Brian Del Signore Plus Brahms

Robert Spano, conductor, pianist, composer, and teacher, is known worldwide for the intensity of his artistry and distinctive communicative abilities, creating a sense of inclusion and warmth among musicians and audiences that is unique among American orchestras. Beginning his 20th season as Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, this imaginative conductor is an approachable artist with the innate ability to share his enthusiasm for music. An avid mentor to rising artists, he is responsible for nurturing the careers of numerous celebrated composers, conductors, and performers. As Music Director of the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2011, he oversees the programming of more than 300 events and educational programs for 630 students and young performers. Principal Guest Conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra since 2019, Spano became Music Director Designate on April 1, 2021 and begins an initial three-year term as Music Director in August 2022.
Highlights of Mr. Spano’s 2020–2021 season include conducting engagements with the Fort Worth, Houston, and New World Symphonies, in addition to multiple programs with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Spano’s 2019–2020 season included a return to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, conducting the world premiere of George Tsontakis’s Violin Concerto No. 3 alongside Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony. He returned to the Indianapolis Symphony for a program of Higdon, Rodrigo, and Sibelius, and led the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Dimitrios Skyllas’s Kyrie eleison, commissioned by the BBC. Conducting debuts included the Wroclaw Philharmonic.
With the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, programs included Spano’s quintessentially rich, diverse pairings of contemporary works and cherished classics, welcoming seasoned guest artists and many new faces. The orchestra’s 75th season featured numerous ASO premieres, including works by living American composers Krists Auznieks, Jessie Montgomery, and Jennifer Higdon, and a world premiere by Brian Nabors. The season opened with Joshua Bell joining the ASO for Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen.
The 2018–2019 season featured Mr. Spano’s highly-acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut, leading the US premiere of Marnie, the second opera by American composer Nico Muhly, with Isabel Leonard, Janis Kelly, Denyce Graves, Iestyn Davies, and Christopher Maltman, and the conclusion of the ASO’s two-year “LB/LB” celebration commemorating Leonard Bernstein and Ludwig van Beethoven. This celebration featured six Bernstein works and nine Beethoven Symphonies, and vocal masterpieces including Verdi’s Otello, Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Bernstein’s Candide. Recent concert highlights have included several world premiere performances including Voy a Dormir by Bryce Dessner at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor; the Tuba Concerto by Jennifer Higdon, performed by Craig Knox and the Pittsburgh Symphony; Melodia, For Piano and Orchestra, by Canadian composer Matthew Ricketts at the Aspen Music Festival; and Miserere by ASO bassist Michael Kurth. In addition to his leadership of the ASO, Spano recently returned to his early love of composing. His most recent works include Sonata: Four Elements for piano, premiered by Spano in August 2016 at the Aspen Music Festival, and a song cycle, Hölderlin-Lieder, for soprano Jessica Rivera. Both works were recorded on the ASO Media label and praised by Oberon’s Grove: “On this latest release, from ASO, we experience Spano as both an imaginative and evocative composer – with a special gift for writing for the voice – and a poetic pianist.”
The Atlanta School of Composers reflects Spano’s commitment to American contemporary music. He has led ASO performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Ravinia, Ojai, and Savannah Music Festivals.
Guest engagements have included the Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Minnesota Orchestras, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, and the San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, San Diego, Oregon, Utah, and Kansas City Symphonies. Internationally, Maestro Spano has led the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, BBC Symphony, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira, Orquestra Sinfonica Estado Sao Paulo, the Melbourne Symphony in Australia, and the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Japan. His opera performances include Covent Garden, Welsh National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, and the 2005 and 2009 Seattle Opera productions of Wagner’s Ring cycles.
With a discography of critically-acclaimed recordings for Telarc, Deutsche Grammophon, and ASO Media, Robert Spano has garnered four Grammy Awards and eight nominations with the Atlanta Symphony. Spano is on faculty at Oberlin Conservatory and has received honorary doctorates from Bowling Green State University, the Curtis Institute of Music, Emory University, and Oberlin. Maestro Spano is one of two classical musicians inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and makes his home in Atlanta.

Brian Del Signore joined the Houston Symphony as Principal Percussionist in 1986. Prior to his Houston Symphony appointment, he held a one-year position as Principal Percussionist of the Grand Rapids Symphony in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and performed with the Kalamazoo and Lansing Symphony Orchestras while there. Before moving to Michigan, Brian performed in many orchestras in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Brian Del Signore earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University in 1981, where he studied with the Pittsburgh Symphony percussionists. In 1984, Del Signore earned a Master of Music from Temple University, where he studied with Alan Abel of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Del Signore began piano lessons at age six and drums at age eleven. His first drum teacher in the late 1960’s was Lou Carto, pop star Bobby Vinton’s drummer and bandleader at that time.

Besides keeping a very busy schedule with Houston Symphony performances, Brian maintains an active education and outreach schedule, where he presents educational percussion programs in elementary schools and percussion clinics in high schools across the Houston area. “Digital Recording Tools for the Performing Musician” is a clinic and master class for college-aged percussionists and musicians which explores the use of recording technology to critique and improve performance ability. Del Signore has presented the clinic and master class at various music schools around the United States including Baylor University, Texas A&M- Commerce, Sam Houston State University, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Yale University, The Julliard School, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Curtis Institute of Music, Temple University, Peabody Conservatory, Carnegie Mellon University, Cleveland Institute of Music, The Colburn School in Los Angeles, and San Francisco Conservatory.

Brian Del Signore endorses manufacturers of high-quality percussion instruments and accessories. These companies—Remo Corporation, Sabian Cymbals, Pearl/Adams Percussion, ProMark Sticks, and Black Swamp Percussion—as well as The Houston Symphony League Bay Area support Del Signore’s educational and outreach programs. For more information on these educational programs please visit www.briandelsignore.com.

Brian and his wife Leah have three college aged children, Damian, Dominique and Dione.