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Update, 2/25/2011: The late Barbara Stewart’s will includes $1.5 million for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in unrestricted funds, and an equal amount for the High Museum of Art. This news comes just after the Atlanta Opera announced Stewart’s game-changing $9 million gift. Stewart was a member of the High and an ASO subscriber for two [...]

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s first in-house recording on its new label, ASO Media, is out this week, distributed on CD by Naxos and as a download on amazon.com and other sites. It’s a strong showing of music co-commissioned and premiered by the ASO from two of its regular composers, Jennifer Higdon and Michael Gandolfi. And [...]

Wynton Marsalis’ visit to Symphony Hall last night was a bit unusual, for him. Yes, he brought his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, but he left his classical compositions at home and there were no new multi-movement jazz suites on the program. (The jazz orchestra premiered ”Portrait in Seven Shades” by alto saxophonist Ted Nash in Atlanta last [...]

Joyce DiDonato had done her homework. On Saturday night at Spivey Hall, just before launching into her second encore, “Over the Rainbow,” she excitedly praised the late Barbara Stewart for her $9 million bequest to the Atlanta Opera, announced last week. Looking heavenward and giving two thumbs-up, DiDonato spoke of the difference an individual can [...]

Jaap van Zweden’s reputation preceded him to Atlanta. A violinist of poetic sensibility and ferocious discipline, he has been concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of the world’s two or three best. (His CD of Leonard Bernstein’s violin concerto “Serenade,” from a 1988 performance with the Concertgebouw, is a go-to favorite.) Bernstein himself encouraged [...]

Joyce DiDonato is everywhere just now; coming February 20, that will include Atlanta’s Spivey Hall. The quintessential “down-to-earth American opera star” — a model that was in place long before Beverly Sills — DiDonato is known as one of the hardest-working singers on the stage today. Raised in Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas [...]