Harpschordist & Conductor Jeanette Sorrell Conducts BNY Mellon Grand Classics Today

Jeanette Sorrell returns to Heinz Hall as guest conductor and harpsichordist for Bach's Coffeehouse, a BNY Mellon Grand Classics weekend with concerts today, March 20 and Sunday, March 22.

Sorrell joins the Pittsburgh Symphony for the first time since her stunning Heinz Hall debut in 2013. Sorrell's program features pieces reminiscent of Bach's performances at Zimmerman's Coffeehouse in Leipzig, where he often went to unwind. Works like Bach's Sinfonia, Telemann's Grillen and Vivaldi's La Follia highlight this concert along with solo and duo performances from various Pittsburgh Symphony members. Soloists include Lorna McGhee, principal flute, and Sorrell on harpsichord. Duo performances include principal cello Anne Martindale Williams with associate principal cello David Premo; principal bass Jeffrey Turner with bassist John Moore; principal oboe Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida with concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley; and Bendix-Balgley with principal second violin Jennifer Ross.

Each BNY Mellon Grand Classics concert is part of the Explore & Engage program, which includes pre-concert talks, exhibits, display boards and interactive activities that illuminate the music, composers and the time in which they were created. A pre-concert talk, open to all ticket holders, led by Resident Conductor Fawzi Haimor will occur on stage at 6:30 p.m. each evening.

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and 2:30 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets, ranging in price from $25.75 to $105.75, can be purchased by calling the Heinz Hall box office at 412-392-4900 or visiting pittsburghsymphony.org.

The Pittsburgh Symphony would like to recognize and thank BNY Mellon for its 2014-2015 title sponsorship of BNY Mellon Grand Classics. Fairmont Pittsburgh is the official hotel of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Delta Air Lines is the official airline of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Award-winning harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrell makes use of baroque dramatic devices, including rhetoric and harmonic tension and release, to bring baroque repertoire to life in a highly personal and communicative way. Sorrell made her much-acclaimed debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in April 2013 as conductor and soloist in the complete Brandenburg Concertos. Other conducting engagements have included the Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, Handel & Haydn Society in Boston (conductor and soloist), the Opera Theatre of St Louis with the St Louis Symphony (conductor), the Grand Rapids Symphony (conductor and soloist) and the Cleveland Orchestra (guest keyboard artist). In addition, in February 2014, Sorrell filled in for British conductor Richard Egarr on five days' notice, leading the complete Brandenburg Concertos and playing the harpsichord solo in Brandenburg No. 5, for the closing concert of the Houston Early Music Festival in its inaugural year. Internationally, Sorrell has led sold-out concerts at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Madrid Royal Theatre, the Grand Théâtre de l'Opéra in Bordeaux, and major halls in Lisbon, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Boston on tour with Apollo's Fire Baroque Orchestra, of which she is the founder and music director. She has also led Apollo's Fire in two major U.S. tours of the Monteverdi Vespers in 2011 and 2014, under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts. Prior tour engagements included the Aspen Music Festival, Library of Congress, the Chautauqua Institution and the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. Sorrell is a two-time recipient of the prestigious American Masterpieces grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the research and production of Come to the River. Her awards include an honorary doctorate from Case Western University, the Bodky Award from the Cambridge Society of Early Music and the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society. Passionate about guiding the next generation of performers, Sorrell has led many baroque projects for Oberlin Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music. She also has developed a highly successful Young Artist Apprentice Program to provide pre-professional training for talented period-instrument students under the auspices of Apollo's Fire. Born in the United States of Swiss and American parents, Sorrell was one of the youngest students ever accepted to the prestigious conducting courses of the Aspen and the Tanglewood music festivals. She studied conducting under Robert Spano, Roger Norrington and Leonard Bernstein, and harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam. She won both the First Prize and the Audience Choice Award in the 1991 Spivey International Harpsichord Competition. She holds an Artist Diploma from Oberlin Conservatory, where upon graduation she was invited to join the faculty of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute.

