Toronto, Ontario – Veteran pops conductor Erich Kunzel and friends bring to music fans a concert of the most memorable favourites, featuring the best of Broadway past and present, including tunes from The Sound of Music, Show Boat, Cats, Chicago, Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, Cabaret, Kiss Me Kate, and Oklahoma! Newcomer Anna Madgett can be currently seen down the street in the current production of Mamma Mia!.

Erich Kunzel is perhaps one of the most well-known pops conductors on the planet. He put Cincinnati on the map by way of a very long and fruitful relationship with its Pops orchestra. In 1965, Mr. Kunzel first conducted the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at Music Hall. When the CSO Board of Trustees officially established the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra in 1977, Erich Kunzel was named the orchestra’s Conductor. He has since led the ensemble to unprecedented success with music lovers worldwide who have discovered the CPO through tour performances, television programs and best-selling Telarc recordings. Erich Kunzel is the most successful Billboard Classical Crossover recording artist in history. In 1991, Billboard named him the Classical Crossover Artist of the Year for an unprecedented fourth consecutive year. Of the 73 Cincinnati Pops’ Telarc releases, 53 have appeared on either the Classical Crossover or Classical Billboard charts. The Pops recording, Copland: Music of America, earned a Grammy Award as "Best Engineered Album, Classical" in 1997. In addition, Robert Woods, the Telarc president who produces Cincinnati Symhpony and Cincinnati Pops albums, was named as "Producer of the Year, Classical" for the Pops’ A Celtic Spectacular and Scary Music in 2002. Five other recordings have received Grammy nominations. American Jubilee was awarded France’s Grand Prix du Disque in 1989.

Educated at Dartmouth, Harvard and Brown Universities, Mr. Kunzel studied with and was personal assistant to the great French conductor Pierre Monteux. By 1970, when Arthur Fiedler invited him to conduct the Boston Pops, Mr. Kunzel’s commitment to Pops was assured. He has led the Boston Pops annually ever since in more than 100 performances in Boston’s Symphony Hall and on tour in the U.S. and England. Mr. Kunzel served on the faculties of Brown University and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He made his professional debut in 1957 conducting the Santa Fe Opera Company, and he has conducted many productions there and with the Canadian Opera Company and Cincinnati Opera. This season he made his debut with the San Francisco Opera conducting 12 performances of The Merry Widow. This production was telecast in 2002 on BBC Worldwide and PBS as part of the Great Performances series.

A multi-award winner and the recipient of several honorary doctorates, Mr. Kunzel is chairman of the Greater Cincinnati Arts and Education Center, an organization with which he plans to fulfill his personal dream to build a new School for the Creative and Performing Arts adjacent to Music Hall. The TSO will celebrate Mr. Kunzel’s 70^th birthday in April in a "Happy Birthday Erich Kunzel" pops concert scheduled for April 19 and 20.

Tickets:
Call the Roy Thomson Hall box office at 416 593 4828.
Eve.: $91, $72, $69, $58, $52, $39, $34, $30.

Mat.: $60, $54, $52, $46, $43, $32.50, $28.25, $25.25.

Mon-Fri, 9-8. Sat, 12-5. Sun, 2 hrs prior to concert start. VISA/MC/AMEX.