlsson, Augustin Hadelich, Caroline Shaw, Carter Brey, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and more.

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. The late Leon Fleisher was also an influential teacher and mentor. For more information, visit www.inonbarnatan.com.

Jessie Montgomery
Composer

Jessie Montgomery, Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year, is a GRAMMY-winning, acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator whose music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of twenty-first century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post) and are performed regularly by leading orchestras and ensembles around the world. In July 2021, she began a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence.

Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works, as well as collaborations with distinguished choreographers and dance companies.  Recent highlights include Hymn for Everyone (2021), her first commission as Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, co-commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and Music Academy of the West; Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for Soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco, Kansas City, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (2021); I was waiting for the echo of a better day, a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape and Pam Tanowitz Dance (2021); Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by Orpheus and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra;  and Banner (2014), written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner” for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation, and presented in its UK premiere at the 2021 BBC Proms.

Montgomery’s impressive range of recent premieres also includes multiple concerti – DIVIDED (2022) for cellist Thomas Mesa and Sphinx Virtuosi, Rounds for pianist Awadagin Pratt (2021), and L.E.S. Characters for violist Masumi Per Rostad (2020); BECAUSE (2021), a theatrical work for the National Symphony Orchestra adapted from the book by Mo Willems and arranged by Jannina Norpoth; I Have Something To Say (2019), for chorus, children’s chorus and orchestra with text by activist playwright Robbie McCauley for Cathedral Choral Society and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; and Passacaglia (2021), a flute quartet for The National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention.

Highlights of her 2022-2023 season include the world premieres of orchestral works for violinist Joshua Bell; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; a consortium led by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices program; a violin duo co-commissioned by CSO MusicNOW and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and new settings of orchestral works by distinguished choreographer Donald Byrd for Nashville Ballet.

Future projects include a contribution to Alisa Weilerstein’s FRAGMENTS project, a percussion quartet, an orchestral work for the New York Philharmonic, and her final commissions as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence.

Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation. She is currently Artist in Residence at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music, Composer in Residence at Bard College, and Professor of Violin and Composition at The New School, and, since 1999, has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization in a variety of roles including composer-in-residence for Sphinx Virtuosi, its professional touring ensemble. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University.

Mark Kosower
Cello

A modern player with a “signature sound” and distinctive style of playing, cellist Mark Kosower embodies the concept of the complete musician performing as concerto soloist with symphony orchestras, in solo recitals, and as a much admired and sought-after chamber musician. He is Principal Cello of The Cleveland Orchestra and a scholar and teacher of cello. Mark’s performance repertoire and discography are testaments to a deep devotion, not only to frequently heard repertoire such as Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations and concertos of Haydn, Walton, Elgar and Dvořák but, significantly, to less well-known concertos of Alberto Ginastera, Miklos Rozsa, Frederich Gulda and Victor Herbert. Mr. Kosower has recorded for the Ambitus, Delos, Naxos International and VAI labels, including as the first cellist to record the complete music for solo cello of Alberto Ginastera (Naxos). He was described as a “powerful advocate of Ginastera’s art” by MusicWeb International, and Strings Magazine noted of his Hungarian music album (also with Naxos) that “the music allows Kosower to showcase his stunning virtuosity, passionate intensity, and elegant phrasing.”

In recent seasons Mr. Kosower has been guest soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Canton Symphony, the Columbus Symphony, Columbus Pro Musica, the Hawaii Symphony, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Naples Philharmonic, the Phoenix Symphony, and the Toledo Symphony among others in addition to twenty-two concerto appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra. He has performed as soloist with Herbert Blomstedt, Sir Andrew Davis, Christoph Eschenbach, and Franz Welser-Möst. During the 2021-22 season Mr. Kosower performs the Gulda Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Music Festival and makes appearances with the symphony orchestras of Bangor, Dayton, and Santa Fe among others. He appears in recitals with Max Levinson, chamber music with James Ehnes at the Seattle Chamber Music Society, and performs all six Bach cello suites at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

In 2017 Mark Kosower launched Bach for Humanity, an initiative that aims to bring people together though Bach’s music in presentations for diverse socioeconomic groups in churches, community organizations, educational institutions, homeless shelters, performing arts series, radio and television stations, and retirement communities. For three years Mr. Kosower performed the complete cello suites and his own transcriptions of the violin sonatas and partitas for cello to widespread acclaim in both conventional and nonconventional venues such as the Cleveland Cello Society, the Cleveland School of the Arts, Judson Manor, and the Cosgrove Center for the homeless. During the coronavirus pandemic Mark Kosower performed two livestream performances of the Bach Cello Suites from Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland to raise money for Covid-19 victims and as part of Bach for Humanity. Other activities during the pandemic have included live and recorded chamber music performances for the North Shore Chamber Music Festival’s Onstage/Offstage series and for the Seattle Chamber Music Society in addition to other recordings and numerous social media projects.

