The premiere of the opera The Judgment of Paris. Trial of a Deicide (Il Giudizio di Paride) with music by MSM Composition faculty member Paolo Marchettini and libretto by Fabio Ceresa takes place on November 29 and 30 at the historic Teatro Pergolesi di Jesi, a city located in the province of Ancona in the region of Marche near the Adriatic Sea.
Il Giudizio di Paride was commissioned by Fondazione Pergolesi/Spontini of Jesi.
The story, set in the monumental hall of an otherworldly courtroom, calls on Paris to answer for the murder of Achilles, a hero of divine blood. In a refined interplay of irony and tragedy, Il Giudizio di Paride alternates between solemnity and comedy in a mythological setting that transforms into a reflection on free will and destiny.
More information here.
MSM faculty member and alumnus Tommy Mesa (DMA ‘23) is a 2025 Avery Fisher Career Grant Award Recipient, and is currently featured on the Great Performances: Taking Note, a PBS digital series spotlighting rising instrumentalists who have received career grants from the Avery Fisher Artist Program. Each year, the Program awards up to five Career Grant Awards to talented instrumentalists and/or chamber ensembles with great potential for major careers.
The second season of the program showcases the Viano Quartet, violinist Joshua Brown, and cellist Tommy Mesa. The series features both performances and interviews with awardees sharing past and present inspirations, training and goals.
Watch an excerpt from the program here.
The American Composers Orchestra (ACO), the Sphinx Organization, and Concert Artists Guild have commissioned los quetzales—a brand new viola concerto written by Michael Frazier. On October 22, this new work will be brought to life by soloist and MSM faculty member Jordan Bak and the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra at the Eastman School of Music, and will be conducted by frequent MSM guest conductor Joshua Gersen.
More about Jordan Bak here.
MSM Musical Theatre faculty member Andrew Gerle has published a book with Joseph Zellnik: The Periodic Table of Broadway Musicals: An illustrated Guide to 118 Essential Shows (Union Square Publishing, 2025).
Writes Broadway World: “Andrew Gerle and Joseph Zellnik imagine the classic periodic table of elements—but instead of Chromium and Rhodium, it’s A Chorus Line and Rent!… This delightful and informative gift book, based on the bestselling viral poster series is a stunning showcase of art and content sure to thrill lovers of show tunes and everything Broadway and beyond.”
Learn more and purchase the book here.
MSM violin faculty member Lucie Robert is featured in the prestigious The Strad magazine giving advice from her perspective as a frequent judge on how to navigate competitions, offering “sage advice to young string players planning to step onto the competition path.”
Read the article here.
The New York Philharmonic, conducted by Anthony Parnther, will perform the arrangements by composer and arranger Darcy James Argue on September 25 during the opening gala of the NY Philharmonic 2025–26 season.
The featured artist at the event, Cecile McLorin Salvant, will sing Mr. Argue’s orchestral arrangements of Being Alive by Stephen Sondheim, Barbara Song by Brecht and Weill, and With Every Breath I Take by Coleman and Zippel.
Learn more and purchase tickets here.
Pianist Phil Markowitz and violinist Zach Brock are releasing a new album on October 3 entitled Stratus (Double Moon records), joined on the recording by Finnish jazz standouts Jaska Lukkarinen (a former MSM graduate exchange student from the Sibelius Academy who studied with Phil Markowitz) and Ville Herrala.
The album was recorded in Sipoo, Finland, and, say the artists, builds on their previous recording Perpetuity, and “blends lyrical improvisation, intricate composition, and intuitive interplay into a cohesive, deeply expressive whole. From lush ballads to dynamic rhythmic journeys, Stratus showcases the quartet’s chamber-like sensitivity and jazz-rooted spontaneity. A rich, genre-blurring project, Stratus is both intimate and expansive an exploration of sound grounded in trust, nuance, and shared vision.”
Learn more about the recording Stratus here. Learn more about Phil Markowitz here.
Held biennially in Sion, Switzerland, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition is dedicated to discovering and promoting new talented artists of all nationalities. Open to international violinists aged up to 30, the competition was held in Switzerland from August 22–30, 2025.
