Metheny and More
Saturday, June 30, 7:30 PM
Breckenridge Riverwalk Center
More Concert Info
Conductor Michael Stern is in his tenth season as Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony and sixteenth season as Founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the IRIS Orchestra.
Stern and Kansas City have been hailed for their remarkable artistic ascent, original programming, organizational development and stability, and the extraordinary growth of its varied audiences since his tenure began. They have entered a new era performing to critical acclaim and sold-out audiences in their new home Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. On Reference Recordings they have released four albums including Shakespeare’s Tempest; Britten’s Orchestra, which won a 2011 Grammy award in the “Surround Sound Album” category and producer David Frost won “Producer of the Year, Classical;” and most recently a Saint-Saëns album released in May 2015. In July 2012, the Symphony’s concerts with internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato were broadcast nationally on nearly 400 PBS station for the PBS Summer Arts Series with the audio recording of that concert receiving a Grammy nomination.
Stern and the IRIS Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee, are entering their sixteenth season, widely praised for the virtuosity of their playing; the depth and variety of programming, with a special emphasis on American contemporary music; and its acclaimed recordings on the Naxos and Arabesque labels. Under Stern’s direction, IRIS has commissioned and premiered works by William Bolcom, Chris Brubeck, Richard Danielpour, Stephen Hartke, Edgar Meyer, Jonathan Leshnoff, Ned Rorem, Huang Ruo, Adam Schoenberg, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, among others.
Other positions include chief conductor of Germany’s Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra (the first American chief conductor in the orchestra’s history), as Permanent Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon in France, and as the Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lille, France.
Michael Stern has led orchestras throughout Europe and Asia, including the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Helsinki Philharmonic, Budapest Radio Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Moscow Philharmonic, National Symphony of Taiwan, Tokyo’s NHK Symphony and the Vienna Radio Symphony, among many others.
In North America, Mr. Stern has conducted the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Houston Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, and the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. He has also appeared regularly at the Aspen Music Festival.
Mr. Stern received his music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where his major teacher was the noted conductor and scholar Max Rudolf. Mr. Stern co-edited the third edition of Rudolf’s famous textbook, The Grammar of Conducting, and also edited a new volume of Rudolf’s collected writings and correspondence. He is a 1981 graduate of Harvard University, where he earned a degree in American history.