NEWS
Brett Mitchell to Debut with Virginia Symphony Orchestra in October 2026
In unveiling their 2026-27 season, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra has announced that Brett Mitchell will make his debut in October 2026, leading the orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra Chorus in the music of Mozart to accompany a screening of the eight-time Oscar-winning classic Amadeus.
This performance will be presented on Saturday, October 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, VA.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please click here.
Brett Mitchell to Debut with Lyric Opera of Chicago in January 2027
CHICAGO — In unveiling their 2026-27 season, Lyric Opera of Chicago has announced that Brett Mitchell will make his debut with the company in January 2027, leading the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus in the music of Mozart to accompany two screenings of the eight-time Oscar-winning classic Amadeus.
Mr. Mitchell and the musicians will present two performances of the project, both at the Lyric Opera House in downtown Chicago:
Friday, January 15 at 7 p.m.
Saturday, January 16 at 2 p.m.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please click here.
And click here to read a preview of the Lyric’s 2026-27 season from CBS Chicago.
Preview: Sunriver conductor Brett Mitchell to play in ‘Maestro at the Piano’ Saturday
Brett Mitchell will present a solo piano recital in Sunriver, Ore. on Saturday, April 11, featuring his original arrangements of iconic works from film score history. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)
BEND, Ore. — The Bulletin (Bend) has published a preview of Brett Mitchell’s upcoming solo piano recital in Sunriver on Saturday, April 11.
Sunriver conductor Brett Mitchell to play in ‘Maestro at the Piano’ Saturday
Mitchell flexes his other chops, arranging tunes from Star Wars, Jurassic Park and other popular films for piano
On Saturday, Central Oregonians will have another chance to see and hear Sunriver Music Festival Artistic Director and Conductor Brett Mitchell — this time around, however, he won’t be on a podium, but rather seated at a piano in his exclusive “The Maestro at the Piano: Music in Film” recital.
For Mitchell, it’s a familiar space in which to ply two major, if lesser known, aspects of his musicality.
“I’ve always been a pianist. I’ve always played the piano,” he said last week by phone from his home in Denver, where he is former conductor of the Colorado Symphony. Today, Mitchell conducts the Pasadena Symphony, as well as Central Oregon’s summertime concert series each August.
But before his career helming orchestras, Mitchell’s piano abilities and ambitions almost took him down a different career path: composition.
“By the time I got into college, I thought I wanted to be a film composer,” Mitchell said. “And the bigger the pieces I started writing, the more likely they were to need a conductor. So I ended up just kind of conducting my own pieces, and then that led to conducting other people’s pieces. But that piano part of things for me has always been really at the forefront for me, even though it hasn’t been at the forefront of how I perform most of the time publicly. I mean, certainly the world knows me as a conductor.”
Musical chairs
Six years ago, courtesy of a pandemic, that work came to an abrupt halt — or a caesura, if you want to put it in classical conducting terms.
“The whole reason that I became a conductor is because I love working with other people. I love working with other musicians,” he said. “And obviously when the pandemic happened, that went away, in large part for a year, year and a half, two years, depending on how you look at it. And I was sitting there here in our house, probably two months into this thing when it became clear that it wasn’t going to be like a two-month deal, but that we were going to all be here for a while.”
This allowed Mitchell to both play the piano and get creative by “flexing (his) arranging chops, arranging chops, taking iconic scores from film music history and arranging them for solo piano,” as he put it in a press release from Sunriver Music Festival.
As is surely true of many a great feat, this one came about after complaining to his spouse.
“I was basically just complaining to my wife saying, ‘I have I have no way to perform right now, because the performing that I do requires other large groups of musicians to all be in the same place together and that’s not able to happen,'” he recalled. “And she said, ‘We’ve got the Steinway. Why don’t you why don’t you go go make music on the Steinway?’ And while that’s a very different experience, what I really found was so fulfilling to me. I had basically left the piano alone in terms of public performance for the better part of 20 years.”
That’s not altogether true; he had performed a recital or two in that time, as well as occasional chamber performances with orchestra members. Otherwise, he’d spent little time playing piano in public for those two decades.
On his home Steinway, “What I was able to do was kind of take all of the parts of me that make me who I am musically, which is primarily an orchestral conductor. I have also conducted an awful lot of films live to picture. That’s something that has gone on now for the better part of 10 or 15 years and I have been a part of that kind of new endeavor. And I have a composition degree, which means I am fully capable of taking an enormous orchestral score and trying to look at it through the lens of the composer and rearrange that music for solo piano.”
Popular YouTube channel
Mitchell performs his arrangements of movie tunes his YouTube channel, which has over 4,500 subscribers. There, you can watch Mitchell perform highly recognizable music from “Gone with the Wind” to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
By his own assessment, these are “no frills,” three-angle videos — a wide shot, Mitchell’s face and his hands on the keys — the popularity of which “is a surprise to no one more than me,” he said.
“I was really making these projects, these videos because it was something I was interested in doing. It was something that I felt passionately about. It was music that I loved and cared deeply about,” he said. “And as it turns out, a lot of people felt the same way. And I’m, I’m really grateful for that.”
Saturday in Sunriver, the live audience will have an opportunity his YouTube fans do not: To hear Mitchell performing them live. Mitchell’s sorted the nearly 400 videos he’s created over the last several years according to which have the most views in creating Saturday’s program.
“So basically, the top 10 or whatever on my channel are showing up on this recital program,” he said. He’ll also perform his arrangements of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” as well as “Adoration of the Magi ” and “Start of Bethlehem” from “Ben-Hur.”
And much like Mitchell’s YouTube channel followers, fans of composer John Williams — the famed and prolific scorer of some of the biggest films of the past 50 years, from “Star Wars” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” to “Schindler’s List” — will not be disappointed.
“There are things (that) would divide my channel in terms of the film score part of it into two sections,” Mitchell said. “The first is John Williams. The second is everybody else.” Of the 398 videos on his channel now, 157 of them are John Williams tunes.
“John Williams is certainly my great hero,” Mitchell said. “I would not be here if it were not for John Williams.”
2026 Sunriver Music Festival
Though the recital certainly works as a standalone event, Mitchell said, it also serves as a lead-in to August’s Sunriver Music Festival, which will pay tribute to country’s 250th birthday.
“All of that’s to really lead into the summer festival,” Mitchell said. “We’ve got classical concerts as always during the summer festival. Each one of those will have a piece by a contemporary American composer on it.” The recital is a particularly strong antecedent to the annual Pops Concert, which will be “John Williams and the American Journey” and the annual Family Concert, “Harry Potter and the Instruments of the Orchestra, which will be an all-John Williams program.
