Sharon Isbin performs at Carnegie Hall twice this month, on November 4 with Sting and Katy Perry and November 12 with mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (BM ’04, MM ’06, voice).

On November 1, organ department chair Paul Jacobs and soprano Christine Brewer will perform works in Alice Tully Hall from their album Divine Redeemer (Naxos), which features works by Bach, Gounod, Franck, and Puccini, among others, and which was released in September. The album tour culminates on January 24 with a performance at Disney Hall in Los Angeles.

On November 20, clarinet faculty member Anthony McGill performs the world premiere of Geoffrey Gordon’s Clarinet Quintet with the Jack Quartet for the American Music Project’s first event in New York City, which is at Roulette in Brooklyn.

A world premiere studio recording of Agostino Steffani’s 1688 opera Niobe, regina di Tebe (Erato/Warner Classics) involved Historical Performance faculty members Robert Mealy, Cynthia Roberts, Phoebe Carrai, Rob Nairn, and Gonzalo Ruiz. The album, released by the Boston Early Music Festival, is to receive a Diapason d’Or from Diapason magazine this month.

Composition faculty member Matthias Pintscher has been named principal conductor of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra beginning in the summer of 2016, it was announced in September. That same month, Pintscher made his Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra debut, conducting his own Mar’eh, for violin and orchestra, as well as music by Fauré, Schoenberg, and Debussy.

In September, the Israeli Chamber Project, which includes Evening Division faculty member Assaff Weisman (BM ’99, MM ’01, piano), who is the group’s executive director, as well as Tibi Cziger (Graduate Diploma ’06, Artist Diploma ’08, clarinet), Sivan Magen (BM ’07, MM ’08, harp), Michal Korman (MM ’07, Artist Diploma ’09, cello), and Dov Scheindlin (BM ’92, MM ’94, viola), opened Merkin Concert Hall’s fall season with a concert of music by Schumann, Dvořák, Henriette Renié, and Gilad Hochman.

Staff

Prop shop supervisor Kate Dale designed scenery and costumes for The Ride Inspector’s Nightmare, an interactive Halloween theater experience at Coney Island USA that runs through November 1.

Students

In September, undergraduate pianist Kevin Ahfat won first prize in the Seattle Symphony’s inaugural International Piano Competition. He performed with the symphony at Benaroya Hall at the finals and at its opening-night gala.

In September, second-year Historical Performance oboist David Dickey joined the resident octet at the Church of Our Saviour in New York City, where he sings countertenor.

On November 27, the Royal Conservatory Orchestra at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto performs doctoral student Jared Miller’s (MM ’12, composition) short piece 2010 Traffic Jam. Miller’s Bloom, which he composed as one of the Banff Centre’s emerging composers in residence, was performed at the center in July. In August, Miller was named one of 30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30 by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s digital music service CBC Music.

In September, master’s pianist Drew Petersen (Diploma ’13, piano) won fourth place in the Leeds International Piano Competition. In the finals, he played Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor.