The New Yorker magazine called Joyce DiDonato “perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation.”  Joyce has towered at the top of the industry as a performer, a producer, and a fierce advocate for the arts. With a repertoire spanning over four centuries, a varied and highly acclaimed discography, and industry-leading projects, her artistry has defined what it is to be a singer in the 21st century.Joyce enjoys a musical partnership with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra and, of course, the Metropolitan Opera. Joyce’s distinctively varied 2025-26 season commenced with season-opening concerts for the Minnesota Orchestra and Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain, as well as the re-opening Powell Hall with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a Kevin Puts’s World Premiere, House of Tomorrow. She only recently made her Lincoln Center Theater stage debut as The Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors, and is about to star in the Met’s production of Innocence by Kaija Saariaho.Concert appearances include Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Nézet-Séguin and the Berlin Philharmoniker. Joyce also joins the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for her second European tour with Yannick and this orchestra following a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 at Carnegie Hall.She is also, quite plainly, a genuine delight.  

Born in Taiwan, raised in Austria, and educated in Europe and America, Pianist Jenny Lin has built a vibrant international career, notable for innovative collaborations with a range of artists and creators. In recent seasons, Jenny has performances – both digital, and in person – for Washington Performing Arts; at Hudson Hall performing the American premiere of William Bolcom’s Suite of Preludes; at Boston Conservatory’s piano series; at Little Island in NYC; and at Winnipeg New Music Festival. She now serves as director of music for The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.Recently, she performed a recital of Philip Glass’s music for the Morris Museum – a continuation of a close collaboration with Glass, with whom she has appeared regularly since 2014.  This experience has inspired the creation of her own commissioning initiative, The Etudes Project, in which she works with a range of living composers to create new technical piano etudes, pairing each new piece with an existing etude from the classical canon.  Her catalogue includes more than 50 albums.A passionate advocate for education, Jenny created “Melody’s Mostly Musical Day“, a musical album and picture book for children, following the adventures of an imaginative little girl from breakfast to bedtime, told in a collection of 26 classical piano works from Mozart to Gershwin.  We’ll hear some of these in this episode.Fluent in English, German, Mandarin, and French, Jenny Lin studied Noel Flores at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, with Julian Martin at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and with Dominique Weber in Geneva. She has also worked with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, and Blanca Uribe, and at Italy’s Fondazione Internazionale per il pianoforte with Dimitri Bashkirov and Andreas Staier. In addition to her musical studies, Lin holds a bachelor’s degree in German Literature from The Johns Hopkins University. Jenny Lin currently resides with her family in New York City and serves on the faculty of Mannes College The New School for Music.

Hamburg’s new General Music Director, Omer Meir Wellber, recently began his five-year tenure of the 2025/26 opera and symphony seasons with the Philharmonic State Orchestra at the striking Elbphilharmonie. The season’s unique programs focus on a very special kind of dialogue between the present and the past under the motto “no risk, no fun”. In this episode, Omer will explain that and more.  Suffice it to say,  Omer unveiled his unusual idea of “over-writing” single movements of great works by international composers, to be repeated in all concerts this season. Omer regularly conducts the Orchestre National de France, the Gewand-haus-orchester Leipzig, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Deutsche Kammer-philharmonie Bremen and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. He is also the author of,  “Die Angst, das Risiko und die Liebe  – Momente mit Mozart” – his first book, published in spring 2017.  In it, he shares his personal understanding of the universal emotions addressed in the three Mozart/Da Ponte operas – Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, establishing him as a great voice of classical music.

For 65 years Young Concert Artists has stood at the forefront of discovering and launching the careers of the future leaders of classical music. Founded by Susan Wadsworth in 1961, YCA has invested in its artists by providing them with the tools, opportunities, and infrastructure to take their careers to the highest level. YCA alumni include Emanuel Ax, Julia Bullock, Anne AkikoMeyers, Jeremy Denk, Ray Chen, Anne-Marie McDermott, Richard Goode, Zlatomir Fung, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Kevin Puts, Pinchas Zukerman, Randall Goosby and Sasha Cooke, to name but a few.This episode features composer Daniel Kellogg, an alumnus of Young Concert Artists, and now its president. He is one of the extraordinary musicians whose careers were discovered and launched to prominence by this innovative non-profit organization.Chosen as YCA Composer-in-Residence in 2002, Daniel was a member of the Young Concert Artists roster for 10 years.Join us as he reveals plans for the 2025-2026 season.