Said Mitchell, “I’m really excited to kick off that America 250 celebration with these film score excerpts, because the art of film scoring was born during the American century,” aka the 20th century. “I’m going to talk a lot throughout the program and share behind the scenes stories with the audience, some anecdotes that perhaps they know, but more likely they don’t that will help them listen with new ears.”
Brett Mitchell Returns to the San Francisco Symphony in May 2027
SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Symphony has announced that their 2026-27 season will feature the return of guest conductor Brett Mitchell to the podium.
On Friday, May 21, 2027, Mitchell will lead the orchestra in a performance of Michael Giacchino’s Oscar-winning score for Disney and Pixar’s Up while the film is screened above the Davies Symphony Hall stage.
Mitchell first led the San Francisco Symphony in July 2019 in a program of Berlioz and Mendelssohn.
Brett Mitchell to Lead Five Performances with the Houston Symphony in January 2027
HOUSTON — The Houston Symphony has announced that Brett Mitchell will return in January 2027 to lead the orchestra in five performances with Cirque de la Symphonie at Jones Hall.
Mr. Mitchell and the orchestra will present three pops performances with the troupe:
Friday, January 29 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, January 30 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, January 31 at 2 p.m.
They will also present two family concerts:
Saturday, January 30 at 10 a.m.
Saturday, January 30 at 11:30 a.m.
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 concerts with the ensemble, including upcoming performances of Nicholas Hooper’s score for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in June 2026.
Brett Mitchell Returns to the 2026 Blossom Music Festival with The Cleveland Orchestra
Brett Mitchell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra at the 2026 Blossom Music Festival. (Photograph by Roger Mastroianni)
CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Orchestra has announced that, for the third consecutive summer, Brett Mitchell will lead the orchestra in a weekend of performances at the 2026 Blossom Music Festival.
Mr. Mitchell and the orchestra will present John Williams’s Grammy-nominated score for the second film in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, while the original film plays live on the big screen twice at Blossom Music Center:
Saturday, July 11 at 7 p.m.
Sunday, July 12 at 7 p.m.
For tickets and more information, please click here. To read a preview of the entire 2026 Blossom Music Festival, please click here.
Mr. Mitchell has been leading The Cleveland Orchestra for a dozen years since joining the orchestra as Assistant Conductor in the 2013-14 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, at Blossom in July 2025.
Brett Mitchell Returns to the Houston Symphony in June 2026
Brett Mitchell will return to the Houston Symphony in June 2026. (Photograph by Roger Mastroianni)
HOUSTON — The Houston Symphony has announced that Brett Mitchell will return to lead the orchestra in Nicholas Hooper’s score for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth film in the Harry Potter franchise.
Mr. Mitchell and the orchestra will present the film with live orchestral accompaniment twice at Jones Hall:
Friday, June 26 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 28 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 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in July 2023 and Patrick Doyle’s score for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in June 2025.
Preview: Sunriver Music Festival — The Maestro at the Piano
BEND, Ore. — The Source has published a preview of Brett Mitchell’s upcoming solo piano recital, presented by the Sunriver Music Festival:
Hailed for the breadth of his work on the podium and at the piano, Maestro Brett Mitchell has carved a unique path in the world of contemporary American classical music. Sunriver Music Festival’s Artistic Director & Conductor will present an exclusive solo piano recital featuring his own arrangements for film in Sunriver on April 11. Visit sunrivermusic.org for tickets to The Maestro at the Piano.
As a conductor, Mitchell currently serves as Music Director of the Pasadena Symphony and Artistic Director & Conductor of Oregon’s Sunriver Music Festival. He previously served as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony, Associate Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra, and Assistant Conductor of both the Houston Symphony and Orchestre National de France. Working widely as a guest conductor, Mitchell has led the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and principal orchestras spanning the United States and beyond.
As a pianist, Steinway Artist Brett Mitchell has a devoted fanbase of his work at the keyboard. The high standard he has set with artistic and professional achievements makes it most appropriate that Mitchell is formally included on the Steinway Artist roster—a list of the most accomplished and discriminating artists in the world. His exceptionally active YouTube channel @brettmitchellconductor features his original solo piano videos of iconic cues from film history and landmark works from classical, jazz, and pop canons.
“Film music has always been one of my great musical loves. When the pandemic hit in 2020 and we couldn’t present orchestral music, I flexed my arranging chops, taking iconic scores from film music history and arranging them for solo piano. What began as a pandemic diversion has morphed into a continuing passion project that I’m now thrilled to share with more than 15,000 subscribers across my social platforms, and I couldn’t be more pleased as we gear up for Sunriver Music Festival’s “America @ 250” celebrations in August 2026 to share many of these iconic selections with our audience in Central Oregon. The art of film scoring was born during the American century, and I can’t imagine a better way to kick off our celebrations than with an intimate evening featuring some of my favorite music of all time. Please join me on April 11 in Sunriver.” - Artistic Director & Conductor Brett Mitchell
Mark your calendars for April 11 and visit sunrivermusic.org for tickets to Sunriver Music Festival’s exclusive concert The Maestro at the Piano. VIP ticketed guests are welcomed to an intimate post-concert reception offering wine, light fare and unhurried conversation with the maestro in an informal setting.
Click here to read the complete preview, and here to read the official press release from the Sunriver Music Festival.
Alec Baldwin To Narrate Copland’s ‘Lincoln Portrait’ for Pasadena Symphony Season Finale
Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actor joins America@250 concert celebrating the nation's 250th birthday, while Grammy-nominated pianist Terrence Wilson steps in on Gershwin concerto
PASADENA — The Pasadena Symphony has tapped actor Alec Baldwin to narrate Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait at its season finale concert, America@250, on May 30 at Ambassador Auditorium. The program, led by Music Director Brett Mitchell, celebrates the nation’s semiquincentennial with a survey of American orchestral music spanning the last century.
“I can’t imagine a better way to wrap up our season and celebrate America’s 250th birthday than with these two extraordinary artists performing these two iconic works, and I couldn’t be more excited to share the stage with them both,” Mitchell said.
Baldwin has previously performed Lincoln Portrait with the Philadelphia Orchestra and serves as a board member and radio host of the New York Philharmonic. He follows narrators including Henry Fonda, James Earl Jones, Katharine Hepburn, Vincent Price and Copland himself.
