The Celebrity Series of Boston is a non-profit performing arts presenter established in Boston, Massachusetts by Boston impresario Aaron Richmond in 1938 as Aaron Richmond's Celebrity Series. [1]
Below is a partial list of performers by genre presented by the Celebrity Series of Boston since its founding:
Many nationally and internationally recognized artists have made their Boston debuts with the Celebrity Series. They include:
Each season from early fall to late spring, the Celebrity Series presents more than 50 multi-cultural and international artists and performing ensembles to audiences in the Greater Boston area. By utilizing a number of different performance venues throughout the Greater Boston area, each year the Celebrity Series bring audiences together to experience the world’s great emerging and established orchestras, chamber ensembles and soloists, and leading artists in contemporary dance, jazz, world and folk music, and spoken word.
The Celebrity Series has operated under a number of organizational umbrellas. In 1938, Aaron Richmond founded Aaron Richmond's Celebrity Series. [2] In 1953, it affiliated with Boston University and took the name, the Boston University Celebrity Series. [3] In 1984, the Celebrity Series changed affiliations and moved its operations under the auspices of the Wang Center for the Performing Arts a not-for-profit institution. [4] Then, in 1989, the Celebrity Series incorporated as an independent, non-profit institution with its own Board of Directors [5] and an annual budget of over $3 million (now between $7 million and $9 million). After 18 years of operating with the title sponsorship support of Bank of Boston, BankBoston, FleetBoston Financial, and Bank of America, the Celebrity Series began operating under its incorporated name, Celebrity Series of Boston, in June 2007. [6]
Leadership of the Celebrity Series has remained consistent over its lifetime. In 1958, Aaron Richmond hired Walter Pierce as a Programming Associate. Pierce later became Executive Director and guided the Series from an impresario-style presenter to a fully staffed, not-for-profit organization. In 1986, Mr. Pierce hired Martha H. Jones as the Series' Director of Marketing. Jones later became General Manager, and, in 1996, when Mr. Pierce retired his full-time post, Martha Jones was appointed Executive Director. [7] [8] [9] [10] Ms. Jones retired in 2011. She was succeeded by Gary Dunning. [11]
In 1971, the Celebrity Series merged with the Boston Opera Association. During this time, Walter Pierce worked closely with Harriet O’Brien, managing director of the Boston Opera Association, sponsors of the annual one-week Boston engagement of the Metropolitan Opera. Following Ms. O’Brien’s death, Mr. Pierce managed the Metropolitan Opera week in Boston until the company ceased touring.
In 1998, a gala concert in honor of Walter Pierce was staged at Boston's Symphony Hall. It was announced during the festivities that seat P-1 in Symphony Hall had been endowed in Pierce's name and that the Celebrity Series had formed the Walter Pierce Annual Performance Fund. Among the performers were pianist Dubravka Tomsic, who played Liszt's Mephisto Waltz; flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal with pianist John Steel Ritter, who played Beethoven's Three National Airs with Variations, Opus 107; William Bolcom and Joan Morris, who performed Billy Desmond and Walter Dore's song, "When Are You Going to Lead Me to the Altar, Walter?"; the Juilliard String Quartet, a trio of pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Isaac Stern, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and Nasha Thomas-Schmitt of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, who danced Alvin Ailey's solo piece "Cry.". [12] [13] [14] At the dinner following the performance, soprano Leontyne Price sang an impromptu version of "This Little Light of Mine" for Pierce. [15]
Launched in the mid-1980s, Arts for All! encompasses four distinct initiatives: Neighborhood Arts, Artist Connections, Take Your Seat, and Public Performance Projects.
Around 60,000 individuals attend Celebrity Series concerts each year. While audiences come from as far north as Maine and as far south as New Jersey, the majority come from the greater Boston metropolitan area. The Celebrity Series – through the Arts for All! program – attempts to ensure that its audience is ethnically diverse and includes people from all age groups and socio-economic backgrounds.[ citation needed ]
Launched in 2012, The Debut Series presents classical musicians in the early stages of their careers in the intimate setting of Pickman Hall at Longy School of Music of Bard College.
A Partial List of Performers on the Debut Series
Stave Sessions is a music festival of new and genre expanding performers started by Celebrity Series in 2015. The festival was created to spotlight innovative and path-breaking contemporary music. Stave Sessions is a festival of discovery and experimentation. The series took place at 160 Massachusetts Avenue on the Berklee College of Music campus. In 2023, Stave Sessions moved to Somerville's Crystal Ballroom in Davis Square.
Partial List of Stave Sessions Performers
AileyCamp Boston is a six-week, summer day camp that combines dance instruction with personal development workshops, creative communication classes and field trips. Founded in 2000 and based on a structural model provided by the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation as a template for camps across the country, the AileyCamp program is designed to help low-income students develop self-respect, confidence, discipline and imagination while fostering an appreciation for the joy of dance. The goal is not to train students to be professional dancers, but to challenge the participants and to strengthen their self-esteem. [16] The camp celebrated its tenth anniversary at its closing performance on Thursday, August 6, 2009.
