In September, the San Francisco Symphony and Tilson Thomas launched its milestone Centennial with a celebratory gala concert dubbed “Fanfare for a New Century” at Davies Symphony Hall.

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The two-hour broadcast is hosted by best-selling Bay Area author Amy Tan and features Tilson Thomas conducting the Orchestra and two of the leading artists of our time: legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor and the dynamic pianist Lang Lang performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major.

The concert opens with Aaron Copland’s vivid portrayal of American prairie life, the Billy the Kid Ballet Suite and concludes with Britten’s orchestral showpiece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra of which the San Francisco Chronicle said: “…as Thomas led his colleagues, section by section and soloist by soloist… the listener could only marvel at the level of individual excellence and communal artistry on display.”

Capping off the concert is an encore of Bay Area composer John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine featuring animated images of San Francisco projected throughout Davies Symphony Hall.

Woven into the concert footage, San Francisco Symphony at 100 includes historical documentary features narrated by Tan highlighting the Orchestra’s early beginnings, its rich history of touring and its commitment to young people and innovations in media.

On April 1st, San Francisco Symphony at 100 will also be released on DVD and Blu-ray with additional bonus historical features (though will not feature Lang Lang’s concert performance.)

San Francisco Symphony at 100 is a production of San Francisco Symphony and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.

Major funding for the telecast is provided by Nan Tucker McEvoy and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, Vivian Milstein, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, The Starr Foundation, the Filomen M. Di’Agostino Foundation, The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, public television viewers, and PBS.

San Francisco Symphony at 100 is directed by Gary Halvorson. Executive Producer: John Kieser. Producer: Michael Bronson. The History Vignettes are produced by Janette Gitler. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

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Recorded in April 2011 at the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center in Miami Beach, The Thomashefskys is written and hosted by Tilson Thomas and stars Broadway performers Judy Blazer as Bessie Thomashefsky and Shuler Hensley as Boris Thomashefsky.  It also features Ronit Widmann-Levy and Eugene Brancoveanu and the New World Symphony.

Founding members of the Yiddish Theater in America, the Thomashefskys owned theaters, published their own magazine, wrote columns in the popular Yiddish newspapers, sponsored and encouraged generations of young artists, brought uncountable numbers of Yiddish artists to America, tirelessly raised funds for progressive social causes and, though it all, were adventurous trend setters.

This story, reclaimed by The Thomashefky Project, presents a musical sound that few have heard, assimilating Eastern European klezmer and cantorial modes with American tunes and rhythms. Over time, as the Jewish American music theater writers became absorbed in their new surroundings, they greatly influenced the American Songbook.

The Thomashefskys is a very personal project for Tilson Thomas, celebrating the lives and theatrical and musical legacies of his grandparents.  Born out of his desire to preserve the music of the Yiddish theater, The Thomashefsky Project, founded in 1998, expanded from an archival role to this stage production hosted and conducted by Tilson Thomas and directed for the stage by Broadway veteran Patricia Birch.

It features music reconstructed from the original Yiddish theater repertoire interwoven with projected images and stories from Bessie and Boris’s lively memoirs.  “My grandparents became mega-stars and found themselves smack in the public eye,” says Tilson Thomas. “They were subject to adulation and relentless scrutiny. Legions of crazed fans were obsessed with every detail of their work and their lives.”

The stage version of The Thomashefskys has been performed to sold-out houses in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Miami, and at Tanglewood in Massachusetts.  The San Francisco Chronicle said, “Thomas and his collaborators do what Yiddish artists always meant to do.  They make you forget your troubles for an evening, plunge into another world and feel your own more fully in the end.”

Following the national broadcast, The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater will be released on April 24 on DVD by New Video (www.newvideo.com). The New World Symphony was founded in 1987 by Michael Tilson Thomas and Ted Arison, and has launched the careers of over 800 musicians.

The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater is a production of The Thomashefsky Film Project LLC and THIRTEEN for WNET.

The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater is directed for television by Gary Halvorson. Producers: Joshua Robison, Michael Bronson, and Michael Kantor. For Great Performances, John Walker is producer; Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

Major funding for the telecast is provided by Arison Arts Foundation, Marcia and John Goldman, Carole and Jeffrey Hays and Lydia and Douglas Shorenstein, Stephen and Sandra Muss, the Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation, the Koret Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Lisa and John Pritzker Fund.

Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, The Starr Foundation, the Filomen M. Di’Agostino Foundation, The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, public television viewers and PBS.

