Peninsula Symphony Orchestra Presents THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH This Weekend

The Peninsula Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Mitchell Sardou Klein, will continue its 65th anniversary season with a pair of concerts entitled "Fountain of Youth" featuring the world premiere of a new Double Concerto for Cello, Clarinet and Orchestra by young composer and clarinetist Jonathan Russell with the composer and award-winning young cellist Nathan Chan as soloistsMarch 21 and 22 in San Mateo and Cupertino. The concerts will also include Grieg's In Autumn, the Intermezzo, Nocturne and Wedding March from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream; Lalo's Cello Concerto with Nathan Chan and Debussy's Premiere Rapsodie for Clarinet and Orchestra with Jonathan Russell.The concerts will be given tonight, March 21, at 8 pm at the San Mateo Performing Arts Center and March 22, at 8 pm at Flint Center/DeAnza College. For information and tickets, visitwww.peninsulasymphony.org .

Tickets are priced $20-$40 and may be purchased at www.peninsulasymphony.org or by calling 650-941-5291.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Jonathan Russell is a composer, clarinetist, conductor, and educator who is especially known for his innovative bass clarinet and clarinet ensemble compositions, his works for bass clarinet duo, bass clarinet quartet, bass clarinet soloists, and clarinet ensembles have been performed around the world and are radically expanding the technical and stylistic possibilities of these genres.

He has received commissions from ensembles such as the San Francisco Symphony, Empyrean Ensemble, ADORNO Ensemble, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, Wild Rumpus, Great Noise Ensemble, and Imani Winds, and performances from numerous other ensembles and performers, including the Berkeley Symphony, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, So Percussion, Third Coast Percussion, the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, The Living Earth Show, DZ4, the BluePrint Project, REDSHIFT, Roomful of Teeth, Ensemble Avalon, Twiolins, the new music bands FIREWORKS, Capital M, and Oogog, pianist-percussionist Danny Holt, and pianists Sarah Cahill, Lisa Moore, Lara Downes, Matthew McCright, Kate Campbell, and Regina Schaffer. His works are published by Potenza Music Publishing, BCP Music, and Peer Music, and his music has been recorded by the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo, the Kairos Consort, pianist Jeffrey Jacob, The Living Earth show, and Imani Winds. Upcoming projects include commissions from New Keys to write a piece for five pianists and five percussionists, and a clarinet-cello double concerto for the Peninsula Symphony.

An avid performer on clarinet and bass clarinet, Mr. Russell is a member of the heavy metal-inspired Edmund Welles bass clarinet quartet and the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo, which has commissioned numerous new works and released two CDs of new American bass clarinet duets. He has appeared as soloist with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the West Point Military Academy Band, Harvard's Bach Society Orchestra, the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, the Great Noise Ensemble, the NakedEye Ensemble, and the Omaha Symphonic Winds. He has been a member of the new music ensemble Hotel Elefant, and has appeared as clarinetist with the Marin Symphony, Ensemble Parallele, the Great Noise Ensemble, REDSHIFT, and the klezmer bands Zoyres, Machaya, and Adama. He is co-founder of the Switchboard Music Festival, an annual eight-hour marathon concert that brings together the San Francisco Bay Area's most creative and innovative composers and performers.

Mr. Russell frequently conducts his own compositions, as well as premieres of works by student and emerging composers. He has appeared as guest conductor with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, the Switchboard Music Festival, the Johns Hopkins Clarinet Choir, the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra, the Los Angeles Clarinet Choir, and the Claremont Clarinet Festival, where he was the 2011 and 2013 Artist-in-Residence.

A dedicated educator, he has served on the Music Theory Faculty at San Francisco Conservatory and on the Composition Faculty at the Conservatory's Adult Extension and Preparatory Divisions. With Sqwonk and Edmund Welles, he has led workshops in Composition and Bass Clarinet Performance at San Francisco Conservatory, Princeton University, Catholic University, UCLA, Cornell University, Ithaca College, UT Austin, Berkeley High School, the Vandoren Clarinet Ensemble Festival, and the Claremont Clarinet Festival.

Mr. Russell has served as Music Director for two dance productions with choreographers Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton. His work on their June 2011 production, The Experience of Flight in Dreams, earned him a nomination for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award in the category of "Outstanding Achievement in Music/Sound/Text." He has a B.A. in Music from Harvard University and an M.M. in Music Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His primary composition teachers have included Paul Lansky, Dmitri Tymoczko, Dan Trueman, Barbara White, Steve Mackey, Dan Becker, Elinor Armer, Eric Sawyer, John Stewart, and Eric Ewazen. His clarinet teachers have included Janet Greene, Alan Kay, and Jo-Ann Sternberg. He is currently a PhD Candidate in the composition program at Princeton University.

Nineteen-year-old cellist Nathan Chan demonstrated his talent for music at an early age. Before he was two, he could mimic the styles of conductors he saw on music videos. As a toddler, his imitations were so intuitively musical that he caught the attention of San Francisco Opera Assistant Conductor Sara Jobin. Under her eye, he made his debut as a conductor at age three, leading the San Jose Chamber Orchestra in a set of Mozart variations. This was followed by a guest appearance with the Palo Alto Philharmonic a year later, conducting Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. At five, he began formal music lessons with cellist Irene Sharp. He later studied with Sieun Lin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Nathan Chan has performed as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the UK Northern Sinfonia, Albany Symphony, Marin Symphony and Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra, among others. He has performed for the Vancouver Recital Society, the Great Eastern International Kids Festival "Prodigies of the World" concert in Singapore, the Emmy-award winning national radio program From The Top and NPR's Performance Today with Fred Child. In 2009, he was featured in The World's Greatest Musical Prodigies, a three-part British series documenting a global search for talented musicians under the age of fifteen, in which Chan and three other performers gave the world premiere of the Velesslavista Quadruple Concerto, composed by Alexander Prior. Mr. Chan has performed benefit concerts for causes such as global warming, the American Alzheimer Association, Friends of Children with Special Needs and the Foundation for the Fine & Performing Arts. For his contributions to the community, he won the Peninsula Arts Council's Ray Lorenzato Diamond Arts Award in 2007. In 2006, Nathan Chan appeared in The Music in Me, a documentary that aired on the HBO network and won the Peabody Award. This program led to a performance in Carnegie Hall and caught the attention of singer Roberta Flack, who invited Mr. Chan to collaborate on her project of Beatles songs for Sony Records.

