Valentina Lisitsa is not only the first YouTube star of classical music with over 200 million views, but she is the first classical artist to have converted her internet success into a global concert career. Her multi-faceted virtuosity is sure to dazzle as she takes center stage for Prokofiev’s vivacious Piano Concerto No. 3. Renowned conductor Keitaro Harada, who currently serves as Music Director of the Savannah Philharmonic and Associate Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, makes his debut with the Pasadena Symphony as part of its search for new Music Director.
The Pasadena Symphony holds the safety of its audience, staff and musicians as its top priority. In order to provide the safest possible experience for all concertgoers, all patrons who are eligible must have received a COVID-19 booster dose in addition to being fully vaccinated in order to attend this performance. Masks are now optional inside the venue. Covid-19 protocols for concerts at Ambassador Auditorium are evolving with LA County Health Department guidelines and will be updated here: pasadenasymphony-pops.org/
To learn more about the music, come early for Insights – a free pre-concert dialogue with Artistic Partner Keitaro Harada and Assistant Conductor David Cubek, which begins one hour prior to each performance. Patrons who arrive early can also enjoy a drink or a bite in the outdoor, tented Rusnak Symphony Lounge. A posh setting along Ambassador Auditorium’s beautiful outdoor plaza, patrons enjoy uniquely prepared menus for both lunch and dinner at each concert by Claud & Co and a full bar and fine wines from the Michero Family serving Riboli Family Wines before the concert and during intermission. In order to provide the safest possible experience, all food must be pre-ordered. For more information, visit: bit.ly/symphony-dining.
All concerts are held at Ambassador Auditorium, 131 South St. John Ave, Pasadena, CA. Single tickets start at $35 and may be purchased online at pasadenasymphony-pops.org, by calling (626) 793-7172, or at the Ambassador Box Office starting at noon on concert days.
IF YOU GO:
- What: The Pasadena Symphony presents Beethoven Symphony No. 5
Keitaro Harada, conductor
Valentina Lisitsa, piano
James Thatcher, hornBrett Banducci In Nomine (world premiere)
Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3
Beethoven Symphony No. 5
- When: Saturday, April, 30 2022 at 2:00pm and 8:00pm
- Where: Ambassador Auditorium | 131 South St. John Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105
- Cost: Tickets start at $35.00
- Parking: Valet parking is available on South St. John directly past the auditorium for $20. General parking is available in two locations: next to the Auditorium (entrance on St. John Ave) at the covered parking structure for $10 and directly across Green street at the Wells Fargo parking structure (entrance on Terrace at Green St). ADA parking is located at the above-ground parking lot adjacent to the Auditorium (entrance on St. John Ave.) for $10. Parking is cash-only.
- Proof of Vaccination: The Pasadena Symphony is committed to providing the safest possible setting for the community and will require all concertgoers to be fully vaccinated, including a booster dose for those who are eligible to attend concerts at Ambassador Auditorium. For protocols, visit: pasadenasymphony-pops.org/
symphony-covid-safety/.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Keitaro Harada
Conductor
Conductor Keitaro Harada maintains a growing, international presence throughout North America, Asia, Mexico and Europe. With home bases in the United States and Japan, the 2020-21 season marked his tenure as Music & Artistic Director of the Savannah Philharmonic and Associate Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. Harada’s broad scope of musical interest in symphonic, opera, chamber works, pops, film scores, ballet, educational, outreach, and multi-disciplinary projects leads to diverse and eclectic programs.
Recent and upcoming highlights include the symphony orchestras of Houston, Seattle, NHK, Yomiuri Nippon, Osaka, Hawaii, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Memphis, Louisiana, Charlotte, West Virginia, Tucson, Phoenix, Virginia, as well as the Osaka Philharmonic, Kanagawa Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic and Orquesta Filarmónica de Sonora (México).
No stranger to the operatic cannon, Harada returns next season for Puccini’s La bohème with North Carolina Opera, for whom he has previously led productions of Pagliacci, Carmen and Britten’s Turn of the Screw. In 2017, he conducted Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar for Cincinnati Opera, as well as run of Carmen for Bulgaria’s Sofia National Opera and Ballet that reprised with a Japan tour in fall 2018. In past seasons and as Associate Conductor of Arizona Opera, he led productions of Don Pasquale, Le Fille du Regiment and Tosca. As a 2010 Seiji Ozawa Fellow at Tanglewood, Harada conducted critically-acclaimed performances of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos.
Having completed his fourth season as Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops, Harada regularly assisted Music Director Louis Langrée, conducted the CSO and POPS, and collaborated with James Conlon and Juanjo Mena.
Valentina Lisitsa
Piano
Valentina Lisitsa is not only the first YouTube star of classical music; more importantly, she is the first classical artist to have converted her internet success into a global concert career in the principal venues of Europe, the US, South America and Asia. Washington Post Online wrote: “It’s striking that her playing is relatively straightforward. ‘Straightforward’ is an inadequate term for virtuosity. She does not tart the music up. She does not seek to create a persona, much less impose one on what she is playing. She offers readings that are, when you penetrate through the satin curtains of the soft playing and the thunder of the loud playing, fundamentally honest and direct. You feel you’re getting a strong performer but also a sense of what the piece is like rather than of how Lisitsa plays it. I was impressed, sometimes dazzled and sometimes even taken aback by the ferocity of her fortissimos. And she is also a delicate, sensitive, fluid player who can ripple gently over the keys with the unctuous smoothness of oil.”
