The Music of Now: Alexander Shelley on San Francisco Classical Voice

Photo Credit: Doug Gifford

Victoria Looseleaf from San Francisco Classical Voice recently chatted with Alexander Shelley during his first weekend of concerts with the Pacific Symphony as artistic and music director designate. He will become the third music director in the ensemble’s history, following his departure from the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa at the end of this season. Shelley spoke about his approach for working with an ensemble, particularly in the role of music director. “The most important thing in my life is to build the sound of an orchestra, to build the personality of the orchestra, to build the way we make music – the flexibility, the breadth of music we make together.” Ultimately, his goal is to connect with audiences, equating the concert hall to “a religious and spiritual space,” where listeners can connect with “another part of being and consciousness that is ever more important.”

Looseleaf notes Shelley’s penchant for mixing canonical and contemporary repertoire. “All the music we love from the past was written in response to its time,” he said. “The manifestations of life, they kind of vary…But the underscoring motivations of life and the underscoring questions [of] life and hope, loss and mystery, all those things that are actually the nuts and bolts of our interactions with the material world, they have not changed a jot.” Shelley argues that the solution is “to juxtapose the music of then with the music of now.”

Read the full interview here.

Photo Credit: Doug Gifford

Curtis Opera Theatre Profiled in Opera Now

Photo Credits (left to right): Pete Checchia, Wide Eyed Studios

The Curtis Institute was founded in 1924 by Mary Louise Curtis Bok, who “had a bold vision for the music landscape at the time: to create a conservatory where the most promising young musicians could develop their talents without financial barriers.” It boasts a small enrollment of 160, comprising only 25 vocal and opera students. “Because Curtis is smaller, undergraduates and graduate students and post-graduate students all work together in one cohort,” says Miloš Repický, director of the opera department. “They take studio class together, they take acting classes together, they take movement together. They’re in productions together. They need to understand that they’re here to support each other and to be constructive in the learning.”

Curtis also supports the careers of its graduates in numerous ways, including through Curtis Artist Management, which provides management and global representation for a select group of alumni and faculty artists. In May, Curtis announced the signing of the first two singers to the program: Sarah Fleiss and Juliette Tacchino. 

Hattie Butterworth visited in April for Curtis’ production of Bernstein’s Candide, directed by Emma Griffin. She writes, “Griffin’s colourful production brought a sense of the connection between singers and ease at which they threw themselves into the operetta’s score.” The 2025-26 season of the Curtis Opera Theatre features productions of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Kaija Saariaho’s La Passion de Simone, and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“It’s clear Curtis offers a unique gift,” Butterworth writes. “There’s a sense of heritage and tradition with a dedication to the new.”

Read the full article here.

Photo Credits: Wide Eyed Studios

Seeking the Complete Artist: Honens Competition on International Piano

The Honens International Piano Competition recently concluded in Calgary, awarding its Gold medal prize to 29-year old Élisabeth Pion. Founded in 1992 by Canadian philanthropist Ester Honens, the Honens Competition awards its laureates with significant cash prizes up to CAD$100,000 in addition to a three-year career development program for the Gold Laureate. 

“The Honens Competition has grown into Canada’s leading pianist agon, known for its combination of holistic vision with serious artistic financial commitment,” writes Thomas May for International Piano. The competition prides itself on seeking ‘the complete artist’ - defined as one “who combines technical mastery with artistic innovation and inspires through deep cultural and social awareness.” This comprehensive view of artistry is apparent in the events surrounding the competition, which Artistic Director Jon Kimura Parker describes as a way “to create a festival atmosphere and to make people in Calgary feel more engaged in Honens.”

The final round of Honens tested its three remaining competitors in a concerto performance with the Calgary Philharmonic. Pion closed the competition with a performance of Prokofiev’s Third Concerto, which May writes was “brilliantly lit” and “rhythmically alive,” with “a striking sense of spontaneity.”

Read the full feature in International Piano here.

Photo Credit: Tim Nguyen

Marc-André Hamelin on Cover of Gramophone!

Cover Photo Credits: Ben Ealovega

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin recently spoke with Michelle Assay from Gramophone for the cover story of the November 2025 issue. Together, they discussed the process and inspiration behind Hamelin’s latest album, Found Objects / Sound Objects, which includes works by Cage, Marirano, Wolpe, Oswald, Wyner, and even Hamelin himself. Hamelin wanted “a means to put together some repertoire that would have been very difficult, or even impossible, to inject into other projects,” he says. This idea of fragmentation is most apparent in John Oswald’s Tip, a 2021 Hamelin-commissioned piece, which injects upwards of 40 musical clippings from a variety of genres from classical to jazz to pop. Nonetheless, Hamlin’s goal remains the same: “It’s always about sharing with the audience,” he says. “It’s my fantasy that [music] could really express itself semantically, with chapters, paragraphs, sentences, punctuation. Not to mention, of course, ideas. I have this fantasy that whatever I play, in whatever way I play it, could be understood as a narrative, a pure narrative.”

