Leon Botstein News

The Verdi Chorus kicks off its 39th season with their Spring Concert, Hélas mon Coeur, dedicated to the memory of Verdi Chorus patriarch Maestro Aurelio De La Vega, for two performances only at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica on May 14 and 15. 

Starlight will present the Kansas City premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA! at Starlight Theatre from May 13-15.

The Orchestra Now performs the final concert in its Carnegie Hall season on Thursday, May 12 at 7 pm, offering seldom-heard masterpieces from the late 1930s.

Brevard Music Center (BMC) presents The Brevard Project: Reimagining the Future of Orchestral Programming, a six-day intensive seminar and think-tank on orchestral programming intended for professionals and influencers in the orchestral field. Presented by Brevard Music Center in partnership with Bard College, the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the South Dakota Symphony, the University of Michigan School of Music, and Project Director Joseph Horowitz, The Brevard Project takes place July 11-16, 2022. The central goals of The Brevard Project are to re-evaluate the artistic mission of the American orchestra and to share the skills needed to curate a more comprehensive, more inclusive American orchestral repertoire.

Broadway Dallas and Broadway Across America will present the Dallas premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA! at the Winspear Opera House from May 31 – June 12, 2022 as part of the Germania Insurance Broadway Series presented by Broadway Dallas. 

Since its inception, the annual Bard SummerScape festival has presented a series of stellar revivals of important but neglected operas. This year's immersion in “Rachmaninoff and His World” features The Silent Woman (“Die Schweigsame Frau”), the only true comic opera by Rachmaninoff's close contemporary Richard Strauss.

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) will present the final program in the 2021-22 season of its popular Sight & Sound series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, April 10. 

Music Director Leon Botstein will lead the American Symphony Orchestra on March 24 in a tribute to the genre-defying genius of the great Duke Ellington with an all-Ellington symphonic concert at Carnegie Hall, where the composer played a series of annual concerts and premiered many of his greatest works, including Black, Brown, and Beige and New World A-Comin'.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will present the Washington, D.C. premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA! at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater April 5–10, 2022.

 Bard SummerScape will return this year with eight weeks of live dance, theater, music, and opera in New York’s Hudson Valley, June 23–August 14, 2022. SummerScape 2022 presents the world premieres of new commissions in both dance and theater.

The Kimmel Cultural Campus will present the Philadelphia premiere of the reimagined Rodgers & Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA!, running March 8 through March 20 at the Forrest Theatre. The 2021-22 national tour will mark the first time a First-Class Equity production of Oklahoma! has toured North America in more than 40 years.

The Orchestra Now presents the second program of the 2021-22 season in its popular Sight & Sound series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, February 20.

The American Symphony Orchestra celebrates its return to Carnegie Hall and its 60th anniversary season in 2021-22 on Friday, January 28, 2022 at 8 PM. The program, part of the Orchestra’s Vanguard Series conducted by Music Director Leon Botstein, features the U.S. premiere of Sergei Taneyev’s final work, At the Reading of a Psalm.

The Best of Broadway will present the Lowcountry premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA! at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center  May 21 & 22, 2022.  Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Monday, December 13 at 10AM.

The Orchestra Now performs two concerts in Manhattan in December, one with guest pianist Shai Wosner at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Orchestra’s popular Sight & Sound series (Dec. 5); and a free concert at Peter Norton Symphony Space offering works by Berlioz, Britten, Tan Dun, and Sibelius led by TŌN’s resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman (Dec. 19). 

The American Symphony Orchestra celebrates its return to the stage and its 60th anniversary season in 2021-22 with four full-orchestra programs at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, and a free opening concert titled Mahler in New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on December 16. The opening program focuses on composers whom Mahler had championed during his years in New York.

 The Orchestra Now will give its first Carnegie Hall concert of the season on Thursday, November 18 at 7 pm. The concert features the world premiere of award-winning composer Scott Wheeler’s Birds of America performed by renowned violinist Gil Shaham, and more.

One of the crowning glories of the 2021 Bard SummerScape season, the festival's lauded production of Ernest Chausson's only opera, King Arthur (“Le roi Arthus”), will be available for on-demand viewing from October 25 to November 1 on the Fisher Center's streaming service, UPSTREAMING.

The concert features acclaimed guest conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto, Musical America’s 2019 Conductor of the Year and music director of both the Orchestra of the Americas and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, the country’s most important orchestra. He leads TŌN and mezzo-soprano Solange Merdinian in Falla’s ballet score El Sombrero de Tres Picos, along with Debussy’s La Mer, Messiaen’s Le tombeau resplendissant, and Mexican composer José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango.

The cast of the national tour of Oklahoma! has been announced! The cast will feature Sasha Hutchings as Laurey Williams, Sean Grandillo as Curly McLain, Christopher Bannow as Jud Fry, Sis as Ado Annie Carnes, Hennessy Winkler as Will Parker, Benj Mirman as Ali Hakim, Barbara Walsh as Aunt Eller and more.