Noah Bendix-Balgley has thrilled and moved audiences around the world with his performances. A Laureate of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, he also won 3rd prize and a special prize for creativity at the 2008 Long-Thibaud International Competition in Paris. Bendix-Balgley won the 1st prize at the 2011 Vibrarte International Music Competition in Paris and was awarded 1st Prize and a special prize for best Bach interpretation at the 14th International Violin Competition "Andrea Postacchini" in Fermo, Italy. Bendix-Balgley has appeared as a soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre National de Belgique, I Pomeriggi Musicale of Milan, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana (Italy), Orchestre Royal Chambre de Wallonie (Belgium), the Binghamton Philharmonic and the Asheville Symphony (USA). In 2011, Bendix-Balgley was appointed concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. His Pittsburgh debut recital in January 2012 was named the "Best Classical Concert of 2012" by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Bendix-Balgley's performance with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, featuring his own original cadenzas, was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike. Bendix-Balgley has also performed his own version of The Star-Spangled Banner for solo violin in front of 39,000 fans at the Pittsburgh Pirates Opening Day at PNC Park. Bendix-Balgley is a passionate and experienced chamber musician. He has performed on North American tour with the Miro String Quartet. From 2008 to 2011, he was the 1st violinist of the Munich-based Athlos String Quartet, which won a special prize at the 2009 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Competition in Berlin, and performed throughout Europe. He has performed with artists including Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Gary Hoffman, Emanuel Ax, Ralph Kirshbaum, and percussionist Colin Currie. Mr. Bendix-Balgley has appeared at numerous festivals in Europe and North America, including the Verbier Festival, the Sarasota Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, and Chamber Music Connects the World in Kronberg, Germany. Born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1984, he began playing violin at age 4. At age 9, he played for Lord Yehudi Menuhin in Switzerland. Bendix-Balgley graduated from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the Munich Hochschule. His principal teachers were Mauricio Fuks, Christoph Poppen and Ana Chumachenco. In his spare time, he enjoys playing klezmer music. He has played with world-renowned klezmer groups such as Brave Old World, and has taught klezmer violin at workshops in Europe and in the United States. In 2013, Bendix- Balgley joined the faculty of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music as an artist lecturer in chamber music.

Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida has been principal oboe of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since 1991. For two years prior, she was associate principal oboe of the Philadelphia Orchestra. DeAlmeida has been featured with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in concertos by Bach, Haydn, Vaughan Williams, Strauss, Mozart and Francaix. She has performed Bach's Concerto for Violin and Oboe with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Vladimir Spivakov, Andres Cardenes, Pinchas Zukerman and Noah Bendix-Balgley. DeAlmeida has been honored with the commissioning of three oboe concerti by the Pittsburgh Symphony. The first one, commissioned by Lorin Maazel, was composed by Leonardo Balada and premiered in 1993 with Lorin Maazel conducting. The following season she recorded it with Maazel and the symphony for New World records. The second Pittsburgh commission for DeAlmeida was written by Lucas Richman. She premiered it in 2006 with the Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. In 2015, she recorded this concerto with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Lucas Richman conducting, for Albany Records. A third commissioned concerto, composed by Alan Fletcher, will be premiered with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck in June 2015. DeAlmeida has also appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Haddonfield Symphony, the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia and the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic. DeAlmeida is an avid chamber musician, having performed nine full recitals at Carnegie Mellon University since 1993. Each summer since 2002, she performs and teaches as a faculty member of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. DeAlmeida has also performed at the Strings Festival in Steamboat Springs, Colorado; the La Jolla Festival in La Jolla, California; and the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. In November 2002, DeAlmeida's first solo CD was released on the Boston Records label. Her second solo CD, entitled Mist Over the Lake on the Crystal Record label, was released in 2006 to rave reviews. She can also be heard on Crystal Records' recording of Sir Andre Previn's Sonata for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano with Sir Andre Previn, as well as all the Pittsburgh Symphony recordings since 1991 under Lorin Maazel, Mariss Jansons, Marek Janowski and Manfred Honeck. In 2009, DeAlmeida was asked to travel to Berlin to perform and record the German Requiem of Brahms with Marek Janowski and the Radio Orchestra of Berlin (RSB) on the Pentatone label. She has been associate teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Music since 2012, and a faculty member there since 1991. She has held teaching positions at Temple University in Philadelphia and Trenton State College in New Jersey, and has also been invited to teach at the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland as well as the New World Symphony. In 2003, DeAlmeida was featured on national television on the CBS "Early Show" in a story relating to the oboe and its remarkable health benefits for asthma sufferers, which led to her work as an ambassador for the American Respiratory Alliance in Pittsburgh. She participates in the Pittsburgh Symphony's Education and Community Engagement department playing and speaking to young people in various venues throughout the Pittsburgh area. DeAlmeida received the Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Michigan, studying with Arno Mariotti, and the Master of Music degree from Temple University, as a student of Richard Woodhams. She proudly plays on F. Loree oboes of Paris, France.