Grammy-nominated pianist Terrence Wilson performs Gershwin’s Concerto in F. Wilson replaces pianist Joyce Yang, who was previously scheduled to perform Jonathan Leshnoff’s Rhapsody on America but is recovering from a temporary injury. The Baltimore Sun has hailed Wilson as “one of the biggest pianistic talents to have emerged in this country in the last 25 years.”
The program opens with John Williams’s Liberty Fanfare and also includes the Suite from Copland’s Appalachian Spring.
Baldwin’s credits include “The Hunt for Red October,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Blue Jasmine” and “30 Rock,” for which he won three Emmy awards, three Golden Globes and seven consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards — making him the actor with the most SAG Awards of all time.
Click here to read the official press release from the Pasadena Symphony, and here to read a preview from Pasadena Now.
Sunriver Music Festival announces 2026 season, Brett Mitchell’s fifth as Artistic Director & Conductor
SUNRIVER, Ore. — The Sunriver Music Festival has announced details of its 2026 summer season, Brett Mitchell’s fifth as Artistic Director & Conductor:
As America celebrates 250 years in 2026, we honor one of its greatest gifts to the world: music. The 49th season programming, curated by Artistic Director & Conductor Brett Mitchell, will feature world-class orchestra musicians and acclaimed soloists performing eclectic works by American composers — Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, William Grant Still, Joan Tower, Kevin Puts, Edgar Meyer and John Williams — alongside favorites by Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, and Mendelssohn and more.
The Summer Festival opens August 10 at Sunriver Resort’s historic Great Hall and closes August 20 at the iconic Tower Theatre in downtown Bend. Four classical concerts, a pops concert and a family concert will be presented. Featured artists include pianist Michelle Cann, violinists William Hagen and Tessa Lark, bass-baritone Timothy Jones, and the Central Oregon Mastersingers.
The classical season will consist of the following four programs:
Wed, Aug 12 | Sunriver Resort Great Hall - Sunriver, OR
AMERICA MEETS SCOTLAND
STILL - Darker America
BARBER - Violin Concerto
William Hagen, violin
MENDELSSOHN - Symphony No. 3, ‘Scottish’
Mon, Aug 10 | Sunriver Resort Great Hall - Sunriver, OR
BEETHOVEN, HAYDN, AND MADE IN AMERICA
JOAN TOWER - Made in America
BEETHOVEN - Piano Concerto No. 4
Michelle Cann, piano
HAYDN - Symphony No. 101, ‘Clock’
Thu, Aug 20 | Tower Theatre - Bend, OR
APPALACHIA AND SPRING
COPLAND - Suite from Appalachian Spring
EDGAR MEYER - Violin Concerto
Tessa Lark, violin
R. SCHUMANN - Symphony No. 1, ‘Spring’
Tue, Aug 18 | Tower Theatre - Bend, OR
THE GENIUS OF MUSIC
KEVIN PUTS - Einstein on Mercer Street
Timothy Jones, bass-baritone
J.S. BACH - Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
MOZART - Symphony No. 39
See our Upcoming Events page for complete repertoire, and visit sunrivermusic.org to learn more. Click here to read a preview in The Source.
Artistic Director & Conductor Brett Mitchell will welcome pianist Michelle Cann, violinists William Hagen and Tessa Lark, bass-baritone Timothy Jones, and the Central Oregon Mastersingers as featured artists during the 2026 Sunriver Music Festival.
Preview: Pasadena Symphony Takes on Tchaikovsky’s Final Symphony, the Work He Premiered Nine Days Before His Death
Grammy-winning pianist Michelle Cann joins Music Director Brett Mitchell for a program spanning Mozart to a contemporary American premiere
PASADENA — Pasadena Now has published a preview of the Pasadena Symphony’s upcoming third subscription program of the 2025-26 season:
Tchaikovsky completed six symphonies. The last one, he said, contained his “whole soul.” Nine days after he conducted its premiere in St. Petersburg in October 1893, he was dead.
The Pasadena Symphony will perform that work — Symphony No. 6 in B minor, the “Pathétique” — on Saturday, February 21, at Ambassador Auditorium, with Music Director Brett Mitchell on the podium. The program also features Grammy-winning pianist Michelle Cann in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 and “Beacon,” an orchestral work by University of Colorado Boulder composer Jeffrey Nytch. Performances are at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
The concert is part of Mitchell’s second season leading the Pasadena Symphony, a season built around American music in anticipation of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. “As we close in on America’s 250th birthday next summer, I’m excited to celebrate the best of American orchestral music, past and present, all season long, pairing new American repertoire with great masterworks of the past,” Mitchell said when he announced the season’s programming, according to a Pasadena Symphony press statement.
Nytch’s “Beacon,” the American work on the February 21 program, was commissioned by the Boulder Chamber and premiered by the Boulder Philharmonic in November 2023. It was written to mark the 75th anniversary of the Boulder Star, a constellation of lights on Flagstaff Mountain that has been illuminated during the holiday season and at times of community crisis. “I immediately had the idea of writing a piece of music to celebrate that,” Nytch said. “Literally by the time I got home, I already knew that the piece was going to be titled ‘Beacon.'” The work opens with brightness, moves into somber reflection, and returns to light — a structure Nytch said was shaped by the Star’s dual role as a holiday symbol and a marker of collective grief.
Cann, the evening’s piano soloist, has become one of the most in-demand concert pianists of her generation, according to her management biography. A leading interpreter of the music of Florence Price, she performed the New York City premiere of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement in 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2021. Her recording of that concerto with the New York Youth Symphony won a Grammy Award in 2023 for Best Orchestral Performance. In 2025, she won a second Grammy, for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, for “Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price,” recorded with soprano Karen Slack. She holds the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music and is on the piano faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.
In Pasadena, Cann performs Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, completed in March 1786 while the composer was also finishing his opera “Le nozze di Figaro.” The concerto replaces the oboes found in most Mozart concertos with clarinets, producing a darker, more intimate coloring. Its slow movement, in the rare key of F-sharp minor, is the only movement Mozart ever wrote in that key.
Mitchell, who was named the Pasadena Symphony’s sixth music director in March 2024, previously served as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony and Associate Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. In May 2025, he stepped in with less than 24 hours’ notice for his subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic, according to his management biography. “In many ways, joining the Pasadena Symphony as Music Director is really coming full circle for me,” Mitchell said when his appointment was announced. “So many of our musicians are these iconic studio players whose work I’ve known and loved for decades.”
