• Ticket Price
    $15-70
    Students Half Price
  • Duration
    2hrs 10min
    One intermission
Season Debut: Gershwin, Rodrigo & Ravel

Season Debut: Gershwin, Rodrigo & Ravel

Season Debut! Classical guitar’s brightest star headlines a dazzling program packed with new and familiar classics.

Sharon Isbin, called “the pre-eminent guitarist of our time” by Boston Magazine, joins the Symphony in its first annual Harriet S. and J. Locke Macomber Concert, an artistic initiative aimed at presenting once-in-a-lifetime works and internationally renowned soloists. The first half of the concert features a trio of American composers beginning with the world premiere of Kevin Puts’s Heartland Canons. Sharon Isbin performs Christopher Brubeck’s Affinity, written as an homage to his late father, jazz great Dave Brubeck, and composed for Isbin to perform. Finally, the impressionistic and intoxicating rhapsody of Gershwin’s An American in Paris. After intermission, Ms. Isbin performs Rodrigo’s dazzling Fantasia para un gentilhombre. The Symphony’s Season Debut concludes with more than 100 musicians performing Ravel’s rapturous, passionate Daphnis et Chloe.

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Event Sponsors

Exclusive Sponsor

  • These concerts have been made possible by a generous gift from the Harriet S. and J. Locke Macomber Des Moines Symphony Fund

Program

  • Kevin PUTS Heartland Canons (2022) World Premiere Commissioned by the Des Moines Symphony
  • Christopher BRUBECK Affinity: Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra Listen
  • GERSHWIN An American in Paris Listen
  • RODRIGO Fantasia para un gentilhombre Listen
  • RAVEL Daphnis et Chloe: Suite No. 2 Listen

Performers

  • Joseph Giunta Conductor Bio
  • Sharon Isbin Guitar Bio

Tickets

Single tickets are $20-$80 and are available through Des Moines Performing Arts. Ticket prices are subject to a $5 increase on the day of the concert, excluding student rush tickets.

Student tickets are $7.50-$35 and are available through the Civic Center Ticket Office. Student rush tickets, subject to availability, are $5 for junior high and high school students and $10 for all other students the day of the concert through the Civic Center Ticket Office. One ticket sold per valid Student ID.

Learn More

Join us 45 minutes before the concert in the Prairie Meadows (East) Lobby for a free Concert Prelude Talk. Led by Dr. Eric McIntyre of Grinnell College, these discussions are complimentary to ticket holders and offer engaging and topical commentary on the featured program. 

Digital Program Books

In an effort to reduce our environmental impact and preserve natural resources, we now offer a Digital Program Book. Click here to read about the program, guests artists and composers featured this weekend.

Joseph Giunta

Joseph Giunta Conductor

One of America’s most distinguished, versatile and dynamic conductors, Joseph Giunta is a musician of international acclaim. He is recognized as an important American conductor for his innovative programming and for his compelling interpretations of traditional and new music. His musical depth combined with his boundless energy and contagious enthusiasm makes him one of the most respected and successful orchestra leaders in the United States.

Learn More About Maestro Giunta

Sharon Isbin

Sharon Isbin Guitar

Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique and versatility, multiple Grammy Award winner Sharon Isbin was named the 2020 Musical America Worldwide Instrumentalist of the Year, the first guitarist ever to receive the coveted honor in its 59 year award history. Soloist with over 200 orchestras, Isbin has performed in the world's finest halls. Winner of the Toronto, Madrid and Munich ARD Competitions, Germany's Echo Klassik and Guitar Player's Best Classical Guitarist awards, she performed in Scorsese's Oscar-winning The Departed, at Ground Zero for the first internationally televised 9/11 memorial, the White House by invitation of President Obama, and as the only classical artist in the 2010 Grammy Awards. The documentary Sharon Isbin: Troubadour, seen by millions on over 200 PBS stations across the U.S. and abroad, won the ASCAP Television Broadcast Award. Recent highlights include a commission for her by Carnegie Hall, a 21-city Guitar Passions tour with jazz greats Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo, sold-out concerts at the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, and her most recent Carnegie Hall appearances included collaborations with Sting and in recital with Isabel Leonard.

Isbin's catalogue of over 30 albums, from Baroque, Spanish/Latin and 20th Century to crossover and jazz-fusion have sold nearly a million copies and reflect her remarkable versatility. Her two latest releases in May 2020 of world premiere recordings of music composed for her are Affinity featuring Chris Brubeck's acclaimed concerto for guitar and orchestra, and Strings for Peach with India's legendary Amjad Ali Khan in a program of ragas for guitar, sarod and tabla. Her 2019 release with the Pacifica Quartet, Souvenirs of Spain & Italy, debuted at #1 on Amazon and #2 on Billboard, and her Grammy-winning Journey to the New World with guests Joan Baez and Mark O'Connor spent 63 consecutive weeks on top Billboard charts. Isbin's Breams of a New World earned her a Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist, making her the first classical guitarist to receive the award in 28 years. Her recording of concerti composed for her by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun was honored with a Grammy, and her Rodrigo Aranjuez with the New York Philharmonic, their only recording with guitar, received a Latin Grammy nomination.

Author of the Classical Guitar Answer Book, Isbin has premiered in over 80 works written for her by some of the world's finest composers, and directs the guitar departments at the Aspen Music Festival and the Julliard School, which she created in 1989.