"Symphonie Fantastique" - University of Georgia Symphony Orchestra conducted by special guest Michael Stern

Hector Berlioz wrote semi-autobiographical program notes for this piece that allude to the romantic sufferings of a gifted artist who has poisoned himself with opium because of his unrequited love for a beautiful and fascinating woman. The artist’s reveries take him to a ball and to a pastoral scene in a field, which is interrupted by a hallucinatory march to the scaffold, leading to a fantastic dance. This is certain to be an audience favorite.

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ABOUT MICHAEL STERN

Conductor Michael Stern has long been devoted to building and leading highly acclaimed orchestras known not only for their impeccable musicianship and creative programming, but also for collaborative, sustainable cultures that often include a vision of music as service to the community. He also is passionate about working with young musicians not only in music making, but also to incorporate the idea of “service” into their experiences as they become the artists and advocates of the future who will take classical music into the 21st century and beyond.

Stern currently holds three Music Director positions: with the Kansas City Symphony, where he will be concluding his 19-year tenure at the end of the 2023-2024 season; with the National Repertory Orchestra, a summer music festival in Breckenridge, CO which, for over 60 years, has provided an intensive, unique fellowship program for aspiring young musicians, and whose alumni populate every major orchestra across the United States; and with the newly rebranded Orchestra Lumos (formerly the Stamford Symphony). Stern was recently named Artistic Advisor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, one of Canada’s foremost orchestral ensembles. And, following a 22-year tenure as founding Artistic Director of Iris Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee, he now serves the newly reimagined Iris Collective as Artistic Advisor.

Stern joins the UGASO as guest conductor for the month of March, 2025.

During Stern’s tenure with the Kansas City Symphony, he and the orchestra have been recognized for their remarkable artistic ascent, original programming, organizational development, stability, and extraordinary audience growth. Under Stern’s leadership, the orchestra explored a wide range of repertoire and commissioned a number of new works. Stern and the KC Symphony also partnered with GRAMMY® Award-winning Reference Recordings for a collection of very well-received CDs that includes commissions by American composer Adam Schoenberg and by Jonathan Leshnoff, whose Symphony No. 3, inspired by World War I soldiers’ letters home, was premiered by the KC Symphony at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. The orchestra’s Reference Recordings releases also include Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”; a pairing of music Elgar and Vaughan Williams; “Miraculous Metamorphoses,” with music by Hindemith, Prokofiev and Bartók; and a disc of works by Saint-Saëns.  In 2021, Stern and the orchestra put out another widely praised recording, bringing together three one-movement symphonies by Sibelius, Barber, and Scriabin. The orchestra’s next recording will be released in the fall of 2022, featuring three works by Brahms arranged for orchestra by Bright Sheng, Virgil Thomson and Arnold Schoenberg.