In the photo above, MSM Strings faculty member and violinist Lucie Robert (sixth person from the left) poses with other members of the jury of this prestigious competition.
The finals named three winners who preformed their chosen concerti with the South Czech Philharmonic Orchestra with Mo Valentin Uryupin. The competition consisted of four rounds including a chamber music section culminating with the finals with Orchestra.
Lucie Robert was also the jury representative for the competition during an interview with Television Suisse Romande.
More information on the competition here.
David Leisner has received the 2026 Celedonio Romero Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Leyenda Foundation.
“The Leyenda Foundation and the Romero Family are proud to honor this extraordinary guitarist, composer, and educator—recognized by American Record Guide as ‘among the finest guitarists of all time,’” writes the foundation in a statement. “In celebrating David Leisner with the 2026 Celedonio Romero Lifetime Achievement Award, we honor a musician whose artistry, innovation, and generosity carry forward the legacy of Celedonio Romero and the enduring spirit of the guitar.”
The Leyenda Foundation works to preserve the legacies of great artists through high quality education experiences and transformative performance opportunities.
Concert pianist and new music innovator Anthony de Mare’s Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim From the Piano proposes a new way of considering the work of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim. The concert takes place at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center on September 27 at 7:30 PM and is free of charge.
In 2009, de Mare began commissioning some of Sondheim’s most luminous contemporaries—including Steve Reich, Nico Muhly, Duncan Sheik, Wynton Marsalis, Tania León, and William Bolcom—to rescore Sondheim’s best known songs as solo piano pieces.
The result is a remarkable compendium of 36 homages, rhapsodies, and re-imaginings spanning the worlds of classical, jazz, film, pop, and musical theater firmly establishing the case for Sondheim as one of the 20th century’s most influential composers.
Learn more here.
Alto-saxophonist, composer, and band leader Jaleel Shaw (MM ‘02) has released his first album in 13 years, called Painter of the Invisible (Changu Records), featuring pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Ben Street, drummer Joe Dyson and guitarist Lage Lund. Vibraphonist Sasha Berliner guests on “Gina’s Ascent.”
“Painter Of The Invisible is a beast of beautiful storytelling that’s well worth the wait,” says DownBeat magazine.
JazzTimes writes “(Jaleel Shaw) channels personal truths and rails against erasure… The album finds him mining the legacy of Black history: personal and collective, spoken and unspoken. From “Contemplation” to “Baldwin’s Blues” to “Invisible Man,” it’s a work rooted in inheritance, inquiry, grief and gratitude — a defiant act of remembrance.”
Conductor Felipe Tristán will transition into the role of official artistic director of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra (BSO) this fall after serving as interim artistic director.
Felipe Tristán currently serves as the Principal Conductor of Ballet de Monterrey, and is on the conducting faculty of MSM.
According to the Violin Channel, Tristán’s plans with the BSO include collaborations outside the concert hall, such as BSO’s partnership with J. Crew in 2024, plus projects focusing on fashion, film, multidisciplinary, and community-based initiatives.
“He made history as the first Mexican conductor to receive the Muzyczne Orły Award from Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for his album Flute Concertos: Penderecki & Reinecke with the Janáček Philharmonic on Hänssler Classic. Last year, he returned to conduct at the MET Gala in New York and is featured in the DISNEY+ special In Vogue: The 90s,” reports the publication.
“Ted and Lesley Rosenthal use music and its varied platforms as a bridge in society,” writes Elise Linscott in the feature article on the two musicians in the August edition of Berkshire Magazine, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love—and music, according to Ted and Lesley Rosenthal,” she writes. Read the full Berkshire Magazine article here.
Ted Rosenthal’s trio recently performed at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall in Lenox, Massachusetts alongside MSM Jazz Arts faculty member Jon Faddis along with trumpeter Randy Brecker. His trio’s latest album The Ted Rosenthal Songbook came out in June, and is available here.
Lesley Rosenthal serves as chief operating officer and corporate secretary at the Juilliard School and was previously the executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
MSM Jazz Arts faculty member Jon Faddis along with trumpeter Randy Brecker share the stage at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall (in photo above) in Lenox, Massachusetts on July 20, along with MSM alumnus Benny Benack III (BM ‘13, MM ‘15) and Bria Skonberg – and with the trio of MSM alumnus and faculty member Ted Rosenthal (BM ’81, MM ’83).
