• Violin sensation Stefan Jackiw makes his CSO debut performing Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy
• All-new post-concert luncheon debuts on March 19

CINCINNATI – Young violin sensation Stefan Jackiw and Norwegian conductor Arild Remmereit make their exciting Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra debuts at historic Music Hall on Friday, March 19 at 11 a.m. and Saturday, March 20 at 8 p.m. The New York Times calls Mr. Remmereit “the hottest conductor you’ve never heard of,” and The Chicago Tribune declares the twenty-four-year-old Jackiw as, “…A legend in the making. He has everything he needs to make an exceptional career for himself – flawless technique, precocious musical understanding, and a sweet, singing tone.”  Maestro Remmereit opens the concert with Sibelius’ popular symphonic poem, Finlandia, with one of the most beloved melodies in all of music.  The program also includes Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy featuring Mr. Jackiw (pronounced Jackiv) and Tchaikovsky’s Polish Symphony.

Audience members are invited to attend Classical Conversations one hour before the performances on Friday, March 19 and Saturday, March 20 with guest speaker and CSO violinist Stacey Woolleey. CSO Assistant Conductor Ken Lam hosts the event.

The CSO is grateful to Johnson Investment Counsel for its generous sponsorship of “International Intrigue” The Fine Arts Fund Partner for these performances is Enquirer Media.

All-New Post-Concert Luncheon

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is piloting post-concert luncheons following the March 19 and March 26 morning concerts in Corbett Tower at Music Hall. Box lunches, catered by Le Boxx, are available for $12. A vegetarian option is available by request. Reservations can be made by noon the day prior to the concert by calling the CSO Box Office at 513-381-3300 or online at www.cincinnatisymphony.org. For more information about CSO dining options visit: http://cincinnatisymphony.org/Content.php?id=168.

Arild Remmereit, conductor

Over a five-month period in 2005, Norwegian conductor Arild Remmereit made five dramatic debuts with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Milan’s Filarmonica della Scala, Munich Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony, quickly establishing himself as a major talent on the international scene.  The New York Times wrote of his Pittsburgh debut, “He came, he conducted, he conquered… Sensational” and the Wiener Zeitung called Remmereit’s interpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 with the Vienna Symphony the “sensation of the evening.  [The orchestra] played with unequaled precision…” Mr. Remmereit was immediately re-engaged in Pittsburgh, Vienna, Milan and Baltimore and since then has also returned to a number of other prominent orchestras as well, including the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), England’s Hallé Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic (New York), New Jersey Symphony and the Seoul Philharmonic, among many others.

The 2009-10 season includes debuts with L’Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and Lahti Symphony Orchestra; returns to Rochester (where he first appeared last season to widespread acclaim), New Jersey, Seattle and Dublin’s RTE National Symphony; and conducts Le Nozze di Figaro at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze.

Mr. Remmereit has also appeared with the Houston Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, to name several.  In 2005 he made his debut at the storied Teatro alla Scala conducting Tchaikovsky’s opera Cherevicki and, more recently, led Florence’s Orchestra del Maggio Musicale in a performance of three Beethoven symphonies in 2008.  In Asia—in addition to the Seoul Philharmonic—he has conducted the Tokyo Philharmonic, Malaysian Philharmonic and the KBS Symphony, also in Seoul.

Born in Norway, Mr. Remmereit studied piano, voice and composition at the Norwegian Conservatory of Music in Oslo, graduating in 1986. In 1992 he earned a degree from the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna under the direction of Prof. Karl Oesterreicher. He has also studied with Leonard Bernstein and served as an assistant to Myung-Whun Chung in Oslo and Paris and to Mariss Jansons in Vienna. Arild Remmereit and his wife currently live in Vienna.

Stefan Jackiw, violin

Violinist Stefan Jackiw is recognized as one of the most significant artists of his generation, capturing audiences with his poetry and purity, combined with an impeccable technique. In the U.S. Mr. Jackiw has performed with the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the orchestras of Baltimore, Indianapolis, Minnesota, Nashville, Oregon, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle, and Utah, among many other ensembles.

In 2000 Mr. Jackiw made his European debut in London to great critical acclaim, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Benjamin Zander. His sensational performance was featured on the front page of The Times, and The Strad reported, “a fourteen-year-old violinist took the London music world by storm.” Abroad, Mr. Jackiw has also performed with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Ulster Orchestra of Ireland, and the Seoul Philharmonic. Invited by Yuri Temirkanov, Mr. Jackiw performed the Barber Violin Concerto as part of the Winter Arts Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 2002 Mr. Jackiw made his debut with the Baltimore Symphony under Temirkanov, followed by a tour of Japan with the orchestra that featured his Tokyo debut at Suntory Hall. Later that season, he made debuts with the Boston Symphony and the Chicago Symphony, both conducted by Roberto Abbado. His performance with the Boston Symphony was selected by the Boston Globe as one of the top two solo appearances of the year. In the 2004-2005 season, Mr. Jackiw made his debut with the Seattle Symphony, conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Both the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer selected this performance as the best debut of the year.

