Brett Mitchell to Debut with Memphis Symphony Orchestra in October

MEMPHIS — The Memphis Symphony Orchestra has announced that Brett Mitchell will make his subscription debut with the ensemble this fall, leading the following program:

MASON BATES - Philharmonia fantastique
BERLIOZ - Symphonie fantastique

The program will be presented on Saturday, October 25 at 7:30 PM at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts and on Sunday, October 26 at 2:30 PM at the Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center.

For more information, please click here.

Brett Mitchell Returns to The Cleveland Orchestra in February 2026

Brett Mitchell will lead two performances of Michael Giacchino’s Oscar-winning score for Up with The Cleveland Orchestra in February 2026.

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Orchestra has announced that Brett Mitchell will return to Severance Music Center in February 2026 to lead two performances of Michael Giacchino’s Oscar-winning score for Up.

Two performances will be presented:

• Friday, February 13 at 7:30 PM

• Sunday. February 15 at 3:00 PM

For tickets and more information, please click here.

Feature: ‘Falling in love with music: A conversation with Sunriver Music Festival artistic director and conductor Brett Mitchell’

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Bend, ORE. — Oregon ArtsWatch has published an extensive feature about the Sunriver Music Festival and its Artistic Director & Conductor, Brett Mitchell. The article features a substantial interview with Mr. Mitchell, who is about to begin his fourth season at the helm of the nearly-50-year-old festival in Central Oregon.

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Falling in love with music:
A conversation with Sunriver Music Festival artistic director and conductor Brett Mitchell

Mitchell, now in his fourth season with the Central Oregon summer festival, discusses how his background as a composer informs his approach to conducting, why performing in Sunriver feels like coming home, and the immersive future of classical concerts.

Preparing to interview Brett Mitchell — conductor and artistic director of the Sunriver Music Festival, which starts August 2 and runs through the 13th — a few big questions came to mind. First: what is it that a conductor does, exactly? Beyond the time-keeping arm-waving and expressive emoting we all associate with the job, that is. Second: what goes into planning a seven-concert music festival in a resort town? It’s just the right length to be really difficult, in the sense that planning a single concert is hard but manageable, whereas planning a big long festival (like Chamber Music Northwest or the Oregon Bach Festival, say) is a lot more work by volume but also comes with a certain amount of wiggle room in terms of the longer arc.

Turns out, Mitchell had answers to all of these questions and a lot more…

Born in Seattle, studied with Leonard Slatkin, worked with Kurt Masur and Lorin Maazel, did The Lenny Thing and conducted the New York Philharmonic as a last-minute replacement (read those reviews right here). Basically your standard superstar conductor success story. He now lives in Colorado, where he ran the Colorado Symphony in Denver for five years, and currently leads the Pasadena Symphony. Since 2022 he’s been head honcho of the Sunriver Music Festival.

So much for the conducting credentials. During the pandemic he brushed up his piano chops, started having kids, and renewed his youthful interest in composing–an interest he’d mostly left behind when he had to choose career paths in grad school. Five years later and his YouTube channel has dozens of videos: Bartók, Chopin, Glass; massive amounts of film music (he was all dressed up to record Jaws when we spoke earlier this month); and a few samples of his own original work.

Mitchell’s original music was mostly written (or arranged) for his children, and a few pieces were sung by his wife Angela. Here’s “Love You Forever” (written for the first baby, Will):

And here’s Mitchell’s “Nocturne”:

And here he is playing Billy Joel’s “Nocturne”:

And here’s some Star Wars:

And here he is conducting Petrushka in 2016:

Got it? Good, then let’s go.

The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity and flow.

Oregon ArtWatch: Let’s start with your a-ha moment. What switched the light on for you as a musician?

Brett Mitchell: Thank you for leading with such a fun question. I do have an a-ha moment. I have a few of them as you would imagine, but there’s one that I always point to. I was born in 1979, and I was a little, little kid in the early ‘80s. It was just me and my mom at that point, and my mom was getting ready for work one morning and this song came on the radio, and for whatever reason it just grabbed me. I went into my mom’s bathroom where she was getting ready, and I said, “Mom, what is this song?”

And she told me what the song was. And I said, “do we have a record of this song?” And she said, “We do.” And I said, “Okay, here’s what I want to do. I want to take our record of this song and my little Fisher Price record player that you bought me for Christmas, and I want to take it to Janet’s house” (I used to stay with a caretaker named Janet) “and I want to play the song for Janet.” And my mom said, “well, you know, sweetheart, this was a number one song for a long time. I’m sure Janet knows the song.” I said, “yeah, mom, but I really want to play it for her.” And she said, “OK, well, how about this? Let’s take our record. Janet has a record player, we’ll play it on hers.” And I said, “No, mom, I want to take our record and my record player.” And rather than arguing with a three-year-old, which as a parent of a three-year-old right now I can tell you is not a winning proposition, we grabbed the record and the record player and we went to Janet’s house. And my mom said, “okay, sweetheart, I’ll see you tonight.” And I said, “where are you going?” And she said, “well, I have to go to work.” And I said, “no, mom, I want us all to sit here and listen to it.” And so we all sat there in this living room and listened to Barry Manilow’s “Mandy.”

Mitchell: Of all things, that is not where you thought this story was going! For whatever reason, that song really grabbed me. I mean, to the point where I have up on my wall the silver record signed by Mr. Manilow himself. It’s funny because I tell that anecdote a lot, and it’s cute, and it always gets a good laugh, but what it really illustrates is: It’s the exact same thing that I do today, which is find music that I love and then share it with as many people as I can. If that’s two people in a living room in Seattle, great. If it’s 20,000 people at some outdoor venue at a summer festival, great. It doesn’t matter to me.

Certainly it’s a long leap from “I heard a pop song from the ‘70s” to “I want to conduct the New York Philharmonic.” But at the same time, music is music. Falling in love with music is falling in love with music. There’s a lot of different ways that you can fall in love with music, and a lot of different avenues that that love can channel itself through. But for me, that was the moment that I was like, “okay, this is obviously something very special.”

I also remember from right around that same time, we had a piano at our house later but we didn’t have a piano when I was first growing up. But my mom’s aunt and uncle did in Roseburg, Oregon, and we would go visit them, and I remember being around that piano for the first time, and I remember playing the very highest notes on the piano. I was, again, about three or four years old. And because of the “tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,” I thought, “oh, Three Little Pigs, that’s fun.” And then I went down to the low end and I kind of rumbled down there and I thought, “oh, Big Bad Wolf.” So something about the storytelling potential of music got to me really early.

I grew up in Seattle and when I was at those really peak formative years of middle school that’s when grunge hit. Go back and look at my middle school yearbook from the early 1990s every one of us is in flannels. I really didn’t get to Beethoven until a few years later in high school, but the really nice thing about viewing music the way I’ve always viewed music is that I heard Nirvana and now I’m hearing Beethoven and they don’t sound super different to me. What it sounds like in both of these particular cases is a guy going through some really challenging times, really challenging things, and trying to work it out through his art, through his music. And by doing that, the rest of us that have had those experiences feel less alone, because somebody else is giving voice to the things that we’re experiencing. The crux of music, the whole purpose of music is communication. And composers in particular are only trying to communicate. They’re only trying to feel, to get us to feel what it is that they are feeling at that moment.

That’s the infinite power of music: it doesn’t really matter. Duke Ellington said there’s only two kinds of music, good music and bad music. That’s it. It doesn’t matter whether you call it symphonic or jazz or pop or emo or ska or whatever. Good music is good music. And that’s all we’re looking for.

OAW: Could you describe the nuts and bolts of what a conductor and artistic director does? We all know that it’s more than the arm waving, but what really goes into the work?

Mitchell: Well, the first thing I would say is that there’s the conducting part of the job, and then there’s the music directing part of the job, or the artistic directing part of the job. My title with Sunriver is “artistic director and conductor,” which implies two different things, and in fact it is two different things. As artistic director or music director, depending upon the organization, you’re in charge of the artistic direction of the organization. That means that I decide what the repertoire is that we’re going to play, what the music is that we’re going to play every season. I decide who the soloists are going to be, who are we going to bring in for some of the concertos that we do, the solo pieces with orchestra. I handle a decent amount of the administrative things that go along with any position.

As for the conducting part of things, what I’m essentially there to do is to help all of these highly trained professional musicians–who are looking in any given rehearsal or performance only at their part–to help them understand how their part fits in with everybody else’s part. You see the first flutist is looking at music that says “Flute 1,” and it has all of the music for the first flute. Same for the second flutist, same for the first oboist, the clarinetist, the bassoons, the horns, the violins, they’re all just looking at their own music. They don’t know what the horn player has in that bar because it’s not provided for them. I mean, if everybody had all of the music all of the time, the music would have to stop every 10 seconds so everyone could turn the page, right? It doesn’t really work like that.