The Pathétique, which anchors the second half of the program, carries biographical weight that few symphonies can match. Tchaikovsky called it his “Passionate Symphony,” from the Russian “patetitcheskaja,” meaning passionate or emotional. The title was mistranslated into French after his death, giving the work its now-familiar name. The symphony’s final movement fades into silence — an ending that, given Tchaikovsky’s death shortly after, has prompted more than a century of debate about the composer’s state of mind.
To read the complete preview, please click here.
Preview: ‘Brahms, Kodály take center stage with Tulsa Symphony Orchestra’
TULSA – The Claremore Daily Progress has published a preview of Brett Mitchell’s upcoming subscription program with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra:
The Tulsa Symphony Orchestra will open the new year at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.
Much-in-demand guest conductor Brett Mitchell leads the performance, bringing his broad orchestral experience and distinctive musical insight to the Tulsa stage.
The evening opens with the Brahms favorite "Variations on a Theme" by Haydn, followed by Kodály’s lively "Dances of Galánta," inspired by Hungarian folk tunes and known for its bold rhythms. The evening’s finale showcases Brahms’s radiant "Symphony No. 2 in D major," a piece celebrated for its warmth and melodic beauty.
Brett Mitchell brings a wealth of experience to the performance, having led major orchestras at home and abroad including the Cleveland Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Known for his engaging presence and thoughtful interpretations, Mitchell returns to the Tulsa stage to interpret an engaging program highlighting the artistry and influence of Brahms and Kodály.
“This program brings together two masters of orchestral imagination and structure,” said Ron Predl, executive director of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra. “From the elegance of Brahms to the rhythmic vitality of Kodály, audiences can expect an entertaining and moving symphonic experience led by this world-class conductor.”
To read the complete preview, please click here (paywall).
Feature: ‘Simply a Composer’s Advocate’
Photo by Roger Mastroianni
The American technical formal apparel company Coregami has announced Brett Mitchell as a brand ambassador, and journalist Owen Clarke has marked the new partnership with a 2,000-word feature article about the multifaceted conductor, composer, and pianist.
Simply a Composer’s Advocate
In a profession often defined by tradition and the worship of past masters, conductor and Coregami ambassador Brett Mitchell has a strict rule: never copy the giants.
“I would rather be a first-rate Brett Mitchell than a second-rate Leonard Bernstein,” he told me. “I want everything that I do, for better or worse, to come genuinely from me. That's the only way it'll be new.”
Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Mitchell was the oldest of three boys. No one else in his family was a musician, and he wasn’t introduced to classical music until high school. As a kid, he was surrounded by the pop artists of his parents’ generation, like the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Billy Joel, and Elton John. As he grew into his teens, in the early 1990s, his influences changed. “There was no way to escape grunge in Seattle at that time,” he joked. “If you go look at my 8th grade yearbook, our jazz band photo, we’re all in flannels and ripped jeans,” he said. “Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, those bands were huge for me back then.”
As he entered high school, however, he became more interested in classical music. In particular, he loved the soundtracks of popular films at the time, movies like Superman, Indiana Jones, E.T., and Star Wars—all scored by John Williams. “I wouldn’t have had a career if it weren’t for falling in love with John’s music,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell knew he loved music, but he wasn’t sure how he wanted to approach it. For a time he thought he might want to be a pianist, or perhaps a film composer. So he started writing bigger and bigger pieces, and his high school band director eventually said, “Why don’t you conduct this piece that you wrote?”
And in October of 1995, exactly thirty years ago, a 16-year-old Mitchell conducted his first piece of music. “Was I terrified? Yes, absolutely,” he said, laughing. “But it was that night in October ‘95 that I really decided, ‘Okay, I think this is the direction I want to go in life.’” After high school, he earned an undergraduate degree in music composition from Western Washington University, and then a master’s and doctorate in orchestral conducting from the University of Texas. By age 26, Mitchell was teaching at Northern Illinois University, and later that same year, he landed his first professional job as an assistant conductor for Orchestre National de France in Paris. From there, he was off to the races.
(Readers can read Mitchell’s full biography on his website. Currently, he is the music director of the Pasadena Symphony, and the artistic director and conductor for Oregon’s Sunriver Music Festival. Just two weeks ago, he was named piano company Steinway & Sons' newest Steinway Artist.)
But Mitchell wasn’t inclined to dwell on his lengthy (and admittedly prestigious) resume, reminiscing on where he’s conducted or directed. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years now,” he told me, early on in our interview. “And when you get to this point, every interview is the same interview.”
Instead, we focused on the philosophy and lifestyle that shape the man behind the baton.
Photo by Roger Mastroianni
Life Above 7,000 Feet
Mitchell has been married to his wife, Angela, for a little over ten years, and together they have two children, a 20-month-old girl, Rose, and a boy, Will, who turns four on Christmas Eve. His family has lived in the foothills outside Denver, Colorado since 2017, when he was named music director of the Colorado Symphony. “We love living here, because we love the outdoors,” he said.
The family’s home is at 7,300 feet, and backs up to the Bear Creek Highlands. “It's like 880 acres of open green space,” he said. “There are a dozen miles of trails right outside our back door, and it’s sunny 300 days a year, which is a big change, for me, from Seattle.” When the trails are clear, Mitchell and his family are hiking, but when it snows, they strap on snowshoes and hit the trails anyway. “Even in the winter, maybe you get a snowstorm and it dumps a foot of snow on you,” he said, “but the next day is almost invariably a bluebird day, crystal clear, bright blue sky, and we’re out there.”
Beyond the accessibility to pristine nature, there are other advantages, as a performer and conductor, to living in Colorado, Mitchell said. Chiefly, rehearsing at high elevation is a great way to build strong lungs. Mitchell recalled conducting his first concert in Colorado, in 2016. He noticed some oxygen tanks backstage at the concert hall. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s funny,’” he remarked. “But then I was conducting, I think it was a Tchaikovsky symphony, one that ends big and loud and fast, with lots of energy, and at the end I was really, really winded.” The oxygen tanks weren’t just a gimmick. Players who come to Colorado, he said, will often come a day or two early to acclimate to the elevation.
“There is a reason we train our Olympic teams in Colorado,” he added. “Working out up here, when I go down to sea level, I feel like Superman.”
This passion for an active lifestyle is also what drew Mitchell to Coregami. “Conductors always look for the most comfortable thing possible to rehearse in, attire that breathes, that lets us move the way we want to move. Then we get to the concert hall and we have to put on, well, the most restrictive clothing imaginable!” He laughed. “Coregami figured out a way to rectify that problem.”
