CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The New York Pops

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 8:00 PM

The New York Pops
Constantine Kitsopoulos, Conductor
Christiane Noll, Soprano
Lillias White, Vocalist
Martín Solá, Tenor
Tomoko Ohno, Piano
Sara Caswell, Violin
Special Guest: Phyllis Newman

JOHN WILLIAMS For New York (Variations on Themes by Leonard Bernstein)
BERNSTEIN Slava! (A Political Overture)
BERNSTEIN "The Wrong Note Rag" from Wonderful Town
BERNSTEIN "I Can Cook Too" from On the Town
BERNSTEIN "Lonely Town" from On the Town
BERNSTEIN "Lucky to Be Me" from On the Town
BERNSTEIN Fancy Free Excerpts
BERNSTEIN "One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man" from Wonderful Town
BERNSTEIN "Spring Will Come Again"
BERNSTEIN A Musical Toast
BERNSTEIN LEONARD BERNSTEIN West Side Story Film Overture
BERNSTEIN "Maria" from West Side Story
BERNSTEIN "Tonight" from West Side Story
BERNSTEIN "Somewhere" from West Side Story
BERNSTEIN In Memoriam; March: "The BSO Forever" from Divertimento for Orchestra
BERNSTEIN "It’s Gotta be Bad to be Good"
BERNSTEIN "Conga" from Wonderful Town
BERNSTEIN "My New Friends" from The Madwoman of Central Park West
BERNSTEIN "Build My House" from Peter Pan
BERNSTEIN "Take Care of This House" from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Major funding for Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds has been provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Alice Tully Foundation, American Express, Bob and Martha Lipp, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, Nash Family Foundation, and Mr. and Mrs. A. Alfred Taubman.

Additional funding provided by GWFF USA Inc., and Linda and Stuart Nelson.

Generous support has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The New York Pops
Constantine Kitsopoulos, Conductor
The New York Pops was founded by Skitch Henderson in 1983 to give New York a permanent professional symphonic pops orchestra that would create greater public awareness and appreciation of America’s rich musical heritage. The orchestra is now the largest independent symphonic pops orchestra in the US, enjoying one of the highest subscription renewal rates of any series at Carnegie Hall. The New York Pops’s extensive education programs allow public schoolchildren to participate in numerous concert and music-making experiences: Salute to Music provides free instrumental lessons to more than 100 New York City junior-high school students each year; Kids in the Balcony arranges for hundreds of children to attend concerts by The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall; and other education programs—such as Create a Symphony and Rhythm, Rhyme & Rap—teach skills such as composition, instrument building, percussion performance, and literacy. The New York Pops’s recordings include a recently reissued CD of the orchestra’s 1983 debut performance as well as From Berlin to Bernstein, The New York Pops Goes to the Movies, Christmas in the Country, Magical Moments from Great Musicals, and With A Song in My Heart—the Music of Richard Rodgers with Maureen McGovern. For the fourth year in a row in summer 2008, the orchestra performed the musical accompaniment to the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, seen by more than 10 million television viewers nationwide on NBC. A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York Pops is a not-for-profit corporation supported solely through the generosity of individual donations, institutional grants, and concert income.


Constantine Kitsopoulos has received acclaim as a conductor whose musical experience spans the worlds of symphony, opera, and musical theater and who embraces the development of new works in a wide variety of genres.

Mr. Kitsopoulos is music director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra and general director of the Chatham Opera, which he founded in 2005. He is a frequent guest conductor with the Baltimore, Detroit, and Milwaukee symphonies, and he made recent debuts with the Blossom Festival Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and National Arts Centre Orchestra. Other orchestral highlights include conducting appearances with the New Jersey Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and a complete performance of Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. This season Mr. Kitsopoulos makes debuts with The New York Pops, Colorado Symphony, and Pittsburgh Symphony.

In recent seasons, Mr. Kitsopoulos has conducted Dicapo Opera Theatre’s production of The Merry Widow and the Chatham Opera’s debut production, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. He also conducted Dicapo Opera Theatre’s production of Gounod’s Faust and all three versions of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, the Hong Kong Municipal Opera production of Carmen in Hong Kong and Beijing, and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at Alice Tully Hall.

Mr. Kitsopoulos is much in demand as a theater conductor, on Broadway and nationwide. He conducted and was the music director for the Tony-nominated musicals A Catered Affair in 2008, Coram Boy in 2007, and the American Conservatory Theatre’s production of Kurt Weill’s Happy End in 2006. He was also music director and principal conductor of Baz Luhrmann’s production of Puccini’s La bohème, served as music director of Frank Wildhorn’s Dracula and Les Misérables, and conducted Matthew Bourne’s Broadway production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Mr. Kitsopoulos’s recordings include Baz Luhrmann’s production of La bohème (Dreamworks, 2002), Happy End (Ghostlight, 2007), and A Catered Affair (P.S. Classics, 2008).

Christiane Noll, Soprano
Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, actress Christiane Holl made her Broadway debut in Jekyll & Hyde, in which she created the role of Emma. Ms. Noll received an Ovation Award for her comedic turn as Hope Cladwell in the National Tour of Urinetown, wowed audiences again as Vanna Vane in the new musical The Mambo Kings, and soared as Jane Smart in the American premiere of The Witches of Eastwick.

Ms. Noll has lived up to her reputation as a versatile actress with a varied repertoire that includes Broadway, opera, operetta, and jazz. She has been a frequent guest soloist as part of Bravo Broadway with symphony orchestras around the world, including the National Symphony and Marvin Hamlisch, the Cincinnati Pops and Erich Kunzel, the Jerusalem Symphony and Don Pippin, and Peter Nero and the Philly Pops. She has released three solo CDs: Christiane Noll—A Broadway Love Story and The Ira Gershwin Album for Fynsworth Alley, and Live at the Westbank Café on 2Die4 Records. In addition, she supplied the singing voice of Anna in the Warner Brothers animated feature The King and I and starred on Broadway in It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues.