Herbie Hancock, Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil Celebrate Gershwin, featuring that classic piece as well as “An American in Paris” and Hancock’s unique improvisation on the great standard “Someone to Watch Over Me,” airs on THIRTEEN’s Great Performances Friday, January 6 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings).

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Since his early teens, Gershwin had been enamored with the music he heard uptown in Harlem, quickly becoming the center of the jazz universe. His first attempt at a serious composition, the mini-opera Blue Monday, a story about characters in a Harlem nightclub was a flop and received only one performance.

Upon seeing the opera, band leader Paul Whiteman was enthused enough to commission Gershwin to write a concert piece in the jazz idiom for a program of American music, and Gershwin, was emboldened to take it on. As he later explained, “I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America – of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness.”

Rhapsody was introduced on February 12, 1924, with the composer as soloist in Ferde Grofé’s orchestration for jazz band. The piece made an indelible mark on the history of American music, on the fraternity of serious composers and performers – many of whom were present at the premiere – and on Gershwin himself, for its enthusiastic reception encouraged him to other and more serious projects.

It was a trip to Paris that inspired Gershwin to work in earnest on a recent commission he had received from the New York Philharmonic, one that would capture in music the tumult of Paris’ streets with their distinctive taxi horns, and create a concert work that didn’t center on the piano.

Back in New York, Gershwin finished An American in Paris, which he subtitled “A Tone Poem for Orchestra.” In an interview in the August 18, 1928 edition of Musical America, he said of the work: “this new piece, really a rhapsodic ballet, is the most modern music I have ever attempted.” He also gave a brief “program note” of the work:

An American in Paris was wildly successful with audiences – and Hollywood – and established Gershwin as an original voice in concert halls worldwide, a voice that resonates to this day.

“Someone to Watch Over Me” was composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin for the musical Oh, Kay! (1926), where it was introduced by British star Gertrude Lawrence. It has been performed by numerous artists in both popular and jazz versions.
The Los Angeles Times noted admiringly, “The L.A. Philharmonic is noted for its flexibility, and the solo riffs were jazzy, authentic and unself-conscious, all of which is a real rarity in the symphonic world.”

Concurrently serving as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (his third season), the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Dudamel’s musical leadership spans three continents.

Beyond the forty-three weeks of his yearly schedule, he also guest conducts with a few of the world’s greatest orchestras each season. This season he returns to the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, along with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris and the Israel Philharmonic. He also returns to La Scala, where he regularly conducts, for a performance of Mahler Symphony No. 2.

Herbie Hancock is a true icon of modern music. Throughout his explorations, he has transcended limitations and genres. His illustrious career has spanned five decades and 14 Grammys, including Album of the Year for River: The Joni Letters.

Hancock also maintains a thriving career outside the performing stage and recording studio. Recently named by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Creative Chair for Jazz, he currently also serves as Institute Chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, and he’s a founder of The International Committee of Artists for Peace. Hancock was made a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in July of 2011.

In 2010, Hancock released the critically-acclaimed, multiple Grammy-winning CD, Herbie Hancock’s The Imagine Project. Utilizing the universal language of music to express its central themes of peace and global responsibility, the ‘Imagine’ project features a stellar group of musicians.

Herbie Hancock, Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil Celebrate Gershwin is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET, Bernard Fleisher Moving Images, WDR in cooperation with ARTE, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, and C Major.

Great Performances is funded by The National Endowment for the Arts, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, Vivian Milstein, Jody and John Arnhold, The LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, The Starr Foundation, the Filomen M. D’Agostino Foundation, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, public television viewers, and PBS.

Herbie Hancock, Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil Celebrate Gershwin is directed by Enrique Sanchez Lansch. Producer: Bernhard Fleischer. Producer for WDR/ARTE: Lothar Mattner. For Great Performances, John Walker is producer; Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2012, featuring the infectious melodies of the Strauss Family and contemporaries, will air live Sunday, January 1 at 2:30 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings) with an encore performance that evening at 7:30 p.m. (In New York, THIRTEEN will air the broadcast at 9 p.m.)

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The venerable concert is the largest world-wide event in classical music reaching over a billion people annually through radio and television in 72 countries. The Vienna Philharmonic’s traditional New Year’s program has showcased Viennese musical culture at the highest level, and since the first television broadcast in 1959, sent the world a New Year’s greeting in the spirit of hope, friendship and peace. (The telecast has been a Great Performances tradition on PBS since 1985.)

Andrews is delighted to return to Vienna for what has become for her a most pleasurable tradition. “It is always a privilege and a wonderful spoiling to visit Vienna, especially at holiday time. The sights and sounds are glorious and I bask in the irresistible music all around me, particularly the beautiful Strauss waltzes.”