Scottish-born Lorna McGhee is principal flute with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and has performed as guest principal with Chicago Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields and Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Before emigrating to North America in 1998, McGhee was co-principal flute of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in England. As a soloist, she has given concerto performances with the London Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in the UK; Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Philharmonia and Victoria Symphony in Canada; and the Nashville Chamber Orchestra and Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra in the United States. A career highlight was a performance of Penderecki's flute concerto with the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra under the baton of the composer in 2004. As a chamber musician and recitalist, she has performed throughout Europe and North America in such venues as London's Wigmore Hall, Barge Music in New York, the Louvre, Paris and the Schubertsaal of Vienna's Konzerthaus. McGhee is often featured in chamber music festivals in Canada, the United States and Australia. Her performances have been broadcast on CBC Radio in Canada, BBC Radio, NPR (USA), Netherlands Radio and ABC (Australia). As a member of Trio Verlaine (with Heidi Krutzen, harp and David Harding, viola) McGhee has most recently recorded Fin de Siècle, a CD of music by Debussy and Ravel for Skylark Music. Both the Trio and Duo are committed to broadening the repertoire and have contributed six new commissions to date. Having taught at the University of Michigan and the University of British Columbia, McGhee has given master classes at universities and conservatoires in the UK, United States and Canada, including the Juilliard School, the Royal Academy of Music and the Banff International Centre for the Arts. She is now an honorary "Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music."

John Moore became a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1996 when he was hired by Music Director Lorin Maazel. He moved to Pittsburgh from San Diego where he had been a member of the San Diego Symphony since 1991. He also held the title of principal bass with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. Moore earned his Bachelor of Music degree at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1988 studying the double bass with the Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Roger Scott. Moore continued his studies with Lawrence Wolfe at the New England Conservatory in 1988. He won first place in the La Jolla Symphony Solo Competition in 1993 performing the Koussevitsky double bass concerto. Moore has performed with numerous music festivals including the National Repertory Orchestra, the Tanglewood Music Festival, Shleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Colorado Music Festival, Strings in the Mountains and the Grand Teton Music Festival. Moore was the associate principal bass with the Honolulu Symphony from 1989 to 1991 and served as a lecturer at the University of Hawaii in 1991. In 1996, he was awarded the position of principal bass of the Columbus Symphony. He served interim double bass professor at Penn State University in 2008. In recent years, Moore has been involved with early music and has performed occasionally with Pittsburgh's Chatham Baroque, appearing in Chatham's December 2013 performances of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. He has performed extensively as a soloist and as a chamber musician in and around Pittsburgh since 1996. Moore is married to Susanne Park, a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony's first violin section. They live in Lawrenceville with their son, Oliver. Moore plays on a 200-year-old English bass made by Jon Betts.

Cellist David Premo joined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1992, was promoted to fourth chair, a non-rotating position in 1994, and subsequent to a national audition in 1999, he was offered the position of assistant principal. Following another round of national auditions, Premo was awarded the position of associate principal in 2001. Additionally, Premo has been artist-lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University since 1994, providing private cello instruction, coaching chamber music groups and teaching an orchestra repertoire class. Premo came to Pittsburgh from Washington, D.C., where he served as associate principal of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra from 1980 until 1991. During his tenure in Washington, Premo performed chamber music at the Phillips Collection, the Corcorcan Gallery and the Library of Congress, and served on numerous occasions as principal cellist with the American Chamber Orchestra, the National Gallery Orchestra and the Wolf Trap Festival Orchestra, among others. Premo performed as a member of the National Symphony Orchestra, both at the Kennedy Center and on several United States and European tours. Since coming to Pittsburgh, Premo has become a frequently requested chamber musician and soloist, appearing on Shadyside and Rodef Shalom chamber music series and, in 1993, performing the Elgar Cello Concerto with the Edgewood Symphony. In 1995, Premo and Christopher Wu (violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony and winner of the 1994 Passamaneck Award) won the Pittsburgh Concert Society Competition. In 1996, Premo won the prestigious Passamaneck Award entitling him to a solo recital which he gave in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Hall in April 1997. Premo studied cello in his native Chicago with Margaret Evans of the Chicago Symphony, later with Robert Newkirk at Catholic University, and most recently with Janos Starker at Indiana University. His cello was made in approximately 1860 by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume.

Jeffrey Turner is the principal bassist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. A native of South Carolina, Turner completed his Bachelor's degree with James VanDemark at the Eastman School of Music. His other teachers include Lawrence Hurst and Robert Gladstone. Before joining the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1987, Turner was the principal bass of the New American Chamber Orchestra from 1984 to 1986, and played with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for the 1986-87 season. Turner currently serves as the Director of Orchestral Studies at Duquesne University, where he is the conductor of the Duquesne Symphony Orchestra. He holds a master's degree in conducting from Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied with Dr. Robert Page. As a conductor, Turner has served in recent years as artistic director of the City Music Center Chamber Orchestraand as music director of the Pittsburgh Live Chamber Orchestra. Locally, Turner has also conducted opera productions at CMU, as well as Honors Orchestra Festivals for the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association. Turner has served as visiting professor at the Eastman School of Music, Indiana University and the University of Maryland, and as a faculty member of Carnegie Mellon University. At Duquesne University, Turner has served as chair of strings and as artistic director of City Music Center's Young Bassist Program. As winner of the Y Music Society's Passamaneck Award, Turner appeared in a critically acclaimed recital at Carnegie Music Hall in 1989. He was also a winner of the 1990 Pittsburgh Concert Society's Artist Award. Turner gives annual recitals and master classes throughout the world, and serves as resident artist for many annual festivals, including the Pacific Music Festival, The National Orchestral Institute, the Korsholm Festival (Finland), Indiana University's Summer Music Festival and The Asian Youth Orchestra (Hong Kong). Turner has been a faculty member for International Workshops in Graz, Austria; Lausanne, Switzerland; and Glasgow, Scotland. He is featured as recitalist, clinician and competition judge at the conventions of The International Society of Bassists. From 1988 to 1992, Turner was the executive director of the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Project, a yearly series of concerts and educational programs featuring Pittsburgh's finest musicians in collaboration.