In July 2007, Mr. Jackiw made his debut with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Ludovic Morlot in the Concerts in the Parks series. The following month, he appeared with the Boston Symphony and Morlot at Tanglewood and was immediately reengaged for the following summer under Hans Graf. In 2008, Mr. Jackiw made his debut with the Cleveland Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis and the San Francisco Symphony under James Gaffigan.

Highlights of the current season include engagements with the Baltimore Symphony under Juanjo Mena, the Milwaukee Symphony under Hannu Lintu, the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero, the Rochester Philharmonic under Yoav Talmi, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Jean Deroyer.

Mr. Jackiw is also an active recitalist and chamber musician. He has appeared on numerous important series, including the Rising Stars Series of the Ravinia Festival and the Caramoor Festival, the Boston Celebrity Series, the “Accolades” series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre Recital Series in Paris, and at the Mostly Mozart Festival. He is a regular participant at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and will appear at the Vail Music Festival in 2009. At the opening night of Zankel Hall in New York, Mr. Jackiw was the only young artist invited to perform, alongside Emanuel Ax, Renée Fleming, Evgeny Kissin, and James Levine.

Born to physicist parents in 1985, Mr. Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of 4. His teachers have included Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair, and Donald Weilerstein. Mr. Jackiw holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, as well as an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory. In 2002, he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Mr. Jackiw makes his home in New York City.

For more information about Mr. Jackiw, please visit: www.stefanjackiw.com.

Cincinnati Pops Founder and Conductor Emeritus Erich Kunzel posthumously won two Spirit of Cincinnati Awards from the Cincinnati USA Convention & Visitors Bureau.  The late Maestro Kunzel, who died after a four-month battle with cancer on September 1, received the Champion Award for his help with bringing the 2012 World Choir Games to Cincinnati and the Queen City Advocate Award for always giving Cincinnati positive media coverage on both a national and international level.  The Queen City Advocate Award was also renamed the Erich Kunzel Queen City Advocate Award.

The awards were presented at the Duke Energy Center during the Cincinnati USA Convention and Visitors Bureau’s annual meeting on March 4.  CSO Board member Norma Petersen accepted the Champion Award on Maestro Kunzel’s behalf and CSO President Trey Devey accepted the Queen City Advocate Award on his behalf.

The late Maestro Max Rudolf invited Mr. Kunzel, then a young conductor on the faculty of Brown University, to join the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as an associate conductor in 1965. That October Maestro Kunzel conducted his first sold-out “8 O’Clock Pops” concert, marking his ascent as a modern orchestral legend.  The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, part of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was then officially founded in 1977 with Maestro Kunzel at the helm.  For decades he led the orchestra, packing houses in Cincinnati’s Music Hall and Riverbend Music Center, and also gaining new fans the world over through tour performances, PBS television specials and millions of recordings sold on the Telarc label.

CSO Lollipop Family Concerts dazzle and amaze kids three to eight, and provide wonderful opportunities for families to share a wonderful experience.

• Jean-Robert Pre-Concert Moveable Feast on March 12
• Pride Night Cabaret Magnifique! following March 13 Concert
• Shortened Sunday Concert for Pathways Series

CINCINNATI – World-renowned pianist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the soloist from the Oscar and Golden Globe-winning soundtracks Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, performs with the CSO and Paavo Järvi at historic Music Hall on Friday, March 12 and Saturday, March 13 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 14 at 3 p.m.  Mr. Thibaudet has captivated audiences around the world performing Grieg’s Piano Concerto. The Washington Post declared, “Jean-Yves Thibaudet…managed to combine swooning tenderness with majestic proclamation, songful sweetness with grand virtuosic sheen.” Friday and Saturday’s program also includes first symphonies by two celebrated Frenchmen, Henri Dutilleux and Georges Bizet, composer of the classic opera, Carmen.

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Post-concert reception to benefit the Freestore Foodbank

CINCINNATI- The Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra, made up of the region’s most talented student musicians, will present a concert at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 7, at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s Corbett Auditorium. The program, conducted by CSO Assistant Conductor Ken Lam, includes works by Tippett, Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich’s challenging Symphony No. 5. The CSYO Concerto Competition winner Stephanie Zyzak of Mason will also perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major.