Mr. Chan is a recipient of the Richard and Brooke Kamin Rapaport Fellowship at Columbia University and the prestigious 2012 Davidson Fellowship for his project entitled, "The Importance of Passion". He recently made his debut in Avery Fisher Hall playing Haydn's Cello Concerto in C Major with the Little Orchestra Society as well as with the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin performing Strauss' "Don Quixote" as the winner of the 2013 Juilliard Cello Concerto Competition. Nathan has a fast growing Internet presence; to date, he has over 3 million views on YouTube.

He currently attends the Columbia University-Juilliard School Exchange. Chan now studies with Richard Aaron at Juilliard in New York City.

ABOUT PENINSULA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Peninsula Symphony Orchestra began in 1949, when two distinct musical ensembles--the Sequoia Symphony & the Peninsula Symphony--and one conductor, Russian-born violinist/conductor Aaron Sten, joined forces. In 1951, under Vincent Guida, symphony clarinetist and business manager, the organization was incorporated as a non-profit association, and a formal board was chosen. With the arrival of current conductor Mitchell Sardou Klein, the Peninsula Symphony grew from a grassroots ensemble to a polished 90-plus member orchestra of well-trained community musicians. The Peninsula Youth Orchestra was established in the spring of 1997, with Mitchell Sardou Klein serving as the Music Director. Today, Peninsula Symphony Orchestra works to enrich the lives of people in the community with inspiring, innovative, high-quality musical presentations at affordable prices, and to promote music education through engaging programs for children and adults.

About Mitchell Sardou Klein

Mitchell Sardou Klein, whose performances on four continents have garnered wide acclaim, enters his 29thseason as Music Director and Conductor of the Peninsula Symphony and his 17th season as founding Music Director of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra. He regularly guest conducts orchestras in California, throughout the United States, and in Europe.

He made his debut with Symphony Silicon Valley in two sold-out performances in January, 2012, and his other recent appearances as a guest conductor in California include the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Inland Empire/Riverside Philharmonic, Ballet San Jose, the California Riverside Ballet and the Livermore-Amador Philharmonic. Concerts elsewhere have included his return to Europe to guest conduct the New Polish Philharmonic and the Suddettic Philharmonic, concert tours of England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Australia and New Zealand with PYO, numerous return engagements to the San Jose Symphony (the predecessor of Symphony Silicon Valley), and his return to the podium of the Santa Cruz Symphony. Prior guest conducting appearances have included the Seattle Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Eastern Philharmonic, Flagstaff Festival Symphony, Amarillo Symphony, Lexington Philharmonic, South Bend Symphony, and many others. Maestro Klein also has extensive experience in conducting ballet orchestras, including the Kansas City, Lone Star, Oakland, and Westport Ballets, as well as the Theater Ballet of San Francisco and les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.

Maestro Klein directed over a hundred concerts as Associate Conductor of the Kansas City Philharmonic (where he was also Principal Pops Conductor and Principal Conductor of Starlight Theater, the Philharmonic's summer home), and also served as Music Director of the Santa Cruz Symphony.

Maestro Klein is a winner of many prestigious awards, including the 2008 Diamond Award for Best Individual Artist, the Silver Lei Award from the 2009 Honolulu Film Festival (for the World Premiere of Giancarlo Aquilanti's La Poverta), the 2000 ASCAP Award for Programming of American Music on Foreign Tour, the 2001 Jullie Billiart Award from the College of Notre Dame for Outstanding Community Service, a 1996 award for the year's best television performance program in the Western States (for the one-hour PBS program about him and the Peninsula Symphony) as well as the 1993 Bravo Award for his contribution to the Bay Area's cultural life.

Mr. Klein was born in New York City, into a musical family that included members of the Claremont and Budapest String Quartets. He began cello studies at age four with his father, Irving Klein, founder of the Claremont Quartet. His mother, Elaine Hartong Klein, danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.

Since 1984, he has been Director of the Irving M. Klein International String Competition. Held in San Francisco each June, the Competition has become one of the most prominent in the world, featuring prizes totaling over $25,000, attracting applicants from more than twenty nations annually, and launching numerous major international concert careers.

Cited for his "keen judgment, tight orchestral discipline, feeling for tempo, and unerring control," Maestro Klein has conducted many significant world, American, and West Coast premieres, including works by Bohuslav Martinu, Meyer Kupferman, Joan Tower, Hans Kox, George Barati, Benjamin Lees, Giancarlo Aguilanti, Melissa Hui, Rodion Shchedrin, Brian Holmes, Ron Miller, Lee Actor, Alvin Brehm, and Margaret Garwood. He has appeared frequently on national and international broadcasts, including National Public Radio, the Voice of America, the WFMT Fine Arts Network, PBS Television, and KQED television. He lives in Oakland, California with his wife, violist Patricia Whaley. Their daughter, Elizabeth, lives and works in New York City.

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