This winter/spring, Anthony Parnther conducts Cleveland Orchestra, NSO, Nashville & Indianapolis Symphonies, Gateways Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, The Central Park Five at Detroit Opera, & more
(January 2025) — “A conductor for the future” with “a flourishing career” (The New York Times), Anthony Parnther is active over the months ahead in the concert hall, opera house, and beyond. He leads characteristically wide-ranging programs with both the Indianapolis Symphony (March 20) and Nashville Symphony (April 11 & 12); makes his second appearance with the all-Black Gateways Festival Orchestra at New York’s Carnegie Hall (April 27); leads Detroit Opera’s revival of Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, The Central Park Five (May 10–18); celebrates the art of film with The Cleveland Orchestra (March 28 & 29), National Symphony Orchestra (June 20 & 21), and others; and conducts both the Civic Orchestra of Los Angeles (Jan 18) and RISE Orchestra (Feb 15 & 16), two of the innovative career pathway programs he has founded to help young musicians from underserved communities.
Adventurous programs with Nashville & Indianapolis Symphonies
Known for his “charismatic, captivating conducting” (Los Angeles Times), Parnther is a favored guest of symphony orchestras nationwide. He returns to the podiums of two key ensembles this spring, leading characteristically creative programs that pair bedrocks of the orchestral literature with new and less familiar music by women and composers of color. With the Nashville Symphony, he juxtaposes Mendelssohn’s Fifth Symphony (“Reformation”) with two contemporary works: Tu-Jia Dance by Chinese American composer Joan Huang and the Four Winds Concertante by Emmy Award winner Jasmine Barnes (April 11 & 12).
In a free concert presented in partnership with the Sphinx Organization, Parnther conducts the Indianapolis Symphony’s Midwest premiere of Mortgante by Argentinian composer Andrés Martín. Featuring Sphinx Competition-winning violinist Samuel Vargas, with whom Parnther premiered the concerto last year, this forms the centerpiece of a program flanked by Price’s The Oak and Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony (March 20). It was in Beethoven’s Fourth that Parnther previously impressed The Guardian with his “high voltage interpretation that maintained a fine balance between detail and elan,” of which “the finale was edge-of-your-seat stuff.”
Return to Carnegie Hall with Gateways Festival Orchestra
Spring also sees Parnther return to Gateways Festival Orchestra (GFO), whose members are drawn from leading symphony orchestras and music faculties nationwide. Having previously helmed the all-Black ensemble at both its recent Chicago debut and its historic, sold-out Carnegie Hall one, which showcased a world premiere from Jon Batiste, this season he conducts GFO in a thoughtfully curated program of Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony, Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, and selected songs and spirituals featuring Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges. After previewing this program at Rochester’s Eastman School of Music (April 24), Parnther, Bridges, and GFO perform it on the main stage of New York’s Carnegie Hall (April 27), where Dawson’s symphony originally premiered in 1935. Marking Gateways’ first Carnegie Hall appearance since its debut there with Parnther in 2022, the April 27 concert will stream live to home audiences worldwide as part of WQXR’s Live from Carnegie Hall series.
The Central Park Five at Detroit Opera
The Central Park Five (2019) is a two-act opera about the miscarriage of justice perpetrated in 1989, when five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping and savagely beating a white female jogger in New York’s Central Park. Set to a libretto by Drama Desk Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Richard Wesley, its score is by Anthony Davis, hailed as one of the “great living American composers” (The New York Times). When awarding Davis the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Music for the opera, the jury described it as “a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful.”
The Central Park Five received its world premiere production at Los Angeles’s Long Beach Opera, where Parnther, who has long “used his platforms and rising profile to champion Black composers” (The New York Times), led its subsequent revival in 2022, followed by a studio recording session. After witnessing the live performance, the Los Angeles Times marveled: “Parnther conducted with gripping authority. … The recording promises to be essential.”
It is under Parnther’s leadership that Detroit Opera revives Davis’s opera, this time in a production by Nataki Garrett, artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The five falsely accused teens will be sung by baritone Markel Reed, bass-baritone Justin Hopkins, and tenors Chaz’men Williams-Ali, Frederick Ballentine, and – in a reprise of the role he created – Nathan Granner. Mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin will portray the Assistant District Attorney and, as in 2022, lyric tenor Todd Strange will sing the role of Donald Trump (May 10–18).