So I have the great luxury of not having to learn how to physically, technically execute all of that music. I have to be able to look at the score, which is the document that I have that has everybody’s parts in it. It’s got the first flute and the second flute and the oboes and the clarinets and the bassoons. And so I’m able to see the context. I’m able to see what the musicians don’t see. Musicians are such good colleagues that we tend to always have our ears open, and when we find somebody else that we’re doing something with we try to mimic them. You’ve got a whole note in this bar, but the person sitting over there has a half note, and you think “if they’re exiting at this moment then I should probably be doing that as well.” And the answer is “no you don’t”–but where does that answer come from if you don’t have somebody at the center of it all that’s aware of the hierarchy at any given moment?

If you think about any pop song, there’s the melody that’s sung by the lead singer, but there’s also the drum track, the bass track, the keys track, the guitars track. All of that has to get blended together in a recording session. That’s the job of the engineer and the producer. I am the engineer and the producer when it comes to the orchestra.

I am what I would also call the arbiter of taste. If the score says “loud,” well, what what does “loud” mean? Does a “loud” in Mozart mean the same thing as a “loud” in Tchaikovsky? If it doesn’t, how are they different? Why are they different? So my job is to decide how loud is loud, how soft is soft, how fast is fast, how slow is slow, how long is long, how short is short, and to make sure that everybody is operating under the same rubric. If we’ve got 50 people on stage performing a Beethoven symphony, we might have 50 different opinions of how Beethoven should go. My job is to say, “for this performance, for the sake of intelligibility to the audience, everybody can’t just do what they want. We all have to be at the same place at the same time in the same way.” And I’m the guy that makes sure that all of those things happen. That’s a very high level look at what I do.

OAW: So then how would you characterize your own specific approach to conducting? What makes you different from any other conductor?

Mitchell: Part of what makes me different from any other conductor is that I’m me. We are all who we are as individuals, and you can’t separate who you are as a person from who you are as an artist. It’s a very physical thing that I do; I also contend with my body. We are all trapped in our own bodies. And even if I wanted to look like another conductor, even if I wanted to make a gesture like another conductor, I can mimic it but that’s his body or her body and it’s gonna look and feel more natural to them than it will to me.

So that’s part of the path of learning conducting: absorbing all of these other influences and then saying, “okay, but I’m my own person and I’m in my own body and this is what I have to work with.” So some of the individuality comes purely by you being an individual, and there’s nothing that we can do about that.

I would say that one of my defining characteristics as a conductor really stems from my background as a composer. My undergraduate degree is in composition from Western Washington University up in Bellingham. And when I started, I did not set out to become a conductor. That was not even on the radar. I started conducting by conducting my own music.

My high school band director commissioned me to write a piece the summer between my sophomore and junior years. And then we got to junior year, I had written the piece, and she said, “well, why don’t you just conduct it?” And I said, “because I don’t know how to conduct.” And she said, “yeah, but you know the most important thing about conducting this piece, which is you know this piece.”

And that’s what you really need. If you think about a word like “authority”–to have authority up on the podium, what does that really mean? Authority does not come from standing up on a box. I really think about the root of the word: If I want to have authority on the podium when I’m working on this piece, that means I have to know this piece so well that I could have authored it. That is what being an authority is. You know the thing so well that you may as well have written it yourself.

And listen, I’m a pianist and I am guilty of this when I am a pianist–as many musicians are–of ignoring markings that exist in the music, because I don’t want to do that at that exact moment. Well, okay, fine, but it’s not really about “want to.” The “want to” has to be serving the composer, because if the composer didn’t write this piece then we don’t have anything to do. The musicians don’t, I don’t, nobody does. So if we’re not there trying to serve the composer’s vision, then what are we there trying to do? What that means for me is that I take composers very seriously. And I take composers at their word. Now that doesn’t mean that I’m a slave to the score, that I don’t bring any imagination or thought. I understand that composers want us to use our imagination within what they have laid out for us. But I’m never casual about if. If a composer says that something should be done at, you know, half note equals 104, that’s the tempo the composer wants. Maybe I’ll be 96, maybe I’ll be 100, maybe I’ll be 108, maybe I’ll be 112. But I’m certainly not going to be 72. And I’m certainly not going to be 138.

And so I think part of what defines my approach is a real respect for and reverence for the composer and taking composers seriously and taking composers at their word.

Shakespeare had a great, very short line, which was “speak the speech.” You know what I mean? Just say it, just say the words. David Mamet, a great playwright and director, had a book about acting. He said, “you have to stop with the funny voices.” He said, “if the speech is good, nothing that you put on top of it will make it better. And if the speech is bad, nothing you put on top of it will make it better.” So, what that tells you is, the speech is the speech. The score is the score. You have to trust that the words in the play are going to connect with the people who hear them. And you have to trust that the notes at the concert are going to connect with the people who hear them. But the only way that you can make sure that the composer’s intention is being met is by doing what the composer asks you to do, even if it sometimes feels wrong, even if it sometimes feels awkward, even if you don’t quite understand why. I think presuming that we know better than the composer is a slippery slope and dangerous territory, and I don’t think I’ve ever gone against a composer’s wishes and felt like, “yeah, I showed him.”

That’s not the job. That’s really not the job. This is not a creative art, what I do. It is a re-creative art. I am taking music that is in printed form in these scores and with my colleagues trying to bring that music to life. But I’m not inventing the music. The players aren’t inventing the music. That’s already been done for us. So maybe that sets me apart from some of my colleagues.

OAW: What led you to then focus on conducting, rather than focusing on composing or playing piano?

Mitchell: My undergrad, as I mentioned, is in composition. I’ve always played the piano. And then I started conducting 30 years ago this fall, in October of ‘95. And it was just a practical thing. It was just my teacher saying, “hey, you should conduct this thing.” Not, “I’m gonna write this piece and finagle my way onto the podium.” That wasn’t the thought at all.

Mitchell: When I got to college, I started writing bigger and bigger pieces, and the bigger the piece you write, the more likely you are to need a conductor. So I started conducting more of my music in college. And then my colleagues in the composition program, my fellow composers, would say to me, “look at that, Brett conducts. Hey, you want to conduct my new piece?” And I’d be like, “yeah, sure, why not?” So I would conduct my friends’ music. And it became clear that I had a natural affinity for helping to shepherd what was going on.

And I knew as I was approaching the end of my undergrad that I was going to have to pick something. If you’re going to go to grad school, you’ve got to major in something. You have to get a master’s in something. You can’t get a master’s in everything.

I think my natural talents are part of what I have to offer: leadership ability. And you really need that as a conductor in a way that as a pianist you do not, and as a composer you do not. It’s also true that being a pianist, you spend hours and hours alone practicing, and you often go on stage alone. As a composer, you spend hours and hours alone writing, and then often you just give the music to other people and you’re not even part of the fun.

And as a conductor, certainly I spend hours and hours alone studying, but the penultimate result is that I get together with my colleagues in the orchestra, and we get to work for a few days on this music that I’ve been studying, and then we get to perform for an audience. I love working with other people, and I love performing for an audience, and given the musical spheres that I was in, it made sense to become a conductor.

And so that was really what I exclusively focused on from the time I was about 22 until I was–well, let’s see, I was 40 when the pandemic started. And when the pandemic started, I was stuck at home, as was everybody. And I was so kind of unmoored, because I couldn’t make music. Conductors, we need an orchestra. Orchestras just shut down because you, I mean, think about what an orchestra is. It’s a bunch of people blowing into their instruments. This is not what we wanted to do during COVID times.

I’ve always had a very clear mission statement, which is to share music I love with as many people as possible. And I was complaining to my wife a few months into the pandemic about how I wasn’t able to make music. And she said, “what does your mission statement say?” And I said, “to make music I love for as many people as possible.” And she said, “and where in there does it say anything about an orchestra? Where does it say anything about an audience? Where does it say anything about conducting?” And I was like, “you’re just constantly right.” She was, she was exactly right.

And so while I had played some piano over the intervening 20 years or so, I really got my chops back up once the pandemic started. I started arranging things. I started arranging film scores, scenes for piano, because that was a thing that I was able to do that nobody else was doing. I have conducted a lot of movies live to picture, so I had access to these scores. I have a composition degree, so I’m able to look at a big orchestral score and reduce that for piano. I am a pianist, so I can play those things on the piano. I understand how it works to try and line music up with picture.

