PAUL PHILLIPS

NEWS 

 

On 7 & 8 March 2025, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Ravel (born 7 March 1875) with performances of Daphnis et Chloé Suites I and II. The concert opened with Paul conducting the West Coast premiere of his orchestral song cycle Battle-Pieces, featuring bass-baritone Ashraf Sewailam as soloist. The concert concluded with Francis Poulenc's Stabat Mater, featuring soprano Mikayla Sager and the Stanford Symphonic Chorus.

 

On 28 February 2025, Stanford Philharmonia conducted by Paul presented the US premiere of Anthony Burgess's Concerto Grosso for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra in A Minor with the Mela Guitar Quartet, winner of the Guitar Foundation of America's International Ensemble Competition 2023. Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra with Piano Obbligato by Ernest Bloch and Symphony No. 3 in C Major, op. 52, by Jean Sibelius comprised the rest of the program.

 

On 18 December 2024, Engelsberg Ideas published its list of Books of the Year 2024, which included The Devil Prefers Mozart as the choice of Richard Bratby, music critic of The Spectator, who wrote: "The literary world seems rather to have cooled on Anthony Burgess the novelist; the musical world saved time by ignoring his music (he was a prolific composer) from the outset. The Devil Prefers Mozart: On Music and Musicians, 1962-1993 (Carcanet Press) suggests that his true vocation lay as intermediary between the two. Stylishly edited by Paul Phillips, this wonderfully bingeable volume collects Burgess’s essays on music, revealing him as the heir to his hero George Bernard Shaw. He’s prescient, too: a writer who died in 1993 has no business being quite so clear-eyed about the cultural woes of our own fragmented century. Gin and tonic for the music-loving mind."

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The Devil Prefers Mozart: On Music and Music, 1962-1993 was released on 25 January 2024 in the UK and Europe, and on 28 March in the US, and can be ordered here. On 20 June, the Financial Times selected it as one of its three Best Summer Books in Classical music with this recommendation: "Burgess’s ambition to be a composer never came to fruition, but the author of A Clockwork Orange continued to write about music through his life. This compendium includes 75 essays and reviews on everything from Monteverdi to punk. By turns insightful, idiosyncratic and contentious, his writings are never dull."

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Paul Phillips led an exciting series of concerts with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Philharmonia, and Stanford New Ensemble in Fall 2024. SSO presented its annual Halloween Concert on 31 October, with music by John Williams, Paul Dukas, and Igor Stravinsky. The Stanford New Ensemble (SNE), configured as a 24-piece chamber orchestra, performed György Ligeti's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with violinist Tanja Becker-Bender on the Homage to Ligeti | CCRMA 50th Anniversary concert, with SSO opening the concert with Atmosphères. Stanford Philharmonia presented its Fall Concert on 9 November, performing Symphony No. 31 in D major, "Paris" by Mozart, The All-Seeing Sky by John Psathas – a double percussion concerto featuring percussion soloists Ireh Kim ’25 & Andrew Chen ’26, Overture to L’Italiana in Algeri  by Gioachino Rossini, and Symphony No. 3, “The Camp Meeting” by Charles Ives to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Ives's birth. And on 15 and 17 November, SSO performed a program of The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas conducted by Sean Tan '27, Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff with pianist Spencer Cha '26, Atmosphères by György  Ligeti, and The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky – the complete 1910 ballet score in its original instrumentation.

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On 2 August 2024, Paul conducted the Stanford Summer Symphony at Bing Concert Hall in a concert that featured Laura Griffiths, Principal Oboist of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, in the Oboe Concerto by Richard Strauss. Rounding out the program were Dánzon No. 2 by Arturo Márquez, Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 by Edvard Grieg led by assistant conductor Andrew Burden, and Billy the Kid Ballet-Suite by Aaron Copland.

 

In June 2024, Paul led the Stanford Symphony Orchestra on its first international concert tour since 2017. The two-week tour of France and Monaco, from 16-30 June 2024, included six performances, beginning at the Versailles Palais des Congrès and ending with a concert at Auditorium Rainier III in Monte Carlo. The tour repertoire included music by American composers (Williams, Hailstork, Gershwin, Bernstein) and French composers (Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel) plus music by Anthony Burgess and Richard Strauss.

 

On 13 April 2024, Paul guest conducted the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) in Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco. The program comprised Marionette Overture by the Swedish composer Hilding Rosenberg, Violin Concerto No. 3 in B Minor by Camille Saint-Saëns with soloist Michael Long, Sinfonietta, Op. 1 by Benjamin Britten, and Negro Folk Symphony by William Dawson.

