In 1969, Tilson Thomas won the Koussevitzky Prize and was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony. Ten days later he came to international recognition, replacing Music Director William Steinberg in mid-concert at Lincoln Center. He went on to become the BSO’s Associate Conductor, then Principal Guest Conductor. He has also served as director of the Ojai Festival, Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Principal Conductor of the Great Woods Festival. He became Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1988 and now serves as Principal Guest Conductor. For a decade, he served as co-Artistic Director of Japan’s Pacific Music Festival, which he and Leonard Bernstein inaugurated in 1990, and he continues as Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, which he founded in 1988. Michael Tilson Thomas’s recordings have won numerous international awards, and his recorded repertory reflects interests arising from work as conductor, composer, and pianist. His television credits include the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts, and in 2004, he and the SFS launched Keeping Score on PBS. His compositions include From the Diary of Anne Frank, Shówa/ Shoáh (commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing), Poems of Emily Dickinson, Urban Legend, Island Music, and Notturno. Among his honors are Columbia University’s Ditson Award for services to American music and Musical America’s 1995 Conductor of the Year award. He is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of France, was selected as Gramophone 2005 Artist of the Year, was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in February, was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama.
Carey Bell, clarinet Carey Bell became SFS Principal Clarinetist and occupant of the William R. and Gretchen B. Kimball Chair in 2007 and made his solo debut with the Orchestra in 2008, in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. As a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, he has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the Bay Area. He has held principal positions with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Syracuse Symphony, and he served as acting principal clarinetist of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. His summer engagements have included Music@Menlo, Oregon Bach Festival, Music in the Vineyards, Telluride Chamber Music Festival, and the Skaneateles Music Festival. Bell received degrees in performance and composition from the University of Michigan, where he studied with clarinetist Fred Ormand and composers William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, Michael Daugherty, and Evan Chambers. During his time in Michigan he participated in summer fellowships at Tanglewood and the Music Academy of the West. After graduating, he continued his clarinet training at DePaul University with Larry Combs and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, piano Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, first-prize winner in the 2006 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, made his debuts in the Young Concert Artists Series in New York at Zankel Hall and in Washington, D.C., at the Kennedy Center. This past season he appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, performed at the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival in New York, and appeared in recital with the La Jolla Music Society. Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle this playbill for reuse.
san francisco symphony
Piatigorsky and Heifetz master classes and, as a student of Friedelind Wagner, an assistant conductor at Bayreuth.
Born in France in 1986, Neuburger began studying piano with Claude Maillols at the Académie Maurice Ravel at age 9. He studied organ and composition with Emile Naoumoff and Jean-François Zygel. At the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, he received highest honors in piano, accompaniment, and chamber music. Neuburger has performed with such ensembles as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, London Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony, Osaka Philharmonic, Orchestre National d’Île de France, and NHK Symphony and makes his San Francisco Symphony debut this week. He has made concerto debuts in Shanghai with the Shanghai Philharmonic in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and in Tokyo with the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3. In 2007, he was featured in the re-opening of Paris’s Salle Pleyel. He has performed recitals at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Louvre in Paris, and at Chopin festivals in Poland and Germany. Among his numerous honors are first prize at the 2002 Ettlingen International Competition for Young Pianists; second prize and the Beethoven Prize at the 2004 International José Iturbi Competition in Valencia, Spain; the Sacem Prize at the 2004 Long-Thibaud Competition in Paris; and second prize at the 2005 London International Piano Competition. Neuburger’s recording of music by Czerny and Liszt is on the Mirare label. For DiscAuvers, he has recorded the complete Chopin Etudes, another recording of Chopin works, and a Brahms disc. He was recently appointed professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris.
The San Francisco Symphony The San Francisco Symphony gave its first concerts in 1911 and has grown in acclaim under a succession of music directors: Henry Hadley, Alfred Hertz, Basil Cameron, Issay Dobrowen, Pierre Monteux, Enrique Jordá, Josef Krips, Seiji Ozawa, Edo de Waart, Herbert Blomstedt, and, since 1995, Michael Tilson Thomas. The SFS has won such recording awards as France’s Grand Prix du Disque, Britain’s Gramophone Award, and the Grammy in the U.S. For RCA Red Seal, Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFS have recorded music from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Mahler’s Das klagende Lied, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, two Copland collections, a Gershwin collection, Stravinsky ballets (Le Sacre du printemps, The Firebird, and Perséphone), and Charles Ives: An American Journey. Their cycle of Mahler symphonies has received seven Grammys and is available on the Symphony’s own label, SFS Media, for which they have also recorded an album of the composer’s orchestral songs. Some of the most important conductors of the past and recent years have been guests on the SFS podium, among them Bruno Walter, Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, and Sir Georg Solti, and the list of composers who have led the orchestra includes Stravinsky, Ravel, Copland, and John Adams. The SFS Youth Orchestra, founded in 1980, has become known around the world, as has the SFS Chorus, heard on recordings and on the soundtracks of such films as Amadeus and Godfather III. For two decades, the SFS Adventures in Music program has brought music to every child in grades 1 through 5 in San Francisco’s public schools. SFS radio broadcasts, the first in the U.S. to feature symphonic music when they began in 1926, today carry the Orchestra’s concerts across the country. In a multimedia program designed to make classical music accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, the SFS has launched Keeping Score on PBS, DVD, radio (The MTT Files), and at the Web site keepingscore.org. San Francisco Symphony recordings are available at shopsfsymphony.org.
MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2010 |
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