Found Objects / Sound Objects closes with Hamelin’s own composition Hexansabbat, commissioned for Le Piano Symphonique festival in Lucerne and premiered by Yoav Levanon in 2024. Jed Distler, who reviewed the album in the same issue for Gramophone, comments: “Imagine the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique’s stark raving mad finale and Liszt’s Scherzo und Marsch first paired together, then chopped to bits, and then radically reharmonised to 21st-century specifications, with more than a few hints of Carl Stalling’s Warner Brothers cartoon soundtracks tossed into the mix.” 

Distler concludes: “Found Objects / Sound Objects may be Hamelin’s most uncompromising, most personal and most interesting release to date.”

Read the full piece here.

Stream the album here.

Photo Credits: Ben Ealovega

Congratulations to our 8VA GRAMMY® Nominees

Christopher Cerrone: Don’t Look Down, performed by Sandbox Percussion

Best Classical Compendium

Cerrone: Don’t Look Down

Sandbox Percussion; Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Christopher Cerrone, Ian Rosenbaum, Terry Sweeney & Mike Tierney, producers

Best Contemporary Classical Composition

Cerrone: Don’t Look Down

Christopher Cerrone, composer (Conor Hanick & Sandbox Percussion)

Best Engineered Album, Classical

Cerrone: Don’t Look Down

Mike Tierney, engineer; Alan Silverman, mastering engineer (Sandbox Percussion)

Don’t Look Down, from contemporary chamber music specialists Sandbox Percussion, reflects the group’s deep connection, friendship, and 10 years of music-making with composer Christopher Cerrone. A bold exploration of the endless possibilities of percussion, Don’t Look Down is a testament to the evolving power of music and collaboration.

Stream the album here.

Kris Bowers: The Wild Robot, featuring Sandbox Percussion

Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media (Includes Film and Television)

The Wild Robot

Kris Bowers, composer

Sandbox Percussion created innovative percussion sounds for The Wild Robot (DreamWorks, 2024), an animated science fiction film directed by Chris Sanders, with music by Kris Bowers. The earthy soundtrack uses a variety of found instruments played by Sandbox Percussion—glass bottles, metal pans, cardboard tubes, coils, coffee mugs, buckets, mixing bowls, chains, an oxygen tank—to bring to life the heartwarming story of Roz, a robot who is stranded on a desert island and learns to use kindness as a survival skill.

Stream the album here.

Beloved: Anne Akiko Meyers, Grant Gershon, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale

Best Choral Performance

Childs: In the Arms of the Beloved

Grant Gershon, conductor (Billy Childs, Dan Chmielinski, Christian Euman, Larry Koonse, Lyris Quartet, Anne Akiko Meyers, Carol Robbins & Luciana Souza; Los Angeles Master Chorale)

Anne Akiko Meyers offers the world premiere recording of Billy Childs’ In the Arms of the Beloved—a requiem for Childs’ mother and the centerpiece of the album—as well as Eric Whitacre’s Seal Lullaby and Ola Gjeilo’s Serenity. All feature the supreme voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon.

Stream the album here.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Michael Repper, Curtis Stewart, and the National Philharmonic

Best Orchestral Performance

Coleridge-Taylor: Toussaint L’Ouverture; Ballade Op. 4; Suites From ‘24 Negro Melodies’

Michael Repper, conductor (National Philharmonic)

Best Classical Instrumental Solo 

Coleridge-Taylor: 3 Selections From ‘24 Negro Melodies’

Curtis Stewart; Michael Repper, conductor (National Philharmonic)

Conductor Michael Repper, violinist Curtis Stewart, and the National Philharmonic celebrate the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s birth with the world premiere studio recordings of the tone poem Toussaint L’Ouverture and Ballade Op. 4 for Violin and Orchestra. Also included is a newly uncovered suite of 5 Negro Melodies as arranged by Coleridge-Taylor, paired with modern recompositions of 3 Negro Melodies arranged by Curtis Stewart, Hamilton Berry, and Andrew Roitstein. 

Stream the album here.

Karen LeFrak: ROMÁNTICO

Producer of the Year, Classical

Elaine Martone

Karen LeFrak: ROMÁNTICO

Sharon Isbin, Enrico Lopez-Yañez & Orchestra Of St. Luke’s

ROMÁNTICO, by composer Karen LeFrak, features Sharon Isbin, one of the great guitar soloists of our time. The recording includes the world premiere of the three-movement Miami Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra, LeFrak’s homage to the musical heritage of Miami, the New York-based composer’s second home. 

Stream the album here.

Final round GRAMMY® voting opens on December 12, 2025.

Michael Repper Champions Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in New York Times Feature

Photo Credit (left to right): András Grausz, Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor Michael Repper embarked on a massive research and recording project of the composer’s works.