She has been a frequent and luminous presence on Great Performances, starting with “An Evening with Alan Jay Lerner” (1989); “Julie Andrews in Concert” (1990); “Some Enchanted Evening: Celebrating Oscar Hammerstein II” (1995); “Back on Broadway” which spotlighted her return to the Great White Way in “Victor/Victoria” (1995); “Hey, Mr. Producer! The Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh” (1998); “My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies” (1999); its follow-up “My Favorite Broadway: The Love Songs” (2001); and the restoration of the classic 1957 “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella” (2004). She also hosted the Emmy Award-winning series Broadway: The American Musical in 2004.

At press time, the musical program was scheduled to run as follows:

Joseph Hellmesberger Jun.
Danse Diabolique

Josef Strauss
Artists Greeting, French Polka, op. 274

Johann Strauss
Enjoy Life, Waltz, op. 340

Johann Strauss Sr.
Sperl Galopp, op. 42

Hans Christian Lumbye
Steam Railway, Galopp

Josef Strauss
Fireproof, French Polka, op. 269
(with The Vienna Boys’ Choir)

Eduard Strauss
Carmen Quadrille

Peter I. Tschaikowsky
Panorama from the Ballet “Sleeping Beauty”

Peter I. Tschaikowsky
Waltz from the Ballet “Sleeping Beauty”

Johann und Josef Strauss
Pizzicato Polka op. 25

Johann Strauss
Persian March, op. 289

Josef Strauss
Burning Love, Polka Mazurka, op. 129

Johann Strauss
Thunder and Lightning, Fast Polka, op. 324

Johann Strauss
Tick Tock, Fast Polka, op. 365

Johann Strauss
The Blue Danube Waltz, op. 314

Johann Strauss Sr.
Radetzky March, op. 228

As is customary with these broadcasts, Ms. Andrews will travel from her home base in the Musikverein hall itself to visit multiple picturesque Vienna landmarks: a steam railway for Lumbye’s “Steam Railway” gallop; the Belvedere Palace for the three ballet sequences, choreographed by Davide Bombana; and the Augarten Palais, home of The Vienna Boys’ Choir.

The Vienna Boys’ Choir is one of the oldest boys’ choirs existing in the world since 1498 when Maximilian I called the first dozen boys to the court as members of the newly formed court music band. Numerous vocalists, violinists, conductors, and pianists have sung in their ranks: Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Karl Zeller, Hans Richter, Lovro von Matacic and Clemens Krauss. In the days of the First Republic they were regarded as Austria’s “singing ambassadors.” Since those days the Vienna Boys’ Choir has given concerts under nearly all the great conductors of this century: Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Herbert von Karajan, Carlos Kleiber, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti and Sir George Solti. And, every Sunday the Vienna Boys’ Choir sing solemn mass in Vienna’s Hofburg chapel, continuing a tradition unbroken since 1498.

Since the autumn of 2003, Mariss Jansons has been the principal conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and since September 2004 principal conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, therefore presiding over two of Europe’s most prestigious orchestras, both steeped in tradition.

From 1979 up to the year 2000, Jansons was music director of the Oslo Philharmonic, which during his tenure became an international orchestra of note. He was also involved with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic as permanent conductor from 1971 until 1999. In addition to that he also appeared as principal guest conductor for the London Philharmonic Orchestra between 1992 and 1997. From 1997 until 2004 he was Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Mariss Jansons has worked together with the world’s most important orchestras, guesting with great success for leading American and European orchestras.

Jansons first conducted the New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic in 2006.

On January 10, Sony Classical will release the live recording via CD-on-demand exclusively at Amazon.com and ArkivMusic and through all major digital service providers, followed by a nationwide CD release on January 24, and DVD and Blu-ray on February 7th.

Great Performances is funded by the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, Vivian Milstein, Vera von Kuffner Eberstadt, The Starr Foundation and the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, public television viewers, and PBS. Exclusive corporate support for the concert is provided by Rolex.

From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration is directed by Karina Fibich, with John Walker as producer/writer. For Great Performances, John Walker and Cara Cosentino are producers; Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

Those expecting a simple ballet adaptation of the Disney animated film will be surprised to find a complex and intense portrayal of unrequited love and the resilience of the human spirit.

San Francisco Ballet – the oldest professional ballet company in America – received Neumeier’s rare permission to present the American premiere in March 2010, which was met with ecstatic audience response, and hailed by critics as “mesmerizing” and “moving.” The two-act production features an evocative score by the young Russian-American composer Lera Auerbach which mixes haunting melodic passages with moody undercurrents atonality and dissonance.