Enrique Mazzola, is music director at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, who recently announced his extension through the year 2031. In the 2025-26 season, Enrique makes debuts at Staatsoper Berlin with Verdi’s Un ballo in Maschera and at Opera de Paris with Rossini’s Cenerentola. At the Lyric Opera, he is currently leading productions of Medea, Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci and Cosi fan Tutti.Notable symphonic debuts include Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse,Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age ofEnlightenment, Oslo Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Taipei Symphony, UtahSymphony, Detroit Symphony, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Brussels Philharmonic,Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, and Swedish Radio Symphony. Other highlights includeperformances with Vienna Symphony, London Philharmonic and Bern Philharmonic.Enrique works regularly with young musicians, among them at Accademia Teatroalla Scala, Académie de l’Opéra national de Paris, Opéra Studio de l’Opéra national duRhin, Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center, andCodarts of Rotterdam. He has given conducting masterclasses.And, as you’ll hear, Enreique Mazzoli is also renowned as a champion of bel cantoopera,

Born in Texas to Chinese immigrant parents, Nancy Zhou began the violin under the guidance of her  father, who is from a family of traditional musicians. She went on to study with Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory while pursuing her interest in literature at Harvard University.Nancy has collaborated with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Hangzhou Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, and Kansas City Symphony, among others.She is a regular guest educator at various international summer festivals, holding not only masterclasses but also workshops on fundamental training and well-being for musicians. Over the years, Nancy’s interest in cultural heritage and the humanities manifested in a string of notable collaborations across the US and in China.Recently, she recorded her debut album, STORIES (re)TRACED, featuring four seminal and inextricably connected works for solo violin, including Béla Bartók’s Sonata.

 Alex Bonoff is studying to become a cantor, and is currently a cantorial soloist at Temple Israel of Minneapolis, a congregation that has had only two cantors in its 147 year history.   We’ll to talk to Alex about that, but I also want to discuss his history as a composer, orchestrator, producer, audio engineer, copyist, music director and supervisor, working on projects in film, television and theatre—and, he says, “anything else that makes sound.” Alex has worked on shows including New York, New York (Broadway), Classic Stage Company’s Assassins (Off-Broadway Show, Broadway Concert), Theatre for a New Audiences (Off-Broadway, in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company) Timon of Athens, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre’s The Penelopiad, Chicago’s Paramount Theatre’s world premiere of August Rush, and Goodspeed Opera House’s world premiere of The 12. He also served as a guest artist at the University of Michigan, his alma mater, as a music director and composer.

Robert Marx is president of The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, one ofNew York City’s leading arts philanthropies.  Since 1995, Rob has appeared on the Metropolitan Opera’s live Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts as an intermission host, commentator and Opera Quiz panelist.  His many broadcast interview subjects have included the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, stage director Robert Wilson, and former Met general manager Joseph Volpe.  From 1989-99 he was executive director of Lincoln Center’s New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.   Among many new initiatives there, he created the Library’s first touring program, sending exhibitions about choreographers Alvin Ailey and George Balanchine, director Harold Prince, and stage designer Ming Cho Lee across America and to Asia.  Major collection acquisitions included the personal archives of choreographer Jerome Robbins, impresario Lincoln Kirstein, composer John Cage, stage designer Boris Aronson, and producer Joseph Papp.   From 1987-1989 Rob was director of the National Endowment for the Arts Theatre Program, and was director of the New York State Council on the Arts Theatre Program from 1976-1983.