Ms. Noll received critical acclaim for her operetta performances as Marianne in the City Center Encores! production of The New Moon, Kathie in The Student Prince, and Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance. Ms. Noll made her opera debut with Plácido Domingo and the Washington National Opera as Valencienne in The Merry Widow and her Carnegie Hall debut with The New York Pops and Skitch Henderson, in his last pops performance, as one of the Three Broadway Divas. She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University

Lillias White, Vocalist
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Lillias White attended City College and was a member of the DemiGods theater ensemble. She has performed her one-woman show, From Brooklyn to Broadway, in New York, Aspen, Los Angeles, and Sydney, Australia.

Ms. White has performed in nearly a dozen Broadway shows. She has been seen as Joyce Heth in Barnum, Grizzabella in Cats, Asaka in Once on this Island, Effie in Dreamgirls, and Mama Morton in Chicago. For her portrayal of Sonja in Cy Coleman and Ira Gasman’s The Life, Lillias was honored greatly with the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Friends of New York, and Tony awards.

Ms. White has appeared in such films as Pieces of April with Katie Holmes, Game Six with Michael Keaton, and Disney’s animated feature film Hercules, in which she played the voice of the Lead Muse. She has also appeared on Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU, Sesame Street, The Jury, and as Bloody Mary on Great Performances—South Pacific on PBS.

Off-Broadway, Lillias sizzled as Dinah Washington in Dinah Was and gave life to a sassy, hat-wearing Velma in Regina Taylor’s Crowns, for which she won an Audelco Award. Ms. White has performed at Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Ravinia Festival, and with The New York Pops, Boston Pops, and Palm Beach Pops.

An original cast member of Like Jazz, a collaborative effort of Cy Coleman and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Ms. White was inspired to create My Guy Cy, a celebration of the music of Cy Coleman. She is currently planning an international tour of her one-woman show My Guy Cy along with a recording of jazz music.

Martín Solá, Tenor
Martín Solá has won acclaim both in the theater and on the concert stage. In 2007, he joined the prestigious New York film, theater, and television agency of Hartig Hilepo Ltd. headed by Paul Hilepo.

Engagements this season include a leading role in the new Off-Broadway play All Eyes and Ears at the Lion Theater and Che in Evita at the historic Theater by the Sea in Rhode Island. Mr. Solá recently appeared in Coram Boy on Broadway, the New York City Opera productions of Margaret Garner and Cendrillon, and the world premiere of Carlos Franzetti’s opera Gauchito and the Pony with the Queens Symphony.

Previously, Mr. Solá appeared on Broadway in Baz Luhrmann’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème and made his Broadway debut in The King and I.

Mr. Solá’s first album, Amor y Desengaño, consists of a group of Spanish songs popularized in the 1950s and ’60s, brought together in a modern adaptation to tell an impassioned story of love and betrayal.

Tomoko Ohno, Piano

Sara Caswell, Violin
Sara Caswell is an award-winning jazz and classical violinist. Originally from Bloomington, Indiana, Sara began playing violin at age 5 and made her orchestral debut at age 15. Since then she has performed nationwide, soloing with numerous orchestras and ensembles including The New York Pops and Jazz Allstars under Skitch Henderson, touring with Mark O’Connor’s American String Celebration, and leading both the Sara Caswell Quartet and Caswell Sisters Quintet in concerts at colleges, universities, and jazz festivals. Among the many jazz artists with whom she has performed are Charlie Byrd, Gene Bertoncini, John Clayton, Ingrid Jensen, and Bucky Pizzarelli.

Sara’s most recent CD, But Beautiful, was released on Arbors Records in 2005 and has received critical acclaim, receiving a No. 1 ranking on nationally syndicated jazz radio host Bob Parlocha’s list of Top 40 New Releases as well as top rankings in Jazz Education Journal and Coda Magazine.

A graduate of Indiana University and the Manhattan School of Music, Sara studied classical violin with Josef Gingold and jazz with David Baker. She teaches at the Manhattan School of Music’s Pre-College Division, the Mark O’Connor Fiddle Camp and Strings Conference, and Jamey Aebersold’s Summer Jazz Workshops; in addition, she presents jazz string clinics around the country.

Special Guest: Phyllis Newman
This November Phyllis Newman will be designated a Living Landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. Tonight the Landmark sings. Ms. Newman is thrilled to appear again at Carnegie Hall with The New York Pops singing a song written especially for her by Leonard Bernstein. The song was for the show Madwoman of Central Park West and written by Ms. Newman with Arthur Laurents, who directed the show.

Ms. Newman has a long list of achievements in the world of entertainment, including a Tony Award for Subways Are for Sleeping and a Tony nomination for Broadway Bound. She also performed in The Apple Tree, Prisoner of Second Avenue, Bells Are Ringing, First Impressions, On the Town, and Follies. On television, Ms. Newman was the first female host of the Johnny Carson Show and also appeared on Thirtysomething; Murder, She Wrote; That Was the Week That Was; and 100 Centre Street. Film credits include The Human Stain, It Had to Be You, and Beautician and the Beast. Ms. Newman is the author of the book Just in Time: Notes from My Life.

In 1996 Ms. Newman founded the Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative of the Actors Fund of America, which each year produces a star-studded Broadway concert, Nothing Like a Dame. The Fund continues to disperse millions of dollars to women in need. Ms. Newman was married to the late legendary Adolph Green for 42 years; they have two children, Adam and Amanda.