Mark Kosower has appeared internationally as soloist with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the China National Symphony Orchestra in Beijing, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, and the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra among others. In the United States he has appeared with the symphony orchestras of Detroit, Florida, Grand Rapids, Houston, Milwaukee, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Seattle, Virginia, the Ravinia Festival and St. Paul chamber orchestras, and has given recitals at the Kennedy Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the National Gallery of Art, and on the Great Performer’s Series at Lincoln Center. Mark Kosower is a frequent guest at international chamber music festivals including the Santa Fe, North Shore, and Colorado College of Music chamber music festivals and has appeared at the Aspen, Eastern, and Pacific Music (of Japan) festivals among many others. His chamber music appearances have included performances with Yefim Bronfman, James Ehnes, Leon Fleisher, Vadim Gluzman, Robert Mann, Janos Starker, Schmuel Ashkenasi, and the Juilliard String Quartet.

Formerly Solo Cellist of the Bamberg Symphony in Germany, Mr. Kosower teaches a series of master classes at Hidden Valley Music Seminars in Carmel Valley each summer and is on the faculty at Carnegie Hall’s NYO-USA program and the Colorado College of Music Summer Music Festival. He has also worked with students in lessons and master classes around the world including the New World Symphony fellows, the Shanghai Orchestra Academy, and the Baccareli Institute of São Paulo and has been on the faculties at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory.

Stefan Jackiw
Violin

Stefan Jackiw is one of America’s foremost violinists, captivating audiences with playing that combines poetry and purity with impeccable technique. Hailed for playing of “uncommon musical substance” that is “striking for its intelligence and sensitivity” (Boston Globe), Jackiw has appeared as a soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, among others.

Following his summer performance with the New York Philharmonic, Jackiw opens the 2023-24 season returning to the orchestra to perform the Barber Concerto with Jaap van Zweden. His season also includes a quadruple World Premiere of new works at Roulette, and his return to Asia with the Taiwan Philharmonic and the China National Symphony. In the spring, the Junction Trio will make their Carnegie Hall debut with the New York premiere of John Zorn’s Philosophical Investigations. He was also recently invited to perform and curate a series of programs at the Edinburgh Festival (‘Stefan Jackiw and Friends’).

During the 2022-23 season, Jackiw returned to the Cleveland Orchestra to perform Britten’s Violin Concerto with Thomas Søndergård, and to the Vancouver Symphony to perform Brahms with Otto Tausk. He also appeared at the 92NY with cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Daniil Trifonov, and he embarked on a multi-city Junction Trio tour that included the group’s Celebrity Series of Boston debut, alongside performances in New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, and more. His European dates included his return to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with the Residentie Orkest, as well as appearances with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony, and the Sinfónica de Galicia. Other recent highlights include his performance of Mozart’s violin Concerto no. 5 with Alan Gilbert and the Boston Symphony, his return to Carnegie Hall to perform Bach with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and performances with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Alan Gilbert, and with Orchestre National de Lyon under Nikolaj Znaider.

Jackiw recently performed a new Violin concerto, written for him by Conrad Tao and premiered by the Atlanta Symphony and Baltimore Symphony. He has also premiered David Fulmer’s concerto Jauchzende Bögen with Matthias Pintscher and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen at the Heidelberger Frühling.

Jackiw tours frequently with his musical partners, pianist Conrad Tao and cellist Jay Campbell, as part of the Junction Trio. He also enjoys collaborating with pianist Jeremy Denk with whom he has toured the complete Ives Violin Sonatas, which the pair recorded for future release on Nonesuch Records. In 2019, he recorded Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Inon Barnatan, Alisa Weilerstein, Alan Gilbert and Academy St Martin in the Fields.

Jackiw has performed in numerous major festivals and concert halls around the world, including the Aspen Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Philharmonie de Paris, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Celebrity Series of Boston, and the Washington Performing Arts Society.

Born to physicist parents of Korean and Ukrainian descent, Stefan Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of four. His teachers have included Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair, and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, as well as an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory, and is the recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Jackiw plays a violin made in 1705 by Vincenzo Ruggieri. He lives in New York City.

Adolphus Hailstork
Composer

Adolphus Hailstork received his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed. He completed earlier studies at the Manhattan School of Music under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, the American Institute at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and Howard University with Mark Fax.

Dr. Hailstork has written across a variety of genres, producing works for chorus, solo voice, solo piano, organ, various chamber ensembles, band, and orchestra. His works have been performed by prestigious ensembles such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, under the batons of leading conductors such as James DePreist, Daniel Barenboim, Kurt Masur, and Lorin Maazel. The composer’s music has been recorded by a variety of ensembles for the Naxos and Albany Records labels.

The composer’s early compositions include Celebration!, recorded by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1976, and two works for band, Out of the Depths and American Guernica, published in 1977 and 1983, both of which  won national competitions. Consort Piece for Mixed Septet, commissioned by the Norfolk Chamber Ensemble and published in 1995, was awarded First Prize by the University of Delaware Festival of Contemporary Music. 1999 saw the premieres of Dr. Hailstork’s Symphony No. 2, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, as well as his second opera, Joshua’s Boots, commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Kansas City Lyric Opera.

