Streaming and in-person:
Click for stream Homage to Ligeti | CCRMA 50th Anniversary
A major concert will kick off the final series of events celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Join us in Dinkelspiel Auditorium on November 3 at 7:30pm for a program of music by György Ligeti, whose five-month residency at Stanford in 1972 and friendship with John Chowning helped lead to the founding of CCRMA.
This all-Ligeti program comprises "Atmosphères" (featured in the Stanley Kubrick film "2001: A Space Odyssey") performed by the Stanford Symphony Orchestra; "Musica ricercata" performed by pianist Roger Xia '24; the electronic composition "Artikulation"; and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra featuring violinist Tanja Becker-Bender with the Stanford New Ensemble conducted by Paul Phillips.
FREE and Open to the Public | In Person + Livestream
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Face coverings are recommended. We encourage you to continue wearing masks for the comfort of our audience members, artists, and staff. For more information please visit CCRMA's COVID-19 Policies and the COVID-19 safety protocols for Department of Music events.
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Born in Stuttgart, Germany, into a family of scientists and musicians of Bohemian origin, Tanja Becker-Bender burst onto the violinists’ scene already as a young girl, winning 1st prize in Italy’s Lipizer competition at age 18, as well as top prize in the Geneva International competition shortly after. Tokyo’s renowned Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award and prizes in the international competitions of Genoa, Houston, and Chimay in Belgium evened out her path of regular solo performances with eminent orchestras such as the Tokyo Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, and Houston Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart of the SWR, Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin, and the Vienna, Zurich and Prague Chamber orchestras, as well as the English Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra Leopoldinun Wroclaw. Conductors she has collaborated with include Kurt Masur, Gerd Albrecht, Peter Ruzicka, Fabio Luisi, Uriel Segal, Hartmut Haenchen, Hubert Soudant, Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi, Dan Ettinger, Zsolt Nagy and Carlos Miguel Prieto. Regular festival performances include those of Schleswig Holstein, Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Rheingau, Engadin, West Cork, Chautauqua (US), and Kronberg, with chamber music partners such as Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Boris Pergamenschikow, Péter Nagy, Ralf Gothóni, Alexander Lonquich, Sofya Melikyan, Eduard Brunner, Andrzej Bauer, Miguel da Silva, Lawrence Power, Claudio Bohórquez, Dimitry Ashkenazy, and many others.
Tanja Becker-Bender has studied in Stuttgart, London, Vienna, and New York, with some of the world’s leading quartet musicians: Wilhelm Melcher (Melos Quartett), David Takeno, Günter Pichler (Alban Berg Quartett), Robert Mann (Juilliard String Quartet) – also finding important inspiration through Bartók’s student György Sándor in New York and through Ferenc Rados in Budapest, as well as through work with Eberhard Feltz in Berlin.
In 2006 she was appointed professor at the University of Music in Saarbrücken, taking the chair which Maxim Vengerov held before. Since 2009, she is professor of violin at the University for Music and Theater in Hamburg. Students of her class have become laureates at important international solo and chamber music competitions, enjoy versatile chamber music careers and play in renowned orchestras worldwide.
Paul Phillips, Professor of Music and Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies, is a conductor, composer, pianist, and author who has conducted over 80 orchestras, opera companies, and ballet troupes worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Opera Boston, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and Choir, and Paul Taylor Dance Company. Phillips is music director and conductor of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Philharmonia, and Stanford Summer Symphony, and teaches conducting at Stanford. He has also taught Harmonic Convergence: Music's Intersections with Science, Mathematics, History, and Literature, Black Music Revealed, Russian Modernists: Stravinsky and Shostakovich, and Orchestra Online, and has led the Stanford New Ensemble and Stanford University Ragtime Ensemble, which he founded. Phillips brought Stanford Philharmonia to Bermuda in 2022 to perform at the Bermuda Festival of the Performing Arts, and in 2024 led the Stanford Symphony Orchestra on a two-week tour of France and Monaco. Previously, he has led choral and orchestral tours to China, Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
Phillips has conducted over 1000 works in performance, including much of the standard repertoire and over 100 regional, US, and world premieres. He has performed with Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, and Carol Wincenc; collaborated with Steve Reich, William Bolcom, George Walker, and many other renowned composers; and led concerts featuring Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles, Dionne Warwick, Tony Bennett, Glen Campbell, and other pop, jazz, and rock stars. Phillips’s honors include 11 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, First Prize in the NOS International Conductors Course (Holland) and Wiener Meisterkurse Conductors Course (Vienna), and selection for the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program. He has conducted two recordings with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and five for Naxos: two each with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland) and Brown University Orchestra, and one with the Slovak Philharmonic.
Studies at Eastman, Columbia, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, and Leonard Slatkin, among others, led to conducting posts at the Frankfurt Opera and Stadttheater Lüneburg in Germany, and with the Greensboro Symphony, Greensboro Opera, Maryland Symphony, Savannah Symphony, and Rhode Island Philharmonic in the United States. Prior to his appointment at Stanford in 2017, Phillips was Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music at Brown University from 1989-2017, and Music Director/Conductor of the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Massachusetts from 1994-2017.
