The organ is louder and more impressive than a piano, thought a young Christopher Houlihan. Now, the musician and professor sets out to teach the next generation of organists while also showing the world how colorful and exciting organ music can be. 

Composer Dan Visconti and creator-librettist Cerise Jacobs’s video game opera, PermaDeath, is a groundbreaking work containing an intricate web of theater, music, and cutting-edge technology. But the elaborate technical aspects of the piece are all in the service of a story about one central human character: a gaming enthusiast named Sonny, who is grappling with the pain and motor control loss of the early stages of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

From when he was a young boy, Steven LaBrie has been fascinated by classical music and singing. It was an opera field trip in 5th grade that drew him to the stage. Now, Steven travels the world with his gift, bringing beauty and humanity to the characters he plays. 

This summer, Founding Director Leif Ove Andsnes presents the third annual Rosendal Chamber Music Festival, August 9 to 12. Exploring music composed “In the Shadow of War (1914–18),” the 2018 season comprises twelve concerts, an exhibition, lectures, and pre-concert talks in the idyllic Norwegian village of Rosendal, where the celebrated pianist will be joined on stage by a stellar roster of guest artists: soprano Anna Prohaska; baritone Matthias Goerne; flautist Guy Eshed; clarinetist Fabio Di Càsola; violinists Johan Dalene, Henning Kraggerud, and Akiko Suwanai; violist Lars Anders Tomter; cellist Edgar Moreau; double bassist Tim Gibbs; harpist Sivan Magen; the Dover Quartet; and pianists Ingrid Andsnes, Bertrand Chamayou, Kirill Gerstein and Eric Schneider.

Bang on a Can and The Noguchi Museum continue their 2018 monthly summer concert series with String Noise, comprised of violinists Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris, performing in the museum’s outdoor sculpture garden at 3pm on August 12.

O18, the second edition of Opera Philadelphia’s annual season-opening festival, launches on September 20 – on the eve of World Alzheimer’s Day – with the world premiere of Sky on Swings. An unflinching yet uplifting exploration of Alzheimer’s disease from the creative team behind O17’s I Have No Stories to Tell You, the new chamber opera finds fleeting beauty in memory loss, pairing the music of Lembit Beecher with a profoundly sensitive libretto by young playwright Hannah Moscovitch.

Carnegie Hall’s new national youth jazz orchestra NYO Jazz will culminate its work with the ensemble’s historic first-ever international tour. Acclaimed trumpeter Sean Jones leads NYO Jazz with iconic jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves as a special guest artist.

Israeli-American cellist Inbal Segev makes her debut on AVIE Records with Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen in a recording of the music of three leading Romantic composers – Chopin, Schumann, and Grieg.

The Angel’s Share, the acclaimed new concert series by Unison Media and The Green-Wood Historic Fund which features opera and chamber music concerts in Green-Wood’s remarkable Catacombs, will continue in August with programs by harpist Bridget Kibbey and twin sister piano duo Christina and Michelle Naughton. The series, which kicked off in June with the world premiere of David Hertzberg’s chamber opera The Rose Elf directed by R. B. Schlather, was praised by The New York Observer as being “everything you want opera to be...[it] shocked, confounded, disturbed, and, in the end, exalted.”

Five Shanghai Orchestra Academy students spent more than eightaction-packed days in New York City earlier this month participating in both musical and cultural exchange. In addition to performing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade in four concerts with the New York Philharmonic as part of its annual Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, the students – called Zarin Mehta Fellows – enjoyed tours of the New York Philharmonic Archives, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and important cultural sites including the 9/11 Memorial and Freedom Tower, Statue of Liberty, and Brooklyn Bridge.

The New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy (NWS), is excited to welcome Carnegie Hall’s NYO2 for their first-ever residency in Miami, July 16-21, 2018. NYO2 is an intensive summer orchestral training program that features some of the finest young instrumentalists from across the U.S. (ages 14-17), including several South Florida musicians this summer. The NWS and Carnegie Hall, two organizations with deep commitments to education and artist training, have partnered for the first year to provide unique opportunities for NYO2. The NYO2 program is an extension of Carnegie Hall’s acclaimed NYO-USA (the National Youth Orchestra of the USA), for ages 16-19, and was created with a particular focus on attracting students from communities underserved by, and underrepresented in, the classical orchestral field.

Advance tickets are on sale for the Richard Tucker Music Foundation’s annual gala concert, one of the most highly anticipated operatic events of the season. Coming to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage on Sunday, October 21 at 6pm starring tenor Michael Fabiano.

On Saturday, September 29, 2018 at Severance Hall, America’s preeminent performing arts television series Great Performances in association with ideastream will record The Cleveland Orchestra’s 100th Anniversary Gala Concert for an exclusive U.S. television broadcast on PBS slated for 2019. The broadcast is a co-production of The Cleveland Orchestra, ideastream, and THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNET.

The curtain rises on the 2018 Bard SummerScape festival next Thursday, June 28, ushering in seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret. At the heart of these offerings is the 29th Bard Music Festival, which explores “Rimsky-Korsakov and His World” through twelve chamber, orchestral, choral, and operatic programs – two of which feature the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein – supplemented by panel discussions and special events (Aug 10–12; Aug 17–19).

Backwards from Winter is a new multimedia (video/electronic music) monodrama for soprano, electric cello, computer music, and video—a collaboration between librettist Juanita Rockwell and composer Douglas Knehans.  The work has two premieres, New York and Australia, featuring separate productions and casts. 

We've certainly taken note of violinist Filip Pogády's Instagram lately and subsequently heard his beautiful playing. He has a knack for fusing talent with good looks that will make anyone swoon.

So we asked him how he's created this intriguing life and this is what we learned...

Inon Barnatan gears up for a rigorous summer performing eight concertos and two solo recitals on three continents. Highlights include his Asian Tour and a return to the National Symphony and BBC Proms.

Over the coming months, Stephen Costello – “the all-American tenor … at the top of his game” (Opera News) – makes a pair of back-to-back leading role debuts. This summer he returns to Spain for his house and role debuts as Fernand in a new production of Donizetti’s La favorite at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu (July 10–24). Then fall brings his first performances as Don José in Bizet’s Carmen at the Dallas Opera, where the Tucker Award-winning tenor is already a firm house favorite (Oct 19–Nov 4).

Sony Classical proudly announces the release of ADRIFT (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) with original music by German composer, songwriter, pianist, experimental musician and Oscar® nominee, Volker Bertelmann aka Hauschka, available now. STXfilms and Lakeshore Entertainment open ADRIFT now in U.S. theaters.

Sony Classical celebrates the 2018 centenary of Leonard Bernstein – one of the 20th century’s most celebrated, multi-faceted and influential musicians – with a box set devoted to his complete RCA Victor and Columbia Masterworks recordings as pianist in a limited original jacket collection. Leonard Bernstein – The Pianist, 11 CDs in a clamshell box with booklet, is a fitting tribute to the man whom Arthur Rubinstein called “the greatest pianist among conductors, the greatest conductor among composers, and the greatest composer among pianists.”