Neumeier created the ballet for The Royal Danish Ballet in 2005 to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of Andersen’s birth, and a subsequent Hamburg Ballet version premiered in 2007. Of all the famous writer’s stories, the choreographer chose this one because of its “very particular concept of love,” he says. “Love that is so strong that it can overcome boundaries, that it can transport her to new worlds, although it may seem to be self-destructive—because the Mermaid re-creates herself at the cost of extreme personal pain. But the story teaches us, at the same time, that no matter how strong our love may be, it doesn’t obligate the object of our love to love us in return.”

Neumeier, a Milwaukee-born American who has spent nearly his entire career in Europe, trained in Copenhagen and London and began his dancing and choreographic careers at Stuttgart Ballet. After only six years there, in 1969 he became director of the Frankfurt Ballet, where he caused a stir with his reinventions of classics such as Nutcracker and Romeo and Juliet. Four years later he began his tenure as director and chief choreographer of the Hamburg Ballet, and in 1978 he founded a school that now supplies more than 70 percent of the company’s dancers. He has created close to 140 ballets for his own company and as a guest choreographer for American Ballet Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, and throughout Europe. His extensive list of honors includes dance and arts awards from the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Denmark, and several publications.

“We are grateful to our co-partners and sponsors for the opportunity to broadcast this truly unique and dazzling production,” said SF Ballet Executive Director Glenn McCoy. “San Francisco Ballet was very proud to present the United States premiere of John Neumeier’s The Little Mermaid, and we are thrilled that the Company has the opportunity to share it with wider audiences, not only nationally, but worldwide,” added McCoy.

San Francisco Ballet prima ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan (star of past Dance in America SFB productions such as Lar Lubovitch’s Othello and Helgi Tomasson’s Nutcracker) plays the title role.  She found a strong personal connection with the Mermaid, she says, in the character’s pursuit of “unconditional love. People dream about it. And [the Mermaid] tries to pursue it, and fails, but still believes in it.”

Written between the lines of this fable about personal sacrifice was a far more personal dimension—Andersen’s own torment. According to Neumeier, many scholars believe that this story is probably Andersen’s most autobiographical work. The writer had a history of falling in love with women he could not have, and a few men as well. This tale of unreciprocated love could well be his own; shortly before he wrote it he had suffered greatly at the marriage of Edvard Collin, a love interest who did not return his affections. “So in a sense,” Neumeier says, “Andersen’s disappointment [about Collin] is the jumping-off point for The Little Mermaid.”

Neumeier has played on that fact, expanding the ballet’s story to include a representation of Andersen in the character of the Poet. Neumeier didn’t intend to depict Collin specifically; instead, he says “the historical facts inspire and help to create a new Prince.”

Cast: Yuan Yuan Tan (The Little Mermaid); Lloyd Riggins (The Poet); Tiit Helimets (The Prince); Sarah Van Patten (The Princess); Davit Karapetyan (The Sea Witch). Music Director & Principal Conductor: Martin West.

The Little Mermaid from San Francisco Ballet is a production of the San Francisco Ballet Association, NDR/ARTE and THIRTEEN for WNET, in association with BFMI and C Major Entertainment.  It is produced by Judy Flannery and Bernhard Fleischer.  For Great Performances, Joan Hershey is producer; Bill O’Donnell is series producer; and David Horn is executive producer. It was directed for television by Thomas Grimm.  It will be released on DVD and Blu-ray by Naxos.

Major funding for the telecast, which was filmed in May at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House and shot in high definition using eight cameras, is provided by The James Irvine Foundation, Lucy Jewett, Mrs. Jeannik Méquet Littlefield, the Bob Ross Foundation, Fang and Gary Bridge, the Helgi Tomasson Innovation Fund of the San Francisco Ballet Endowment Foundation, and Tim Dattels. Major funding for Great Performances is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, the Starr Foundation, the Filomen M. D’Agostino Foundation, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation.

So it was reported by Reuters news agency a day after the historic event which saw the tenor following in the distinguished footsteps of opera superstars Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo, both of whom have given memorable Central Park performances.

Andrea Bocelli Live in Central Park airs on THIRTEEN’s Great Performances, Friday December 2 at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings). Accompanied by the New York Philharmonic, under the direction of music director Alan Gilbert, the spectacular event was Bocelli’s special gift to New York City. The program is the New York-based offering of the multi-city PBS Arts Fall Festival, which includes four Great Performances productions. Award-winning journalist Paula Zahn is the evening’s host.