Brett Mitchell leads the Colorado Symphony at Boettcher Concert Hall. Photo by Brandon Marshall
More Than Waving a Stick
As a conductor, Mitchell sees his job as multi-faceted, with responsibilities that go far beyond the music. The books on the shelves in his studio, where he sat when we conducted our interview, reflect this. “There are at least as many books on sports psychology and coaching as there are on conducting,” he said. “I’m looking at Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings. Pat Summitt, Sum It Up. Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power. I'm looking at John Wooden, at David Brooks, at books about Kobe [Bryant].”
Why so many books about athletics? Mitchell is blunt. “Coaches of professional athletes have the most insight in terms of how to deal with what I deal with as a conductor, which is elite talent,” Mitchell said. “These people are the best in the world at what they do, and they know it. Your job is to make them better, which isn’t easy. So yes, my role is diplomat. It's politician. It's counselor. It's psychologist.”
In fact, Mitchell said his job is “as much about understanding people as it is about understanding music,” if not more, and that it’s not about taking charge and making unilateral decisions, but about organically building a consensus. “While I certainly bring my ideas to the podium, I am not the sole proprietor of good ideas,” he admitted. He added that to the layman, a conductor may seem like a shotcaller. That’s not how it is. “You probably think of this guy standing up there on a box, waving a stick in your face saying, ‘My way or the highway!’ Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
Mitchell likened his role to being an “arbiter of taste.” He has the final say, of course, but his voice should be the mouthpiece through which the orchestra speaks. “I try to be as open as I possibly can,” he said. “That give and take is what I love about conducting.”
When I asked Mitchell about some of the quotes or books that have inspired his philosophies on conducting, he was quick to name one by Austrian-born American composer Erich Leinsdorf: The Composer’s Advocate. “This book is great,” Mitchell admitted, “but honestly the title of the book was more revealing to me than anything inside it, because it cuts to the heart of what our job is as conductors. We're advocating on behalf of the composer.”
Mitchell is also fond of a line from the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George, by Stephen Sondheim, about the work of French painter Georges Seurat. “The line comes at the end of Act II, toward the very end of the show,” Mitchell explained. “Seurat’s in a creative rut, he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to get to the next place. And his muse [Dot] tells him, ‘Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see.’”
Mitchell loves the quote so much he had it engraved on a piece of wood and mounted on the wall in his studio. This quote was the genesis for what he told me at the beginning of this piece, and it’s a personal mantra for Mitchell, a reminder that, whatever subconscious influences he may absorb as he goes about his life, he needs to be his own artist, for better or worse. As much as Williams, Bernstein, Sondheim, Tchaikovsky, or any other great composer from days gone by may have inspired him, he’s careful never to fall into the trap of emulating their work.
“I want to give audiences something new,” he said.
Brett Mitchell leads the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall. Photo by Brandon Patoc
We’re Here to Show the World What Can Be
Much of Mitchell’s work today involves mentoring young people. He served as music director for the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra for four years, and has taught at a number of programs for budding musicians. But in an era of generative artificial intelligence—when youth are encouraged to use generative AI for everything from writing essays to creating imagery—he admits that there’s a lot of pressure for youth to mimic. Convincing kids to “let everything you do come from you” isn’t always easy.
Mitchell says that if he had anything to say to the young artists of today, growing up in an era of AI, it’s to not get discouraged. “AI will never be able to stumble upon happy accidents the way humans do,” he said. “AI is trained on the past. It’s trained to take the past, and distill into what it thinks is best for the present. But the most interesting, beautiful things are often those that arrive by accident.” Mitchell often plays jazz in his free time, and remarked on the popular joke that “there are no wrong notes in jazz,” because, “if you hit a note that you didn't mean to hit, all you have to do is take that little mistake and then do it again. Do it again and make it a feature, not a bug. This is something only a human brain can do.”
Another piece of advice Mitchell has for budding orchestral players is to remember that synchronization isn’t the goal. “In orchestras, there’s an emphasis placed on playing together,” he said. “If there's a chord on the downbeat, we all play that chord on the downbeat together. But we have to remember, the end goal is not to play with each other. The end goal is to play for each other.”
He gave an example. “If it's the oboe solo, that may mean the violins need to tone it down, and play more transparently. It’s not just about being in the same place at the same time. It's understanding when it's your turn and when it's somebody else's turn. You have to ask yourself, ‘Am I doing everything that I can to support my colleague?’”
This, Mitchell said, is part of what makes playing, conducting, and listening to orchestral music so special. It’s a collaborative effort, it’s many individuals coming together to craft something beautiful. “Anything that you’re gonna accomplish in your life, if it is worthwhile, you will accomplish it with other people,” Mitchell said.
This is, in part, why he isn’t worried about the future of the arts. Developments in technology like artificial intelligence will take some jobs. That’s only natural. “When’s the last time you saw an elevator operator?” Mitchell joked. But he doesn’t see it ever having a fatal impact on the arts, simply because by nature, AI is retrospective.
“We can't write symphonies with robots. We can't paint pictures with robots,” he said. “Or we can, but the symphonies AI writes, the paintings AI creates, these are just a conglomeration of everything that already has been, they aren’t a lens into things that could be.”
He paused. “We have to remember, that's what artists are here for. We’re here to show the world what could be.”
Brett Mitchell leads The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center. Photo by Roger Mastroianni
Brett Mitchell Named a Steinway Artist
Brett Mitchell sits at one of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Steinway & Sons’ Model D concert grand pianos. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)
NEW YORK — Brett Mitchell has been named the newest Steinway Artist by Steinway & Sons.
In recognition of your distinguished career in music and outstanding commitment and loyalty to the Steinway piano, Steinway & Sons is pleased to welcome you, Brett Mitchell.
The high standard that you have set with your artistic and professional achievements makes it most appropriate that you are now formally included on the Steinway Artist roster, a list of the most accomplished and discriminating artists in the world.
Steinway & Sons congratulates you on receiving this distinction.
Please click here to visit Mr. Mitchell’s artist profile on the Steinway & Sons website.
Review: ‘Jazzy Fun and a Riotous Finale at the Pasadena Symphony’
Music Director Brett Mitchell leads the Pasadena Symphony at the Ambassador Auditorium. (Photo by Courtney Lindberg)
PASADENA — San Francisco Classical Voice has published a review of the opening program of the Pasadena Symphony’s 2025-26 season, Brett Mitchell’s second as Music Director:
Just a week after Halloween, Hector Berlioz’s spooky Symphonie fantastique took center stage at the Pasadena Symphony’s season-opening concert. Outside on Nov. 8, it was an appropriately foggy evening for devilish music. Inside the Ambassador Auditorium, Music Director Brett Mitchell warmed up the hall with a weighty program that also featured sunny jazz-inspired compositions by Maurice Ravel and Jim Self.
