MODESTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND YOUTH ORCHESTRA FEBRUARY PERFORMANCES

MODESTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA - RACHMANINOFF & RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Friday, February 7, 2020 at 7:30 pm* and Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 7:30 pm*
*Note the new 7:30 pm start time

David Lockington, conductor
Stephen Hough, piano
Modesto Symphony Orchestra
 
PROGRAM         
Rachmaninoff
Piano Concerto No. 2
 
Rimsky-Korsakov
Scheherazade

Gallo Center for the Arts, Mary Stuart Rogers Theater
1000 I Street, Modesto

Pre-Concert Talk: MSO Associate Conductor Ryan Murray will hold a pre-concert talk from stage at 6:30 pm. Free to all concert ticket holders.
 
Tickets:
Pricing: $19 / 39 / 54 / 71 / 94

Tickets available online at ModestoSymphony.org or through the Gallo Center for the Arts Ticket Office at (209) 338-2100.
    
Group Prices available: Groups of 10+ receive a 15% discount on tickets. Call (209) 338-5064 for more information.
 
Ticket Office Hours: Monday through Friday 10:00am-6:00pm / Saturday 12:00pm-6:00pm MODESTO SYMPHONY YOUTH ORCHESTRA – SPRING CONCERT
Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 2:00 pm
 
Ryan Murray, MSYO Music Director
Don Grishaw, MSYO Concert Orchestra Conductor
Modesto Symphony Youth Orchestra

Gallo Center for the Arts, Mary Stuart Rogers Theater
1000 I Street, Modesto

Tickets:
Youth $5
Adult $14
 
Tickets available online at ModestoSymphony.org or through the Gallo Center for the Arts Ticket Office at (209) 338-2100.
   
Group Prices available: Groups of 10+ receive a 15% discount on tickets. Call (209) 338-5064 for more information.
 
Ticket Office Hours: Monday through Friday 10:00am-6:00pm / Saturday 12:00pm-6:00pm
   
Music Director David Lockington has developed an impressive conducting career in the United States.  A native of Great Britain, he served as the Music Director of the Grand Rapids Symphony from January 1999 to May 2015, and was named the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate for the following four seasons. He has held the position of Music Director with the Modesto Symphony since May 2007 and in March 2013, was appointed Music Director of the Pasadena Symphony. Mr. Lockington has a close relationship with the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Spain, where he was the orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor from 2012 through 2016, and in the 18/19 season began a new position as Principal Artistic Partner with the Northwest Sinfonietta in Tacoma, Washington.
 
In addition to his current posts, Mr. Lockington has held positions with several other American orchestras, including Assistant Conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra and Opera Colorado, and Assistant and Associate Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra., he has conducted the Northern Sinfonia in Great Britain, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra in Beijing and Taiwan, and led the English Chamber Orchestra on a tour in Asia.
 
After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Cambridge where he was a choral scholar, Mr. Lockington came to the United States on a scholarship to Yale University where he received his Master's Degree in cello performance and studied conducting with Otto Werner Mueller.  He was a member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and served as assistant principal cellist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra for three years before turning to conducting.