David Feheley is a technical director, with 20 years of experience, specializing in producing opera and productions in repertory. He is currently the technical director for the Metropolitan Opera.David studied theatrical production at York University in his native Toronto before joining the newly opened York University Student Centre as its production manager.  He managed all aspects of the Centre’s program of concerts and events in its multi-use facility.He later branched out into the freelance world as a technical director before joining the production department at the Stratford Festival of Canada. He started as the Assistant Technical Director for the Festival Stage, and finished his time at the Festival as the assistant director of production.David moved into the world of opera when he joined the Canadian Opera Company in 2003. While there, he was part of the opening of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Canada’s first purpose-built opera house, and the COC’s Ring Cycle, Canada’s first home-grown production of the Ring.David moved to the United States in 2013 to assume the position of technical and production director for the Houston Grand Opera. While in Houston, he continued his association with Wagner’s Ring Cycle, as Houston produced its first Ring, the La Fura dels Baus production from Barcelona.Since 2016, David has been the technical director for the Met, overseeing all backstage operations as well as the construction work done in the scenery and scenic shops. The Met’s season of 19 productions running in repertory also includes building and producing 6 new productions each year.The Ring Cycle has played a prominent role in his time at the Met. A major technical overhaul of Robert Lepage’s 2010 production and its presentation as part of the 2019 season marked David’s third Ring.

Steven Blier is the co-founder and artistic director of the New York Festival of Song, and has served as programmer/translator/pianist/arranger of more than 130 of its programs.He has been a recital collaborator with some of the great singers of our time.Steven has recorded on the Koch, New World, Nonesuch, Albany, RCA, and Musicmasters labels and he won a Grammy Award in 1990.  He was nominated for Grammy Awards in 1999 and 1989.  He has given master classes around the U.S. in song repertoire, and had been a feature writer for Opera News magazine. He has been guest faculty/recitalist at the Wolf Trap Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Chautauqua Festival, and San Francisco Opera, and was a faculty member at the State University of New and Aspen Music Festival. He holds a BA degree from Yale University, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

After graduation from Macalester College in St. Paul, Lawrence Perelman imagined a performing arts cable channel. So he earned an MBA at Columbia Business School and later founded Semantix Creative Group, a strategic advisory firm for performing artists and global performing arts institutions. As Semantix’s CEO, Lawrence kept pitching his idea, and even discussed it with Carnegie Hall’s Clive Gillinson. In December 2021, Lawrence, as co-founder, was part of the team that launched Carnegie Hall+, a premium subscription on-demand channel on the Apple TV app. As you’ll hear in this episode, his parents always encouraged him to take risks: “You want to meet someone and accomplish something? Write them a letter.” That’s maybe the most valuable lesson he learned: "...to put your heart out there and make a statement." So, in 1994, he wrote a letter to William F. Buckley Jr. to thank him for emboldening Soviet Jews to come to America, as his parents did. Suffice it to say that over the years, Buckley became a friend and mentor who changed the course of Lawrence’s life "because he took time to answer my letter." This is a unique episode!

Earl J. Schub has had a distinguished career as an educator and arts administrator. For 12 years he was the dean of the Chicago College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt University.   He had served as Lyric Opera of Chicago’s director of public relations and marketing, and executive producer for television, and director of education.  He served as manager of the company’s Opera Center for American Artists, and as manager of Western Opera Theater, San Francisco Opera’s touring and educational affiliate. Earl has served on the Illinois Arts Council, the Chicago City Arts Council, and the California Arts Commission and he was as an on-site observer for the National Endowment for the Arts. He served on the education committee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra In addition, he has been on the board of trustees for a number of music organizations, including the Chicago Music Alliance, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony.

Richard Schoch is an historian whose research encompasses theater historiography, Shakespeare in performance, musical theater, and cultural history. Richard is the author of eight books, including the recently published Shakespeare's House: A Window onto his Life and Legacy. His latest book is How Sondheim Can Change Your Life, published last November. In 2021 he was elected to the Royal Irish Academy, Ireland’s highest academic honor. Richard Schoch is a professor of drama Queen’s University in Belfast. He graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University and earned his PhD from Stanford University. He has directed plays in New York City and worked for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Richard’s book shows how Sondheim’s lyrics relate to us all. But as important, Richard’s book reveals parallel styles between Stephen Sondheim and William Shakespeare. 

