See Change II

We welcome Maestro Paul Haas, our second music director finalist (the remaining two candidates will audition during the fall of 2013) to the podium. Composer Alexandra Bryant’s groundbreaking piece, commissioned and premiered by the Tacoma Youth Symphony in 2010, will receive a “second listen” by the TSO. The daughter of TSO violinist Andrea Bryant, Alexandra Bryant is winner of the 2010 Avalon Competition and the 2007-2008 recipient of Cleveland Institute of Music’s Darius Milhaud Award. Her work Apostrophe was premiered in 2008 by the Cleveland Youth Orchestra in Severance Hall. Beethoven’s third piano concerto will feature the TSO debut of pianist Stephanie Leon Shames, formerly a professor at UPS, who has performed with the Seattle, Detroit, New Orleans and Wyoming symphonies, among others.

The New York Times has declared conductor Paul Haas “on the brink of a noteworthy career.” Time Out New York calls him “visionary.” Current music director of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, Haas is founder and artistic director of Sympho, a concert production company that features unexpected performance methods and unorthodox venues. Formerly music director of the renowned New York Youth Symphony, Haas garnered an ASCAP-League of American Orchestras Bernstein Award for Educational programming.