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September 20, 2007 Jack Wright, (617) 598-3212, jw@celebrityseries.org High-resolution photos: http://www.celebrityseries.org/Photo_Galleries/801-Kiri_Gallery.htm CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON OPENS Evening Also Features The Opening Night Reception and Gala Dinner (BOSTON)—Celebrity Series of Boston, Martha H. Jones, President and Executive Director, opens its 2007-2008 season with soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in recital with pianist Warren Jones on Sunday, October 14 at 5:00 p.m. at Symphony Hall. The performance is part of Dame Kiri’s farewell recital tour, and her only appearance in Boston during the 2007-2008 season. The evening’s program features works by Mozart, Richard Strauss, Copland, and Puccini. Full program information is listed below. Following the concert is The Opening Night—an annual gala celebration that this year pays tribute to Talbots Charitable Foundation’s 19 years as a Celebrity Series sponsor on the occasion of their 60 th anniversary, and benefits the Walter Pierce Annual Performance Fund and the Harris A. Berman Fund for After-School Arts. The performance marks Dame Kiri’s seventh with the Celebrity Series since her debut in 1984. She last appeared with the Series in 2002. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa made her operatic debut as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House in 1971, and has since established herself as one of the world’s most beloved sopranos. She has performed in leading opera houses around the world including Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opera, the Sydney Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, and La Scala among many others. Her heroine roles include those by Richard and Johann Strauss, Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, as well as Bizet and Gounod. On the concert stage, she has collaborated with many of the world's major orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and London Symphony Orchestra, and under the batons of such noted conductors as Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, and Sir Georg Solti. Dame Kiri is also an established recording artist and has released complete versions of Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosí fan Tutte, Die Zauberflöte, Tosca, La Rondine, and Manon Lescaut, among many other operas. In 1985 she joined Nelson Riddle for Blue Skies, an album of American popular songs, and followed it with recordings of Gershwin, Porter, and Kern songs, along with recordings of My Fair Lady, South Pacific, and West Side Story. Dame Kiri is well known for her performance at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981 at which she performed for one of the largest telecast audiences of any singer in history. In 1990 she made another historic performance during a tour of Australia and New Zealand when her outdoor concert in the city of Auckland attracted an audience of 140,000. Dame Kiri is a Dame Commander of the British Empire, and has received honorary degrees from universities in Cambridge, Oxford, Dundee, Durham, Nottingham, Sunderland, Warwick, Auckland, Waikato and Chicago. Her most recent activities include performing for the Queen of England at the Opening Ceremony of the 18 th Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006, and shortly thereafter releasing a new album on the EMI label entitled Kiri Sings Karl in collaboration with composer Karl Jenkins. Pianist Warren Jones performs regularly with renowned artists, at major festivals, and in legendary concert halls around the world. He has released several recordings on the BMG/RCA Red Seal label, and his recording of Copland and Ives songs for Decca/Argo was nominated for a Grammy Award. Mr. Jones is a member of the collaborative piano faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and teaches and performs at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. For ten years he was Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, and for three seasons served in the same capacity at San Francisco Opera. Born in Washington, D.C., Mr. Jones grew up in North Carolina and graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he was recently honored with the Conservatory's Outstanding Alumni Award. Program Information: Sunday, October 14 at 5:00 PM MOZART R. STRAUSS DUPARC POULENC HEGGIE BRITTEN COPLAND WOLF-FERRARI PUCCINI TICKETING INFORMATION: Remaining tickets, priced at $65 and $50, are available by calling CelebrityCharge at (617) 482-6661 (Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.), online at www.celebrityseries.org, or at the Symphony Hall box office, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, Monday-Saturday 10:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m. About Celebrity Series of Boston
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