Phillip Gainsley's Podcast

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...

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 Festiv...

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 Orc...

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 a...

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 seri...

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 f...

Kathleen Marshall Kathleen 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 S he Loves Me , Damn Yankee s , 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 Syracus...

Daniela Candillari grew up in Serbia and Slovenia.  She holds a Doctorate in Musicology from the Universität für Musik in Vienna, a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a Master of Music and Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance from the Universität für Musik in Graz. She is also a Fulbright Scholarship recipient. Daniela is in her fourth season...

Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo began performing professionally at the age of 11 and has since appeared in opera, concert, recital, film, and on Broadway. He has performed in the world’s great opera houses and symphony halls. In June 2024, he began his tenure as the general director and president of Opera Philadelphia. His most recent album, Anthony Roth Costanzo & Justin Vivian Bond: Only...

Freya’s music is characterized by contrasts between earthy rhythmic play and fragility, luminous spaces, and a sense of the otherworldly. She has been commissioned by numerous institutions and ensembles Her current season includes Mother Tongue , a new four movement work for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Ed Gardner; a new work for the Archipelago Collective’s 10th anniversary festival on S...

Peter Boyer is one of the most frequently performed American orchestral composers of his generation. His works have received over 800 public performances by more than 300 orchestras, and tens of thousands of broadcasts by classical radio stations around the world/ Listen, as we discuss Peter’s major work Ellis Island: The Dream of America, for actors and orchestra. It has become one of the most-pe...

Brent Assink served as executive director of the San Francisco Symphony for 18 years, a term during which the symphony significantly grew its artistic profile and community engagement.  His creative partnership with then-Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas produced celebrated projects such as the American Mavericks festivals, the Keeping Score multi-media series and SFS Media, the first orchestra...

The King's Singers have represented the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world's greatest stages for over fifty years. They are renowned for their unrivalled technique, versatility and skill in performance, and for their consummate musicianship, drawing both on the group's rich heritage and its pioneering spirit to create an extraordinary wealth of original works and unique collaboration...

Kathleen van Bergen is in her 14th season as CEO and president of Artis—Naples.  In that time, she has been recognized throughout Southwest Florida and the greater arts community as an example of leadership geared toward prudent growth and relationship building.  Named one of Musical America’s “Top 30 Professionals of the Year” in 2019, she is described as “a woman with a mission, a vision and a b...

Music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda is also one of the world’s most sought-after conductors, recognized equally for his artistry in  the concert hall and the opera house. Gianandrea’s award-winning recordings are distributed by LSO Live, for whom he also records as principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.  His discography spans over 80 recordings...

Over the course of 34 years, Thomas W. Morris worked at the top levels of the symphony orchestra world, running two of the biggest and most famous, the Boston Symphony and The Cleveland Orchestra. Throughout, though, he developed a sense of institutional malaise, on how classical music is presented these days. He capped his career becoming artistic director of California's Ojai Music Festival. The...

Daniele Rustioni is a major presence at leading opera houses and symphony halls. In 2022, the International Opera Awards named him “Best Conductor.” His opera repertoire numbers over 70 works spanning over centuries and ranging from Italian to French, German to Russian, and more.  This coming season he concludes his eight-year tenure as music director of Opéra National de Lyon.   He was principal...

Jan Vogler’s distinguished career has brought him together with renowned conductors and internationally acclaimed orchestras around the world. In addition to his classical concert activities as a soloist, Jan is constantly looking for new ways to combine music with other arts. In February 2024, he gave a highly acclaimed concert with inaugural-poet Amanda Gorman, performing her contemporary poems...

Sharon Isbin was named Musical America Worldwide’s 2020 Instrumentalist of the Year, the first guitarist ever to receive the honor in its 59-year award history. She was inducted into the 2023 Guitar Foundation of America Hall of Fame and received its Artistic Achievement Award.   She is “the pre-eminent guitarist of our time”, the winner of Guitar Player magazine’s Best Classical Guitarist award,...

 “If I ever stop finding music challenging and life-altering, I’ll quit and become an accountant.”  Not to worry.  Pianist Jonathan Biss, a world-renowned educator and critically-acclaimed author, cannot stop finding music challenging and life-altering.  Listening to him speak about Beethoven — or even Verdi, one gleans an obsession with greatness.   At the age of 17, Jonathan attended the Curtis...

Andreas Landin, Swedish baritone has worked, since his graduation from the Opera Academy at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, as an opera singer in Scandinavia and in other theaters in Europe.  He has specialized in contemporary opera repertoire and has had more than 20 contemporary opera roles written for him, mostly by scandinavian composers and performed in the opera houses in Copenhagen, Malmö Op...

The musical Kristina is based on a series of four novels by Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg detailing a family's poverty-driven migration from Sweden to America in the mid-19th century.  On October 12, 1996, a concert version with the original cast was presented, in Swedish, in Minneapolis , Minnesota, as an opening event of the Plymouth Music Series   (now Vocal Essence) 1996–1997 season in Orchest...

Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists.  He is also the recipient of both the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Jeremy is known for his interpretations of the music of American composer Charles Ives. He is also known for his original and insightful writing on music. His New York Times best-selling m...

Sarah Hicks is the in-demand conductor across an array of genres, and as an educator, arranger, producer, writer and speaker committed to creating connections through music. Sarah has worked extensively with all the major orchestras in the US and abroad.  She is a specialist in film music and the film in concert genre.   Sarah has acted as advisor on numerous projects for Disney Music Group and is...

The Winchendon Music Festival is a non-profit concert series held in Winchendon, Massachusetts. The Festival showcases performances by international artists from a variety of genres including classical, folk, jazz, historical performance, and world music. Concerts are free to the public, thanks to support from several local cultural councils, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Robinson Broadh...