Editing the audio, editing the video–that was a whole new thing. That was a challenging thing. But like many, many, many, many people, I figured out how to do that. As with, you know, virtually everything on the planet, COVID forced a readjustment of priorities. Now I find myself conducting all the time again, thank goodness. But I also do have a good following on YouTube, and I want to keep that going. Not because it makes me so much money, but because the people who are on there, who enjoy what I do on there, really enjoy what I do on there. I appreciate that a lot, and I enjoy doing it as well. I’m going to go record a video right after this interview, for Jaws‘ 50th anniversary.

Mitchell: I’m always suspicious of people who say, you know, “I knew from the time I was eight years old that I wanted to be a conductor.” When you’re eight years old, you don’t you don’t really understand what’s going on up there. You see somebody that’s the center of attention and standing on a box and waving their arms and apparently all-powerful. But that is about 1% the truth of what actually goes on up there. I think it’s much healthier if you sort of backdoor your way into it the way I did.

OAW: Could you talk about your composing life, what you’ve been working on and sharing on YouTube these last few years?

Mitchell: Almost everything that I’m composing now is actually not composing, it’s arranging. I would say that the composing that I’ve done over the past few years, with a couple of exceptions, has really been for our kids. We have an almost three-and-a-half-year old boy–a week from today he’d want me to tell you–who just started preschool last week, who’s very excited about that. And a little girl who just turned one back in April. When they were coming into the world, I thought “well dear God, I’m a musician. I’m a composer, I’m a pianist, I can’t not do something for them.”

So I repurposed a lullaby that I wrote back when I was either 15 or 16 and I called it “Will’s Lullaby.” I’ve actually never written it down anywhere; it exists on the YouTube channel, but I’ve never written it down anywhere.

And because my wife is a soprano, we also wanted to do a song for Will. And I had written a song maybe 20 years before for a colleague of mine who had a baby, and that was “Love You Forever.” And I said, “I want to make it a little bigger and a little more expansive.” And so I sort of rearranged that when Will was born.

Will was born Christmas Eve of 2021. Rose was born in April of ‘24, and her little lullaby was from another piece that I had written back in the year 2000 called “Four Miniatures for Solo Piano.” It was just the second movement of that. Again, I expanded it, changed it around a little bit. But I needed to find a new text, because I had run out of old music to repurpose.

We knew we were going to name her Rose. I’m Brett William, so our son is Will. My wife is Angela Rose, so we knew her name was gonna be Rose once we found out it was a girl. So I went looking around for rose poems and found a great poem by Robert Frost called “The Rose Family.”

Mitchell: I’ll tell you the really interesting thing about all four of those. My wife and I just did a recital together here in Denver last month, and we played all four of those things. I played “Will’s Lullaby,” we sang “Love You Forever,” then I did “Rose’s Lullaby,” and then we did “Rose Family.” And “Will’s Lullaby” was written, as I said, when I was 15 or 16, and “Rose’s Lullaby” was written when I was like 20 and towards the end of my composition degree. And one of our neighbors who came to the recital, a big music fan, she said, “I have to tell you, I really liked ‘Will’s Lullaby’ a lot. I think I liked that more than ‘Rose’s Lullaby.’” And I was like, “that’s very interesting because what you’re saying is that the music of the essentially relatively untrained 15-year-old was more palatable than the music of the trained 20-year-old.”

And I completely understand that. I really do. I totally understand where that’s coming from. When you’re in the middle of getting a composition degree, you want to be taken seriously, you want to explore all the different ways you can create music and sound worlds you can make. When I was writing “Will’s Lullaby” when I was 15, I was just writing a pretty tune, because that was all I was interested in doing then. And as it turns out, people are mostly interested in the pretty tune. I found that really interesting, and I didn’t take offense to it at all.

So most of the composing that I do is really in the guise of arranging for the YouTube channel. But then I’ll also write little things here and there, usually as gifts for people. Leonard Bernstein used to write little pieces for people that he called “anniversaries.” And it was either for an anniversary or a birthday, just little teeny tiny gifts. And then I think after Lenny died, they were all published together in three different sets or something like that. But it was never intended to be that. It was just intended to be, “hey, I love you.” Some people like to cook for other people. I like to write music for other people. It’s no different. It’s a love language coming from me.

OAW: Let’s talk about Sunriver Music Festival. How did you get the job in the first place, and what’s it like putting together a music festival?

Mitchell: I got a phone call, or maybe an email, at the beginning of a pandemic about this festival that was looking for an artistic director and would I be interested in applying. I think somebody may have recommended me for it. And I said, “sure, why not?” And ended up coming out during the summer of 2021. I was one of two candidates that they brought in to lead half of the festival. I led half the festival that year and they offered me the position and I took it. So this will be my fourth season.

The thing about a summer festival is we spend so much of our year working with the same people week in, week out. So there’s something really nice for musicians about going on the road for a couple of weeks, going to a really beautiful place like Sunriver–that’s certainly part of why we’re able to attract the caliber of musicians that we’re able to attract is, because we have a festival in a beautiful place–and to come together and to make a whole bunch of music in a relatively short period of time.

I’m always listening to the audience and what the audience is saying they want to hear, because that’s important. I’m listening to the board, I’m listening to the musicians. What do they want to hear? What do they want to play?

And then I’m really balancing that with the simple truth, the practical reality of how these festivals work. I’ll give you an example. If we have a show on Sunday night, the way that the rehearsal schedule usually works for it is we rehearse Saturday morning, Saturday night, Sunday morning, show on Sunday night. So we start at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning and 36 hours later, 10 p.m., we’re done with the program and we’ve done three rehearsals and the show. That is a tall order for anybody.

Part of what that means, and this aligns nicely with the summer festival, is that the programming has to be a little bit more conservative. You can’t just go totally crazy with these people who don’t play together for most of the year. So part of it is just getting our sea legs in terms of how we listen to each other. But then also being realistic about how much time we have to put this program together. And so I have to be very cognizant of all of those things.

So on our first program this year, there’s a couple of pieces that the orchestra could play, you know, blindfolded backwards in their sleep upside down. The selections from Carmen, I mean dear God, we have all played Carmen thousands of times in our career. No problem. The Ravel Piano Concerto, professional musicians play that all the time and we love it. And then there are a couple of pieces that are slightly more off the beaten path, but nothing that’s gonna cause the musicians any challenges. The Fauré, Pelléas et Mélisande, is one of the most beautiful pieces on the planet. And then the opening fanfare is a piece that doesn’t get played a lot. It’s also not terribly long, but it’s a great way to show off the brass section.

I’m trying to take all of the constituencies that we’re trying to serve. I’m trying to serve the audience. I’m trying to serve the musicians. I’m trying to serve the board for whom I work. I’m trying to serve myself because I have to believe in what we’re doing up there. Making sure that all of those different constituencies are being served and that we’ve got real variety over the course of the season. That’s the other thing that I think is really, really crucial.

That opening program is all French music. The next classical program is a classically oriented program: There’s Mozart, which is pure classical music; there is Tchaikovsky doing his Mozart impersonation; there is Stravinsky doing his Mozart impersonation; and there is Bill Bolcom doing his Mozart impersonation. So all of these pieces go together in a not haphazard way–they go together in a very intentional way to make sure that what you just heard is a little different from what you’re about to hear, but somehow related. That the concert you heard a few days ago is different from what you’re hearing tonight. I mean, how much more different can you get from an all-French program than the way we close with Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven? The height of what we would call the Viennese school, Viennese classicism. And then in the middle of all of that, you’ve got this beautiful trip to Leipzig with Robert Schumann, and Mendelssohn with our concertmaster, and then a couple pieces by Bach.

And we haven’t even touched the family show, we haven’t talked about the pops show. So there’s all sorts of music that occurs over the course of the season with the intent of serving all of us so that we’ve got this great variety as we’re working our way through each of these seasons.

OAW: Having grown up in Seattle and now working all over the place and living in Colorado, does coming back to Bend feel like coming home?

Mitchell: Oh, 100 percent, totally. And it’s not just because I grew up in Seattle. I spent all my summers in Oregon. My mom is from Roseburg. By the time I was growing up, my grandparents had moved about an hour down I-5 to Grants Pass. So Grants Pass is where I used to spend my summers. I mean, if you were to look at my knees today, the vast majority of those scars I got in Grants Pass, falling off dirt bikes.

