Phillip Gainsley's Podcast

Phillip Gainsley

4.9 (12)
MUSIC INTERVIEWS
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Phillip Gainsley's Podcast

Phillip Gainsley's Podcast

JAN 14

Thomas W. Morris

Over the course of 34 years, Thomas W. Morris worked at the top levels of the symphony orchestra world, running two of the biggest and most famous, the Boston Symphony and The Cleveland Orchestra.Throughout, though, he developed a sense of institutional malaise, on how classical music is presented these days.He capped his career becoming artistic director of California's Ojai Music Festival. There, Thomas reimagined music experiences by challenging all aspects of making music and producing concerts.Thomas’s book, Always The Music is the story of his growth through the highest levels of the world of classical music, his learning and insights into how storied musical institutions function, how great artists create, and how audiences engage. The book’s final chapter offers a thoughtful prescription for the American orchestra. Mostly, though, this is the story of one man's lifelong love affair with great music and the people who make it.Like the book, this is an instructive and entertaining episode!

1h 21m
12/28/2024

Danieli Rustioni, principal guest conductor designate, Metropolitan Opera

Daniele Rustioni is a major presence at leading opera houses and symphony halls. In 2022, the International Opera Awards named him “Best Conductor.” His opera repertoire numbers over 70 works spanning over centuries and ranging from Italian to French, German to Russian, and more. This coming season he concludes his eight-year tenure as music director of Opéra National de Lyon. He was principal guest conductor of the Bavarian State Opera until October 2023.Daniele has led performances at the nearly all of the most important international opera houses and festivals, including Aix-en-Provence Festival, BBC Proms, Berlin State Opera, Dutch National Opera, Paris Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Salzburg Festival, Teatro Real, Zurich Opera House and the Teatro alla Scala. In Italy, his homeland, he has also conducted at Opera di Roma, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Florence), Teatro La Fenice (Venice), Rossini Opera Festival (Pesaro) and Teatro San Carlo (Naples).He was recently named principal guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, and as we spoke, he was preparing his debut concerts with the New York Philharmonic.

1h 12m
12/15/2024

Jan Vogler

Jan Vogler’s distinguished career has brought him together with renowned conductors and internationally acclaimed orchestras around the world.In addition to his classical concert activities as a soloist, Jan is constantly looking for new ways to combine music with other arts. In February 2024, he gave a highly acclaimed concert with inaugural-poet Amanda Gorman, performing her contemporary poems with cello suites by J. S. Bach in the Isaac Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall. They appeared on the ‘Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert’ in March 2024. He has also collaborated with actor Bill Murray for their joint musical-literary project “Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends – New Worlds”. Under the artistic direction of Jan Vogler and conductor Kent Nagano, Wagner’s “Ring Tetralogy” will be performed in the artistic context of the period in which it was composed, based on the latest findings of research into Wagner and performance practice, and integrated into an extensive supporting program as part of the multi-year project “The Wagner Cycles” of the Dresdner Musikfestspiele from 2023 to 2026.“Die Walküre,” the second work in the epochal narrative will follow in 2024.Jan has recorded 20 Sony CDs. The most recent releases were with the cello concertos of Edouard Lalo and Enrique Casals in March 2023, The Dvorak Album in July 2022.Jan has been Intendant of the renowned Dresden Music Festival since October 2008 as well as Artistic Director of the Moritzburg Festival since 2001. In 2017 the Moritzburg Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary as one of the most established chamber music festivals internationally.In 2006, he received the European Award for Culture and in 2011 the Erich-Kästner Award for tolerance, humanity and international understanding. In June 2018 he received the European Award for Culture TAURUS as Director of the Dresden Music Festival. 2021 Jan Vogler was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

