Glenn Triest
Glenn Triest
Curating Concerts in Pittsburgh and Tucson
A New Crop of Sphinx Laureates The 18th annual Sphinx Competition for black and Latino string players wrapped up on February 1 with a concert at Detroit’s Max M. Fisher Music Center featuring competition winners in performance with the professional Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, led by Andrew Grams. In the Senior Division, the $50,000 first-place award went to nineteenyear-old violinist Eduardo Rios (left), a student at the Colburn School in Los Angeles. Awarded $10,000 as the Junior Division’s top laureate was Hannah White (right), a fourteen-year-old violinist from Germantown, Wis. Second- and third-place awards in the Senior Division, worth $20,000 and $10,000, went to violist Michael Casimir and Annelle Gregory, respectively. As top laureates, Rios and White will both have the opportunity to perform with orchestras through the Sphinx Soloist Program.
NY-California Connections
In January the New York Philharmonic launched the first American partnership in its Global Academy Fellowship Program as ten competitively selected students from California’s Music Academy of the West—the first class of Zarin Mehta Fellows—came to New York for eleven days of coaching, mentoring, mock auditions, rehearsals, and side-by-side performances with the Philharmonic under Music Director Alan Gilbert. Pictured at the January 8 subscription concert is 24-year-old Sean Krissman, a 2014 MAW student, performing alongside Mark Nuccio, the Philharmonic’s associate principal clarinet. The Global Academy also includes a four-year partnership with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra inaugurated last September. It establishes a Shanghai Orchestra Academy in conjunction with the Shanghai Conservatory, as well as annual residencies in Shanghai by Gilbert and the Philharmonic.
Two new musician-curated chamber music series have launched this season, featuring members of the Pittsburgh and Tucson orchestras. On March 3, Pittsburgh Symphony musicians performed music from Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale at Wigle Whiskey Barrelhouse & Whiskey Garden on the city’s North Side. The performance was one of three in the PSO’s Play N’at series this season, with others taking place at Livermore Cloak Room in the East Liberty neighborhood and at the restaurant Franktuary in the Lawrenceville neighborhood. Classical music-themed cocktails and refreshments were served, door prizes were given out, and discounted tickets to PSO concerts were for sale. Tucson Symphony Orchestra percussionists performed on February 22 at Tucson Symphony Center in the orchestra’s TSO Center Stage Series, launched in November and featuring TSO members performing concerts of their own choice. On the program was music by Vivaldi performed on steel pan drums, as well as selections by Philip Glass, West African compositions, and a sonata for nonpitched percussion. Previous TSO Center Stage programs have featured the TSO brass section, Concertmaster Lauren Roth, and pianist Paula Fan.
Chris Lee
Pittsburgh Symphony musicians perform at Livermore Cloak Room (top photo) and at Wigle Whiskey Barrelhouse & Whiskey Garden (above).
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