So I have been coming to Oregon my whole life. My mom’s entire side of the family is from Oregon. It was one of the things that I told the search committee, that it would be wonderful to feel like I’m back home for some time every summer. When I was a kid, my grandparents and I came over to Bend once, in the mid ‘80s. We came into Bend and I was like, “wow, this makes Grants Pass look like the big city.” And then I didn’t go back to Bend until 2021, when I auditioned. And I was like, “what happened?” Now it’s the big metropolis in Central Oregon. So it’s nice to have that lifelong perspective of what Bend was, which I remember so clearly from being a kid, and to see it now and to spend a good portion of my summer every year there.

Yes, it more than feels like coming home. It’s very special to me.

OAW: Our standard last question–what would you ask Brett Mitchell?

Mitchell: Oh my God. You know, very seldom do I get asked a question I’ve never been asked before. I guess I would ask myself, “where do you see the art form going?” The art form has changed a lot even in the course of my career. I’ve been doing this almost 30 years, and I got my doctoral degree 20 years ago, which means that was when I “finished” my training–we’re always training. When I was going to grad school, there was no such thing as, “what if we did the score for Empire Strikes Back live while we showed the movie?” It literally didn’t exist. The technology didn’t exist. They couldn’t have done that back then, even if they had wanted to. I was in academia, so it probably would have been looked down upon anyway. I’m glad to hear that that’s kind of going away, that looking down the nose kind of thing.

What does it look like 30 years from now? I mean, 30 years from now, I’ll be 75, almost 76, just wrapping it up-ish, hopefully. And what does it look like? I mean, I think that the more we can kind of hew to Duke Ellington’s “there are only two kinds of music,” the more successful we will be. I think if we say “dead white European males from the 19th century and everyone else need not apply,” that’s when the field gets in real trouble. Because I have conducted, I believe, over a thousand concerts now in my life. And at those thousands of concerts that I have performed for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, never once have I seen a dead white European male, ever. Never happened. I’m not saying that they don’t have things to say to us, because they do, and they’re universal messages. But they shouldn’t be heard at the expense of people who have things to say today.

And the more we can successfully look at music as a continuum. Classical music is not a thing that happened. It’s a thing that is happening. It is a genre all its own, and a genre that is doing its level best, I do believe, to break down barriers, to break down walls, both in terms of who’s on stage and who’s in the audience and whose music we’re performing. So I think that the future of music is very bright for organizations that embrace the reality of who we are and when we are and where we are. We are not a museum. We are not there to encase works and to put them on a pedestal and to look at them and say, “oh golly, isn’t that lovely?”

That’s not what composers are trying to do. Composers are trying to communicate with immediacy. This is part of the challenge of doing something like Beethoven 5. Imagine how paradigm-shattering and mind-blowing it would have been to hear that piece for the first time. And yet that piece is now over 200 years old, and we’ve all heard it many times. So how do you recapture that immediacy? Beethoven wants to grab you. So how do we grab the audience?

The thing about music that’s really well known is it loses its power. It loses its impact. And I’ll give you two perfect examples from the world of film. The first is the shower scene from Psycho. The second is anytime you hear the shark theme from Jaws. Back in 1960, when Psycho came out and Janet Leigh was getting hacked to death in the shower, and Bernard Herrmann has those screeching strings–that must have been truly terrifying in the theater. If you think about Jaws and those two notes, how terrifying. I mean, John Williams won the Oscar for that score. And I have done Psycho in performance, and I have done Jaws in performance. And you get to those scenes, and people laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s like, “oh, right, there’s the wee, wee, wee,” or “there’s the doom, doom, doom, doom, doom.” So it loses its power.

Mitchell: Beethoven 5 loses its power with overexposure. This is why we try not to repeat ourselves too much, so that when the time does come for immediacy, it can really land.

I think the ability to take an audience on a journey that really is a clear conversation, so that the way you hear the first piece impacts the way you hear the second piece and the way you heard those first two pieces impacts the way you heard you hear the third piece. We have all sorts of visual possibilities now. I don’t see anything wrong with incorporating visual elements in concerts. We have eyes as well as ears, and there’s nothing wrong with trying to engage more than one sense at a time.

I think the organizations that are the nimblest, that are willing to zig and zag, rather than, “we are an ocean liner, we are classical music, this is the direction we are headed.” It’s like, “yes, but it’s an iceberg, don’t you see the iceberg?” You’ve got to be able to, you know, take the schooner this way.

So what do concerts look like in 30 years? Gosh, I don’t know. Immersive, I think. I think all of the senses will be engaged somehow.

I don’t believe for one second–maybe eight years ago, I would have believed this–but after COVID, I don’t believe for one second that people are only going to stay at home and listen to music. I have seen it myself. As we all got back into the concert hall, people wanted to be in the hall. People needed to be in the hall. People need the communal experience. And particularly today, where we’ve got so many blips and bings and pings and alerts and dings–for all of us to come together, shut up, shut off the devices, and let the composer or composers take us on the journey that they’re trying to take us on.

For anybody that’s ever been to a concert, it’s one thing to have a big loud end to a concert and then everybody leaps to their feet and screams. That’s wonderful, that’s lovely and it’s a nice thing to have happen. But I will tell you that I never ever feel more connected to an audience than I do when we end a piece quietly and we all hold the quiet. Now, I’m holding the quiet. I’m the one that’s not moving, and nobody’s going to clap until I move, and I know that. But I literally just got goosebumps, because you can feel 2,000 people wrapping you in that silence. And then when we release it and we can all exhale–that’s never going to go away.

So it’s like the Mark Twain quote, right? “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Reports of classical music’s death have been greatly exaggerated. There’s a great Time Magazine article that goes around all the time about, “oh man, the audiences are getting older and look at all that white hair in the audiences and what are we ever gonna do?” And then you look at the date and it’s 1954. It’s like we have been saying classical music is dying since classical music was born. It’s not going anywhere. We just need to be constantly flexible and imaginative in terms of how we are presenting this music that we love to other people so that they might have an opportunity to love it too.

‘An Impressive Philharmonic Debut’: Brett Mitchell Steps In at the New York Philharmonic

Brett Mitchell leads the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall. © Brandon Patoc

NEW YORK — On May 16, 17, and 18, Brett Mitchell stepped in for his subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic, leading three performances of Kevin Puts's The Brightness of Light featuring soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry, followed by the complete score of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé featuring the New York Philharmonic Chorus.

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Review: With Last-Minute Conductor Swap, Philharmonic Soldiers On

Brett Mitchell led the New York Philharmonic in the local premiere of a song cycle by Kevin Puts, featuring the soprano Renée Fleming.

"The Philharmonic announced on Thursday afternoon — just a day before the concerts — that [Juanjo] Mena would not be conducting… Instead, the conductor Brett Mitchell, the music director of California's Pasadena Symphony and a newcomer to the Philharmonic, stepped in. Mitchell possesses the right credentials, having led The Brightness of Light at the Colorado Symphony with Fleming and Gilfry in 2019. Still, this was no easy task given his truncated rehearsal time and lack of familiarity with the players... School may be almost out, but the Philharmonic passed this particular test with grit."

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New York Philharmonic with Renée Fleming & Rod Gilfry — Brett Mitchell conducts Puts and Ravel

Stepping in for Juanjo Mena, Brett Mitchell made an impressive Philharmonic debut.

"Under Mitchell, the Philharmonic was rhythmically secure and well-attuned to the nuances of Puts's captivating score, and electrifying in the rapturous rendition of 'The High Priestess of the Desert'."

"Mitchell expertly managed [Daphnis et Chloé's] frequent tempo changes, alternating between languid wooing, ceremonial processions, exhilarating dances, sudden scenes of conflict, and tumultuous revelry... The vocalizing of the 60-member NY Philharmonic Chorus, meticulously prepared by Malcolm J. Merriweather, provided additional color and strength to this ravishing rendition."

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Kevin Puts Has Georgia (and Alfred) on His Mind in BRIGHTNESS at NY Philharmonic

"The Philharmonic was not left out of Puts's efforts—not only in the marvelously, intricately orchestrated songs, but in a pair of Orchestral Interludes, 'Georgia and Alfred' and 'The High Priestess of the Desert'—through which conductor Mitchell drew sweep and passion. He was a last-minute substitution on the podium, though he had conducted the work once before. Still, he did a stellar job, as did the ensemble."

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Noisy and Pastoral Love Vie in Mixed Philharmonic Program

"Complete scores of ballets can flag in concert without dancers to sustain interest, but the hour-long performance of Daphnis et Chloé had no such problem Friday night. Conductor Mitchell smoothly managed Ravel's constant tempo changes, ushering in stately processions, infectious dances, languid wooing, sudden battles, and ecstatic revelry by rapid turns. (The list of tempo markings alone occupied an entire page of the Philharmonic program.)"

