The program will include works by Leonard Bernstein, as well as Mahler's Symphony No. 1, and features clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. Tickets are $25-30.

This performance will be recorded for future broadcast on WGBH Radio. According to Cortese, "This concert represents two important BYSO collaborations for which we are very proud. Richard Stoltzman is an exceptional musician whose love and understanding for music will no doubt motivate our players in their own musical journeys. To perform as part of the Celebrity Series is a big honor; West Side – Variants with Mr. Stoltzman and Mahler 1 seems to me the perfect fit for the concert series.”

BYS is the most advanced of four different orchestras that comprise the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras. This 119-member ensemble is made up of students grades 7-12 from dozens of communities all over New England. BYS performs a wide range of demanding orchestral repertoire, conducted by Mr. Cortese. This season, the BYS will be featured in two more Boston performances, including a 50th Season Anniversary Gala with world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma on May 18, 2008 at Symphony Hall and a June 15 premiere of a BYSO-commissioned piece by Robert Beaser, at Sanders Theatre. In June, the BYS concludes its season with its 19th international tour to perform at Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany, one of the finest concert halls in the world.

The BYSO's Junior Repertory Orchestra (JRO), conducted by Adrian Slywotzky, will open the concert, performing Dvořák's Festival March. JRO is comprised of 96 students grades 4-10.

Federico Cortese

Federico Cortese assumed the post of Music Director of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras in 1999. He has conducted throughout the United States, Australia and Europe. From 1998-2002, he served as Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa. In addition to his annual scheduled concerts, Mr. Cortese led the Boston Symphony several times in Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, most notably performing Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 and Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Mr. Cortese has conducted several prominent symphony orchestras, including Atlanta, Dallas, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony and Oslo Philharmonic. Opera engagements have included Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Spoleto Festival in Italy and the United States, the Boston Lyric Opera, the Saint Louis Opera, the Finnish National Opera, Opera Australia, and the Washington Opera. Mr. Cortese has been music coordinator and associate conductor of the Spoleto Festival in Italy. He also served as Assistant Conductor to Robert Spano at the Brooklyn Philharmonic and to Daniele Gatti at the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Mr. Cortese studied composition and conducting at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome and subsequently studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna. In addition, he has been a conducting fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center.

Mr. Cortese also studied literature and humanities and holds a law degree from La Sapienza University in Rome.

Richard Stoltzman

Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman has opened up new possibilities for his instrument, giving the first clarinet recitals in the histories of both the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall, and becoming the first wind player to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1986. He has performed as soloist with more than one hundred orchestras, as a recitalist, chamber musician, and jazz artist. He has performed or recorded with Gary Burton, the Canadian Brass, Chick Corea, Judy Collins, Eddie Gomez, Keith Jarrett, the King’s Singers, George Shearing, Wayne Shorter, Mel Tormé, and Jeremy Wall of Spyro Gyra.

He has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for clarinet. For ten years, Stoltzman was a participant in the Marlboro Festival and became a founding member of the Tashi chamber music ensemble in 1973. Other chamber music performances and recordings include work with the Beaux Arts Trio and the Amadeus, Cleveland, Guarneri, Vermeer, Tokyo, Emerson, and American string quartets. He has received Grammy awards for his recording of the Brahms sonatas with Richard Goode (1983) and the Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart clarinet trios with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma (1996). He received an Emmy Award for best performing arts video for his performance of the Copland clarinet concerto with Dudley Moore and Michael Tilson Thomas.

His laserdisc/videocassette project 1791-1891-1991 includes a performance with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos in Vienna’s Konzerthaus of Mozart’s clarinet concerto—200 years to the day after its premiere—along with Brahms’s clarinet quintet and the premiere of Takemitsu’s Fantasma/Cantos. Stoltzman is the author of Aria and The Richard Stoltzman Songbook, both published by Carl Fischer, Inc. -- www.bysoweb.org