She posted her first video on the internet platform YouTube in 2007, a recording of the Etude op. 39/6 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The views increased staggeringly; more videos followed. The foundation stone of a social-network career unparalleled in the history of classical music was laid. Her YouTube channel now records 550,000 subscribers and 200 million views with an average 75,000 views per day.
This singular success has led Valentina to perform at some of the world’s most prestigious stages, including a spectacular recital in London’s Royal Albert Hall before an audience of 8000 in June 2012 that sealed her international breakthrough. Listeners had the chance to vote online in advance for their preferred programme – a form of audience participation that has become one of Valentina’s trademarks. DECCA gave Lisitsa an exclusive artist contract, releasing the live recording of the Royal Albert Hall concert only one week later on CD and DVD. Since then, Valentina has released a further 9 albums for Decca, including every piano concerto by Sergei Rachmaninoff, works by Chopin, Philipp Glass, Liszt and Scriabin as well as CD «Love Story – Piano Themes from the Cinema’s Golden Age» with major film music from the 1920s. In February 2019, for the 125th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death, Decca released a special CD-Box Set: the most complete collection of works for solo piano by Tchaikovsky with some of the works having never been recorded before.
Highlights of the past seasons include amongst others a sold-out concert at Auditorio Nacional with the Spanish National Orchestra, where Valentina played all piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Sergej Rachmaninoff in one evening. She has also performed at Berlin Philharmonie, Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Wigmore Hall in London, Prinzregententheater in Munich, Carnegie Hall in New York, NCPA in Beijing, Teatro Major in Bogota and at festivals including the BBC Proms, Dvorak Prague Festival and Musica Mundi Chamber Festival in Brussels. In recent seasons, Valentina performed as a soloist with London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Seoul Philharmonic.
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Valentina started learning the piano at age three and gave her first public recital a year later. She graduated from Kiev Conservatory subsequently moving to the United States and giving her debut performance in New York in 1995. Now Valentina shares her time between Moscow and Rome
James Thatcher
Horn
James Thatcher began his professional career at age 16 when he played and studied in Mexico City with his uncle, Gerald Thatcher, former principal hornist with the National Symphony of Mexico. Subsequent instructors have included Fred Fox, Don Peterson, Wendell Hoss, James Decker, Vincent DeRosa and master classes with Hermann Baumann. Mr. Thatcher has been a member of the Phoenix Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the Pacific Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
He is currently principal horn of the Pasadena Symphony, the New West Symphony and the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, but principally he is a studio player, a recipient of the Most Valuable Player Award from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences and “arguably the most often heard horn player in the world” due to his performances on some 70 to 80 films per year for the last 20 years.
James has the enviable position of being the favored first horn of multiple Oscar-winning composer John Williams performing in such films as Always, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Sleepers (in which he received an on-screen credit), Nixon, Schindler’s List, JFK, Sabrina, Home Alone, Rosewood, Seven Years in Tibet and The Patriot as well as the fanfare for the 1992 Olympics. He also works regularly with other Hollywood greats Jerry Goldsmith, James Newton Howard, Randy Newman, John Barry, James Horner and Alan Silvestri to name a few and can be heard as well on the tracks to Glory, The Rocketeer, Field of Dreams, X-Men: The Last Stand, Spider-Man 3, Ice Age, Polar Express, Beowulf, Dances with Wolves, Toy Story, Cars, Apollo 13, Forrest Gump, Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Transformers, The Simpsons Movie, Night at the Museum, King Kong, Signs, Peter Pan, Hook, as well as Independence Day and the Star Trek films, among others. Most recently, Mr. Thatcher was deemed principal horn in James Newton Howard’s soundtrack of The Last Airbender directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Thatcher has joined Kristy Morrell on the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music as the co-professor of Horn. Notable students include J. Greg Miller.
Brett Banducci
Composer
Brett Banducci is a composer, violist, and educator residing in Los Angeles. Brett is the 2016 recipient of the Andrew Imbrie Music Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A frequent performer with the Pasadena Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony, and Hollywood Chamber Orchestra, he is a longtime contributing member to the Hollywood Studio Symphony and has played on countless records, films, and television scores— including recent albums by Madonna and Barbra Streisand.
His compositions have been performed and premiered at Brooklyn’s MATA Festival Interval New Music Series, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Los Angeles-based Hear Now Festival, among others. A devoted educator he spearheaded an innovative composition program for the Young Musicians Foundation in 2015. Brett received his DMA from the University of Southern California in 2016. His primary composition teachers have included Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, Morten Lauridsen, and Byron Adams. He has studied viola with Pamela Goldsmith and Keith Greene. Brett currently hosts a dynamic new podcast called Classical Chops Studio. Subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