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Scenes from a Marriage: The Brightness of Light at the NY Philharmonic

"There is a pleasing lyricism to Puts' writing here, and the Philharmonic produced an appropriately warm coloring under conductor Brett Mitchell, a last-minute replacement…"

"Mitchell rounded out the program with a complete performance of Daphnis et Chloé, the latest in the Philharmonic's ongoing celebration of Ravel's 150th anniversary... Mitchell kept the action moving seamlessly in a work that can easily turn a conductor into a traffic cop, and...the Philharmonic's reading offered a performance delightfully varied in color and style."

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Love, Light, Letters: Song Cycle Embraces Painter, Photographer

"In his Philharmonic debut, Brett Mitchell was a last-minute replacement... Even on short notice, Mitchell was well prepared for the Puts cycle, having conducted the work in 2019 as music director of the Colorado Symphony, one of the work's co-commissioners... The conductor paced both works nicely, with a good sense of where the Puts needed to breathe."

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Brett Mitchell leads the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall. © Brandon Patoc

Brett Mitchell returns to Tulsa Symphony Orchestra’s 2025-26 classical season

Brett Mitchell will lead a program of Brahms and Kodály with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra in January 2026.

TULSA — The Tulsa Symphony Orchestra has announced that Brett Mitchell will return to lead the third classical subscription concert of their 2025-26 season, leading the following program at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center on Saturday, January 10, 2026:

BRAHMS - Variations on a Theme by Haydn
KODÁLY - Dances of Galánta
BRAHMS - Symphony No. 2

Mr. Mitchell first led the orchestra in March 2023 in a program of Bach, Vaughan Williams, Mahler, and Prokofiev, and returned in October 2024 with a program of Brahms, Ravel, and Bartók. This performance marks his third engagement with the orchestra.

For more information, please click here.

Review: ‘With Last-Minute Conductor Swap, Philharmonic Soldiers On’

NEW YORK — The New York Times has published a review of Brett Mitchell’s eleventh-hour subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic:

The final weeks of an orchestra’s season can feel like the end of school: Everyone’s worn down and summer is beckoning. Last week’s program at the New York Philharmonic had that mood even before a late-breaking curveball that tested the orchestra further.

The Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena was to be on the podium for the New York debut of Kevin Puts’s “The Brightness of Light,” an orchestral song cycle featuring the soprano Renée Fleming and the baritone Rod Gilfry, along with Ravel’s rapturous “Daphnis et Chloé.”

But the Philharmonic announced on Thursday afternoon — just a day before the concerts — that Mena would not be conducting…

Instead, the conductor Brett Mitchell, the music director of California’s Pasadena Symphony and a newcomer to the Philharmonic, stepped in. Mitchell possesses the right credentials, having led “The Brightness of Light” at the Colorado Symphony with Fleming and Gilfry in 2019. Still, this was no easy task given his truncated rehearsal time and lack of familiarity with the players.

“The Brightness of Light” is a portrait of the artist Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. For the libretto, Puts uses selections from their correspondence — from the heady rush of their early relationship through its souring and O’Keeffe’s deepening romance with the landscape of New Mexico. (This work expands on an earlier piece with Fleming, “Letters,” that relies solely on O’Keeffe’s perspective.)

Puts, who also wrote the opera “The Hours” with Fleming in mind, adores her voice’s glowing luminosity; his orchestral writing often bathes her in shining halos of sound, and on Friday she returned the favor. Gilfry, who was also making his New York Philharmonic debut, handled Stieglitz with polish, though the role functions as little more than a foil for O’Keeffe’s personal and artistic evolution.

The music was accompanied by Wendall K. Harrington’s visuals, which included projections of work by O’Keeffe and Stieglitz, images of the couple’s letters, and libretto supertitles. Puts leans on the projections to do the storytelling; the music often feels more like accompaniment than main attraction. Still, he illustrates the couple’s complicated relationship with verve and humor, deploying rapid percussion to express the nervous, bright energy of new love, and a hacking, squawking violin solo (played by the concertmaster Frank Huang) to go with the lines “I’ve labored on the violin till all my fingers are sore — You never in your wildest dreams imagined anything worse than the notes I get out of it.” (A little on the nose, but enjoyable nonetheless.)

Then came the Ravel, played with a steely determination to get through the not-ideal circumstances… School may be almost out, but the Philharmonic passed this particular test with grit.

To read the complete review, please click here.

(A version of this article appeared in print on May 21, 2025, Section C, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: “Last-Minute Switch Steps Up to Podium. A newcomer conducts a song cycle featuring Renée Fleming.”)

Review: ‘New York Philharmonic with Renée Fleming & Rod Gilfry – Brett Mitchell conducts Puts and Ravel’

Conductor Brett Mitchell and New York Philharmonic Chorus director Malcolm J. Merriweather onstage with the New York Philharmonic. © Brandon Patoc

Stepping in for Juanjo Mena, Brett Mitchell made an impressive Philharmonic debut.

NEW YORK — Classical Source has published a review of Brett Mitchell’s recent subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic:

Based on the 30-year-long, almost-daily correspondence between American painter Georgia O’Keeffe and the German-born photographer Alfred Stieglitz, Kevin Puts’s Brightness of Light is an expansion of his 2015 song-cycle, Letters from Georgia. Composed for Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry in 2019, the highly programmatic piece is difficult to categorize. Enhanced by Wendall K. Harrington’s engaging and evocative projection design – which utilizes videos of O’Keeffe and images by both artists and copies of some of their letters – the opus touches on every aspect of the couple’s tumultuous relationship, from their first, business-like meeting, through their initial ardor and post-marriage cooling off, to their final separation, which left them physically distant though still emotional entwined…

Under [Brett] Mitchell, the Philharmonic was rhythmically secure and well-attuned to the nuances of Puts’s captivating score, and electrifying in the rapturous rendition of ‘The High Priestess of the Desert’. There were many memorable moments, most notably concertmaster Frank Huang’s humorous, scordatura-tuned accompaniment to O’Keeffe’s narration of her own attempts to play the violin, and the tuned gongs in the concluding ‘Sunset’.

Somewhat long-winded, with an outlandish scenario based on a 2nd century quasi-mythic love story involving a goatherd, a shepherdess, a herdsman, pirates and the god Pan, Daphnis et Chloé is perhaps best appreciated by simply sitting back and marveling at Ravel’s miraculous music. Mitchell expertly managed the score’s frequent tempo changes, alternating between languid wooing, ceremonial processions, exhilarating dances, sudden scenes of conflict, and tumultuous revelry. Flute, clarinet, horn, and trumpet soloists were uniformly eloquent, and Nancy Allen (recognized at intermission for her 25 years as the Philharmonic’s principal harp) delivered particularly graceful glissandos. The vocalizing of the 60-member NY Philharmonic Chorus, meticulously prepared by Malcolm J. Merriweather, provided additional color and strength to this ravishing rendition.

To read the complete review, please click here.

Review: ‘Kevin Puts Has Georgia (and Alfred) on His Mind in BRIGHTNESS at NY Philharmonic’

Soprano Renée Fleming, conductor Brett Mitchell, and baritone Rod Gilfry perform Kevin Puts’s The Brightness of Light with the New York Philharmonic. © Brandon Patoc

Renee Fleming and Rod Gilfry Thrill in Helping Bring Correspondence to Musical Life with Conductor Brett Mitchell

NEW YORK — Broadway World has published a review of Brett Mitchell’s recent subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic:

This past weekend, composer Kevin Puts’s BRIGHTNESS OF LIGHT, based on the long, abundant correspondence of artist Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer/gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, had its long overdue New York premiere, with the New York Philharmonic under debuting conductor Brett Mitchell, and soprano Renee Fleming as O’Keeffe and baritone Rod Gilfry as Stieglitz, friends and lovers (marital and otherwise)…

The Philharmonic was not left out of Puts’s efforts—not only in the marvelously, intricately orchestrated songs, but in a pair of Orchestral Interludes, “Georgia and Alfred” and “The High Priestess of the Desert”—through which conductor Mitchell drew sweep and passion. He was a last-minute substitution on the podium, though he had conducted the work once before. Still, he did a stellar job, as did the ensemble…

Filling out the program was Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe (Choreographic Symphony in Three Parts),” which had been written by the composer for the Ballets Russes in 1912. It ran from the rhapsodic to the anarchic and back again, and was exciting to hear even if it's not among Ravel's most frequently played works.