1h 12m
11/24/2024

Sharon Isbin

Sharon Isbin was named Musical America Worldwide’s 2020 Instrumentalist of the Year, the first guitarist ever to receive the honor in its 59-year award history. She was inducted into the 2023 Guitar Foundation of America Hall of Fame and received its Artistic Achievement Award. She is “the pre-eminent guitarist of our time”, the winner of Guitar Player magazine’s Best Classical Guitarist award, and numerous other awards. Sharon has appeared as soloist with over 200 orchestras and has given sold-out performances in many of the world’s finest halls across 40 countries, including New York’s Carnegie and Geffen Halls, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, London’s Barbican and Wigmore Halls, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Paris’ Châtelet, Vienna’s Musikverein, Munich’s Herkulessaal, Argentina’s Teatro Colón, and Madrid’s Teatro Real. She has been acclaimed for expanding the guitar repertoire with some of the finest new works of our time, and has premiered over 80 works written for her by world-renowned composers, including more concerti than any other guitarist, as well as numerous solo and chamber works. Public television’s acclaimed one-hour documentary Sharon Isbin: Troubadour has been seen by millions on over 200 PBS stations across the U.S. and abroad. Other recent national performances on PBS include the Billy Joel Gershwin Prize with Josh Groban, and Tavis Smiley. And, she has a significant discography. Sharon Isbin has been practicing Transcendental Meditation since age 17 and donates her time to perform benefits for the David Lynch Foundation, along with Katy Perry, Sting, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno, to bring TM to at-risk communities. We’ll talk about that and more in this inspiring conversation.

1h 10m
11/05/2024

Jonathan Biss

“If I ever stop finding music challenging and life-altering, I’ll quit and become an accountant.” Not to worry. Pianist Jonathan Biss, a world-renowned educator and critically-acclaimed author, cannot stop finding music challenging and life-altering. Listening to him speak about Beethoven — or even Verdi, one gleans an obsession with greatness. At the age of 17, Jonathan attended the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Leon Fleisher, which proved a phenomenal learning experience. While his life in music provides him with tremendous satisfaction, playing music remains ever a struggle. He regards it as a pleasure and privilege to live this struggle, and to share its results with other people. As he puts it, “Doing justice to great music is an unattainable goal.”His audio book, Unquiet, My Life With Beethoven is a must-hear.Our conversation is as enlightening as it is entertaining. Listen for yourself!

1h 5m
10/27/2024

Andreas Landin

Andreas Landin, Swedish baritone has worked, since his graduation from the Opera Academy at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, as an opera singer in Scandinavia and in other theaters in Europe. He has specialized in contemporary opera repertoire and has had more than 20 contemporary opera roles written for him, mostly by scandinavian composers and performed in the opera houses in Copenhagen, Malmö Opera and Gothenburg Opera among others. He has also appeared in modern classic parts such as the count in Luce mie Traditrici by Sciarrino, The Emperor in Der Kaiser von Atlantis and the baritone in The four note opera. Within the classic opera repertoire Andreas has sung parts as varied as Don Giovanni, Papageno, Marcello, and Silvio. He has also had great success within the oratory repertoire and regularly perform the bass parts in most of the classic oratories by Bach, Handel, Brahms and Mozart. In recent years Landin has partly moved into a heavier fach and sung parts like Scarpia in Tosca and the title role in Macbeth.

50 min
10/13/2024

Philip Brunelle, artistic director of VocalEssence, leads Kristina

The musical Kristina is based on a series of four novels by Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg detailing a family's poverty-driven migration from Sweden to America in the mid-19th century. On October 12, 1996, a concert version with the original cast was presented, in Swedish, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as an opening event of the Plymouth Music Series (now Vocal Essence) 1996–1997 season in Orchestra Hall, and the next day in Chisago Lakes High School in Lindstrom, Minnesota – the area where much of the events in Moberg's books took place and where the statue of the books' two main characters stands on the main street of the town. In this episode, Philip discusses this milestone in the history of VocalEssence

37 min
10/01/2024

Jeremy Denk

Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists. He is also the recipient of both the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Jeremy is known for his interpretations of the music of American composer Charles Ives.He is also known for his original and insightful writing on music. His New York Times best-selling memoir, Every Good Boy Does Fine was published to universal acclaim by Random House in 2022. His latest album of Mozart piano concertos was deemed “urgent and essential” by BBC Radio 3, while his recording of the Goldberg Variations reached No. 1 on the Billboard classical charts.

1 hr

4.9

out of 5

12 Ratings

So good!

04/03/2021

lloydfromflorida

A true expert shares his views in a conversational and stylish manner. Gainsley is so well prepared and/or well grounded in the subject matter. He is a treasure!

Phillip Gainsley's Podcast

Creator

Phillip Gainsley
Years Active

2020 - 2025
Episodes

100
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Copyright 2025 Phillip Gainsley
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Phillip Gainsley's Podcast

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Updated 11/08/2024