On the program will be the music of trumpet legends Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and others.
In addition, the concert will feature the vocals of Benack and Skonberg who have toured together with Jazz at Lincoln Center, and follow up here on last September’s sold-out Linde Center performance at Tanglewood of Rosenthal’s Bernstein & Bop: A Saxophone Colossus.
More information and tickets can be found here.
The acclaimed composer, conductor, and saxophonist Jim Saltzman has been appointed Dean of Jazz Arts at MSM, succeeding Ingrid Jensen who has led MSM Jazz Arts since July 2020 (Ms. Jensen will remain on the MSM faculty). He will assume the role effective July 1, 2025.
Hailed by the Boston Globe as a “postmodern jazz saxophonist [who] plays with passion and intensity” and by All Music as “a force to be reckoned with,” Dr. Saltzman has taught at MSM for 14 years (starting on the Precollege faculty in 2011 and joining the Jazz Arts faculty in 2015).
“A superb teacher with a durable track record on the MSM Jazz Arts faculty and an artist whose impressive musicianship and inventiveness continue to inspire, Jim will provide a smooth transition into a new era of Jazz Arts at Manhattan School of Music, one that builds on a learning environment characterized by generosity of spirit and artistic excellence,” says MSM President James Gandre.
Read the full news release here.
Clarinetist David Krakauer, who teaches in MSM’s Woodwinds and Contemporary Performance programs, is La Notte della Taranta’s 2025 guest “Maestro Concertatore” with the festival’s Orchestra Popolare.
The world-renowned festival tours municipalities in the Salento region of southern Italy for several weeks in August and culminates in a free concert on August 23 in the town of Melpignano with an audience of more than 150,000. The festival celebrated “the traditional Pizzica dance and music, fused with modern influences, creating an electrifying atmosphere.”
David will also be performing solo and chamber music performances and holding educational residencies in Italy and France in June and July.
For information on all of David Krakauer’s summer events, visit his website here. For details on Le Notte della Taranta festival tour, visit the event’s website here. For details on the final concert on August 23, visit this page.
Award-winning composer and violist Jessica Meyer has been commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to write a composition for their orchestra. The world premiere will be held on October 25 at Carnegie Hall.
Jessica’s works have been performed in venues from the Kennedy Center to Carnegie Hall, by musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, and by orchestras around the country. Upcoming premieres include a work for MET Opera tenor Paul Appleby and the Claremont Trio, a viola and piano work commissioned by Juilliard Pre-college, a new orchestral piece “Turbulent Flames” to be performed by a consortium of orchestras across the United States.
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is offering free tickets to all concerts in its 2025-26 season including the Carnegie Hall concert on October 25 featuring the premiere of Jessica’s commission. Visit the Orchestra’s website for more information here.
Learn more about Jessica Meyer here.
On May 23, MSM piano faculty member Wael Farouk will be performing Rachmaninoff’s 3rd piano concerto with the renowned Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the top orchestras in China, and the only non-state-owned and self-financing orchestra in the country. The image above is the promotional poster for the event.
Egyptian-American pianist Wael Farouk has performed internationally in such venues as the White Hall in St. Petersburg, Schumann’s House in Leipzig, and Carnegie Hall in New York, where his solo debut in 2013 was described as “absolutely masterful.” He has been a faculty member at MSM since 2021.
Learn more about Wael Farouk here.
MSM violin faculty member Lucie Robert has been named president of the jury of the newly launched 2025 Bogotá International Violin Competition that will be taking place in Colombia from October 31 to November 7 at the Auditorio Fabio Lozano and the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo. The competition is open to violinists of all nationalities up to the age of 30 as of May 31, 2025.
The Bogotá International Violin Competition aims to promote excellence in violin performance, and position Bogotá as a leading classical music hub in Latin America; it also hopes to inspire the young people of Bogotá’s “Vamos a la Filarmónica” programs.
Lucie Robert has also been named president of the International Jury for Violin 2026 of the Concours International de Montréal, a prestigious competition where the international elite of the new generation of classical musicians compete.
Learn more about the Bogotá International Violin Competition here. Learn more about the Concours International de Montréal here.