Ryan Murray's dynamic conducting, natural musicality and deeply held passion for the arts have allowed him to steadily build a robust career since his professional debut at the age of just 22. Ryan is currently the Associate Conductor for the Modesto Symphony Orchestra and Music Director for the Modesto Symphony Youth Orchestra; with whom he made his conducting debut at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Since his appointment in 2013, Ryan has consistently worked to improve the quality, skill and prominence of the youth orchestra, and now leads an ensemble that features over 60 students from the greater Modesto area. He is also Artistic Director of Opera Modesto and Resident Conductor & Choral Director of the Music in the Mountains Summer Festival in Nevada County, California.  As part of a joint-collaboration, Ryan served as Music Director for Fresno Grand Opera's mainstage productions of contemporary opera for two seasons, and previously served as a staff conductor for the Bay Area Summer Opera Theater Institute (BASOTI) and The Opera Academy of California in San Francisco.  Effortlessly moving between genres, Ryan currently enjoys a wide range of performance genres & platforms, including traditional orchestral and operatic repertoire, pops performances, and a notable emphasis on contemporary American operatic works.
Ryan has recently garnered national recognition for his dynamic, compelling performances of contemporary opera and is the current winner of the 2016/17 American Prize in Opera Conducting for his highly lauded production of A Streetcar Named Desire. He was a 2016 semi-finalist for the Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music and received honorary mention for the American Prize in Youth Orchestra Conducting. Ryan is also a past winner of the Vienna Philharmonic’s prestigious Ansbacher Fellowship for Young Conductors, and spent the summer in residence alongside the Vienna Philharmonic at the 2014 Salzburg Festival.
Driven by a lifelong passion for learning, Ryan has attended masterclasses and seminars around the world. Ryan recently attended the 2017 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music's Conductors Workshop, and was one of just eight conductors worldwide to attend the Time of Music Summer Festival Masterclass in Finland led by Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angles Philharmonic, Susanna Mälkki; he also recently attended a contemporary music symposium led by Alan Gilbert featuring the New York Philharmonic. Past events include the Aurora Chamber Festival in Sweden, where he studied under Maestro Kurt Masur, the Lucerne Festival Academy’s Conducting Masterclass in Switzerland, and the Eastman School of Music’s Summer Conducting Institute featuring the Rochester Philharmonic. Ryan holds degrees, summa cum laude, in Bassoon Performance and Voice Performance from California State University, Sacramento. Widely praised for his tireless work ethic, natural poise, and impassioned, inspired performances, Ryan continues to connect deeply with orchestras and audiences alike, and has proven to be a formidable presence on the podium.
 
Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer. Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Hough was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (2001) and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year’s Honours 2014. He was awarded Northwestern University’s 2008 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano, won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award in 2010, and in 2016 was made an Honorary Member of RPS. Since taking first prize at the 1983 Naumburg Competition in New York, Hough has performed with many of the world’s major orchestras and has given recitals at the most prestigious concert halls. He is a regular guest at festivals such as Salzburg, La Roque- d'Anthéron, Mostly Mozart, Edinburgh, and BBC Proms, where he has made more than twenty concerto appearances. He has appeared with most of the major European and American orchestras and plays recitals regularly in major halls and concert series around the world. His recent engagements include recitals in Chicago, Hong Kong, London's Royal Festival Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Paris, Boston, San Francisco, the Kennedy Center and Sydney; performances with the Czech, London and New York Philharmonics, the Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis, National, Detroit, Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto symphonies, and the Philadelphia, Minnesota, Budapest Festival and Russian National Orchestras; and a performance televised worldwide with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle.
 
Many of his catalogue of over 60 albums have garnered international prizes including the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Diapason d’Or, Monde de la Musique, several Grammy nominations, eight Gramophone Magazine Awards including ‘Record of the Year’ in 1996 and 2003, and the Gramophone ‘Gold Disc’ Award in 2008, which named his complete Saint-Saens Piano Concertos as the best recording of the past 30 years. His 2012 recording of the complete Chopin Waltzes received the Diapason d’Or de l’Annee, France’s most prestigious recording award. His 2005 live recording of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos was the fastest selling recording in Hyperion’s history, while his 1987 recording of the Hummel concertos remains Chandos’ best-selling disc to date.
 
Published by Josef Weinberger, Mr. Hough has composed works for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble and solo piano. His “Mass of Innocence and Experience” and “Missa Mirabilis” were respectively commissioned by and performed at London’s Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral. In 2012, the Indianapolis Symphony commissioned and performed Mr. Hough’s own orchestration of “Missa Mirabilis,” which was subsequently performed by the BBC Symphony as part of Mr. Hough’s residency with the orchestra. Mr. Hough has also been commissioned by musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Gilmore Foundation, The Genesis Foundation, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, London’s National Gallery, Wigmore Hall, Le Musée de Louvre and Musica Viva Australia among others.
 
A noted writer, Mr. Hough regularly contributes articles for The Guardian, The Times, The Tablet, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine and wrote a blog for The Telegraph for seven years which became one of the most popular and influential forums for cultural discussion and for which he wrote over six hundred articles. His book, The Bible as Prayer, was published by Bloomsbury and Paulist Press in 2007; his first novel, The Final Retreat, was published in 2018 by Sylph Editions; and Rough Ideas, a collection of essays and reflections, was published by Faber and Feber in August 2019. Mr. Hough resides in London where he is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester. He is also a member of the faculty at The Juilliard School.
 

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