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SSO presented its Winter Concerts on 8 & 9 March 2024 in Bing Concert Hall, performing Symphony No. 4 by Gustav Mahler and Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams in collaboration with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus. Soprano Maya Kherani and baritone Kenneth Goodson were the vocal soloists, with Stephen Sano conducting the Vaughan Williams.

 

On 24 February 2024, Stanford Philharmonia performed its Winter Concert featuring piano soloist Stephen Prutsman, playing Beethoven's Coriolan Overture conducted by Sean Tan '27, Stravinsky's Suites Nos. 1 and 2 for Small Orchestra, Ravel's Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose Suite), and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat Major, "Emperor".

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The premiere of Paul's latest composition, Sweet Thunder for 12 Pianos, took place in San Francisco on 9 & 10 February 2024 in a pair of sold-out performances in Grace Cathedral. Both concerts also included Benjamin Gribble's Fall and Fly, which premiered on 14 September 2022, conducted by Paul, at the Flower Piano Festival in the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Dean Mermell produced this documentary about that event.

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On 2 December 2023, Paul guest conducted the CODA Honor Symphony Orchestra in Bing Concert Hall in a program of music by Dvorak, Valerie Coleman, and Saint-Saëns plus his own Brownian Motion. The California Orchestra Directors Association sponsored this high school honor orchestra concert, which was hosted by Stanford University.

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The Stanford Symphony Orchestra received rave reviews for its concert with Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros with the Wolf Pack, which Paul conducted on 29 October 2023 in Frost Amphitheater. The San José Mercury News called the performance "an absolute triumph", echoed by popmatters describing it as "a majestic triumph…this night defies expectations of what can or can’t be done." Other glowing reviews have appeared online in San Francisco Bay Area Concerts and The Stanford Daily, which "was impressed by how the orchestra was able to blend into the rock arrangements, creating a harmonious fusion." Produced by Stanford Live and Goldenvoice, the concert, which lasted three and a half hours, featured arrangements by Giancarlo Aquilanti of favorite Grateful Dead songs.

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Mavra/Iolanta, released in December 2022, is a Blu-ray videorecording of the 2019 Bayerische Staatsoper production, which entwines these two operas using Paul's chamber arrangement of Stravinsky's Mavra; it was selected as a "Critic's Choice" in the July 2023 issue of Opera News. A new Naxos recording of the Complete Guitar Quartets of Anthony Burgess, recorded by the Mela Guitar Quartet and with liner notes by Paul, was released in September 2023.

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On 29 July 2023, Paul led the Stanford Summer Symphony in a sold-out concert at Bing Concert Hall. The program opened with the Afro-American Symphony (No. 1) by William Grant Still and ended with the "New World" Symphony (No. 9) by Antonin Dvorak. Between these two works was the West Coast premiere of The Silent Years by William Perry, featuring Michael Chertock as piano soloist. The Silent Years is a suite of three rhapsodies for solo piano and orchestra based on Perry's music for The Beloved Rogue (starring John Barrymore), Blood and Sand (starring Rudolf Valentino), and The Gold Rush (starring Charlie Chaplin). Chertock and Phillips premiered The Silent Years and recorded it with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland) for Naxos on the album Music for Great Films of the Silent Era under the supervision of William Perry, who traveled from his home in Massachusetts to attend the Stanford performance.

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A profile of Paul appeared in the April 2023 issue of Punch Magazine. In July 2023, he lectured and guest conducted at the Montecito International Music Festival in Thousand Oaks, California, and returned in July 2024 to again conduct the Montecito Festival String Orchestra. From 2022-24, Paul served as President of the Western Region of the College Orchestra Directors Association and on CODA's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Committee. At Stanford, Paul led the Music Department's DEI Committee from 2021-23. 

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In May 2023, Paul conducted concerts in Bing Concert Hall with Stanford Philharmonia and the Stanford Symphony Orchestra featuring winners of the 2023 Concerto Competition. On 13 May, flutists Jenny Xiong '24 and Daniel Sun '25 performed Franz Doppler's Concerto for Two Flutes in D Minor, and alto saxophonist Zachary Lin '26 played André Waignein's Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, with Schumann's Manfred Overture and Sibelius's Symphony No. 7 completing the SP program. On 19 and 20 May, pianist Roger Xia '24 performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor; the California premiere of Jennifer Higdon's Cold Mountain Suite opened the concert, which concluded with Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz.

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Videos of most SSO, SP, and SSS performances from 2017-2024 can be viewed at the Stanford Orchestras YouTube channel.