Berkeley Symphony opens its 2019-2020 season featuring Joseph Young in his first appearance as the orchestra's new Music Director. Recently appointed in April, Maestro Young will lead a program that includes the return of Bay Area favorite Conrad Tao as soloist for Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major, a rare performance of Shango Memory by former UC Berkeley professor of music Olly Wilson, and Beethoven's iconic Symphony No. 5 in C minor.
Maestro Young was appointed as Music Director in April 2019 following a highly successful and critically acclaimed debut appearance as guest conductor in January 2019. Due to a last-minute cancellation, Maestro Young stepped in at a moment's notice with only two days to prepare an ambitious program of works. The result was an instant success.
Praised by The New York Times as a musician of "probing intellect and open-hearted vision," Conrad Tao makes his third appearance with Berkeley Symphony following his February 2016 debut and most recent performance in December 2017. A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant (2012), Tao leads a varied career as a soloist, chamber artist, composer and recording artist.
Opening the program is a rare performance of Olly Wilson's Shango Memory, a work inspired by the Yoruban god of thunder and lightning that was commissioned to mark the New York Philharmonic's 150th anniversary in 1995. With a rich musical background that included jazz and orchestral performance, electronic media and academic studies of African music, Wilson wrote a large body of works performed by orchestras all over the world including Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Moscow Philharmonic. In 1970, he served as professor of music at UC Berkeley where he taught until his retirement in 2002. As part of the upcoming global celebrations of Beethoven's 250th birthday, Berkeley Symphony will conclude the program with the composer's most enduring masterwork, Symphony No. 5 in C minor.
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