Again, Mitchell didn’t have much time with the orchestra when he was parachuted in to replace Juanjo Mena, who was a last-minute cancellation, but the performance nonetheless ran smoothly… The New York Philharmonic Chorus, under Malcolm Merriweather, added greatly to the overall effect of the piece, becoming one more element of the orchestra.

To read the complete review, please click here.

Review: ‘Noisy and pastoral love vie in mixed Philharmonic program’

Brett Mitchell conducts the New York Philharmonic. © Brandon Patoc

NEW YORK — New York Classical Review has published a review of Brett Mitchell’s recent subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic:

Complete scores of ballets can flag in concert without dancers to sustain interest, but the hour-long performance of Daphnis et Chloé had no such problem Friday night. One could try to picture in one’s mind the ballet’s wacky scenario involving religious rites, shepherdesses and pirates, or one could just sit back and appreciate Ravel’s mastery of orchestral color and atmosphere. Ravel extracted two suites from this score, the second of which has become a familiar concert item, but it turns out the material in between the excerpts is almost as interesting.

Conductor [Brett] Mitchell smoothly managed Ravel’s constant tempo changes, ushering in stately processions, infectious dances, languid wooing, sudden battles, and ecstatic revelry by rapid turns. (The list of tempo markings alone occupied an entire page of the Philharmonic program.)

The wordless singing of the New York Philharmonic Chorus, directed by Malcolm J. Merriweather, put a human presence in the scene, whether cooing over the lovers or shouting for joy in the work’s closing revels.

Wind soloists and concertmaster Frank Huang had their eloquent say in the score’s quieter moments. Ripping arpeggios and tinkling nature sounds were contributed by harpist Nancy Allen, who was recognized before the performance for her 25 years as the Philharmonic’s principal harp.

To read the complete review, please click here.

Review: ‘Scenes from a marriage: The Brightness of Light at the NY Philharmonic’

The Brightness of Light creative team: from L to R, the New York Philharmonic, composer Kevin Puts, projection designer Wendall K. Harrington, conductor Brett Mitchell, baritone Rod Gilfry, and soprano Renée Fleming. © Brandon Patoc

NEW YORK — Bachtrack has published a review of Brett Mitchell’s recent subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic:

Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz wrote thousands of letters to each other, beginning in 1916 and continuing until his death 30 years later. Along the way, her talent and his influence turned them into one of the most influential artistic couples the United States has ever produced. Kevin Puts memorializes their complex relationship, and their way with words, in The Brightness of Light, a song cycle drawn from their voluminous correspondence. Previously heard in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Kansas City since its 2019 premiere, the work made its long-awaited Manhattan debut at the New York Philharmonic, featuring its original stars, Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry.

Puts approaches the musical language in his typical style, an unapologetic embrace of neo-romanticism that recalls Barber and other mid-20th century American composers. The orchestra swells in two overwhelmingly lush interludes, Georgia and Alfred and The High Priestess of the Desert, with deeply chromatic tutti passages that envelope the listener in an intense sound world. There is a pleasing lyricism to Puts’ writing here, and the Philharmonic produced an appropriately warm coloring under conductor Brett Mitchell, a last-minute replacement…

Mitchell rounded out the program with a complete performance of Daphnis et Chloé, the latest in the Philharmonic’s ongoing celebration of Ravel’s 150th anniversary. The unusually bright acoustic of David Geffen Hall since its renovation in 2022 served the piece well, isolating solo voices in the woodwind and brass that sometimes get lost within the overall tapestry of the hour-long work. Mitchell kept the action moving seamlessly in a work that can easily turn a conductor into a traffic cop, and while the listener’s attention sometimes cannot help but wane, the Philharmonic’s reading offered a performance delightfully varied in color and style. Much credit goes to the New York Philharmonic Chorus, prepared by Malcolm J Merriweather, whose wordless cries of ecstasy set the right bacchic mood.

To read the full review, please click here.

Review: ‘Love, Light, Letters: Song Cycle Embraces Painter, Photographer’

Brett Mitchell leads the New York Philharmonic in Kevin Puts’s ‘The Brightness of Light’ with soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry. © Brandon Patoc

NEW YORK — Classical Voice North America has published a review of Brett Mitchell’s recent subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic:

On May 16, the New York Philharmonic offered a program of two romances born in the early 20th century: a contemporary song cycle based on the correspondence between two iconic American artists and a 1912 ballet score highlighting nymphs and shepherds from classical mythology. The repertoire provided the opportunity to luxuriate in work by two of America’s finest opera veterans, supported and surrounded by New York’s flagship orchestra in full fettle.

Kevin Puts’ The Brightness of Light was born from an Eastman School of Music 2015 commission for soprano Renée Fleming for a performance by the conservatory’s orchestra at Lincoln Center. Eastman alumnus Puts came across a quote from Georgia O’Keeffe — “My first memory is of the brightness of light, of light all around” — and decided to set letters from the painter’s voluminous correspondence with Alfred Stieglitz, photographer, gallery owner, and O’Keeffe’s life partner. After the premiere of the cycle of eight songs for soprano, Fleming suggested expanding the work into a musical dialogue with Stieglitz with a part for a male singer. The expanded cycle premiered in 2019 at Tanglewood, co-commissioned by seven performing institutions, with Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry in the roles they sang with the Philharmonic…

The complete score of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé (2012) filled the second half and provided a showcase for the orchestra, particularly appropriate on an evening honoring Philharmonic retirees and long-serving current members. Rich in solo opportunities throughout the sections, the work was Ravel’s only score for the legendary Ballets Russes, which from 1909 to 1929 was Europe’s preeminent ballet company. The hour-long ballet, to Ravel’s longest score, is set on the island of Lesbos where the goatherd Daphnis pursues the shepherdess Chloé among nymphs and shepherds. After Daphné is abducted by pirates and rescued, thanks to the intervention of Pan, all dance a frenzied bacchanale.

Ravel’s lush impressionistic language was a treat for the ear… There were many sensual delights to relish, notably the sinuous flute solos played by Robert Langevin.

In his Philharmonic debut, Brett Mitchell was a last-minute replacement for scheduled conductor Juanjo Mena. Mitchell currently serves as music director of the Pasadena Symphony and has appeared with major orchestras across the U.S. and globally. Even on short notice, Mitchell was well prepared for the [Kevin] Puts cycle [The Brightness of Light], having conducted the work in 2019 as music director of the Colorado Symphony, one of the work’s co-commissioners. The occasional earsplitting fortissimo (and a runaway wind machine) revealed Mitchell’s lack of familiarity with the acoustics of David Geffen Hall, but the conductor paced both works nicely, with a good sense of where the Puts needed to breathe.

To read the complete review, please click here.

In his Philharmonic debut, Brett Mitchell was a last-minute replacement for scheduled conductor Juanjo Mena. © Brandon Patoc

Preview: ‘Van Cliburn Winning Pianist Coming to Sunriver’

Brett Mitchell leads the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra in Sunriver, Ore. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)

BEND, Ore. — Source Weekly has published a preview of the Sunriver Music Festival’s 2025 season, Brett Mitchell’s fourth as Artistic Director & Conductor:

During this year's Sunriver Music Festival, listeners will be treated to amazing performers, diverse compositions and a dynamic, creative driving force behind it all. One of the most thrilling aspects of this year's festival is that a newly awarded medalist from the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition will be announced on June 7, and this performer will subsequently come to Sunriver to play two concerts. Artistic Director and Conductor Brett Mitchell shared his excitement over the 48th season of the festival…

Source Weekly: How did the partnership between the Van Cliburn Piano Competition and the Sunriver Music Festival come about?

Brett Mitchell: The Cliburn connection is something that has been a part of Sunriver Music Festival for longer than I have been. It is always, of course, an enormous event in the classical music world. These pianists come from all over the world, and to have a complete unknown who, seemingly overnight, becomes a household name is amazing. This opportunity that we have in Sunriver to feature one of the medalists, honestly is one of the things that attracted me to this position. The opportunity to work with some of the greatest up-and-coming musicians on the scene is incredible. I'm a musician, period, because I had a great high school band director. I thought that's what I wanted to do, to teach young musicians. And that has been a very big part of my career. When I was the assistant director of the Cleveland Orchestra, I was also the director of the Cleveland Youth Orchestra. So, the opportunity to find these young musicians that the Cliburn has and shine a light on them... and that we in Sunriver are able to bring them to our community, literally two months after they have been awarded a medal, is just amazing. I think it's one of the most exciting things we do. 

SW: I imagine it's a bit like choosing a favorite child, but which concert are you personally most excited about this summer?

