“Our listeners are queueing up, writing in and tripping over

- BBC Radio 3

Possessing a beautifully warm mezzo soprano voice and a passion for the charm and allure of nostalgic music, Patricia Hammond is spearheading a revival of the great songs of the last century – from Victorian and Edwardian “parlour” songs to early jazz. Originally from BC’s Sunshine Coast and now based in London (UK) where she is known as the “Canadian Nightingale,” Hammond makes her Toronto debut in From the Titanic to the Speakeasy at Hugh’s Room on Tuesday, June 19^th at 8:30pm.

Growing up in a house that contained thousands of 78-RPM records, Patricia’s early obsession with old sheet music – the only “antiques” she could afford to buy – began at the age of nine. While she trained as a classical singer and went on to perform with numerous opera companies and symphonies under the baton of esteemed conductors like Ivan Fischer and Sir Simon Rattle, she never let go of her early passion for this delightful and sentimental music. Songs like the entrancing “Yours”, the spirited “Let Him Go, Let Him Tarry,” and “The Honeysuckle and the Bee,” which is only demure on the surface, are also featured on her new recording Our Lovely Day. Veteran broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson calls the recording: “a music-box of vintage treasures, beautifully sung by a remarkable woman.”

Featured frequently on BBC Radio and television, Patricia was the only contemporary artist included on Sony’s 2010 compilation Down Memory Lane, alongside Dame Vera Lynn and Mario Lanza. Patricia performs frequently around London with groups including the Piccadilly Dance Orchestra, the RMS Lusitania Ragtime Orchestra, and Albert Ball’s Flying Aces band.

Patricia Hammond has also made it a personal mission to bring these songs directly to the people who remember them, spending endless hours singing to the elderly in hospitals and nursing homes. Here, the effect of her music has been poignant and life-changing, an experience she chronicled in a touching personal essay, “Awakenings” for The London Telegraph and reprinted in The Week.  Her story so moved Damian Jones, producer of “The Iron Lady,” that he optioned the rights for a film, which is now in the works.

www.patriciahammond.com

Also this season is Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand”  with over 500 musicians under the under the baton of Virginia Symphony Music Director JoAnn Falletta; banjo legend Béla Fleck, reunited with the original Flecktones; while Randy Jackson and the Virginia Symphony join forces for a spectacular Music Of Pink Floyd, complete with laser light show. Only at the Virginia Arts Festival will you also find the Flying Proms Symphonic Air Show Spectacular, merging symphonic music with amazing maneuvers by vintage airplanes, and, in a magical day out for the whole family, Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals overtakes the Virginia Zoo, with music as the guide across 53 acres of enchanting zoo exhibits.

For a complete schedule and information about many more featured artists and performances, please see: www.vafest.org

“The Queen of Harps … Catrin has done more than anyone in harp history to bring her instrument to a wider public”, says Classic FM. At her Carnegie Hall debut The New York Times commented, “With one touch of the strings … she pulverised the stereotype of harpists as pretty, angelic strummers.” Catrin Finch will join Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, one of the great singers of our time, in a selection of Welsh folk songs. Mr. Terfel appears with DCINY by the kind permission of the Metropolitan Opera.

The program also includes Haydn’s joyous St. Nicholas Mass and Joseph Martin’s The Awakening, conducted by Richard W. Weymuth, and a special appearance by the acclaimed New York choral group KHORIKOS.

Info: www.DCINY.org

Tickets: www.lincolncenter.org

“…his playing is powerful and precise, driven by a probing intellect and executed with steely, virtually infallible fingers.”

—The New York Times

A pianist of power and precision who brings out the panoramic architecture of old and new music alike, Maurizio Pollini’s illustrious recorded legacy on the Yellow Label, which began in 1971, is celebrated this year on his 70^th birthday, with three beautiful limited-edition box sets. For at least two generations, Maurizio Pollini’s fastidious technical standards, unflappable consistency, uncompromising programs of wide-ranging repertoire, and fierce determination to serve the composer first and foremost have represented the modern pianist’s gold standard.

The Art of Maurizio Pollini chronicles the breadth of Pollini’s performance and recording career, chosen personally by the artist. The 3-CD, deluxe hardcover set consists of complete works ranging from Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Chopin’s op. 25 Études to complete concertos by Beethoven and Mozart.  A remarkable bonus is the 1960 performance of Chopin’s First Piano Concerto from the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw – a performance that ensured Pollini’s victory at the age of 18. On that occasion, the great Arthur Rubinstein, who was on the jury, proclaimed, “that boy plays the piano technically better than any of us.” Pollini will perform this very concerto with Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra on May 17^th and 19^th in Philadelphia, and May 18^th at Carnegie Hall.

More than any other leading pianist of the second half of the 20th century, Maurizio Pollini has made a point of championing new music. The remarkable 20^th Century box set includes, on 6 CDs, Pollini’s debut for the Yellow Label and works from Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Webern, Boulez, Nono, Manzoni, Schoenberg, Bartók and Debussy.

From the outset of Maurizio Pollini’s career, his name and Frédéric Chopin’s have been intimately linked. The 9-CD Chopin box includes complete recordings of Études, Préludes, Polonaises, Sonatas nos. 2 & 3, Nocturnes and much more.

