Music Director Christopher Lees and UNCSA Symphony Orchestra Present "Russian Fireworks"

This week the UNC School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Music Director Christopher James Lees will be shooting off Russian Fireworks.

On the program is the Symphony No. 5 by Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff's second Piano Concerto with outstanding Russian pianist Dmitri Shteinberg, and the Prelude to Khovanschina by Modest Mussorgsky.

Russian Fireworks will begin Thursday night, March 19^th at 7:30 in the Stevens Center for the Performing Arts. 

Today's guest, Christopher James Lees, is the new Music Director of the Symphony Orchestra and Associate Professor of Conducting at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He has been nationally recognized for powerful and nuanced performances across a wide array of repertoire. Only the second American Gustavo Dudamel Conducting Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mr. Lees made his debut with the orchestra in April 2013 and returned for concerts in February 2015. Today, he shares stories behind the pieces featured in Russian Fireworks, discussing everything from Rachmaninoff's writer's block to Shostakovich's formalist tendencies.