Eleanor Stanford from The New York Times spoke with Repper about this undertaking, which included going note by note through Coleridge-Taylor’s manuscripts, unearthed by the Library of Congress and the British Library, and ensuring that each piece was performable and accessible. Among those published include Coleridge-Taylor’s “24 Negro Melodies,” which is featured on Repper’s recent album with the National Philharmonic and violinist Curtis Stewart.

Repper remarks that engaging with Coleridge-Taylor’s music is important “because it reminds us how much passion, emotion, and love can be in every note.” He believes that the composer deserves to be widely appreciated because the “quality of his musicianship, the quality of his writing, merits it.”

Read the full article from The New York Times here.

Listen to the album here.

Photo Credit: Elman Studio

The Shepherd School of Music Highlighted in Classical Voice North America

Photo Credit: Brandon Martin

The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, with highlights that include seven world premieres by the school’s composition faculty: Shih-Hui Chen’s The Birds Are Real, Ambushed From Ten Directions, Richard Lavenda’s Upon Further Reflection, Anthony Brandt’s Chamber Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Kurt Stallman’s The Fruit and the Work, Karim Al-Zand’s A Joint Interest, Arthur Gottschalk’s Tombeaux: pour un création d’une rapsodie, and Pierre Jalbert’s Another Starry Night.

Reporting for Classical Voice North America, James Bash met with Dean of Music Matthew Loden, who spoke of the Shepherd School’s unique position as “a conservatory inside of a research university,” which brings “sophisticated, academically bright and musically brilliantly talented students who want to have the bespoke musical experience.” Loden also mentions its small body of students, with an enrollment of 285, citing that “our size allows us to concentrate on what our students need to be successful in the future.”

Miguel Harth-Bedoya recently joined the faculty as director of orchestra and professor of conducting, following 20 years leading the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. After attending a rehearsal with one of Harth-Bedoya’s student conductors, Bash remarks that his “engaging, enthusiastic teaching style is contagious.”

Read the full article from Classical Voice North America here.

Photo Credit: Michael Stravato

Anne Akiko Meyers Featured in Cover Story for Strings Magazine

GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Anne Akiko Meyers speaks with Megan Westberg from Strings Magazine for the cover story for the November-December 2025 issue. Westberg hails Meyers as a “stalwart champion of contemporary composers,” highlighting the recent release of three albums of contemporary music, with two more on the way.

Within the past year, Meyers’ recording output features Michael Daugherty: Blue Electra for violin and orchestra, Beloved (In the Arms of the Beloved) by Billy Childs, and Philip Glass Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel. Upcoming projects for Meyers include commissioned recordings of Adam Schoenberg’s violin concerto Orchard in Fog and Eric Whitacre’s The Pacific Has No Memory with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which premiered to a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall in May 2025.

Meyers comments on the necessity of new music in the modern landscape of recording and performance: “You want music that grows…it’s a reflection of our times, our culture, and it just resonates, I think, so deeply in our hearts when we listen to music that makes us feel.”

Read the full piece here.

(Credit Jamie Pham)

Alexander Shelley Featured on "Fred Plotkin on Fridays"

The celebrated conductor Alexander Shelley appeared on the IDAGIO show “Fred Plotkin on Fridays.” The author of Opera 101 and Classical Music 101, Plotkin is a passionate opera expert who speaks with fascinating people in the music world every Friday.

In this episode, Plotkin speaks with the distinguished English conductor, currently serving as the Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. Shelley is also the music director of the Naples Philharmonic (Florida), incoming principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland, and incoming music director of the Pacific Symphony.

Born in 1979 to concert pianist parents, Shelley studied cello and conducting in Germany before winning first prize at the 2005 Leeds Conductors Competition, which marked the start of his acclaimed international career. A passionate and articulate advocate for the role of music in society, Shelley has spearheaded multiple ground-breaking projects, unlocking creativity in the next generation and bringing symphonic music to new audiences.

Listen to the conversation here.

Sandbox Percussion Featured on KMTV, Nebraska

Sandbox Percussion, which the New York Times has called “exhilarating” and the Guardian “utterly mesmerizing,” appeared at KANEKO, in Omaha, to perform brand-new music by Andy Akiho, who joined the quartet on steelpan.

For this new piece, as a quintet, they're building on the success of their Grammy-nominated and Pulitzer Prize-finalist work Seven Pillars, which has captivated audiences across 40+ performances worldwide, from Paris to Beijing.

The performance gave Omaha audiences the first glimpse into their new project, brought to life at KANEKO, whose unique creative environment is shaping the new piece. The event was previewed by KMTV 3 News Now.

"A lot of the sounds we're making on these instruments are ones that you wouldn't always necessarily hear. We have some wooden sticks on a vibraphone," Victor Caccese, from Sandbox Percussion, said.

Watch the full segment here.