Essential Voices USA has released a new choral album entitled Listen to the World. The ensemble Essential Voices USA is led by Music Director and Conductor Judith Clurman, who teaches voice and ensemble voice for the MSM Musical Theatre program.
The recording features compositions by Judith Clurman, Matthew Sklar, and Robert Sirota, with texts by William Schermerhorn and Victoria R. Sirota, and as themes, addresses pressing global challenges including environmental preservation, immigration, and human connection.
The recording on Albany records can be streamed on all platforms. It was produced and engineered by Silas Brown. The published scores will be available at Hal Leonard this summer.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has named MSM Jazz Arts faculty member Caroline Davis to its 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows in Music Composition. A composer, saxophonist, and educator, Caroline Davis lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is an active leader and sidewoman on the national jazz scene.
Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants, the Guggenheim Fellows Class of 2025 was tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise. As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each Fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”
Since its establishment, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted over $400 million in Fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. Recognizing a broad range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program.
Learn more about the 2025 Fellows here. Learn more about Caroline Davis here.
“I’m very pleased to announce that my arranging debut at Carnegie Hall last month, in a concert featuring Cécile McLorin Salvant with The Knights, is included in The New York Times’ “Classical Music Our Critics Can’t Stop Thinking About” roundup for March,” says Darcy James Argue.
Writes Seth Colter Walls in the New York Times about the concert: “Hopefully a studio recording session is in the works. For now, we have a scaled-back version of Argue’s new arrangement of Sophisticated Lady, performed by Salvant with the Metropole Orkest for Dutch television earlier this year. In the closing seconds, the piano part nods to an iconic reading of another Ellington tune, In a Sentimental Mood (which Ellington famously recorded with John Coltrane). At Carnegie, I exhaled with real delight as that quotation echoed throughout the auditorium.”
Watch the video with arrangement and conducted by Darcy James Argue here. Read The New York Times article here.
Long-time MSM Vocal Arts faculty member Joan Patenaude-Yarnell was honored on April 8 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild. In the photo above, posing with Joan (seated) from left to right is MSM Dean of Vocal Arts Carleen Graham, MSM Provost and Executive Vice President Joyce Griggs, and MSM President James Gandre.
The Canadian-born soprano has been a member of both the New York and San Francisco Operas.
Joan Patenaude-Yarnell has also sung with opera companies throughout North America and Europe. Her roles have included Violetta in La Traviata, Alice Ford in Falstaff, Gilda in Rigoletto, Nedda in I Pagliacci, the title role in Suor Angelica, Mimì in La Bohème, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, Elle in La Voix Humaine, and Héro in Béatrice et Bénédict.
Learn more about Joan Patenaude-Yarnell here.
Cellist and MSM alumnus Tommy Mesa (DMA ‘23), who recently joined MSM’s College faculty, has been named one of three recipients of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grants awarded for 2025. Tommy Mesa is an acclaimed performer, recording artist, and educator.
The Avery Fisher Artist Program was created by the late Avery Fisher as a gift to Lincoln Center in 1974. The program’s Avery Fisher Career Grants support exceptional instrumentalists and chamber groups who are citizens or permanent residents of the U.S.
In addition to receiving $25,000 for career advancement, the winners will get unrestricted use of a professional recording of their performances at the award ceremony, and a custom-designed rosette as a symbol of the Career Grant.
The awards ceremony on March 18 will be streamed live at 6 PM EST on the Violin Channel.
Chantal Poulin and Shira Gilbert, the Executive and Artistic Directors of the Concours International de Montréal, have announced that Lucie Robert will be President of the International Jury for Violin 2026.
The Concours musical international de Montréal (CMIM) is a prestigious competition where the international elite of the new generation of classical musicians compete.
“I am deeply honoured to serve as President of the International Jury for Violin 2026. It is with great pleasure that I will welcome the selected violinists to my hometown of Montreal. Their participation in this major competition will undoubtedly represent a meaningful milestone in their musical careers,” said Lucie Robert in a statement. “I look forward to being together with my colleagues on the jury and with the Montreal public to discover these young musicians, and to be moved and transported by their artistry.”