BM: I love all of these programs. The French program that we open with is going to be a really nice experience. All of the pieces are French, but they couldn't be more different from each other. The Dukas Fanfare is a brass fanfare, which is not something you associate with France. The Ravel Piano Concerto is hugely inspired by George Gershwin and the world of jazz. The Fauré is probably what most folks would consider French music: delicate, beautiful, exquisite. And then, of course, there's Carmen [by Bizet] which is designed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Carmen, which premiered in 1875, and it also marks the 150th anniversary of Bizet's death. And then also the Classical Tradition program, with the Bolcom Commedia, which is such a funny, witty piece. To have Mark Kosower, who is the principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra, come out and do the Rococo Variations of Tchaikovsky... and we know that Tchaikovsky was history's greatest admirer of Mozart, along with about five million of the rest of us! Then to have [Mozart's] Marriage of Figaro on there, it's such a greatest hit of classical music. And then to follow that up with the Stravinsky Dance Concertantes, which is from Stravinsky's neoclassical period... that program I'm really excited about as well. I know you asked for one, but there's two.

SW: Can you talk about your personal journey with music?

BM: When I was growing up in Seattle in the '80s and early '90s when grunge hit, I got to Nirvana before I got to Beethoven. But when I got to Beethoven in high school a few years later, it did not sound so different to me from Nirvana. It was like, here's this guy, or group of guys, and they are clearly going through some stuff... and they are trying to say it artistically to see if it might resonate with the rest of us. And that, I don't care if you are from the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s or today, if you have a universal message, it's worth hearing. Which is why we do what we do.

To read the complete preview, please click here.

BREAKING: Brett Mitchell Steps In at the New York Philharmonic

NEW YORK — Stepping in for an indisposed Juanjo Mena, Brett Mitchell will make his subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic this weekend, the orchestra has announced.

On the first half of the program is Kevin Puts’s The Brightness of Light, featuring soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry. Mr. Mitchell was a co-commissioner of this work during his tenure as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony.

On the second half, Mr. Mitchell and the orchestra will be joined by the New York Philharmonic Chorus for a performance of the complete score of Maurice Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé.

Three performances will be presented in the Philharmonic’s home of the Wu Tsai Theater at David Geffen Hall:

• Friday, May 16 at 7:30 p.m

• Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m.

• Sunday, May 18 at 2 p.m.

For information, please click here.

Composer Kevin Puts, soprano Renée Fleming, conductor Brett Mitchell, and baritone Rod Gilfry after performing The Brightness of Light with the Colorado Symphony in November 2019

Brett Mitchell Returns to the Houston Symphony in June 2025

HOUSTON — The Houston Symphony has announced that Brett Mitchell will return to lead the orchestra in Patrick Doyle’s score for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth film in the Harry Potter franchise.

Mr. Mitchell and the orchestra will present the film with live orchestral accompaniment three times at Jones Hall:

• Friday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m.

• Saturday, June 28 at 2 p.m.

• Sunday, June 29 at 2 p.m.

For more information, please click here.

Mr. Mitchell has been leading the Houston Symphony for almost 20 years since joining the orchestra as Assistant Conductor in the 2007-08 season. Since then, he has led more than 150 performances with the ensemble, including John Williams’s Oscar-nominated score for the first film in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, in July 2023.

Preview: ‘Pasadena Symphony to Close Season with Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony’

Music Director Brett Mitchell leads the Pasadena Symphony at the Ambassador Auditorium in October 2024. He will lead the final program of his inaugural season on Saturday, May 3. (Photo by Karen Tapia)

PASADENA — Pasadena Now has published a preview of the final program of Brett Mitchell’s inaugural season as Music Director of the Pasadena Symphony:

Pasadena Symphony […] will close out its 2024-2025 season with an afternoon and evening of sweeping romanticism and bucolic serenity as Music Director Brett Mitchell leads a program culminating in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the “Pastoral,” on Saturday, May 3.

Performances are scheduled for 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Ambassador Auditorium.

The concert marks the conclusion of Mitchell’s inaugural season at the helm of the orchestra, and the repertoire reflects his signature approach: programs that are both emotionally resonant and carefully constructed.

“The program ends with a sense of optimism and joy,” the symphony stated in its season announcement. The concert will open with George Whitefield Chadwick’s “A Pastoral Prelude for Orchestra,” followed by Max Bruch’s beloved “Violin Concerto No. 1,” featuring acclaimed American soloist William Hagen.

Hagen, who performs on a rare 1732 Antonio Stradivari violin on loan from the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation, is known for his virtuosic presence and lyrical sensitivity. He has appeared with major orchestras across North America and Europe, earning praise from critics for performances that are “captivating, floating delicately above the orchestra,” according to Chicago Classical Review.

Mitchell, named Music Director of the Pasadena Symphony in March 2024, is no stranger to major stages. A former music director of the Colorado Symphony and a frequent guest with top-tier American and international ensembles, he has shared the podium with soloists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and Renée Fleming.

Saturday’s program, centered on nature-inspired works, draws a thematic throughline from Chadwick’s turn-of-the-century American romanticism, through Bruch’s dramatic German lyricism, to Beethoven’s ode to the countryside.

Beethoven’s Sixth, subtitled “Pastoral,” is a departure from the composer’s more stormy and structured works. Composed in 1808, it offers a deeply personal reflection of his love for nature, with movements titled “Scene by the Brook” and “Thunderstorm” giving way to the final movement’s sense of peaceful renewal.

Mitchell was appointed Music Director in March last year, signaling a new chapter for Pasadena Symphony.

To read the complete preview, please click here.

Pasadena Symphony Unveils Its 2025-26 Season: Bold Classics and New Voices

Brett Mitchell will lead his second season as Music Director of the Pasadena Symphony at the Ambassador Auditorium from November 2025 through May 2026. (Photo by Tim Sullens)

PASADENA — The Pasadena Symphony has announced its 2025-26 season, Brett Mitchell’s second as Music Director. Pasadena Now has published an extensive article about this announcement:

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PASADENA SYMPHONY UNVEILS ITS 2025-26 SEASON: BOLD CLASSICS AND NEW VOICES
Brett Mitchell's sophomore season as Music Director promises a delicate balance of orchestral staples and contemporary voices

In Southern California’s classical music scene, the Pasadena Symphony has long occupied a position of understated elegance—neither flashy nor provincial, but rather a thoughtful custodian of orchestral tradition. Now, with Brett Mitchell entering his second season as Music Director, the orchestra appears poised for a subtle yet significant transformation. The recently announced 2025-26 season suggests a conductor and ensemble seeking to establish a dialogue between the canonical and the contemporary, between European tradition and American innovation.

The season opens on November 8th with the appropriately titled “Symphonie Fantastique!” program, featuring Berlioz’s hallucinatory masterpiece alongside Ravel’s effervescent Piano Concerto in G Major, performed by Orion Weiss, a pianist whose interpretive choices often bring fresh perspective to familiar works.

The inclusion of Jim Self’s “Tour de Force” signals Mitchell’s interest in expanding the orchestral repertoire beyond the expected, though one wonders if this particular piece will offer substantive musical rewards or merely serve as an obligatory nod to living composers.

The January program pairs Mendelssohn’s evocative “Scottish” Symphony and “Hebrides Overture” with Edgar Meyer’s Violin Concerto, to be performed by Tessa Lark. Meyer, whose compositional voice bridges classical formalism with American vernacular traditions, represents a shrewd programming choice—familiar enough to avoid alienating subscription-base conservatives while still offering something beyond the standard repertoire.

February 21st brings a program featuring Tchaikovsky’s profound “Pathétique” Symphony, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 performed by Michelle Cann, and Jeffrey Nytch’s “Beacon”—another example of Mitchell’s commitment to showcasing contemporary voices alongside canonical masterworks.

Perhaps most intriguing is the March 21st concert featuring Juan Pablo Contreras as both composer and special guest for his Symphony No. 1, a co-commission by the orchestra.

Contreras, whose work often explores his Mexican heritage through classical forms, will share the program with Bernstein’s “Three Variations from Fancy Free” and Dvořák’s perennial “New World” Symphony—a pairing that seems designed to invite reflection on musical representations of American identity across different eras and cultural perspectives.

April 25th presents Beethoven’s revolutionary “Eroica” Symphony alongside Quinn Mason’s thematically related “Heroic Overture (Overtura Eroica)” and Jennifer Higdon’s Cello Concerto, performed by Julian Schwarz in its West Coast première—further evidence of Mitchell’s interest in creating meaningful dialogues between established masterpieces and contemporary compositions.