Commissions from the early 2000s include Earthrise, a large-scale choral work premiered by James Conlon and the 2006 Cincinnati May Festival Chorus, Two Studies on Chant Melodies for the American Guild of Organists 2006 National Convention, and Whitman’s Journey, a cantata for Chorus and Orchestra debuted by the Master Chorale of Washington, D.C at the Kennedy Center in 2006 under the direction of Donald McCullough. Rise for Freedom, an opera about the Underground Railroad, was first performed in 2007 by the Cincinnati Opera Company. Hailstork’s Serenade for Chorus and Orchestra, commissioned by Michigan State University, and Set Me on a Rock, also for chorus and orchestra as commissioned by the Houston Choral Society, both premiered in 2008. The Gift of the Magi, commissioned by the Virginia Children’s Chorus for Treble Choir and Orchestra, debuted in 2009.

The Orlando Philharmonic premiered Zora, We’re Calling You, with a libretto by Elizabeth Van Dyke featuring text by Zora Neale Hurston, in 2011. In 2013, I Speak of Peace, commissioned by The Bismarck-Mandan Symphony in honor of President John F. Kennedy, was performed by the ensemble under the baton of Beverly Everett.

Some of Hailstork’s newest works include The World Called, based on Rita Dove’s poem Testimonial, for Soprano, Chorus and Orchestra, commissioned by The Oratorio Society of Virginia and premiered in 2018, and Still Holding On, an orchestral work commissioned by The Los Angeles Philharmonic and premiered in February of the following year. Commissioned by the Harlem Chamber Players in commemoration of the 100^th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Hailstork’s Tulsa 1921 for Mezzo-Soprano, Harp, Percussion and Strings premiered on June 19th, 2021 in New York City. His Symphony No. 4 was premiered by the Louisville Orchestra in February 2022, and his highly anticipated requiem cantata in memory of George Floyd, A Knee on a Neck, with text by Herbert Martin, was first performed by The National Philharmonic  in March 2022. Dr. Hailstork’s Symphony No. 5 was premiered by the National Philharmonic in June 2023. Another large-scale work, JFK: The Last Speech, a co-commission by the Colorado Music Festival, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, and Amherst College, received its premiere at the Colorado Music Festival in July 2023.

Dr. Hailstork has received honorary doctorates from the Manhattan School of Music, Michigan State University, and the College of William and Mary. He resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he is professor emeritus at Old Dominion University.

William Hagen
Violin

The riveting 30-year-old American violinist William Hagen has appeared as a soloist with many of the world’s great orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, San Francisco Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, and many more. Already a seasoned international performer who has won friends around the world, William has been hailed as a “brilliant virtuoso…a standout” (The Dallas Morning News) whose playing is “… captivating, floating delicately above the orchestra” (Chicago Classical Review). He was the third-prize winner of the 2015 Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition, one of the highest-ranking Americans ever in the prestigious competition. William performs on the 1732 ‘Arkwright Lady Rebecca Sylvan’ Stradivarius, on generous loan from the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.

Hagen’s recent performances include appearances with the Rochester Philharmonic and Asheville Symphony, and performances at the Ravinia, Grant Park, Sunriver, and Santa Fe Chamber Music

festivals and Tippet Rise Art Center. Hagen’s 2023-24 season highlights include performances for the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth, Detroit Symphony, a European tour with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, and collaborations with cellist Andrei Ioniță and pianists Orion Weiss and Albert Cano- Smit. This season William offers a new community engagement initiative that combines conversations with local gardening experts with an interactive performance and explores the ways in which music and nature are connected.

William has performed with conductor Nicolas McGegan both at the Aspen Music Festival and with the Pasadena Symphony, and made his debut with the Oregon Symphony under Carlos Kalmar, performed with the Brussels Chamber Orchestra in Beijing and at the Aspen Music Festival with conductor Ludovic Morlot, and played recitals in Paris, Brussels, and at the Ravinia Festival.

Collaborations include those with Steven Isserlis at the Wigmore Hall, with Tabea Zimmermann at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn, with Gidon Kremer, Steven Isserlis, and Christian Tetzlaff in Germany, and in New York City with the Jupiter Chamber Players.

Since his debut with the Utah Symphony at age nine, William has performed with conductors such as Marin Alsop, Christian Arming, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Michel Tabachnik, and Hugh Wolff. A native of Salt Lake City, William first heard the violin when he was 3 and began taking lessons at age 4 with Natalie Reed, followed by Deborah Moench. At age 10, he began studying with Robert Lipsett at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, where he studied until the age of 17.

After studying at the Juilliard School for two years with Itzhak Perlman, William returned to Los Angeles to continue studying with Robert Lipsett at the Colburn Conservatory. He then went on to study at the Kronberg Academy in Germany with Christian Tetzlaff. William is an alumnus of the Verbier Academy in Switzerland, the Perlman Music Program, and the Aspen Music Festival.