Beginning his second season with the Pasadena Symphony, Mitchell enjoys communicating with his audience and provided extensive descriptions and background for each piece, which made for a lengthy but educational evening.
The program’s opener, held special personal significance for Mitchell and the orchestra. Besides his prolific life as a composer, Jim Self was Pasadena’s principal tuba for 50 years (1975–2025) and played in many other ensembles in the L.A. area. He also performed as a veteran studio musician on 1,500 soundtracks for film and television, becoming the “go-to” tubist for film composers. His most memorable gig was providing the “Voice of the Mothership” in John Williams’s score for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Tour de Force: Episodes for Wind Ensemble was programmed as a 50th anniversary tribute to Self, assuming the composer would be there to take a bow. Sadly, however, Self died just days before the performance, at the age of 82. Mitchell called for a moment of silence in his memory.
The most popular of Self’s 90 published works, Tour de Force was inspired by the European tour he took with the Pacific Symphony in 2006. Scored for a large…ensemble with augmented percussion, it unfolds in nine loosely connected (and not programmatic) episodes. In a note, Self admitted that the piece was “certainly not classical, profound, or groundbreaking,” but “fun, mildly provocative, rhythmically interesting, jazzy, bluesy, and Latin at times.”
The Pasadena Symphony…made a strong case for this rousing and noisy curtain-raiser, which, not surprisingly, draws upon Self's long career in movie scoring for its energy, splashy sound effects, accessibility, and short attention-getting outbursts. The music may not be “great,” but the jazzy atmosphere and dynamic contrasts between larger and smaller groups of instruments made for an entertaining and ear-opening experience.
Tour de Force and the Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major that followed had something in common: the influence of George Gershwin. Episode Five of Tour de Force ends with a “Gershwin-like clarinet solo,” and the piece throughout uses the jazzy “stacked fourth” chords Gershwin was fond of.
Pianist Orion Weiss brought Ravel’s jazzy inflections to the surface of this performance in his delicate, perceptive, and refined interpretation. His account of the sublime second-movement Adagio followed a clear and lyrical line, with shimmering trills and hushed dynamics. Mitchell coaxed fine solo work from the woodwinds, prominent in the spare scoring. The racing downward scales of the final Presto had verve and propulsion, reminiscent of passages from Petrushka by Igor Stravinsky, Ravel’s contemporary in Paris.
Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique requires sustained energy and physical stamina from the conductor, orchestra — and perhaps the audience. Mitchell led with commitment and precision, showing that his connection with the orchestra has deepened since his inaugural season last year…
The work tells a personal story of the composer’s own romantic obsession with the actress Harriet Smithson. Beginning in dreamy infatuation, it progresses, finally to diabolical ruin in a riotous sonic orgy, one of the great climaxes in the symphonic literature… Mitchell and the Pasadena Symphony…managed to capture the drama of Berlioz’s star-crossed journey.
To read the complete review, please click here.
Preview: Pasadena Symphony Emphasizes American Music for 2025–26 Season
Music Director Brett Mitchell stands in front of the Pasadena Symphony’s home of the Ambassador Auditorium. (Photo by Tim Sullens)
PASADENA — San Francisco Classical Voice has published a preview of the Pasadena Symphony’s 2025-26 classical season, Brett Mitchell’s second as Music Director.
In a country as fractured and divided as ours, can a celebration of national pride still sell tickets? The Pasadena Symphony is betting on it.
In anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the orchestra’s 2025–26 season is loaded with American music. Brett Mitchell’s second season as music director will feature two co-commissions and two West Coast premieres by American composers, plus classics by Copland and Dvorak’s America-inspired “New World Symphony.”
“As we close in on America’s 250th birthday next summer, I’m excited to celebrate the best of American orchestral music, past and present, all season long, pairing new American repertoire with great masterworks of the past,” Mitchell said when announcing the repertoire.
The celebration kicks off on Nov. 8 with “Tour de Force,” a piece by Jim Self, the orchestra’s principal tuba. The performance marks his 50th anniversary with the ensemble. The opening concert will also feature two French masterpieces, Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” and the Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major with soloist Orion Weiss.
Edgar Meyer’s 1999 violin concerto, which incorporates bluegrass elements, will follow on Jan. 24 with Tessa Lark as soloist. It will be surrounded by two favorites by Felix Mendelssohn: his concert overture “The Hebrides” and his Symphony No. 3, also known as the “Scottish.”
Another American work, “Beacon” by Colorado-based composer Jeffrey Nytch, will be presented on Feb. 21. The concert is also set to feature Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, with soloist Michelle Cann.
The Mar. 21 concerts will feature a Pasadena Symphony co-commission: the First Symphony of Mexican American composer Juan Pablo Conteras. According to the orchestra, the work is inspired by “his journey to becoming a composer and a U.S. citizen.”
The West Coast premiere of American composer Jennifer Higdon’s Cello Concerto highlights the Apr. 25 concerts with Julian Schwarz as soloist. The program also features Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony and the “Heroic Overture” of Dallas-based composer Quinn Mason.
The season concludes with another co-commission and West Coast premiere: the “Rhapsody on ‘America’” by Baltimore-based composer Jonathan Leshnoff, featuring pianist Joyce Yang. The all-American program also features works by John Williams and Aaron Copland.
All concerts will take place at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, with 2 p.m. matinees and evening repeats at 8 p.m. Subscriptions and single tickets are now on sale.
To read the complete preview, please click here.
Review: ‘Participating in the ritual: Central Oregon’s Sunriver Music Festival’
Artistic Director & Conductor Brett Mitchell leads the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra in Aug. 2025 at the Tower Theatre in Bend, Ore. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)
SUNRIVER, Ore. — Oregon ArtsWatch has published an extensive review of the final three concerts of the 2025 Sunriver Music Festival, Brett Mitchell’s fourth as Artistic Director & Conductor.
Participating in the ritual: Central Oregon’s Sunriver Music Festival
The joys and miracles of live music in the rustic Great Hall, with SRMF director Brett Mitchell, concertmaster Yi Zhao, pianist and Cliburn medalist Vitaly Starikov, and an orchestra full of stars.
