Conductor Joseph Young Opens a Dynamic 2024 Performance Calendar with Sphinx

Joseph Young Opens 2024 with Sphinx Symphony Debut

Season Highlights Include:

Sphinx Symphony Orchestra debut as part of the Sphinx Competition – live-streamed on Friday, January 26 and Saturday, January 27

Canonical works by Brahms, Dvorák, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky that anchor the Spring season

Dynamic, jazz-tinged programs with his Berkeley Symphony

New operatic staging of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio with the Cincinnati Opera

January 2024—This year, American conductor Joseph Young carries forward his momentum of the previous year, during which he earned high praise for his “magisterial podium presence” (New Jersey Star-Ledger) and his “wonderous dynamism” (City Press, Johannesburg).

Maestro Young opens his 2024 engagements this week with this Sphinx Symphony Orchestra debut as part of the 27^th annual Sphinx Competition, the prestigious showcase for young Black and Latinx musicians. He leads the Junior Division Honors Concert on Friday, January 26, and the Senior Division Finals Concert on Saturday, January 27, during which soloists compete for recognition and awards. Both concerts will be live-streamed on YouTube, and Saturday’s concert will feature an intermission Q&A with Maestro Young.

Young’s upcoming guest engagements include debuts with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra in a program that includes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concert No. 1 with soloist Tony Siqi Yun. He also makes his Milwaukee Symphony debut in a program that includes Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 (“New World”) and Barber’s Violin Concerto with Alexi Kenney.

At the Berkeley Symphony, where Young has served as Music Director since 2019, he will lead three visionary programs that pair jazz-inspired orchestrations with mainstays of the Western canon to explore what he calls “the American Kaleidoscope” of sound. Highlights include contemporary French composer Guillaume Connesson’s Coltrane-inspired concerto for saxophone, A Kind of Trane, featuring Maestro Young’s brother, the saxophonist Dr. Robert Young; excerpts from Laura Karpman’s groundbreaking setting of Langston Hughes’ Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, and Duke Ellington’s Solitude. He will also lead the orchestra in the  West Coast Premiere of Joel Puckett's There Was a Child Went Forth, featuring tenor Nicholas Phan, and Jimmy López Bellido's Aurora Violin Concerto with Leticia Moreno. 

This summer, Young returns to the Cincinnati Opera to conduct a new production of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio as part of the organization’s summer festival season.

Additional engagements in 2024 and beyond will be announced in due course. 

 

Joseph Young, Conductor | 2024 Schedule to Date

 

27^th Annual Sphinx Competition
January 26–27 in Detroit, Michigan and live-streamed HERE

Sphinx Symphony Orchestra 

Junior Division Honors Concert (1/26)
Senior Division Finals Concert (1/27)

 

Berkeley Symphony
February 25, 2024, in Berkeley, California   

DEBUSSY: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun                           

Guillaume CONNESSON: A Kind of Trane

Dr. Robert Young, saxophone

FARRENC: Symphony No. 3 in G minor

 

Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra
March 15–16, 2024, in Providence, Rhode Island 

Brian Raphael NABORS: Pulse

TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Concerto No. 1 | Tony Siqi Yun, piano

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1

 

Berkeley Symphony
March 23, 2024, in Berkeley, CA

Joel PUCKETT: There Was a Child Went Forth (West Coast Premiere) | Nicholas Phan, tenor

Laura KARPMAN: Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, Part 1

MENDELSSOHN: Selections from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Laura KARPMAN: Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, Part 3

 

Peabody Symphony Orchestra
May 4, 2024 in Baltimore, Maryland

BRAHMS: Schicksalslied, Op. 54, “Song of Fate”

STRAVINSKY: Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)

 

Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
May 10–11, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Brian Raphael NABORS: Pulse

BARBER: Violin Concerto | Alexi Kenney, violin

DVORÁK: Symphony No. 9, “New World”

 

Berkeley Symphony
June 2, 2024, in Berkeley, California

ELLINGTON: Solitude (arr. Morton Gould)

Jimmy LÓPEZ BELLIDO: Aurora Violin Concerto | Leticia Moreno, violin

MUSSORGSKY: Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Maurice Ravel)

  

Cincinnati Opera: Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio
July 18, 20, 21, 28 in Cincinnati, Ohio

Music and libretto by Paul McCartney and Carl Davis

Featuring the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Opera Chorus

Stage direction by Caroline Clegg

Full cast list HERE.

 

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www.josephfyoung.com/bio 

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www.facebook.com/youngconductor

 

Media Contact: Michelle Pendoley, michelle@pencomms.com