The CSYO & CSO are participating in “Orchestras Feeding America,” a national initiative started last year by the League of American Orchestras. Concert attendees are encouraged to bring a canned food item for the Freestore Foodbank.

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CINCINNATI — Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will perform a special fundraising concert for Princeton City Schools on Tuesday, March 23 at 7:30 p.m. at Princeton High School featuring the Orchestra’s principal trumpet, Robert Sullivan. Proceeds from the March 23 concert will benefit district-wide music education and instrumental music programs. Following the concert attendees are invited to go backstage to Princeton High School’s “Viking Room” to meet Maestro Järvi and CSO musicians.

“I am pleased that the CSO can help support band and orchestra programs because music education is very important to me and to the Orchestra,” said CSO Music Director Paavo Järvi. “I am always very energized by these performances in the community.”

CSO In Your School is a community engagement and learning program offered as part of the CSO’s strong commitment to the community and to music education.

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The Music Hall Working Group (or MHWG) has been meeting for several years to identify the areas of greatest need that Music Hall faces and to begin planning for its restoration and renewal into a 21^st-century performing arts venue and community gathering place.

An important milestone has been reached in the form of a new entity that will lead the project: the Music Hall Revitalization Corporation.

The Music Hall Revitalization Corporation (or MHRC) is an organization that will lead and coordinate all future plans related to Music Hall redevelopment, including planning, design, construction, communications, and fundraising. The new organization will also collaborate closely with the members of MHWG to build on the momentum of the work that’s already been completed.

Jack Rouse, a CSO Board member and dynamic community leader, will serve as President of MHRC. Jack brings a wealth of experience and local connections to this project, and the members of the Working Group are thrilled that he’s agreed to take on this leadership role.  One of Jack’s initial responsibilities will be to form a volunteer Board of MHRC, which will include official representatives of each of the Music Hall Working Group organizations, and will provide direction and authority on their behalf.

For complete details on this new development, please use the download below to read the media release.

download: MHRC_Release.pdf (53.96KB) added: 26/02/2010 description: Music Hall Press Release

Did you know?

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s education programs serve more than 50,000 people annually.

This morning, February 23, thousands of students descended on Music Hall for a Young People’s Concert.

To help introduce students to orchestral music and the experience of live performance, participating teachers receive stimulating preparatory materials, including Teacher’s Guides for grades 1-4 and 5-8 with a CD of music to be performed. These materials, created in part by the CSO’s Advisory Committee for Education (ACE), enable teachers to make the most of their students’ concert-going experience.

For information about the Young People’s Concerts and the Teacher’s Guides, please call 513.621.1919.

Last weekend’s Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra concert featured an amazing work – the Symphony in E Major by Hans Rott – a work almost forgotten.  Rott was an immensely talented composer and a student of Anton Bruckner who suffered a mental breakdown, was institutionalized and died at the age of 25.

His friend Gustav Mahler wrote, “It is complete impossible to estimate what music has been lost in him:  His genius soars to such heights even in the first symphony, written at age twenty.  It makes him – without exaggeration- the founder of the new symphony as I understand it.”

Mary Ellyn Hutton wrote an article about the discovery on MusicinCincinnati.com.  Click here to read it.

Last weekend’s concert also featured the return of violin sensation Janine Jansen, who toured Europe with the CSO in 2008.  She performed the Brahms Violin Concerto.  According to Janelle Gelfand of The Cincinnati Enquirer, “(Jansen) gave the kind of performance you never wanted to end, because of her combination of warmth, ease and expressive freedom.”  Click here to read the full review.

In her MusicinCincinnati.com review, Mary Ellyn Hutton wrote, “The juxtaposition of Brahms and Rott was a clever touch, considering the history of the two men, who occupied different camps in musical Vienna in toward the end of the 19th century.  Rott represented the music of the future — later to morph into Mahler and his world-encompassing symphonies.  Brahms was the conservative, upholding the legacy of Beethoven, and allegedly helped send Rott to his grave at age 25 with his criticism of the work.”  Read her full review by clicking here.

On February 15, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra took New York by storm, performing an amazing concert at Carnegie Hall.  According to The New York Times, the CSO performed Webern’s arrangement of Ricercare No. 2 from Bach’s A Musical Offering with “admirable precision” and “was equally impressive when asked to create similar effects on the larger and more vividly detailed canvas of Lutoslowski’s Concerto for Orchestra.”  The audience reception was tremendous as the performance ended with a standing ovation.

Read the full New York Times review by clicking here.

Read the Cincinnati Enquirer review by clicking here.

Read the MusicinCincinnati.com review by clicking here.