The heat wave that baked much of the Pacific Northwest for a few days last week was in full force as the final concerts of the 48th annual Sunriver Music Festival began. Taking place in the rustic charm of the Sunriver Great Hall, which was once the officer’s HQ at Camp Abbott during the Second World War, the festival took us from Leipzig to Vienna with some strange stops in between…
Monday the 11th was “The Leipzig Connection,” and opened with Schumann’s Manfred Overture; an interesting factoid was that Robert and Clara’s great-great granddaughter was in the audience that night. There was plenty of sturm und drang during the Manfred, and I did my best to hear over the oft-featured horns and woodwinds. The strings were rich and woody, somehow appropriate to this venue as if in a strange “like to like” principle…
Yi Zhao, concertmaster, was the soloist [in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto], and her cantabile portions were fantastic… She leaned into the sentimentality of the opening movement, and her scalar passages were well-constructed as she was ably supported by the orchestra. The attacca bassoon into the second movement was a delight, and being delighted by the first bassoonist Anthony Georgeson was to become a regular feature of my time here. Zhao wrung the pathos out of the lower registers, sounding very viola-like. The tutti serenade was beautiful… The finale was appropriately spritely and dancing, and Zhao really shone here, as her rapid-fire sautillé toward the end positively sparkled. I’m not sure what the classical music scene as a whole is like in Central Oregon these days, but since the demise of the Cascade Festival of Music, I imagine there are not many other chances to hear tremendously important works of this caliber in the region.
Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra Concertmaster Yi Zhao and Artistic Director & Conductor Brett Mitchell. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)
Earlier in the first half, conductor and Artistic Director Brett Mitchell (read his interview with Matthew Neil Andrews, and get more detail on the festival and venue here) mentioned that anyone who achieved a certain level of piano aptitude likely learned some of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words at some point in their playing career. Those ones escaped me, but us little Baroque boys instead sometimes learned a piano transcription of the work that opened the second half, the now-(though not always)-famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 by good old Uncle Bach, the great Johann Sebastian. Originally composed for the organ (though there is apparently some argument as to whether Bach himself actually composed it), the work languished in relative obscurity until Leopold Stokowski’s famous orchestral transcription appeared in Walt Disney’s Fantasia about the time the Sunriver Great Hall was being built. Mitchell pointed out that the number of musicians required to play that particular transcription might be almost equal to that night’s orchestra plus all the members of the audience, so the rendition played here was Australian composer Luke Styles’ brilliantly scaled-down version for percussion, strings, and a small wind section.
A startling simultaneous trill on tambourine and triangle underpinned an abrupt and almost comical exposition of the famous toccata theme by the winds at the opening. The huge, menacing chords built from the ground up by the winds were fantastic, and the woodblock chattered behind arpeggiating strings. Gently the strings carried the majority of the fugal opening, and the descending scales were parted out to various instruments in clever salvos. The percussion accents were various and vital, and all in all this work with its light touch and deft instrumentation was a breath of fresh air for those (like me) who consider Stokowski’s version weighted and a bit stodgy.
The finale of the evening was Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major BWV 1068, the perfect piece for a summer music festival, right up there with Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks or his Water Music suite. Mitchell led the orchestra deftly in a marvelous rendition of the “Overture,” this gem of stylized Baroque grandeur at its finest with its succinct trumpet fanfares set one after another in a filigree of majestic fortissimo timpani rolls. In the second movement, whose main theme is sometimes known as the Air on the G String, the strings played this timeless melody in a broad, handsome largo. In the Gavottes the interpolations from the principal trumpet Jeffrey Work ended with breathtakingly gentle terminal trills, in opposition to the wide, bold cadential trills he delivered later in the Gigue. The evening left me excited for more of the festival, and ready for whatever peregrinations would lead us to Vienna for the final evening…
Brett Mitchell leads the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra at the Great Hall in Sunriver, Ore. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)
Miracles
The final night of the festival took us as promised to Vienna, after the ethereal and mystical stops of the previous evening. The evening opened, appropriately enough, with a work by Haydn, Symphony No. 96 in D Major, Hob. I:96, also nicknamed the “Miracle.” The opening was appropriate because the other great Viennese masters Mozart and Beethoven were also programmed this evening, and Haydn was at one point Beethoven’s teacher, and was a friend and mentor to Mozart for most of the latter’s life, with Mozart even dedicating six of his string quartets to “Papa Haydn”…
The SRMF’s performance featured some magical moments. Principal oboe Lindabeth Brinkley was absolutely top-notch: her delicacy of phrasing, her ability to combine the sweet with the powerful during the opening “Adagio” made me wish that movement would never end. The winds generally were fantastic while I was there; the little trios and quartets that manifested themselves here and there were constantly among the highlights of any performance. The fine tutti sections in the finale were strong, punctuated without being overblown, and the finesse required from the brass and winds to deliver a first-rate performance was everywhere in evidence.
Much as it had been at The Cliburn earlier in the summer, it was a true pleasure to hear Vitaly [Starikov] play multiple concerts in one week, and his back-to-back performances at SRMF were a highlight of my year. He chose the Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453 to play at the SRMF…
In the “Andante” the woodwinds again showed their caliber: the very highest. They displayed unity and precision in an almost uncannily unified timbre to come from such disparate instruments; if I have ever heard a more dulcet bassoon than Georgeson playing the Mozart that evening, I can’t remember when it was. The soloist played misterioso, giving this movement everything we love about a Mozart andante; it was soulful and hauntingly melodic. He has a sensitivity to his attack, a way of leaning into the instrument and bringing his hands down in such a way that it feels like he is going to disgorge some frightfully loud chord – and then he puts all that tremendous energy into the softest cantabile imaginable…
My friend Jon was with me for both the Leipzig and Vienna concerts. He is a musician himself, and we shared our insights with one another throughout the week. He commented that he thought a really great soloist can raise the level of the orchestra, and I agreed with him, and in this case, I thought that two things were going on; that is to say there was a feedback loop between soloist and orchestra, as though each kept upping their game, as if each were daring the other to do better. The orchestra was spectacular in this work, and I was as impressed with Starikov’s Mozart as I was with his solo work, which is about the highest praise I can think of.
Pianist Vitaly Starikov and conductor Brett Mitchell after performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 with the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra. (Photo by Jimena Shepherd)
Talk about your all-time festival favorites, what better way than to round off the festival than by playing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op 67…
The opening four notes are maybe the most famous four notes in music history, and their execution is something of a matter of personal choice by the conductor. Mitchell chose here to launch straight into it with no fanfare, no ritardando or undue accenting: he simply played them as they were written: the opening bit of an “Allegro con brio,” and this worked really well. Let’s not milk it, I thought, there is so much other great stuff here, and we will get to hear this motive many more times tonight. The brisk tempo was also a great choice, and the strings were obviously having great fun – this was their chance to shine, and the phrasing was nuanced and intelligent, with sensitive piannisimi, giving the music plenty of room to grow dynamically.