Jim Griffith is in his first season as the executive director of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.        He was also the founder, president, and CEO of the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center in Fort Myers, Florida.  The landmark— an abandoned federal courts building, a neoclassical-style building with a row of distinctive ionic columns out front — is now home to concerts, art exhibits, plays, fundraisers, fashion shows and just about every other kind of art.  All of this after he was told it couldn’t be done.  That’s all he had to hear. Jim co-founded the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, Gulf Coast Music School, and New Arts Festival.  Jim Griffith is an accomplished violist who has even performed at Carnegie Hall.  He was a member of the Naples, Florida Philharmonic from 1989 to 2022.

Dave Bennett began his national touring career at the age of 14. He has been a featured soloist at Carnegie Hall with The New York Pops and he has performed with 35 other US and Canadian orchestras including Nashville, Houston, Detroit, Rochester, Omaha and Toronto. Some of his annual appearances include The Elkhart Jazz Festival, The Suncoast Classic Jazz Festival, The Arizona Classic Jazz Festival, The Sacramento Hot Jazz Jubilee, The Clambake Music Festival, and The Redwood Coast Music Festival. Dave was featured on NPR’s  “Jazz at Riverwalk.”   He made his European debut in 2008 at The Bern Jazz Festival in Switzerland in a combo with jazz legends and Benny Goodman alumni guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and vibraphonist Peter Appleyard. Dave is a recording artist on the jazz label Mack Avenue Records. His second release, Blood Moon reached No. 24 on the Billboard Jazz charts in 2018.  In March 2022, Dave and his band performed to a sold-out audience at New York City’s Birdland Jazz Club. Dave recently joined forces with guitarist/vocalist/pastor Tom Hampton for Dave’s first gospel project, recently released.

Behzod Abduraimov’s performances combine an immense depth of musicality with phenomenal technique and breath-taking delicacy. He performs with renowned orchestras worldwide including Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Concertgebouworkest, Czech Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB). Regular festival appearances include Aspen, Verbier, Rheingau, La Roque Antheron, Lucerne and Ravello festivals. Behzod’s second recording for Alpha Classics, featuring works by Ravel, Prokofiev, and Uzbek composer Dilorom Saidaminova, was released on 12 January 2024. The album was Gramophone’ Editor’s Choice in January 2024, and was included in Apple Music ‘10 Classical Albums You Must Hear This Month’ of February 2024.  The year 2021 saw the highly successful release of his first recital album for Alpha Classics based on a program of Miniatures including Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. In 2020, recordings included Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan, recorded on Rachmaninoff’s own piano from Villa Senar for Sony Classical, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3 with Concertgebouworkest, for the RCO live label. Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1990, Behzod began the piano at age five, as a pupil of Tamara Popovich at Uspensky State Central Lyceum in Tashkent.

Ken Ludwig’s first play, Lend Me a Tenor, was produced on Broadway (1986) and in London by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It won two Tony Awards and was called “one of the classic comedies of the 20th century” by The Washington Post. His Crazy For You was on Broadway for five years, on the West End for three, and won the Tony and Olivier Awards for Best Musical. It has been revived twice in the West End and is currently touring Japan.   His shows have been produced in over 20 languages in more than 30 countries, and many have become standards of the American repertoire.   We’ll talk about these shows and many of his others, and we'll discuss his love of Shakespeare!