Learn about Lucie Robert here. Learn about the Concours International de Montréal here.
The all-female jazz ensemble Artemis —that features MSM Dean of Jazz Arts Ingrid Jensen and MSM Jazz Arts faculty member Nicole Glover —held a residency at the prestigious Village Vanguard jazz club in New York during the week of March 3–9 to launch their new recording. Last fall, the group topped Downbeat magazine’s reader’s poll as jazz group of the year for the second year in a row.
On March 3, the band released its third album, “Arboresque,” which “captures both the hard-bop strut of the most beloved 1960s recordings by its storied label, Blue Note Records, as well as Artemis’s own fresh take on jazz tradition,” writes The New York Times.
The group was formed by pianist Renee Rosnes in 2016, featuring the trumpeter Ingrid Jensen — who named the group for the Greek goddess of the hunt and wilderness — the drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, the bassist Linda May Han Oh, the clarinetist Anat Cohen, the saxophonist Melissa Aldana, and the singer Cécile McLorin Salvant.
Performing at the Village Vanguard is the current ensemble line-up Allison Miller, Noriko Ueda, MSM Jazz Arts faculty member Nicole Glover, Ingrid Jensen, and Renee Rosnes.
A profile of the ensemble is featured in The New York Times here.
The Only Girl in the Orchestra won the Oscar at the Academy Awards on March 2 for Best Documentary Short Film.
The documentary tells the story of former MSM bass faculty member Orin O’Brien who, in 1966, was the first woman to be hired in the then 125-year history of the New York Philharmonic. The documentary is by Orin’s niece, Emmy-award-winning producer/ director Molly O’Brien.
Portions of the documentary were filmed at MSM’s Neidorff-Karpati Hall with recording assistance provided by MSM sound engineers.
For more about the documentary, click here.
Krakauer and Tagg’s Good Vibes Explosion will perform a series of concerts in February the Tristate Area (New York & Connecticut), including a residency with Fairfield University and performing at the Quick Center in Fairfield, Connecticut; The Local in Saugerties, New York; and Flushing Town Hall (in a rare New York City appearance for the band) as part of the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts.
Krakauer and Tagg’s Good Vibes Explosion is a touring project conceived and created by Grammy-nominated “ebullient clarinet wizard” (Time Out NY) David Krakauer and multi-instrumentalist/producer Kathleen Tagg, showcasing a multi-generational/high-octane group of collaborators from very different backgrounds, hailing from the USA, Canada, Iran and South Africa.
Their album Mazel Tov Cocktail Party has received rave reviews across North America and Europe: France’s Le Monde calls it: “a breath of fresh air, an incentive to dance…In the face of the overwhelming negativity and alarming rise of hatred and intolerance in today’s world, let’s breathe and dance together…More than a suggestion, an injunction.”
Touring information here.
This year, 14 members of our MSM Community were part of GRAMMY Award-winning projects (out of our nearly 50 nominations). The 67th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony on February 2 honored winning and nominated recordings, compositions, and artists for work released between September 16, 2023, and August 30, 2024, as chosen by the members of the Recording Academy.
Read our full list of winners in the MSM Community here.
In January and February, MSM Jazz Arts Faculty member Darcy James Argue debuts as the new Composer in Residence for the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, and conducting for the Metropole Orkest. These projects each involve arrangements he has written to feature two of his favorite musicians: vibraphonist Warren Wolf (in photo on left) and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant (in photo on right).The arrangements for Salvant will also receive their US premiere at Carnegie Hall in March, in a concert with The Knights.
The concert dates are:
GRAND VIBES: WARREN WOLF, DARCY JAMES ARGUE, FRANKFURT RADIO BIG BAND Jan. 23: DARMSTADT – Centralstation Jan. 24: FRANKFURT – hr-Sendesaal
CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT, DARCY JAMES ARGUE, METROPOLE ORKEST Feb. 3: GRONINGEN – SPOT Feb. 4: UTRECHT – TivoliVredenburg Feb. 5: – AMSTERDAM – Het Concertgebouw Feb. 7: EINDHOVEN – Muziekgebouw
CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT & THE KNIGHTS Orchestral arrangements by DARCY JAMES ARGUE Mar. 27: NYC – Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium
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