I began to note various things live that I maybe don’t pay as much attention to when I listen to a recording. Things like the bitter battles between strings and winds, the importance of the bassoon as an anchor to the harmonies, the small but vital horn entrances on which the ensuing parts hang. In the “Andante con moto” I noticed just how difficult the contrabass parts were, and how much fun the double bassists Jason Schooler and Clinton O’Brien had on their fortissimo cadential endings, the one-note whomps! they got to play at the end of a phrase… I heard how the cellos and violas sounded at times delightfully like a collection of woodwinds; their ability to change color, chameleon-like in this fashion is something I don’t note unless I’m sitting there, reveling in the glory. The sudden and surprising crescendi, the tootling piccolo hits in the “Scherzo” – the list goes on and on.
As the Beethoven ended, I pondered the incredible possibilities and synergies that develop when performers and audience gather at the same time, to participate in the ritual, the very real magic known as live music. Though this was my first time attending, the Sunriver Music Festival, in its 48th year, feels like the gift that just keeps on giving. Here’s to 48 more.
Brett Mitchell and the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra after performing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)
Feature: ‘From Manilow to Mozart, Sunriver maestro Brett Mitchell is an all-around music fan’
Brett Mitchell leads the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra (Photo by David Young-Wolff)
BEND, Ore. — The Bulletin has published a feature about the Sunriver Music Festival and its Artistic Director & Conductor, Brett Mitchell, who is about to begin his fourth season at the helm of the nearly-50-year-old festival in Central Oregon.
Sunriver Music Festival kicks off Saturday, with four classical concerts, a family concert and the ever-popular, and often sold-out, pops concert over the next week and a half in Bend and Sunriver.
The festival opens at the Tower Theatre with an evening program titled “A French Soiree,” followed by the Pops Concert Sunday night, also in the downtown Bend theater.
Concerts continue apace, through Aug. 11’s Season Finale Classical Concert, “Vienna Waits for You,” with music by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, among the many composers who called the Austrian city home.
But if, like Brett Mitchell, conductor and music director of the seasonal classical festival, you’re a Billy Joel fan, you know that the concert’s title is a pulled directly from the lyrics of “Vienna,” the B-Side to Joel’s 1977 single “Just the Way You Are.”
“I really am a subscriber to Duke Ellington’s great aphorism, which is, ‘There’s only two kinds of music. There’s good music, and there’s bad music,'” Mitchell said.
First came rock
Mitchell’s classical bona fides include his service as current music director of the Pasadena Symphony, and previous stints as music director of the Colorado Symphony, associate conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra and assistant conductor of both the Houston Symphony and Orchestre National de France. In May, Mitchell stepped in for conductor Juanjo Mena and made his subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic with less the 24 hours’ notice, receiving wide praise in reviews of his work.
But Mitchell is also a rock and pop aficionado. The array of autographs on the wall of his home studio attests to his wide and varied musical influences and tastes:
“I’m in my studio right now, and I’ve got to my left what I call my autograph wall, and I’ll tell you who’s autographs are on this wall,” Mitchell said. “The autographs are Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, John Williams, Billy Joel, Barry Manilow, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel and Tony Bennett.”
If there are any aesthetes turning a nose up at the very notion of this diverse group sharing space on Mitchell’s wall or playlists, know this: He grew up in a non-musical family, and from a young age, rock and pop were his entry points into what he does professionally now.
We mean very young.
In the early ’80s, when he was 3 years old, he heard a song on the radio and asked his mom, who was getting ready for work, if they had it on vinyl.
“She said, ‘We do have a record of it.'”
Mitchell told his mom he wanted to take said record and his Fisher-Price record player to his caretaker, Janet’s house. His mom said Janet probably already knew the song. But he was determined to do it his was. His mom gave in on the record, but told him Janet has her own record player.
“I said, ‘No mom, I really want to take our record and my record player.’ And rather than argue with a 3-year-old, which is never a winning proposition — which I can attest to because we have a 3-year-old right now — she said, ‘OK.'”
Oh Mandy
When they arrived at Janet’s, the future conductor stopped his mom from leaving to head to work, he insisted the three of them sit together and listen to it.
The record: “Mandy,” Manilow’s 1975 no. 1 song, in which Mandy came and gave without taking. “The thing I have up on my wall — there was a silver record released for ‘Mandy’s’ 40th anniversary like 10 years ago, that Barry signed however many of.
“It’s funny, because people hear, you know, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, John Williams up on my wall with the silver record of ‘Mandy’ by Barry Manilow, and it’s like, ‘Guys, this is what I’m talking about,'” Mitchell said. “I tell that story all the time because it’s a cute story … but here’s what it really is. I found music that I loved, and I wanted to share it with as many people as I could.
“Now, when I was 3, that was for my mom and my caretaker on a living room floor in Seattle,” he added. “Now I get to do it — I opened the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom season (that’s the name of its summer performance venue) for 20,000 people a couple of weekends ago. So when you ask do I listen to pop, I do listen to pop. I listen to jazz. I listen to almost everything but classical to be honest with you, because I’m always working on classical music. That’s what I do all the time.
“The last thing I want to do when I’ve finished a day of studying Mozart is go listen to more Mozart. I’d much rather listen to Dave Brubeck and Bill Evans.”
The early ’90s
Knowing he was 3 in the early ’80s and living in the Pacific Northwest, you can probably guess what genre he got into after the smooth rock of Manilow.
“I was born in 1979 in Seattle,” he said. “By the time I got to middle school in 1991, it was Nirvana, it was Pearl Jam, it was Soundgarden.”
Crack open his middle school yearbook to “whatever page you want, every one of us is in flannels and ripped jeans,” he said, laughing.
He’s chiefly a Nirvana guy: “I thought Nirvana was as good as it got.” He even preferred the raucous, Steve Albini-engineered “In Utero” over the polished, Butch Vig-produced breakthrough “Nevermind.”
For him, there’s a common thread among all the songwriters and composers he’s come to love in his work and his free time that ties it all together.
Because of the way Mitchell had always viewed music, when he began exploring classical at age 15, “It didn’t strike me as any different from Nirvana,” he said. “Here’s a guy dealing with some serious things in his life, and has chosen, as part of the way that he’s going to work through these things, he has chosen to share that with the rest of us, to make the rest of us feel less alone. That’s exactly what Kurt Cobain was doing. That’s exactly what Beethoven was doing.”
“To me, it’s all the same,” he said.
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.