In the words of The New Yorker, Charles Neidich “is an artist  of  uncommon merit -- a master of his instrument and, beyond that, an  interpreter  who keeps listeners hanging on each phrase.”        Charles is the artistic  director of the Wa Concert Series at  the Tenri Cultural Institute in New  York, which he founded with his wife, clarinetist Ayako Oshima, in September 2017. This concert series is inspired by the  Japanese concept “wa”—  meaning circle, but also harmony and completeness; each  performance is  thus paired with visual arts and offers a variety of culinary delicacies prepared by Ayako Oshima. In recent seasons, Charles has added conducting to his musical accomplishments. He has led the Cobb Symphony Orchestra and Georgia Symphony in performances of the Franck Symphony in D Minor and Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (also playing the solo clarinet part). Charles commands a repertoire of over 200 solo works, including pieces commissioned or inspired by him, as well as his own transcriptions of vocal and instrumental works. With a growing discography to his credit, he can be heard on the Chandos, Sony Classical, Sony Vivarte, Deutsche Grammophon, Musicmasters, Pantheon, and Bridge labels. His recorded repertoire ranges from familiar works by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, and Brahms, to lesser-known compositions by Danzi, Reicha, Rossini, and Hummel, as well as music by Elliott Carter, Gyorgy Kurtag, and other contemporary masters. Although Charles became quite active in music at an early age, he opted against attending a music conservatory in favor of academic studies at Yale University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, in Anthropology. In 1975 he became the first American to receive a Fulbright grant for study in the former Soviet Union, and he attended the Moscow Conservatory for three years where his teachers were Boris Dikov and Kirill Vinogradov. Charles Neidich has achieved recognition as a teacher in addition to his activities as a performer, and currently is a member of the artist faculties of The Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes College of Music. During the 1994-95 academic year he was a Visiting Professor at the Sibelius Academy in Finland where he taught, performed and conducted. Mr. Neidich is a long-time member of the renowned chamber ensemble Orpheus.

Having grown up in Atlanta, with a long lineage of preachers and connections to gospel music to inspire him, GRAMMY-nominated Carlos Simon’s music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles, to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism.Carlos is the current composer-in-residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and he frequently composes for its National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera.This past season featured the premiere of his Gospel Mass, with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a work reimagining the traditional mass with gospel soloists and choir, with visual creations from Melina Matsoukas.Carlos frequently curates concert programs, which often highlight his own music as well as that of close collaborators. Curation concerts have recently been programmed by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Chamber Players, Tanglewood Festival for Contemporary Music, and the Kennedy Center.Carlos also released the live premiere recording of brea(d)th, a landmark work commissioned by Minnesota Orchestra and written in collaboration with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, conducted by Jonathan Taylor Rush. “Arguably the most important commission of Simon’s career so far” (The New York Times), brea(d)th was written following George Floyd’s murder as a direct response to America’s unfulfilled promises and history of systemic oppression against Black Americans.  I’m especially proud to have discussed the piece with Carlos in this episode.

Kathleen MarshallKathleen began her Broadway career as an assistant to her brother Rob, the choreographer of Kiss of the Spider Woman, in 1993. The two also collaborated on She Loves Me, Damn Yankees , Victor/Victoria and Seussical. She was the artistic director for the Encores! series of staged musical revivals from 1996 through 2000. During that time, she choreographed The Boys from Syracuse, Li'l Abner and Call Me Madam and she directed and choreographed Babes in Arms and Wonderful Town.She also directed and choreographed the Broadway revival of Grease.  I was fortunate enough to catch the Encores! production of Wonderful Town when it transferred to Broadway.Kathleen was also the director and choreographer of the Broadway revival of Pajama Game which opened in February 2006 and which was the Broadway acting debut of Harry Connick Jr.  I’m happy to report I was there too!More pertinent, Kathleen directed and choreographed a Broadway revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes in 2011, with Sutton Foster as Reno Sweeney.  The show ran at London’s Barbican Centre in 2021 and was recorded for television (BBC) by Ross MacGibbon, later picked up by PBS in America.  Kathleen’s production is as close to perfect as can be. In fact, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer. Stephen RidleyIn 2021 Steve joined Kathleen as music supervisor and music director of Anything Goes at the Barbican.  He was also music supervisor of Oklahoma! at Wyndham’s Theatre.  Steve conducted the highly-acclaimed Broadway transfers of The King and I at The London Palladium and the Dominion Theatre and An American in Paris at the Dominion Theatre, and he was the music director of the Olivier Award winning revival of Ken Ludwig’s Crazy for You at the Novello Theatre.  He later was music supervisor of Kiss me, Kate at the Barbican, now being shown on PBS throughout the U.S.Steve is a music director, conductor and pianist based in London. He was born in Middlesbrough and is a graduate of the Royal College of Music. I’m thrilled that he joined us for this exciting episode!