Anne Martindale Williams has enjoyed a successful career as principal cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since 1979. Throughout her tenure with the orchestra, she has often been featured as soloist both in Pittsburgh and on tour in New York at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall. Williams was soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony in the Pittsburgh premier of The Giving Tree conducted by the composer, Lorin Maazel. She has also collaborated with guest artists such as Yehudi Menuhin, André Previn, the Emerson Quartet, Lynn Harrell, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham and Pinchas Zukerman in numerous chamber music performances. She made her London debut performing Dvo?ák's Cello Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic, Andre Previn conducting. Her solo in The Swan on the Pittsburgh Symphony's recording of Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns was described by Grammophon critic Edward Greenfield as "...the most memorable performance of all." Williams divides her time between the orchestra, teaching at Carnegie Mellon University, and solo and chamber music performances in America, Europe and the Far East. She has appeared in several nationally televised productions including Concertos, produced by the BBC and Previn and the Pittsburgh, produced by WQED. She has given master classes at many universities and festivals throughout the country, including The Curtis Institute of Music, SUNY at Stony Brook, Manhattan School of Music, the New World Symphony in Miami, the National Orchestral Institute, Aspen, Credo at Oberlin College and the Masterworks Festival. She also has performed at many of America's prestigious summer music festivals including Aspen, Caramoor, Skaneateles, Maui, Rockport Festivals in Massachusetts and Maine, Grand Teton, Strings Festival in Steamboat Springs, Orcas Island, and Mainly Mozart in San Diego. For many years she has enjoyed performing throughout the country with her Piano Trio, which includes her good friends Andrés Cárdenes and David Deveau. Williams has performed numerous times as soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, performing Schumann's Concerto in A minor, Tippett's Triple Concerto, Previn's Reflections, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 6, Strauss's Don Quixote, Bloch's Schelomo, Dvo?ák's Cello Concerto, Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain, Saint-Saëns' Concerto No. 1 and Brahms' Double Concerto, as well as Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet. In recent seasons, she was featured in Haydn's Concerto in C, Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations, Elgar's Cello Concerto, and Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Cello, Oboe, Bassoon and Orchestra, and Walton's Cello Concerto. Williams is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Orlando Cole. Her Tecchler cello was made in Rome in 1701. Her husband, Joe, is the director of student ministries at Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church in Mount Lebanon. They reside in Pittsburgh with their daughter, Claire.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, known for its artistic excellence for more than 119 years, is credited with a rich history of the world's finest conductors and musicians, and a strong commitment to the Pittsburgh region and its citizens. Past music directors have included Fritz Reiner (1938-1948), William Steinberg (1952-1976), Andre Previn (1976-1984), Lorin Maazel (1984-1996) and Mariss Jansons (1995-2004). This tradition of outstanding international music directors was furthered in fall 2008, when Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck became music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. The orchestra has been at the forefront of championing new American works, and gave the first performance of Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 1 "Jeremiah" in 1944. The Pittsburgh Symphony has a long and illustrious history in the areas of recordings and radio concerts. As early as 1936, the Pittsburgh Symphony broadcast on the airwaves coast-to-coast and in the late 1970s it made the ground breaking PBS series Previn and the Pittsburgh. The orchestra has received increased national attention since 1982 through network radio broadcasts on Public Radio International, produced by Classical WQED-FM 89.3, made possible by the musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. With a long and distinguished history of touring both domestically and overseas since 1900-including 36 international tours to Europe, the Far East and South America-the Pittsburgh Symphony continues to be critically acclaimed as one of the world's greatest orchestras.

Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts is owned and operated by Pittsburgh Symphony, Inc., a non-profit organization, and is the year-round home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The cornerstone of Pittsburgh's Cultural District, Heinz Hall also hosts many other events that do not feature its world-renowned orchestra, including Broadway shows, comedians, speakers and much more. For a full calendar of upcoming non-symphony events at the hall, visit heinzhall.org

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