Phillips has received numerous commissions and awards for his compositions, which include opera, ballet, chamber music, choral music, song cycles, and orchestral works published by Barnard Street Music. His chamber arrangement of Stravinsky’s opera Mavra, published by Boosey & Hawkes, has been performed by the Royal Opera House and at Glyndebourne and is featured in Bayerische Staatsoper’s Mavra/Iolanta, a 2022 DVD/Blu-ray Disc cited as a “Critic’s Choice” recording by Opera News (July 2023). As a pianist, Phillips has performed at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Mohawk Trail Concerts, Orvieto Musica, Carnegie Recital Hall, and Lincoln Center, plus many other series and venues. He has also led numerous clinics and workshops, including the American Composers Orchestra EarShot Program with the Pioneer Valley Symphony and a Conductors Guild Conductor Training Workshop at Stanford featuring guest composer Gabriela Lena Frank.
Phillips has chaired the Music Department’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and served on many other departmental committees. He was President of the Western Region of the College Orchestra Directors Association from 2022-24 and has served as Music Advisor to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, England, since 2015. For further information, visit www.paulsphillips.com.
Roger Xia recently graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Biology and Music (B.S.) and Biomedical Data Science (Coterminal M.S.). Before college, he was a scholarship student in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Division. Roger started piano lessons at age 5 and continued with Natsuki Fukasawa, Richard Cionco, Thomas Schultz, and Elizabeth Schumann. His violin lessons started at 7 with Dong Ho and continued with William Barbini and Owen Dalby. Roger made his Carnegie Hall debuts at age 10 and was featured on the From the Top show 322. He was a National Young Arts Foundation winner and joined the National Youth Orchestra (NYO-USA) as an associate concertmaster and keyboardist.
Roger is an active chamber musician and attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Summer String Quartet Workshop. He was a founding member of the “Rising Stars of Chamber Music” program developed by Susan Lamb Cook to train young musicians in chamber music. At Stanford, he continued chamber music studies with Christopher Costanza.
Roger was concertmaster of various orchestras including the Sacramento Youth Symphony (SYS) Premier Orchestra, Davis Senior High School (DSHS) Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO), and Stanford Symphony Orchestra (SSO). Roger has won concerto competitions and appeared as a soloist since age 8 with orchestras including the Merced Symphony Orchestra, SYS Premier Orchestra, UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, DSHS Symphony Orchestra, and SFSYO. Roger performed as a violin soloist with the Stanford Philharmonia at Stanford (2021) and at the Bermuda Music Festival (2022). He was selected as a winner of the 2023 Stanford Orchestras Concerto Competition and performed Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 with SSO.
Aside from music, Roger enjoys martial arts, ping pong, and skiing and loves to share his music-making experience with friends!
ABOUT THE ENSEMBLES
The Stanford New Ensemble performs compositions of the 20th century, more recent works of the 21st century, and new works by Stanford faculty and student composers. SNE, which rehearses weekly on Wednesday evenings, collaborates with composers and visiting artists, and adjusts the size of its membership according to the repertoire that it plays each quarter. For this quarter, SNE has a membership of 24 musicians – the exact roster needed for performance of the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by György Ligeti. Current membership consists of Stanford undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and professional members from the Bay Area. Inquiries about SNE can be directed to music director Paul Phillips or Dr. SunYoung Park, Orchestral Studies Program Administrator, by emailing them at
or calling Dr. Park at 650-725-2694.
The Stanford Symphony Orchestra is one of the America’s leading collegiate orchestras, with a distinguished history dating back to 1891, the year that Stanford University was founded. With a membership of over 100 undergraduate and graduate students, SSO rehearses on Monday and Thursday evenings and presents about ten concerts annually on campus of repertoire ranging from the Classical Period to the present. SSO frequently performs with outstanding student and faculty soloists as well as renowned visiting artists, often in collaboration with Stanford Live, and annually performs the Halloween Concert with the Stanford Wind Symphony, collaborates with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus, and hosts the Concerto Competition to give talented Stanford students the opportunity to perform as orchestral soloists.
Recent SSO concerts have included Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and the West Coast premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s A Knee on the Neck with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus; Pines of Rome, Le Sacre du Printemps, and Symphonie Fantastique; Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor; the California premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain Suite; and a joint performance with the University of Stuttgart Academic Orchestra. Last season was a particularly memorable one for the orchestra, beginning in October 2023 with thrilling SSO Benefit Concert in Frost Amphitheater with Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros with the Wolf Pack for an audience of 6000 wildly enthusiastic Grateful Dead fans, and ending in June 2024 with an exciting two-week tour of France and Monaco.
Like its sister organization Stanford Philharmonia, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra is supported by the Department of Music and the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU). Membership is open to all Stanford undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and members of the community. Inquiries about SSO can be directed to music director Paul Phillips or Dr. SunYoung Park, Orchestral Studies Program Administrator, by emailing them at or calling Dr. Park at 650-725-2694.
Cost: FREE