The season concludes with “America @ 250” on May 30th, a program that reads initially like a Fourth of July concert displaced to Memorial Day weekend. Yet the inclusion of Jonathan Leshnoff’s “Rhapsody on ‘America'” (receiving its West Coast première and co-commissioned by the orchestra) alongside selections from John Williams’ “American Journey,” Copland’s “Appalachian Spring Suite” and “Lincoln Portrait” suggests a more thoughtful engagement with national musical identity than mere patriotic spectacle. Pianist Joyce Yang joins the orchestra for this exploration of American musical vernacular.

Throughout the season, Mitchell has assembled an impressive roster of soloists and programming that consistently pairs orchestral warhorses with works by living composers.

What emerges is a portrait of an orchestra and conductor navigating the perennial challenge facing American symphonic institutions: how to honor the European classical tradition while establishing a distinct and contemporary American orchestral identity. Mitchell’s approach appears to be one of gentle evolution rather than radical reinvention—introducing new works alongside familiar masterpieces, inviting audiences to discover connections between centuries and continents.

Whether Mitchell’s vision will ultimately lead to a distinctive institutional identity remains to be seen, but his sophomore season suggests a promising direction: neither hidebound by tradition nor recklessly innovative, but attentive to both the past and future of orchestral music in America.

Music Director Brett Mitchell onstage at the Pasadena Symphony’s home of the Ambassador Auditorium, the “Carnegie Hall of the West.” (Photo by Tim Sullens)

Feature: ‘Brett Mitchell Pays Tribute to Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek with Emotional Piano Performance’

‘Brett Mitchell Pays Tribute to Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek with Emotional Piano Performance’

Italian Star Trek news magazine ExtraTrek has published an extensive feature about Brett Mitchell’s film music covers on his YouTube channel. The following excerpts are translated from the original Italian:

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BRETT MITCHELL PAYS TRIBUTE TO LEONARD NIMOY AND STAR TREK WITH EMOTIONAL PIANO PERFORMANCE
Brett Mitchell's YouTube channel features piano-based reinterpretations of famous film scores, celebrating iconic characters and creating an immersive musical experience

Brett Mitchell, a renowned conductor and pianist, has developed a special relationship with film and television music over the years, combining his interpretative sensitivity with his passion for soundtracks. On his YouTube channel, active since 2006, Mitchell offers original arrangements ranging from orchestral classics to the most iconic soundtracks in pop culture.

One of his most touching tributes is the video Horner: Spock (Brett Mitchell, piano), in which he performs on the piano an arrangement of James Horner ’s Spock theme, taken from the soundtrack of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This song, full of emotion and depth, is a perfect tribute to the figure of Leonard Nimoy and his iconic character, remembered for his wisdom, his stoicism and his famous motto: Live long and prosper. A few days ago Mitchell offered this piece on the day in which the actor, interpreter of the most famous Vulcan of the franchise, would have turned 94.

A tribute full of meaning

Mitchell's performance is notable for the delicacy with which he manages to render the emotional nuances of Horner's piece. The arrangement, entirely for piano, captures the melancholy and grandeur of Spock, evoking the most touching scenes of the film. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a fundamental chapter of the saga, made immortal by the dramatic scene of Spock 's death, accompanied by Horner's music.

This tribute goes beyond a simple musical performance: it is a gesture of love towards a character who has marked generations of fans and who continues to be one of the most beloved figures of the Star Trek franchise.

Music and Cinema: The Perfect Combination on Brett Mitchell's Channel

Mitchell's work doesn't stop with Spock . His channel is a veritable archive of great soundtracks reinterpreted with sensitivity and mastery. Staying on the subject of Star Trek, we can't help but mention another example of his talent: the piano arrangement of A Good Start, a piece composed by Jerry Goldsmith for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This piece, which accompanies the iconic final sequence of the film, is a hymn to the wonder of space exploration and the sense of adventure that has always characterized the saga.

The artist doesn't just play music: in his videos he often synchronizes the music with the original scenes, offering an immersive experience that fuses the power of the soundtrack with the visual narrative.

In addition to the two videos mentioned, Mitchell's channel features other highly valuable performances, such as:

• Angelo Badalamenti: Twin Peaks Theme (Piano Cover) (Brett Mitchell, piano), a touching reinterpretation of the famous theme from the Twin Peaks series, characterized by dreamlike and melancholic atmospheres.

• John Williams: AI Artificial Intelligence (Brett Mitchell, piano), an intense and emotionally charged performance of Williams’s score for Steven Spielberg’s film, which perfectly captures the film’s sense of wonder and melancholy.

A journey through music and memory

Visit his YouTube channel and subscribe to not miss all his new reinterpretations and to enjoy many other songs already published. For those who love cinema, soundtracks and classical music, his YouTube channel is a must-see, where every note tells a timeless story.

Preview: ‘In Pasadena today, Mozart’s Turkish delight takes center stage’

Music Director Brett Mitchell (center) will lead the Pasadena Symphony this weekend in music by Adolphus Hailstork (left), and will collaborate with violinist Stefan Jackiw (right) on Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5.

PASADENA — Pasadena Now has published a preview of Brett Mitchell’s subscription concerts with the Pasadena Symphony this weekend:

At first glance, the Pasadena Symphony’s program today might appear conventionally classical: Mozart, Prokofiev, Stravinsky. But beneath this seemingly traditional façade lies a thoughtfully curated journey through musical history—from contemporary reflections on Baroque sensibilities to neoclassical reimaginings—all anchored by Mozart’s inventive Violin Concerto No. 5, the so-called “Turkish.”

Under the baton of Brett Mitchell, who assumed leadership of the Pasadena Symphony in April 2024 (only the sixth music director in the orchestra’s 97-year history), today’s performances at Ambassador Auditorium—at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.—promise to showcase both the ensemble’s evolving artistic vision and violinist Stefan Jackiw’s remarkable interpretive gifts.

The centerpiece, Mozart’s A-major concerto, remains one of the composer’s most intriguing instrumental works. Composed in 1775 when Mozart was just 19, it demonstrates his growing compositional sophistication. The concerto’s nickname derives from its finale, where Mozart dramatically shifts from A major to A minor, introducing what his European contemporaries perceived as exotically “Turkish” elements: unison chromatic crescendos, repetitive phrases, and col legno playing (striking strings with the wood rather than hair of the bow)—techniques that must have seemed thrillingly foreign to 18th-century Salzburg audiences. As music scholar Tchaikovsky noted, this piece represents “the highest, culminating point to which beauty has reached in the sphere of music.”

Jackiw, who began playing violin at age four and debuted professionally with the Boston Pops at 12, brings particular sensitivity to this repertoire. Now 39, the Korean-German American violinist has built a reputation for combining technical brilliance with profound emotional intelligence. “In just a few bars of Mozart, you encounter an entire universe of feeling,” Jackiw once observed about the concerto’s Adagio movement, noting the “huge range of emotions contained in just a few bars” particularly in the slow movement.

Mitchell’s programming reveals curatorial acumen. The concert opens with Adolphus Hailstork’s Baroque Suite, a contemporary work filtering modern compositional techniques through historical forms, before proceeding to Mozart’s concerto with Jackiw as soloist. The program continues with Prokofiev’s impeccably crafted Classical Symphony before concluding with Stravinsky’s Suite from Pulcinella.

As Mitchell’s inaugural season unfolds, today’s concerts offer a compelling glimpse of his artistic vision—one that respects tradition while embracing innovation. Known for his “warm, down-to-earth demeanor” and ability to connect with audiences through insightful musical interpretations

To read the complete preview, please click here.

Brett Mitchell to debut with Nashville Symphony on 2025-26 classical series

NASHVILLE — The Nashville Symphony has announced that Brett Mitchell will make his debut on their 2025-26 classical subscription series, leading the following program at Schermerhorn Symphony Center on May 15 and 16, 2026:

BARBER - Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance
EDGAR MEYER - Bass Concerto No. 2 (for Double Bass and Percussion)
Edgar Meyer, double bass | Sam Bacco, percussion
BEETHOVEN - Symphony No. 3, ‘Eroica’

To learn more, please click here.

Brett Mitchell to lead opening weekend of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2025 Blossom Music Festival

Brett Mitchell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra’s opening weekend of the 2025 Blossom Music Festival. (Photograph by Roger Mastroianni)

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Orchestra has announced that, for the third time in the past five seasons, Brett Mitchell will lead the opening weekend of performances at the 2025 Blossom Music Festival.

On Saturday, July 5 and Sunday, July 6, Mr. Mitchell will lead John Williams’s Oscar- and Grammy-nominated score for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone while the original film plays live on the big screen.

For tickets and more information, please click here.