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Widely regarded as the most popular Italian tenor in the world with more than 70 million albums sold, Bocelli was joined that rainy, windswept evening by pop stars Céline Dion, Tony Bennett, Chris Botti and David Foster, and from the classical world, bass baritone Bryn Terfel, sopranos Ana María Martínez and Pretty Yende, and violinist Nicola Benedetti, along with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, under the direction of Joe Miller. Bocelli presented a varied repertoire that includes well known arias, fan favorites, and some new surprises.

Since Great Performances introduced American television audiences to Bocelli with 1997’s Romanza concert, Bocelli has been featured in a notable series of Great Performances specials, including Sacred Arias, Amore, Vivere, My Christmas and American Dream, his spectacular “Statue of Liberty” concert from New Jersey’s Liberty State Park.

The night began promisingly as the setting sun cast a golden glow on the New York skyline, but as Maestro Gilbert struck up the portentous strains of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino overture, a light but steady rain fell over the crowd of some tens of thousands of New Yorkers, and those who had come much farther, to see him. Though umbrellas were raised, and a chilly wind began to blow, fans were swept up in the beauty of the music and the presence of their idol. “In spite of the rain and cold, you are heroes,” Bocelli assured the adoring crowd.

The first act of stirring operatic selections including Verdi and Puccini favorites gave way to more popular fare in the second including duets with Celine Dion and Tony Bennett.

The program:

La Forza del Destino Ouverture
Alan Gilbert, New York Philharmonic

“La donna ė mobile” (Rigoletto)
Andrea Bocelli

“Di quella pira” (Il Trovatore)
Andrea Bocelli

“Va Tosca! (Te Deum)” (Tosca)
Bryn Terfel, Choir

“Ave Maria ‘Ellens dritter Gesang’”
Andrea Bocelli

“Vicino a te s’acqueta” (Andrea Chenier)
Andrea Bocelli, Ana Maria Martinez

“Au fond du temple saint” (Les Pêcheurs de Perles)
Andrea Bocelli, Bryn Terfel

“O Soave Fanciulla” (La Bohème)
Andrea Bocelli, Pretty Yende

“Libiano ne’lieti calici” (La Traviata)
Andrea Bocelli, Pretty Yende, Choir

“Home on the Range”
Bryn Terfel, Choir

“En Aranjuez con tu amor”
Andrea Bocelli, Nicola Benedetti (violin)

“’O Sole Mio”
Andrea Bocelli, Choir

“Once Upon a Time in the West”
Andrea Bocelli

Andrea Bocelli, David Foster, Chris Botti (trumpet)

“Volare”
Andrea Bocelli, David Foster

“The Prayer”
Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, David Foster

“New York, New York”
Andrea Bocelli, Tony Bennett

“Amazing Grace”
Andrea Bocelli, Choir

“Time to Say Goodbye”
Andrea Bocelli, Ana Maria Martinez, Choir

“Nessun Dorma” (Turandot) (encore)
Andrea Bocelli, Choir

Bocelli’s performance was the latest in a rich tradition of memorable free concerts in Central Park which, over the years, has included such notable performers as Barbra Streisand, Simon and Garfunkel, Diana Ross, Garth Brooks, Bob Marley and the Wailers, and Bon Jovi.

Before the concert, Bocelli nostalgically reflected, “I cannot help but smile when thinking about the upcoming concert in Central Park. It was my father’s dream, and my father was right, because my artistic path would have been entirely different without the strong and sincere embrace of this extraordinary city where everything is possible, even when it seems impossible. My father will not be there, but I can count on his blessing and his kind and gentle smile to give me courage. My mother, sitting in the front row, will feel my father, too, and they will be together again just like when I was a little boy performing on the fireplace steps. Perhaps they had secretly dreamed that I might have the opportunity to perform in New York City, and maybe right here in Central Park.”

Concerto: One Night In Central Park will also be released on CD , DVD and CD+DVD by Sugar/Decca on November 14th.

Great Performances is a production of THIRTEEN for WNET New York Public Media, one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local arts programming to the New York community.

Andrea Bocelli Live in Central Park is directed by David Horn. For Great Performances, Mitch Owgang and Andrea Cotromano are producers; Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn and Filippo Sugar are executive producers.

Barilla is the main sponsor of the concert event and the television broadcast. Major funding for the Great Performances telecast is provided by Vivian Milstein, the Starr Foundation, the Irene Diamond Fund, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, Joseph A. Wilson, public television viewers, and PBS.