Alumnus wins Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
Feb. 14, 2011 -- Kent Nagano (M.A., '76) won Best Opera Recording at the 53rd Grammy Awards ceremony held Feb. 13, 2011, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The award, Nagano's third Grammy, was for Saariaho: L'Amour De Loin, a recording with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Rundfunkchor Berlin.
Alumnus Kent Nagano. Photo by: Wilfried Hösl
Nagano, the conductor laureate of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, is music director of both the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bayerische Staatsoper. He has said that, "The music program at San Francisco State really prepared me for the professional world of music. My transformation took place there."
Nagano, a frequent guest conductor for the world's finest orchestras, was not the only SF State alum nominated for a Grammy this year. Johnny Mathis' Let it be Me: Mathis in Nashville was up for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. Wayne Wallace's ¡Bien Bien! was nominated for Best Latin Quintet. Steven Miller was nominated for Best Engineered Album, Classical for his work on Bobby McFerrin's Vocabularies.
For more on the University's notable alumni, visit the music page of Alumni Hot Shots
-- Adrianne Bee
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