Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner has climbed all 14 of the 8,000+ meter peaks, from Annapurna to Everest. Upon completing the most daunting and feared mountain, K2, in the remote Karakoram Range, she became the first woman climber to do so without supplemental oxygen or porters. On stage she shares the highlights of a remarkable career and what it was like to be the first.

Terence Blanchard’s opera Fire Shut Up In My Bones made history in 2021 as the first work written by a Black composer to be staged at the Metropolitan Opera.
This “opera in jazz,” as Blanchard describes it, tells the true coming-of-age story of a young boy growing up in the face of great adversity and forging his personal identity.
Now, in this visually captivating concert performance, Terence Blanchard brings us a new suite of music from the piece.

American pianist Evren Ozel has established himself as a musician of “refined restraint” (Third Coast Review), combining fluent virtuosity with probing, thoughtful interpretations. Having performed extensively in the United States and abroad, Evren is the recipient of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2022 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and is currently represented by Concert Artists Guild as an Ambassador Prize Winner of their 2021 Victor Elmaleh Competition.

A favorite of La Jolla Music Society audiences, Blake Pouliot has been described as “immaculate, at once refined and impassioned” and has anchored himself among the ranks of classical phenoms. Pouliot has established himself as “one of those special talents that comes along once in a lifetime” (Toronto Star). He is joined by pianist Henry Kramer, who has been praised by The Cleveland Classical Review for his “astonishingly confident technique” and The New York Times for “thrilling [and] triumphant” performances.