PAUL PHILLIPS

LATEST NEWS 

 

Paul Phillips leads an exciting series of concerts with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Philharmonia, and Stanford New Ensemble this fall. 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 that concert with Atmosphères. Stanford Philharmonia presented its Fall Concert on 9 November, performing Symphony No. 31 in D major, "Paris" (Mozart); The All-Seeing Sky (John Psathas), double percussion concerto featuring percussion soloists Ireh Kim ’25 & Andrew Chen ’26; Overture to L’Italiana in Algeri (Rossini); and Symphony No. 3, “The Camp Meeting” (Ives) to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth. And on 15 and 17 November, SSO performed a program of The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Dukas) conducted by Sean Tan '27, Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor (Rachmaninoff) with pianist Spencer Cha '26, Atmosphères (Ligeti), and The Firebird (Stravinsky) – the complete 1910 ballet score in its original instrumentation.

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On Friday, 2 August, 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: Dánzon No. 2 by Arturo Márquez, Billy the Kid Ballet-Suite by Aaron Copland, and Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 by Edvard Grieg; assistant conductor Andrew Burden conducted the Grieg.

 

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) along with music by Anthony Burgess and Richard Strauss.

 

The Devil Prefers Mozart: On Music and Music, 1962-1993 by Anthony Burgess is a new book that Paul compiled and edited. Published by Carcanet Press, it 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 The Devil Prefers Mozart 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." 

 

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 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, 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 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, which was hosted by Stanford University and performed in Bing Concert Hall.

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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 Sunday, 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 in 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, was released in September 2023; Paul wrote the liner notes for this recording.

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This past summer, Paul led the Stanford Summer Symphony in a sold-out concert at Bing Concert Hall on Saturday, 29 July 2023. 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 the 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  attended 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 has been invited to return in 2024. Paul is currently in his second year as President of the Western Region of the College Orchestra Directors Association and serves 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.