Films in concert with Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony, & more
“The quintessential L.A. musician of our day” (Los Angeles Times), Parnther is “Hollywood’s go-to conductor for epic projects” (Billboard). As CBS News reported on Sunday, he is one of today’s foremost film conductors, who has helmed a host of blockbuster film scores and is regularly invited to lead high-profile live-to-film events. After similar performances earlier this month with the Seattle Symphony, he returns to both The Cleveland Orchestra (March 28 & 29) and Fort Worth Symphony (March 8) for Black Panther in concert, set to the Oscar- and Grammy-winning score by Ludwig Göransson.
At the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Parnther conducts the National Symphony Orchestra in a program of contemporary film music; curated by Oscar-winning composer Kris Bowers, of Bridgerton and The Color Purple fame, this concludes “Notes & Frames,” the orchestra’s three-week festival of music in film (June 20 & 21). Parnther also leads a selection of his own cinematic favorites with New York’s Buffalo Philharmonic (Feb 1).
Innovative young artist programs in L.A.
Actively committed both to expanding career opportunities for young people from underserved communities and to advocating for underrepresented talent in the concert hall, Parnther is the Artistic Director of Burbank-based nonprofit Musicians at Play(MAP), which partners Los Angeles-area schools with a vibrant community of music professionals.
Under MAP’s auspices, he has also launched two similarly transformative projects. Since 2022 he has served as Artistic Director and Conductor of the RISE Diversity Project. To recruit young musicians of color to the world of television and film, this unique career pathways project offers mentorship, coaching, and the chance to play alongside professional studio musicians on a world-class scoring stage. The program’s annual selection and training process culminates with public performances of musical movie excerpts by this season’s newly formed RISE Orchestra. Held in Los Angeles, these will be led by Parnther himself (Feb 15 & 16).
Last spring, Parnther and MAP also founded the Civic Orchestra of Los Angeles (CO-LA), a 70-member ensemble designed to fill the gap left by the just-disbanded American Youth Symphony, formerly an important training ground for young orchestral hopefuls. As CO-LA’s Conductor and Music Director, Parnther led its inaugural concert at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles in April 2024, when the Los Angeles Timesreported:
“The pews were full for a crowd-pleasing program of emotional music. Parnther, a charismatic figure, has a growing fan base for his conducting, and he elicited hooting and hollering from the audience. He gave insightful and amusing comments preceding each piece, and his tightly balletic baton style summoned a knockout performance from musicians who, with one exception, were strangers to him before their four rehearsals.”
Through CO-LA, Parnther aims to continue providing career pathways, world-class training, and high-profile performance opportunities to young orchestral musicians. Later this month, he conducts the ensemble’s second public concert – a performance of Shostakovich’s searing Eleventh Symphony, “The Year 1905,” at the First Congressional Church of Los Angeles (Jan 18).
Anthony Parnther: upcoming engagements
Jan 18
Los Angeles, CA
First Congregational Church of Los Angeles
Civic Orchestra of Los Angeles (CO-LA)
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 11
Feb 1
Buffalo, NY
Buffalo Philharmonic
“The Sound of Cinema”
Feb 15 & 16
Los Angeles, CA
RISE Orchestra
Film music
March 8
Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
Ludwig GÖRANSSON: Black Panther in concert
March 20
Indianapolis, IN
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
PRICE: The Oak
Andrés MARTÍN: Morgante (with Samuel Vargas, violin)
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 4
March 28 & 29
Cleveland, OH
The Cleveland Orchestra
Mandel Concert Hall
Ludwig GÖRANSSON: Black Panther in concert
April 11 & 12
Nashville, TN
Nashville Symphony
Joan HUANG: Tu-Jia Dance
Jasmine BARNES: Four Winds Concertante
MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 5 (“Reformation”)
April 24 & 27
Gateways Festival Orchestra
Gateways Music Festival
April 24: Rochester, NY
Eastman School of Music (Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre)
April 27: New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage)
DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 8
DAWSON: Negro Folk Symphony
Selected songs and spirituals (with J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano)
May 10, 16, & 18
Detroit, MI
Detroit Opera
Anthony DAVIS: The Central Park Five
June 20 & 21
Washington D.C.
The Kennedy Center
National Symphony Orchestra
Kris Bowers curates: Notes & Frames: A Film & Music Festival