Maurizio Pollini in Recital:

Sunday, April 22 at 3:00pm    Boston, Symphony Hall

Sunday, April 29 at 3:00pm    New York, CarnegieHall

Sunday, May 6 at 3:00pm       New York, Carnegie Hall

Sunday, May 13 at 3:00pm     Chicago, Symphony Center

Maurizio Pollini with Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra

Thursday, May 17 & Saturday, May 19  at 8:00pm      Philadelphia, Kimmel Center

Friday, May 18 at 8:00pm       New York, Carnegie Hall

Now, in his mid-fifties, Prats has made a triumphant return to the international stage, performing in many of Europe’s major cities including a key recital at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 2008. Prats made a 2009 appearance at the Caramoor Festival at which The New York Times praised his “passion and clarity of execution to spare” in Carlos Fariñas’ Alta Gracia, continuing, “Mr. Prats fiercely negotiates the piece’s shifting dynamics — storming the keys one moment, caressing them the next — and, as he does, the twists and turns that have roiled his life seem to bubble freely to the surface.”

Decca’s first opportunity to record Prats was a live recital in the won­derful new hall in Zaragoza in Spain. The program is balanced between the masterpieces and the bonbons of Spanish and Cuban music that are so close to Prats’ heart. The pianist revels in intricacy and luxuriance, while unleashing a storm of brilliance, in five of Enrique Granados’ Goyescas, then shows his passion and aplomb for the vibrancy and intensity of Brazil in Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachiana brasileira no. 4.  Prats delights in a series of encores, with ever-expanding virtuosity in works by three Cuban composers. Says the pianist, “What can I say about Carlos Fariñas, Ignacio Cervantes and Ernesto Lecuona, except that I am
Cuban? This is the music of my home.”

Decca presents Jorge Luis Prats: Live in Zaragoza

Precious few stereo LPs were pressed when these recordings were issued, and they became some of the rarest, most collectible classical discs of all time. Mercury Living Presence continues to enjoy a unique reputation as one of the most enterprising, prestigious and sonically-spectacular labels in history.  As The New York Times described of an early release, “one feels oneself in the living presence of the orchestra.”

The elegantly-packaged box set presents 50 original albums, along with their original artwork, drawn from the best in an outstanding catalog. Preceded by only European Classical Labels, Mercury Living Presence was the first to capture many of the great American orchestras and ensembles such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Eastman Wind Ensemble, and Detroit Symphony. As the first American team allowed inside the Soviet Union, the label boasts great recordings from the Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra and the Moscow Philharmonic. The collection also features such treasures as Janos Starker performing the Bach Cello Suites, and Antal Dorati, conducting the 1812 Overture with an authentic Napoleon-era canon from the US Military Academy. In reviewing the new set for London’s Mail On Sunday, David Mellor praises Dorati’s “tremendous rhythmic elan and penetrating musical intelligence. Every one of his performances of music from Tchaikovsky to Bartok to Stravinsky is a joy.”

Mercury Living Presence The Box Set – YouTube

Exploring the relationship of art, nature, and spirituality, Shining Night, a new film by Michael Stillwater, conveys the richness and breadth of composer Morten Lauridsen’s life, with a soundtrack featuring his masterworks. Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout praises Lauridsen’s “radiantly beautiful music,” calling the film “a heartening rarity, a thoroughly intelligent classical-music program that strikes an appropriate balance between words and music.” The screening on Friday, March 30 at 5:30pm will be followed by a Q&A with the composer, filmmaker Michael Stillwater and Eric Whitacre.

On Saturday, March 31, 2:00pm at Avery Fisher Hall, DCINY Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Jonathan Griffith conducts one of
Morten Lauridsen’s seminal works, Lux Aeterna, 15 years after the much-performed work was created. Composed after Lauridsen received news that his mother was dying, Lux Aeterna is a meditation about illumination, searching for peace and reconciliation in the face of death.

Sunday, April 1 at 8:30pm will be a splendid evening of music at Carnegie Hall, conducted by frequent DCINY collaborator and recent Grammy winner Eric Whitacre, one of the most popular and performed composers of our time, and featuring the Distinguished Concert Singers International. Whitacre will conduct works by Morten Lauridsen, with Mr. Lauridsen himself on the piano, as well as a series of his own works.

www.DCINY.org/shininglight

Showcasing his passionate performance style, Abduraimov’s Decca Classics debut recital is centered around Prokofiev’s Sonata no. 6 with Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre (Liszt/Horowitz arrangement). Following his recital debut at London’s Wigmore Hall in May 2010, The Daily Telegraph called the performance of Prokofiev’s 6th Sonata “heart-stopping – in ways that somehow managed, even in relentless passages of brutal mechanistic bombast, to be musical as well.” And, regarding his Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre with Vladimir Horowitz’s pyrotechnical embellishments, The Independent declared, “the way Abduraimov hurled these fistfuls of notes around, he might have been taking a stroll in the park. And a thought arose: could this fresh-faced child be a new Horowitz?”

Abduraimov’s debuts during the 2011/12 season include Tokyo and Kansas City Symphonies, Canada’s National Arts Center Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, and a major tour of Australia. His next US performance will be the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and conductor Michael Christie on April 26, 27 and 28, 2012.

WATCH: Introducing Behzod Abraimov

Info at www.DCINY.org; tickets at www.carnegiehall.org

www.DCINY.org