The Celebrity Series Boston Marquee series, which grew out of the Celebrity Series' Emerging Artists series, [17] was inaugurated in the 2000-01 season. [18] Boston Marquee sought to provide new creative opportunities for Boston artists and to offer new experiences for Boston audiences by commissioning new works, encouraging artistic collaborations and making resources available to artists. Among the artists who appeared on Boston Marquee are pianists Judith Gordon, Craig Smith, and Robert D. Levin, soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano Jan Curtis, dancer Julie Ince Thompson, the Boston Trio, Sol y Canto, the Nicola Hawkins Dance Company, Rebecca Rice Dance, violinist Stefan Jackiw and Emmanuel Music. Though Boston artists remain an important part of Celebrity Series presentations, the Boston Marquee series was suspended prior to the 2008-09 season.
The Celebrity Series regularly collaborates with other Boston-area arts organizations. Most often these collaborations take the form of co-presentations. Past and present collaborative partners include The Wang Center for the Performing Arts, World Music, Broadway in Boston, Dance Umbrella, the Boston Early Music Festival, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Handel and Haydn Society.[ citation needed ]
John Harris Harbison is an American composer and academic.
Classical Baby is an American animated television series for young children and families directed by Amy Schatz and produced by HBO. The animation was created and designed by Maciek Albrecht and MaGiK World Animation. Classical Baby is designed to introduce young children to masterpieces from the worlds of music, art, dance, and poetry. This series first aired on HBO Family on May 14, 2005.
Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate is a Chickasaw classical composer and pianist. His compositions are inspired by North American Indian history, culture and ethos.
Richard Danielpour is an American composer and academic, currently affiliated with the Curtis Institute of Music and the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is an educational and performing arts complex located at 500 South Goodwin Avenue in Urbana, Illinois and on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Herman C. Krannert, an industrialist who founded Inland Container Corporation and an alumnus of the university, and his wife, Ellnora Krannert, made a gift of $16 million that led to the Krannert Center's construction. Max Abramovitz, the architect who designed the facility, was also an Illinois alumnus.
Jaime Laredo is a violinist and conductor. He was the conductor and Music Director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and he began his musical career when he was five years old.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where she is also director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.
The Richmond Symphony is based in Richmond, Virginia, US and is the largest performing arts organization in Central Virginia and one of the nation's leading regional orchestras. The organization includes a full-time orchestra with more than 70 musicians, the Richmond Symphony Chorus with 150 volunteer members, and the Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra programs with more than 260 student participants. Each season, approximately 200,000 community members listen to live concerts and radio broadcasts by the Richmond Symphony, and 55,000 students and teachers participate in the Symphony's educational outreach programs.
Aaron Richmond was an American performing arts manager, pianist, impresario, and educator, based in Boston, Massachusetts, who managed the careers of numerous classical musicians and founded Celebrity Series of Boston, a performing arts presenting organization that still operates today.
Benita Valente is an American soprano whose career has encompassed the operatic stage as well as performance of lieder, chamber music and oratorio. She is especially lauded for her interpretations of Mozart and Handel, but she also excelled in certain Verdi roles. The New York Times once referred to her as "as gifted a singer as we have today, worldwide."
The National Theater Hall and National Concert Hall, or together the National Theater and Concert Hall, are twin performing arts venues at Liberty Square in Zhongzheng District, Taipei, Taiwan. Completed in 1987, the landmarks stand on the south and north sides of the square with Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to the east. Together the venues are referred to by the abbreviation NTCH. The square itself sits near Ketagalan Boulevard, site of the Presidential Office Building, the National Central Library, the National Taiwan Museum, and the 228 Peace Memorial Park.
The Peninsula Symphony is an American symphony orchestra, based in the San Francisco Peninsula, California. The orchestra consists of over 90 community musicians. In 1995, the Peninsula Symphony was featured in a PBS broadcast.
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.
Lynn Chang, born 1953, is a Chinese-American violinist known for his work as both a soloist and a chamber musician.
Judith Gordon is a concert pianist and educator.
Stefan Jackiw is an American classical violinist.
Founded as the Lexington Sinfonietta in 1995 by conductor Hisao Watanabe, the Lexington Symphony is a group of musicians from the Lexington, Massachusetts, area.
Oscar Ravina, born in Warsaw, Poland, was a violinist, violin teacher and concertmaster based in New York, who has had a prolific career as a performer as well as being a current professor emeritus at Montclair State University, where a talent grant in his name is regularly given to outstanding full-time freshmen studying string instruments.
Walter Pierce was a performing arts impresario who, from 1965 until 1996, presented, managed, and promoted over 1500 music, dance, and theater events in Boston under the auspices of the Celebrity Series of Boston. Pierce also served as president of the International Society for the Performing Arts in 1976 and 1977.
Anna Clyne is an English composer, now resident in New York City, US. She has worked in both acoustic music and electroacoustic music.
This morning the single ticket sale for the first concert of the Aaron Richmond Celebrity Series I, the recital by Lotte Lehman and Lauritz Melchoir at Symphony Hall ... will go on sale at the box office.
the Boston University Celebrity Series, which Pierce has directed since 1965, will be the Wang Celebrity Series beginning with the 1984-85 season.