May 5-7, with his home orchestra, the Kansas City Symphony, Michael Stern leads the Britten War Requiem with fellow Colbert Artists soprano Christine Brewer and tenor Anthony Dean Griffey in commemoration of the United State’s entry into World War I. (Kansas City is home to the National World War I Museum and Memorial.) May and June highlights include Mozart Piano Concertos with Emanuel Ax in Kansas City, and the Chicago Civic Orchestra with Yo-Yo Ma.
In March, Stern led the highly anticipated world premiere performance of Einojunahi Rautavaara’s “Fantasia” with fellow Colbert Artist, Anne Akiko Meyers and the Kansas City Symphony.
Earlier in March, Stern led a subscription week with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Marc-André Hamelin (another Colbert Artist!), in nights of Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, and Medtner’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
“Under Stern’s impassioned baton, the orchestra produced teeth-rattling forte passages in the fifth movement, which turned abruptly into complete silence. The juxtaposition, which was exaggerated by Stern, emphasized Tchaikovsky’s wittiness.” – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 10, 2017
Stern led a round of several different programs with the National Symphony. and Joshua Bell in Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, and the premiere of Anne Dudley’s The Man With The Violin.
In January, Stern spent two weeks in Guangzhou as Music Director of the Youth Music Culture Guangdong, alongside Artistic Director Yo-Yo Ma, and then returned to the US to lead the Kansas City Symphony in a program of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.