2024 New Year's Concert

Médée, a tragedy in a prologue and five acts on a libretto by Thomas Corneille, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s first and last collaboration with the Académie Royale de Musique. The work was premiered on 4 December 1693, when Charpentier was exactly fifty years old and at the height of his career. Louis XIV attended the performance, proving that it was an eagerly awaited event. Yet this sombre drama, which disconcerted the public, was withdrawn after just ten performances, and not heard again until 1976. A specialist in the French repertory and a close associate of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, where he has followed all the advances in research and historically informed performance for thirty-five years, Hervé Niquet has endeavoured, in presenting this new Médée, scrupulously to apply all the scholarly findings available to us today.

Armbruster was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he was 8 years old, Armbruster began performing professionally in Philadelphia.After studying with Constantin von Sternberg [ru] he became a concert pianist, then branched out into conducting and a composing for radio, then television and film. He debuted as a pianist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of eight. In his teenage years, he started recording piano rolls for the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art reproducing pianos and turned out hundreds of classical and salon-type performances for them. He attracted particular notice as orchestra leader of The Voice of Firestone, the songs "Cuddle Up" and "High Barbaree" and his compositions "Western Ballet" and "Variations in Miniature on Chopsticks".

Unfortunately, the diversity of Swiss symphonic music from the late 18th to the early 20th century is hardly known to concertgoers today.

One of the greatest stars of the rock & roll era, Elton John exploded like a supernova in the early 1970s and sustained a career that kept him at the top of the charts for the next five decades. He had a Billboard Top 40 hit single every year between 1970 and 1996, a sign that he knew how to both change with the times and mold the times to fit him. John's earliest records were part of the moody, introspective post-'60s singer/songwriter movement, but once he had a hit with "Your Song," the pianist revealed he could also craft Beatles-like pop and pound out rockers with equal aplomb. As "Rocket Man," "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," and "Bennie and the Jets" – songs John wrote with his lifelong collaborator Bernie Taupin – climbed into the Top Ten on either side of the Atlantic, John was inescapable during the first half of the '70s. His versatility, combined with his effortless melodic skills, and flamboyant stage shows, became his calling cards, sustaining him through shifts in fame and fortune. Eventually, John reached outside of pop music, writing songs for Disney's The Lion King and collaborating with Tim Rice on Aida, yet he never abandoned the form: during the 2010s and 2020s, he balanced fashionable collaborations with emerging stars with albums that hearkened back to his moody records of the early '70s. In 2024, he joined the elite group of EGOT winners after earning an Emmy Award for his concert special Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium.

English synth pop duo Pet Shop Boys have amassed a remarkably consistent and influential catalog, pairing wry cultural commentary with buoyant melodies and lush electronic arrangements that sound like no other. After first emerging in the mid-'80s with "West End Girls" and "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe quickly established themselves as hitmaking singles artists who were also able to craft emotionally resonant albums, like 1988's Introspective and 1990's Behaviour. The duo navigated the constantly shifting landscape of modern dance-pop with grace and intelligence, moving easily from disco to house music to thoughtful synth pop without losing their distinctive style in the process. Continuing to evolve artistically, Pet Shop Boys incorporated Latin music on 1996's Bilingual, expanded into theater and ballet, and eventually morphed into elder statesmen of electronic pop, producing an array of inventive late-period highlights like 2016's Super and 2024's Nonetheless.

Truth in Our Time complements American minimalist’s new symphony with compelling programming including Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9, Korngold’s Violin Concerto, featuring James Ehnes, and potent contemporary works by Nicole Lizée and Yao.  "The concert was as much a capsule presentation of the orchestra as an institution as well as a performing ensemble. The NACO has a crisp, slightly light sound, sonorous but expressive through articulation, color, and agility rather than mass, and this suited all the pieces," New York Classical Review of the US Premiere at Carnegie Hall, April 2022

On Tuesday, October 28, 2014, after 45 years of performing the greatest live music in rock history, the Allman Brothers Band had arrived at its final concert. The dream created by Duane Allman in 1969 had come to fruition, gone through triumph and tragedy, joy and sorrow, flourished and faltered, and ultimately persevered to reach the pinnacle of the blues/rock genre. The road had seemingly gone on forever, but, in 2014, the group decided that forever would come to an end at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. On Friday, October 25, in recognition of the 10th anniversary, fans can own a piece of rock ‘n’ roll history when Final Concert 10-28-14 is officially released via Peach Records. “Having joined the Allman Brothers Band in 1991, I had no idea what I was getting myself into as a percussionist joining two drummers on stage,” percussionist Marc Quinones notes looking back. “Fast forward 23 years to the last show we played as the Allman Brothers Band. I feel honored to have been part of such a historical musical force that was and is the ABB. Love live the ABB!”